he was looking at mr. nancy , an old black man with a pencil mustache , in his check sports jacket and his lemon-yellow gloves , riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered , high in the air ; and , at the same time , in the same place , he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse , its eyes an emerald nebula , strutting , staring down at him ; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak-colored skin and three sets of arms , wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress , his face painted with red stripes , riding an irritated golden lion , two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast 's mane ; and he was also-seeing a young black boy , dressed in rags , his left foot all swollen and crawling with blackflies ; and last of all , and behind all these things , shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider , hiding under a withered ocher leaf .