chain--a single chain cable.

By that mysterious law of amalgamation which throughout nature causes

appearances to exaggerate realities, the place, the hour, the mist, the

mournful sea, the cloudy turmoils on the distant horizon, added to the

effect of this figure, and made it seem enormous.

The mass linked to the chain presented the appearance of a scabbard. It

was swaddled like a child and long like a man. There was a round thing

at its summit, about which the end of the chain was rolled. The scabbard

was riven asunder at the lower end, and shreds of flesh hung out between

the rents.

A feeble breeze stirred the chain, and that which hung to it swayed

gently. The passive mass obeyed the vague motions of space. It was an

object to inspire indescribable dread. Horror, which disproportions

everything, blurred its dimensions while retaining its shape. It was a

condensation of darkness, which had a defined form. Night was above and

within the spectre; it was a prey of ghastly exaggeration. Twilight and

moonrise, stars setting behind the cliff, floating things in space, the

clouds, winds from all quarters, had ended by penetrating into the

composition of this visible nothing. The species of log hanging in the

wind partook of the impersonality diffused far over sea and sky, and the

darkness completed this phase of the thing which had once been a man.

It was that which is no longer.

The Man Who Laughs