His face was within a foot of mine, and I barely checked a sound that, for all the early morning, was one of fright. Few men but in an idle moment now and then have tried that trick of gazing into metals, and phials, and flames of candles; and of the stupor or lethargy a man can work in himself by these means I had read in Olaus Magnus, in Suavius, and elsewhere. Neither was I entirely ignorant of that disordered function of the mind whereby a man can people the world with images of his own raising; but he was an ugly devil at best, and the abominable expression into which for a moment his eyeballs were deliberately set--the Squint Upwards and Inwards--added a sensible horror to the already horrible.... As I turned away his gaze righted again; but I knew him now. “I see ye know it,” he said. “I do, sir,” I answered curtly over my shoulder. “What good the Platonists had of it I could never see, and, by your leave, I will confine myself to my stewardship, which I take to be the godlier business.” “He, he!” he chuckled weakly. “Free from superstition, too!--So we both know it; good, we will talk of it later.” “You shall pardon me,” thought I; and left him. Here, then, was Cardan out-Cardaned; and there rose in my mind an image, not of this terrestrial sea that overwhelms the pleasant habitations of men, but of a dreader ocean, that of the terror of the Spirit, which, when men with anguish and labour have raised creeds and customs and laws against the void the thought of which they could not else endure, licks and laps till darkness cover all again. In this more heinous destruction and treason against all mankind this man trafficked. But if I am to tell my tale--or, rather, to set down this inconclusive record--I must trust you to take my meaning without further words.