The crocodile closes his mouth. It is finished. It is begun.
—The Litanies of Surat-Hemad
I was already more than half awake when the dream came to me, already aware that I lay in my stateroom aboard the steamship Empress Faustina, completely cognizant of the steady thrumming of the ship’s engines through the bulkhead, which had deprived me of sleep on so many other occasions. Then, I say, it was then, as I slid out of my bunk and began to grope about among my things that the lightbulb overhead seemed to dim steadily—not, some other compartmentalized division of my rational mind noted, as if the power were failing, but as if the room filled with otherwise invisible, black smoke. Then, then, I felt the cold, damp, earthy breeze wash over me—not salt air from an open porthole, but more lik
