On the hand of sleep is the finger of death.  The child felt himself seized by that hand.  He was on the point of falling under the gibbet.  He no longer knew whether he was standing upright.

The end always impending, no transition between to be and not to be, the return into the crucible, the slip possible every minute—­such is the precipice which is Creation.

Another instant, the child and the dead, life in sketch and life in ruin, would be confounded in the same obliteration.

The spectre appeared to understand, and not to wish it.  Of a sudden it stirred.  One would have said it was warning the child.  It was the wind beginning to blow again.  Nothing stranger than this dead man in movement.

The corpse at the end of the chain, pushed by the invisible gust, took an oblique attitude; rose to the left, then fell back, reascended to the right, and fell and rose with slow and mournful precision.  A weird game of see-saw.  It seemed as though one saw in the darkness the pendulum of the clock of Eternity.

This continued for some time.  The child felt himself waking up at the sight of the dead; through his increasing numbness he experienced a distinct sense of fear.

The chain at every oscillation made a grinding sound, with hideous regularity.  It appeared to take breath, and then to resume.  This grinding was like the cry of a grasshopper.

An approaching squall is heralded by sudden gusts of wind.  All at once the breeze increased into a gale.  The corpse emphasized its dismal oscillations.  It no longer swung, it tossed; the chain, which had been grinding, now shrieked.  It appeared that its shriek was heard.  If it was an appeal, it was obeyed.  From the depths of the horizon came the sound of a rushing noise.

It was the noise of wings.

An incident occurred, a stormy incident, peculiar to graveyards and solitudes.  It was the arrival of a flight of ravens.  Black flying specks pricked the clouds, pierced through the mist, increased in size, came near, amalgamated, thickened, hastening towards the hill, uttering cries.  It was like the approach of a Legion.  The winged vermin of the darkness alighted on the gibbet; the child, scared, drew back.

Swarms obey words of command:  the birds crowded on the gibbet; not one was on the corpse.  They were talking among themselves.  The croaking was frightful.  The howl, the whistle and the roar, are signs of life; the croak is a satisfied acceptance of putrefaction.  In it you can fancy you hear the tomb breaking silence.  The croak is night-like in itself.

The child was frozen even more by terror than by cold.

Then the ravens held silence.  One of them perched on the skeleton.  This was a signal:  they all precipitated themselves upon it.  There was a cloud of wings, then all their feathers closed up, and the hanged man disappeared under a swarm of black blisters struggling in the obscurity.  Just then the corpse moved.  Was it the corpse?  Was it the wind?  It made a frightful bound.  The hurricane, which was increasing, came to its aid.  The phantom fell into convulsions.