But he was not in his club. The wind was screaming outside as he bowed his head to pray to the God that he felt in his heart was growing distant from him.

No prayers would come. Each time he closed his eyes the imprint of that half-glimpsed thing drew itself on his inner lids. He could see it, writhing and moving like a bed of snakes at the back of the rock hole. Dear God, had it really been there? Something had been there. Hunting Wolf’s face was the physical proof.

He had been on his way to the tunnel when he had seen the men running like pigeons scattering before a horse and he had run past them, ignoring their pleas and their clutches at his coat, lurching through the snow to reach the mouth of the tunnel. And then he had seen it. A dark mass of malice with the figure of Hunting Wolf standing before it like a scolded child. He must have glimpsed it for only a few seconds before the explosion.

The impact had thrown him into the snow, but he had regained his feet and rushed to the injured man before he had time to consider the danger or the madness in what he had witnessed.

Now, he could not shut it out. The nightmare of that thing was beyond reason. He, who had sighed when the men had related their tales of devilish talking animals and reprimanded them for their wild fantasies of being watched in their beds, had seen something that defied description. Something that made him question not merely his faith but his sanity and he was left with the minister’s problem of explaining away the inexplicable, and the man’s problem of finding peace of mind again, sufficient to sleep in tranquillity.

None was forthcoming. He could not even pray by his bedside. Henderson let his head fall onto the rough brown coverlet that hung over the edge of the bed. If he let himself spiral down into this pit of derangement, there might be no escape. With all his self-discipline he pulled back the man of reason, the man who could deny and disprove that such horrors stalked the Lord’s earth.

He lifted his head in defiance and imagined himself in that leather armchair in Edinburgh, with the smoke of his university friends’ cigars blowing around his ears and their logical theories echoing in the high-ceilinged room. They would never allow themselves such self-pitying despair. Nor would he. His head snapped up. It was as though they heard him over the ocean and responded.

He thought again about what he had heard. That had been the worst of all. The obscenities. For the thing had spoken in perfect English.