Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/160

148 body, from head to foot, was smeared with oil. The most noticeable point about the man was that he was blind. His eyelids were closed, but the sockets of his eyes were sunken as are those of a corpse. With his left hand he felt for the wall, while in his right hand he carried a small stonemason's pick. His face was expressionless. This was the most terrible thing about it, for his face was as the face of the dead. He crept into the room as Death himself might creep into the chamber of the dying.

I realized at once in my dream that this was the native about whom my friend had been speaking before we had retired for the night. This man had heard of the doctor's arrival, would know my room as the one he usually occupied, and had now come there to murder him.

I was so fascinated by the sight of this unhuman creature moving towards me that I could not stir a muscle. I was raised up in bed, and was leaning on one elbow like an image on a tomb. I was so filled with the sense of a final calamity that I felt I had ceased to breathe. There were, indeed, such a clutching at my throat and such a bursting at my heart that the act of breathing seemed wellnigh impossible. Had I been awake I should, without doubt, have shouted