out. I don t like it. I m a-goin ome, I am.
I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three
hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two ladies
there being by no means the least active.
He s fallen in the pit! cried some one.
Keep back! said several.
The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one
seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit.
I say! said Ogilvy; help keep these idiots back. We don t know
what s in the confounded thing, you know!
I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was,
standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again.
The crowd had pushed him in.
The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two
feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, and I
narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and
as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder
fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into
the person behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a
moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in
my eyes.
I think everyone expected to see a man emerge possibly something a
little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I
did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the
shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two
luminous disks like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey
snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the
writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me and then another.
A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman
behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still,
from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my
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