What was it--coming nearer, ever nearer?
Now Lakla and O'Keefe heard it, life ebbing from lips and cheeks.
Nearer, nearer--a music as of myriads of tiny crystal bells, tinkling, tinkling--a storm of pizzicati upon violins of glass! Nearer, nearer--not sweetly now, nor luring; no--raging, wrathful, sinister beyond words; sweeping on; nearer-- The Dweller! The Shining One! We leaped to the narrow window; peered out, aghast.

The bell notes swept through and about us, a hurricane.

The crescent strand was once more a ferment.

Back, back were the _Akka_ being swept, as though by brooms, tottering on the edge of the ledge, falling into the waters.
Swiftly they were finished; and where they had fought was an eddying throng clothed in tatters or naked, swaying, drifting, arms tossing--like marionettes of Satan.
The dead-alive! The slaves of the Dweller! They swayed and tossed, and then, like water racing through an opened dam, they swept upon the bridge-head.

On and on they pushed, like the bore of a mighty tide.