"She hath in keeping a certain jar of mine, Denis, a toy, that nevertheless I set some value on; this I would have you privily convey to the house where the Chinese inhabited--I make no question but you know where it stands. Do this, my dear nephew, and I shall confess myself every way bound to serve you when I shall come to be enfranchised of this place; for I myself may not undertake the bearing off of this jar (it stands in a little cupboard by the bed, Denis, now I think on't), my dress being not such, as wearing it, I might hope to escape challenge of the guard, but with you, Denis, 'twill be a mere frolick adventure." He laid his mouth close to my ear. "Besides, there is the lass Idonia..." What more he might have added, I know not, for his beastly greed in so safeguarding his wealth, and that at my risk, who had delivered him, sickened me in such sort as I could no longer abide to hear it, but left him, and going straightway forward into the screaming press about the door, struck out a path for myself through the midst of them. At the same moment the hammering without in one peal ended; the half of a wall fell in, and through the breach thus made came a wavering and intermittent light. Unspeakably astonished, I gazed about me, upon the dead and writhing bodies that lay at my feet thus uncertainly illumined, and upon my uncle, huddled up in his torn silken robe. But when I had averted my eyes with a shudder to the breach in the wall, I saw a sight I may neither forget nor endure the remembrance of; for it seemed to me that there entered in by that way a figure--inhuman tall, black visaged, and of a most cruel aspect. Perhaps for the space of a man's counting ten, he leaned forward through the aperture, regarding us all in that ghostly dimness, and then, with an equal suddenness, was gone, and the light with him.... No one word passed our trembling lips, for all felt the horror of impending destruction. Only the dying yet moved a little, stirring in their blood, but even they soon lay still. Meanwhile, through the great rent in the wall, the wind blew exceeding strong, so that although at the first we had postponed all thoughts to that one vision of the giant presence, we now perceived by the direction of the wind and the saltness of it that it was the river-wall was down, and not (as in our confusion we had supposed) the inner wall, by which the soldiers must necessarily have assaulted us.