And they fled down the long passage that opened before them.
After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they
stopped.
"He doesn't often come this way," said the Persian. "This side has
nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the
house on the lake ... But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels
... although I promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in
his business again!"
So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they
again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed
them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it
seemed to be nearer to them.
At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they
could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed
to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though
thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly
unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the
chalk that grates on the blackboard.
They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining
on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round
and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a
hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when
the moon is quite red, bright red.
How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man's
height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did
it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And
what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with
it?
The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves
against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that
incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more
intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound, for the sound was
certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the
darkness, under the fiery face.
And the fiery face came on ... with its noise ... came level with them!
...
And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand
on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant.
They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little
hurried waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high
tide, little night-waves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head
that was like a moon. And the little waves passed between their legs,
climbing up their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could
no longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could
they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes: their
hands went down to their legs to push back the waves, which were full
of little legs and nails and claws and teeth.