The things that happened in the open boat on this fourth day are not altogether to be explained. A metaphysician from the East explained a similar visitation--but like many explanations of the East, the foundations of his discussion were off the ground. He did not begin with stuff that weighs-up avoirdupois. The West can weigh the moon and estimate the bulk of Antares’ occulted companion, but in cases where _things_ cease to be weighable, our side of the world sits back with the remark, “It is well enough to hypothecate the immaterial, but what’s the good of it when you can’t see it?” Also when the East gently suggests an opinion, the West rises to declare, “Why, you people haven’t got gas or running water in your houses.” Now occasionally there comes a time when the Western eye sees something that it can’t touch or smell exactly, and it is easier to disbelieve its own senses than to change its point of view for an Eastern one. Accordingly it says, “I was crazy with the heat,” or as Bellair was prone to explain away the visitation of this day, “The thirst and the hunger had got to me.” There follows, without further peroration, an unheated narrative of what _appeared_ to take place on that fourth day: As was expected from drinking the brine, Stackhouse went mad. The look of the great creature, his very identity, changed, went out from him, and something else came in. This happens when a dog goes mad. We have had to reckon with it in our own families. If that which we knew passes, without something foreign taking its place, the result would be a mere inert mass waiting for death. The alienists have given us the word _obsession_ to explain that which comes instead, making an obscenity and violence of that which we knew. In the olden days these Enterers were known as demons. A man named Legion was beset with them, and Another with a strong will came and, according to the story, freed Legion. That which had defiled him entered a herd of swine, the bars of which were somehow down at the time.... They had ceased to hate Stackhouse. The old Master was gone into who knows what long feeding dream? This was merely his body that they watched for an hour or two in the forenoon. In fact, Bellair had studied the departure with some detachment. He was sitting as usual in the centre of the boat, glad that the Stackhouse agony was done. There was a moment in which it appeared that death was stealing in rapidly, and another in which a new kind of life entered the body--as vandals enter to despoil a house after the tenant has moved away.