“Be still,” Fleury commanded. “Be still and rest——”
Stackhouse himself would not have faltered before that voice of Fleury’s, but there was a force in it that prevailed for a moment upon the obsession. The air was full of strain.... They heard the heart in the poor body. The blue-tipped hands were upraised from the bottom of the boat—the face was toward them. Bellair and the Faraway Woman could see only the back of Fleury’s head. The strain was like a vice in the open boat.
Bellair contemplated the mystery: that this force, lower and more destructive than Stackhouse, could be managed and subdued in part by the energy of another’s will-power, when Stackhouse himself would have required brute strength.... He thought he understood what was going on, though he would likely have scouted the same had some one told him. In any event, Fleury was quieting the complicated thing before him.... They heard the heart-beats rise and sink, the hands often lifting from the bottom. The entire passage of the battle was magnified before their eyes. Hours passed. Fleury scarcely turned.
So far there is nothing to call in the Eastern metaphysicians, but the day was not done, nor the dying galvanism of the monster. The afternoon was still bright, when the great hairy head cocked itself up differently—the eyes stretching open and suddenly filled with yellow-green light, the colour of squash-pulp close to the rind, but a transparent light, that gathered the rays of the day in its expiring lucency, and held their own eyes—a lidless horror lifted from its belly. The woman must have seen the change at the same instant, for her cry blended with the voice of Bellair. As one, they understood that this was a different force for Fleury to meet—a wiser, more ancient and terrific force, from the bowels of the world of evil possibly, without relation to Stackhouse, but with a very thrilling relation to them.
The whole face had a different look. It was rising higher. The hands were braced upon the grating, pushing the body up. They were accustomed to the loosed havoc of bestiality which Stackhouse had left upon his features—but this that looked out from his eyes was knit and intent.
Fleury’s hand groped back.
“It will not answer me,” he was saying. “This is different. It will not obey me. Take my hand, Bellair.... Yes, and take hers with the other. We must drive it out.”
Weariness more than death was in the speech. He had struggled for hours. It was the voice of a man who had fought to his soul’s end. Bellair held his hand and the woman’s, but felt himself the betrayer. This had come for him! He was the prophet lying still while the sailors deliberated. They must cast him into the sea, before this thing could be willed into quiescence. Concentration on his part was broken by this conviction.
The body of Stackhouse was lifted to its knees—the different face looking out of the eyes. They sat before it like terrified children; the eyes found them one after another, steadily, with unearthly frigid humour, like some creative force of evil, integrated of the ages, charged with intrepid will, a ruling visitant that would tarry but an instant for the climax.
It was not human, save in the shape and feature for their recognition; its difference from the human was its frank knowing destructiveness. Humanity is mainly unconscious of the processes of evil; this had chosen. This was of the pull of the earth, and knew its power. It seemed known to Bellair as if from some ancient meeting. He could never have remembered, however, without this return. It was devoid of sex, which seemed to bring to him some old deep problem that took its place with his ineffable fear of the presence.