The eyes
were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large,
with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon,
when the moon is quite red, bright red.
How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness,
at a man's height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently?
And how did it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring,
staring eyes? And what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound
which it brought with it?
The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened
themselves against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen
because of that incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now,
because of the more intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound,
for the sound was certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds
that moved in the darkness, under the fiery face.
And the fiery face came on...with its noise...came level
with them!...
And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair
stand on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand
noises meant. They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow
by innumerable little hurried waves, swifter than the waves
that rush over the sands at high tide, little night-waves foaming
under the moon, under the fiery head that was like a moon.
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