Somehow he managed to get out of bed and to place his back against the wall, and there he cowered until he heard his brother's body threshing about the floor. As a matter of fact, that shot had sent Frank sprawling from his bunk, and he was striving to kick off the hampering folds of his sleeping-bag, nothing more; but the thumping of his knees and elbows bore a dreadful significance to the terrified listener. Evidently the Thing had closed in--had grappled with Frank. Its hands, damp with death sweat, even now were groping for him, Joe. The thought was unbearable. Blindly the elder brother thrust his revolver at full length in front of him and pulled the trigger; Frank shrieked, but again and again Joe fired, and when the last cartridge was spent he continued to snap the weapon. He desisted only when he heard a voice, faint, but hoarse with agony, crying: "O God! You've shot me, Joe! You've shot me!" Then and not until then, did a sort of sanity come to the wretch. The revolver slipped from his fingers; he felt his bones dissolving into water; a horror ten times greater than he had previously suffered fell upon him. He tried to speak, to throw off this hideous nightmare, but his voice came only as a dry, reedy whisper. Frank was still now; he did not respond to his brother's incoherencies except with a deep groaning that momentarily became more alarming. "I--I--didn't--Christ! I didn't shoot you ... Frank! ... Answer me! Say something. ..." Even yet the dread of that hobgoblin presence lay like ice upon the elder brother; he feared to move lest he encounter it, lest he touch it and it enfold him; but when Frank's twitching body became still he fell to his knees and went groping forward on all-fours in search of it. Death was here now. He had slain his brother and there was NO LIGHT! Joe began to sob and to chatter in a maudlin hysteria of fright and apprehension. He succeeded in finding Frank by the sound of his breathing, and he was pawing at him and wildly calling his name when at his back a match was struck. The sound, the flare, brought a scream from his throat. He cringed and cowered; the pallid face he raised was slack-jawed, his gaze was that of a crazy man. Slowly, very slowly his dementia left him. His eyes were still distended, to be sure, but into them sanity, recognition, began to creep. He stared dazedly about him, and at last he managed to speak Doret's name. "Wh-what you doing--here?" he breathed.