The chill of the hall, as he emerged, struck into his flesh, a polar blast. Like an animal he scurried to the bed and crawled under cover, shaking convulsively. His watch ticked upon the bed-post. Presently he was burning--as if hot cloths were quickly being renewed upon his flesh. Yet instantaneously upon lifting the cover, the chill would seize him again. Finally he squirmed his head about until he could see his watch. Two-fifteen, it said. Manifestly, this was a lie. He had not wound the thing the night before, though its ticking filled the room. He recalled that when he was drinking, frequently he wound his watch a dozen times a day, or quite as frequently forgot it entirely. At all events, it was lying now. Thoughts of the whiskey he had poured out, of the drugs in the medicine-case, controlled. He needed a drink, and nothing but alcohol would do. This is the terrible thing. Without endangering one's heart, it is impossible to take enough morphine to deaden a whiskey reaction. A little only horrifies one's dreams. There is no bromide. He cried out for the poison he had washed away from his veins. This would have been a crutch for hours. In the normal course of bodily waste, he would not have been brought to this state of need in twenty-four hours. He felt the rapping of old familiar devils against his brain. He needed a drink. The lights were turned on full in his room. The watch hanging above his head ticked incessant lies regarding the energy of passing time. He could lose himself in black gorges of agony, grope his way back to find that the minute hand had scarcely stirred.... He lay perfectly rigid until a wave, half of drowsiness, half of weakness, slowed-down the vibrations of his mind.... Somewhere in the underworld, he found a consciousness--a dank smell, the dimness of a cave; the wash of fins gliding in lazy curves across the black, sluggish water; an _eye_, green, steadfast, ashine like phosphor which is concentrated decay,--the eye of rapacity gorged. His nostrils filled with the foreign odor of menageries and aquariums. A brief hiatus now, in which objects altered. A great weight pressed against his chest, not to hurt, but to fill his consciousness with the thought of its cold crushing strength; the weight of a tree-trunk, the chill of stone, the soft texture of slimy flesh.... Full against him upon the rock, in his half-submerged cavern, lay the terror of all his obsessions--the crocodile. Savage incarnations were shaken out of his soul as he regarded this beast, a terror so great that his throat shut, his spine stiffened. Still as a dead tree, the creature pressed against him, bulging stomach, the narrow, yellow-brown head, moveless, raised from the rock. This was the armed abdomen he feared most--cruelty, patience, repletion--and the dirty-white of nether parts!... He heard the scream within him--before it broke from his throat.