"What life can be here but the phantasmic--the stuff of which dreams are made?
I am indeed walking in a vain show!" Thus I strove to keep my heart above the waters of fear, nor knew that she whom I distrusted was indeed my defence from the realities I took for phantoms: her light controlled the monsters, else had I scarce taken a second step on the hideous ground.

"I will not be appalled by that which only seems!" I said to myself, yet felt it a terrible thing to walk on a sea where such fishes disported themselves below.

With that, a step or two from me, the head of a worm began to come slowly out of the earth, as big as that of a polar bear and much resembling it, with a white mane to its red neck.

The drawing wriggles with which its huge length extricated itself were horrible, yet I dared not turn my eyes from them.

The moment its tail was free, it lay as if exhausted, wallowing in feeble effort to burrow again.
"Does it live on the dead," I wondered, "and is it unable to hurt the living?
If they scent their prey and come out, why do they leave me unharmed ?" I know now it was that the moon paralysed them.
All the night through as I walked, hideous creatures, no two alike, threatened me.