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Arkham party detoured radically from the swath. He told the crowd that the men
were evidently trying to get to a subordinate peak which overlooked the swath
at a point considerably ahead of where the shrubbery was now bending. This,
indeed, proved to be true; and the party were seen to gain the minor elevation
only a short time after the invisible blasphemy had passed it.
Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the glass, cried out that Armitage was
adjusting the sprayer which Rice held, and that something must be about to
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happen. The crowd stirred uneasily, recalling that his sprayer was expected to
give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three men shut their
eyes, but Curtis Whateley snatched back the telescope and strained his vision
to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the party's point of advantage above and
behind the entity, had an excellent chance of spreading the potent powder with
marvellous effect.
Those without the telescope saw only an instant's flash of grey cloud - a
cloud about the size of a moderately large building - near the top of the
mountain.
Curtis, who held the instrument, dropped it with a piercing shriek into the
ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled, and would have crumbled to the ground
had not two or three others seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan
half-inaudibly.
'Oh, oh, great Gawd... that... that...'
There was a pandemonium of questioning, and only Henry Wheeler thought to
rescue the fallen telescope and wipe it clean of mud. Curtis was past all
coherence, and even isolated replies were almost too much for him.
'Bigger'n a barn... all made o' squirmin' ropes... hull thing sort o' shaped
like a hen's egg bigger'n anything with dozens o' legs like hogs-heads that
haff shut up when they step... nothin' solid abaout it - all like jelly, an'
made o'
sep'rit wrigglin' ropes pushed cost together... great bulgin' eyes all over
it... ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin' aout all along the sides, big
as stove-pipes an ad a-tossin' an openin' an' shuttin'... all grey, with
kinder blue or purple rings... an Gawd nit Heaven - that haff face on top...'
This final memory, whatever it was, proved too much for poor Curtis; and he
collapsed completely before he could say more. Fred Farr and Will Hutchins
carried him to the roadside and laid him on the damp grass. Henry Wheeler,
trembling, turned the rescued telescope on the mountain to see what he might.
Through the lenses were discernible three tiny figures, apparently running
towards the summit as fast as the steep incline allowed. Only these - nothing
more. Then everyone noticed a strangely unseasonable noise in the deep valley
behind, and even in the underbrush of Sentinel Hill itself. It was the piping
of unnumbered whippoorwills, and in their shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a
note of tense and evil expectancy.
Earl Sawyer now took the telescope and reported the three figures as standing
on the topmost ridge, virtually level with the altar-stone but at a
considerable distance from it. One figure, he said, seemed to be raising its
hands above its head at rhythmic intervals; and as Sawyer mentioned the
circumstance the crowd seemed to hear a faint, half-musical sound from the
distance, as if a loud chant were accompanying the gestures. The weird
silhouette on that remote peak must have been a spectacle of infinite
grotesqueness and impressiveness, but no observer was in a mood for aesthetic
appreciation. 'I guess he's sayin' the spell,' whispered Wheeler as he
snatched back the telescope. The whippoorwills were piping wildly, and in a
singularly curious irregular rhythm quite unlike that of the visible ritual.
Suddenly the sunshine seemed to lessen without the intervention of any
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ecraft%20-%20The%20Dunwich%20Horror.txt discernible cloud. It was a very
peculiar phenomenon, and was plainly marked by all. A rumbling sound seemed
brewing beneath the hills, mixed strangely with a concordant rumbling which
dearly came from the sky. Lightning flashed aloft, and the wondering crowd
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