They had barely finished remarking on these facts, when there suddenly glided across their vision, forms--of every conceivable shape, _i.e._, those resembling corpses of human beings and animals, with bloodless faces, glassy eyes and stiff limbs--some apparently just dead and others in an advanced state of decomposition, all possessed and propelled by Impersonating Elementals; phantoms of actual earthbound people--misers, murderers, etc., several of whom approached the trio and tried to peer into their faces.
"For heaven's sake keep off!" Kelson shrieked, as the vibrating form of an epileptic imbecile, with protruding blue eyes and pimply cheeks, came up to him, and thrust its face into his.
"This is a bit thick," Hamar said, vainly attempting to elude the phantom of a short, stout woman with a big head and purple face, who, putting out a large black, swollen tongue, leered at him.
"Curse you! d--n you!" Curtis screamed, throwing out his hands in a vain endeavour to beat off the phantoms of two idiot boys, who were trying to bite him with their loose, dribbling mouths. "A little more of this, and I shall go mad!"
Seeing a tall, grey phantom with a man's body and wolf's head bounding up to them, Kelson would have run away, had not Hamar, whose presence of mind never quite deserted him, gripped him by the arm. "If you leave us, Matt," he said, "we are lost. I feel our safety depends on our keeping together. If I'm not mistaken this is a cunning dodge on the part of the Unknown to separate us. If that happens, I feel we may never get back to our bodies--and the compact will then be broken. We must hang on to each other at all costs." So saying, he slipped his free arm through that of Curtis, and the three stood linked together.
Hamar clung on to the other two, until his hands grew numb, and the sweat stood on his chest and forehead in great beads. As figure after figure stealthily and noiselessly approached them, Kelson and Curtis writhed and shrieked; and, at times, it seemed as if the chain must be broken. But alarming as were these harrowing types of Vice-Elementals--_i.e._, nude things with heads of beasts and bodies of men and women; grotesque heads; malevolent eyes; mal-shaped hands; headless beasts, etc.; none had so dangerous an effect on the unity of the trio as the alluring types of Vice-Elementals, _i.e._, shapes of beautiful women that smiled seductively at Kelson, and resorted to every device to entice him away with them. It was then that Hamar was taxed to the utmost, that he exhausted voice, strength, and patience, in holding Kelson back.