I stood still listening to them throb against the dusk, until the wind, or perhaps the bats themselves, shifted direction quite rapidly, and began to stream over my uncovered head. I crouched, and looked up, and suddenly was enveloped in their great dark cloud, their wings pushing the air about me. My heart beat against the inside of my chest, as though one of these wild creatures were also trapped inside me.

Presently their flow shifted back to the east, and I crawled forward, over the ledge to find myself staring into a gaping maw in the earth, the likes of which I have never seen. It seemed like a great crack in the face of the earth, black and wide, and the bats boiled forth without ceasing.

Though it seemed a fearsome thought, what might be hiding in the darkness of this great hole, still I had some urge to stay. The more I thought of it, the more I knew that any hole which could hide such a great storm of bats must be a cavern of immense size. I scraped along on my belly, between cacti until I lay on the brink of the chasm. Looking down into the dark, there was no end in sight. The feeling of aweness it gave me has still not left me.