. . . .and in the fearsome instant of deeper darkness, the watchers saw wriggling at that treetop height, a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo. . . . and all the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter and bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality. . . It was no longer shining out; it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well, it seemed to flow directly into the sky.