“What did I tell you?  There—­there!  That tentacle is moving.”

The uplifted tentacle was moving.  It was doing what I had seen it do, as I supposed, in my distorted imagination—­it was reaching forward.  Undoubtedly Bob saw what it was doing; but, whether in obedience to his master’s commands, or whether because the drug was already beginning to take effect, he made no movement to withdraw the pipe.  He watched the slowly advancing tentacle, coming closer and closer toward his nose, with an expression of such intense horror on his countenance that it became quite shocking.  Farther and farther the creature reached forward, until on a sudden, with a sort of jerk, the movement assumed a downward direction, and the tentacle was slowly lowered until the tip rested on the stem of the pipe.  For a moment the creature remained motionless.  I was quieting my nerves with the reflection that this thing was but some trick of the carver’s art, and that what we had seen we had seen in a sort of nightmare, when the whole hideous reptile was seized with what seemed to be a fit of convulsive shuddering.  It seemed to be in agony.  It trembled so violently that I expected to see it loosen its hold of the stem and fall to the ground.  I was sufficiently master of myself to steal a glance at Bob.  We had had an inkling of what might happen.  He was wholly unprepared.  As he saw that dreadful, human-looking creature, coming to life, as it seemed, within an inch or two of his nose, his eyes dilated to twice their usual size.  I hoped, for his sake, that unconsciousness would supervene, through the action of the drug, before through sheer fright his senses left him.  Perhaps mechanically he puffed steadily on.

The creature’s shuddering became more violent.  It appeared to swell before our eyes.  Then, just as suddenly as it began, the shuddering ceased.  There was another instant of quiescence.  Then the creature began to crawl along the stem of the pipe!  It moved with marvelous caution, the merest fraction of an inch at a time.  But still it moved!  Our eyes were riveted on it with a fascination which was absolutely nauseous.  I am unpleasantly affected even as I think of it now.  My dreams of the night before had been nothing to this.

Slowly, slowly, it went, nearer and nearer to the smoker’s nose.  Its mode of progression was in the highest degree unsightly.  It glided, never, so far as I could see, removing its tentacles from the stem of the pipe.  It slipped its hindmost feelers onward until they came up to those which were in advance.  Then, in their turn, it advanced those which were in front.  It seemed, too, to move with the utmost labor, shuddering as though it were in pain.

We were all, for our parts, speechless.  I was momentarily hoping that the drug would take effect on Bob.  Either his constitution enabled him to offer a strong resistance to narcotics, or else the large quantity of neat spirit which he had drunk acted—­as Tress had malevolently intended that it should—­as an antidote.  It seemed to me that he would never succumb.  On went the creature—­on, and on, in its infinitesimal progression.  I was spellbound.  I would have given the world to scream, to have been able to utter a sound.  I could do nothing else but watch.