“And I like the old idea,” he had been saying, speaking of these departed pagan deities, “that sacrifice and ritual feed their great beings, and that death is only the final sacrifice by which the worshipper becomes absorbed into them. The devout worshipper”—and there was a singular drive and power behind the words—“should go to his death singing, as to a wedding—the wedding of his soul with the particular deity he has loved and served all his life.” He swept his tow-coloured beard with one hand, turning his shaggy head towards the window, where the moonlight lay upon the procession of shaking waves. “It’s playing the whole game, I always think, man-fashion… I remember once, some years ago, down there off the coast by Yucatan—”

And then, before they could interfere, he told an extraordinary tale of something he had seen years ago, but told it with such a horrid earnestness of conviction—for it was dreadful, though fine, this adventure—that his listeners shifted in their wicker chairs, struck matches unnecessarily, pulled at their long glasses, and exchanged glances that attempted a smile yet did not quite achieve it. For the tale had to do with sacrifice of human life and a rather haunting pagan ceremonial of the sea, and at its close the room had changed in some indefinable manner—was not exactly as it had been before perhaps—as though the savage earnestness of the language had introduced some new element that made it less cosy, less cheerful, even less warm. A secret lust in the man’s heart, born of the sea, and of his intense admiration of the pagan gods called a light into his eye not altogether pleasant.

“They were great Powers, at any rate, those ancient fellows,” Erricson went on, refilling his huge pipe bowl; “too great to disappear altogether, though today they may walk the earth in another manner. I swear they’re still going it—especially the—” (he hesitated for a mere second) “the old water Powers—the Sea Gods. Terrific beggars, every one of ’em.”

“Still move the tides and raise the winds, eh?” from the Doctor.

Erricson spoke again after a moment’s silence, with impressive dignity. “And I like, too, the way they manage to keep their names before us,” he went on, with a curious eagerness that did not escape the Doctor’s observation, while it clearly puzzled the soldier. “There’s old Hu, the Druid god of justice, still alive in ‘Hue and Cry’; there’s Typhon hammering his way against us in the typhoon; there’s the mighty Hurakar, serpent god of the winds, you know, shouting to us in hurricane and ouragan; and there’s—”