Algernon Blackwood

“ Wait and see if I am not right.” All of which bewildered the secretary hopelessly, until one day, in his chief’s absence, he peeped into his bedroom, and saw on the walls his own series of maps, distorted out of all truth or accuracy, with the pits marked in red and the whole presenting different aspects of a mighty and very dreadful countenance. The two smaller pits were eyes, and the lower deep one with the bushes fringing it like hair, was a mouth⁠—a huge, open, gaping mouth. ”

“ This Essay was to include these passages, but Finkelstein did not take the secretary into his confidence concerning it. There was an air of mystery about the whole thing.
And the translated passages always had to do with the one subject, viz., that the Earth was the body of a great Being⁠—living, conscious; that it had organs and a physiognomy; that the beauty of nature was merely a revelation of its personality; and that human beings could no more realise this than a fly on an elephant could realise that it walked upon a living body differing from its own merely in size and habits. ”

“ He dwelt upon the analogy till water came into bin soft eyes, and his gesticulations threatened the crockery as well as Spinrobin’s own astonished features. Arms and legs, he said, after all are only crutches to enable ill-constructed creatures to get about⁠—whereas the worlds have no need for them, being round. Eyes are equally unnecessary, for they find their way through the ether without them infallibly. For lungs⁠—their whole surface is in continual commerce with the winds ”

“ I wonder if the old boy is a spy⁠—or merely a lunatic.” He remembered that he was expected to be afraid of nothing. Arrest, high treason, and other ominous words occurred to him; but in the end he rejected them all. ”