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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11438 ***
+
+
+
+
+The Willows
+
+by Algernon Blackwood
+
+(1907)
+
+
+Contents
+
+ I.
+ II.
+ III.
+ IV.
+ V.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube
+enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters
+spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country
+becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low
+willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a
+fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and
+across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word _Sümpfe_,
+meaning marshes.
+
+In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and
+willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal
+seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their
+silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering
+beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have
+no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft
+outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of
+the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they
+somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive.
+For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface,
+waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea,
+too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their
+underside turns to the sun.
+
+Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here
+wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels
+intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the
+waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and
+foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of
+shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which
+shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life,
+since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
+
+Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins
+soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy
+tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood
+about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening
+before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna,
+leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the
+blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below
+Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had
+then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the
+old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning
+heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals
+in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria
+and Hungary.
+
+Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into
+Hungary, and the muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on
+many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden
+belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Pozsóny)
+showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited
+horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the
+sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply
+to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands,
+sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond—the land of the willows.
+
+The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps
+down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the
+scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings,
+and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut
+nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization
+within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the
+utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows,
+winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we
+allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
+some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
+audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom
+of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others
+who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to
+trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.
+
+Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
+tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about
+for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering
+character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood
+carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches
+tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many
+a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a
+great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach
+the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after
+our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in
+the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an
+immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all
+sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as
+though to applaud the success of our efforts.
+
+“What a river!” I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
+traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
+obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of
+June.
+
+“Won’t stand much nonsense now, will it?” he said, pulling the canoe a
+little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for
+a nap.
+
+I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the
+elements—water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun—thinking of
+the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us
+to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and
+charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.
+
+We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than
+any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
+_aliveness_. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the
+pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to
+play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps,
+unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the growth
+of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent
+desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some
+huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our
+little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us
+sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had
+come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.
+
+How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its
+secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our
+tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be
+caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is
+its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools,
+suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of
+its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all
+mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at
+the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon
+its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream
+and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices,
+its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the
+bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on;
+the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little
+towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet
+whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured
+down upon it till the steam rose.
+
+It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world
+knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian
+forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it,
+where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear
+again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new
+river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed
+that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of
+shallows.
+
+And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth,
+was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent
+tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge
+them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well
+marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to
+recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this
+particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power
+impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river
+that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that
+follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs,
+and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro
+in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped
+down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life
+among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson,
+and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.
+
+This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know
+other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat
+plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun
+that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while
+below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of
+Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very
+leisurely too, lest they be discovered.
+
+Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and
+animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely
+places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the
+shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water
+that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds
+of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant
+cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river’s vagaries
+after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and
+swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us
+from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag
+as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the
+river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily
+among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible
+to see how they managed it.
+
+But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the
+Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the
+Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries
+where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly
+grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into
+three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers
+farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was
+intended to be followed.
+
+“If you take a side channel,” said the Hungarian officer we met in the
+Pressburg shop while buying provisions, “you may find yourselves, when
+the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you
+may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn
+you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind
+will increase.”
+
+The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being
+left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be
+serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions.
+For the rest, the officer’s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing
+down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the
+dignity of a westerly gale.
+
+It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour
+or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot
+sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The
+island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank
+standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far
+end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the
+tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was
+triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.
+
+I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood
+bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as
+though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming
+streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and
+rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind
+poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself
+actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river
+descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill,
+white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.
+
+The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make
+walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end
+the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry.
+Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam,
+and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from
+behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the
+islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows,
+which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures
+crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like
+growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to
+vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering
+numbers.
+
+Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
+bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular
+emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my
+delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a
+curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.
+
+A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many
+of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept
+away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched
+the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far
+than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it
+directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting
+hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the
+air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind
+was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape
+to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind
+of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do
+with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I
+experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal
+with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with
+my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained
+power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to
+do with it too—a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled
+with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every
+hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at
+play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
+
+But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach
+itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres
+of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the
+eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it,
+standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching,
+waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows
+connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind
+insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in
+some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty
+power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
+
+Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one
+way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains
+overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests
+exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or
+another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human
+experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They
+tend on the whole to exalt.
+
+With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far
+different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the
+heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a
+vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me
+as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke
+in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here
+upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a
+world where we were not wanted or invited to remain—where we ran grave
+risks perhaps!
+
+The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely
+to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet
+it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of
+putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the
+stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a
+most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my
+companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered
+devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained
+to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly
+at me if I had.
+
+There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
+pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
+
+“A poor camp,” observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent
+stood upright, “no stones and precious little firewood. I’m for moving
+on early tomorrow—eh? This sand won’t hold anything.”
+
+But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many
+devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then
+set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow
+bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply.
+We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were
+crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great
+portions with a splash and a gurgle.
+
+“The island’s much smaller than when we landed,” said the accurate
+Swede. “It won’t last long at this rate. We’d better drag the canoe
+close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment’s notice. I shall
+sleep in my clothes.”
+
+He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his
+rather jolly laugh as he spoke.
+
+“By Jove!” I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had
+caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the
+willows, and I could not find him.
+
+“What in the world’s this?” I heard him cry again, and this time his
+voice had become serious.
+
+I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the
+river, pointing at something in the water.
+
+“Good heavens, it’s a man’s body!” he cried excitedly. “Look!”
+
+A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept
+rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again.
+It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to
+where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its
+eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body
+turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of
+sight in a flash.
+
+“An otter, by gad!” we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
+
+It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly
+like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far
+below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet
+and shining in the sunlight.
+
+Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another
+thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was
+a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the
+Danube was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted
+region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real
+event. We stood and stared.
+
+Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
+wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I
+found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying
+apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort
+of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down
+the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking
+across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light
+too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It
+seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His
+voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the
+wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something
+curious about the whole appearance—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an
+impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.
+
+“He’s crossing himself!” I cried. “Look, he’s making the sign of the
+Cross!”
+
+“I believe you’re right,” the Swede said, shading his eyes with his
+hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a
+moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun
+caught them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great
+crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air
+was hazy.
+
+“But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?”
+I said, half to myself. “Where is he going at such a time, and what did
+he mean by his signs and shouting? D’you think he wished to warn us
+about something?”
+
+“He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably,” laughed my
+companion. “These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you
+remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed
+here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man’s world! I
+suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too.
+That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time
+in his life,” he added, after a slight pause, “and it scared him,
+that’s all.”
+
+The Swede’s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
+something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he
+talked, though without being able to label it precisely.
+
+“If they had enough imagination,” I laughed loudly—I remember trying to
+make as much _noise_ as I could—“they might well people a place like
+this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all
+this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and
+elemental deities.”
+
+The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was
+not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I
+remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his
+stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting.
+It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids
+like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than
+any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an
+adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I
+looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along
+under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I
+experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then
+that the Swede was—what he was, and that he never made remarks that
+suggested more than they said.
+
+“The river’s still rising, though,” he added, as if following out some
+thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. “This island
+will be under water in two days if it goes on.”
+
+“I wish the _wind_ would go down,” I said. “I don’t care a fig for the
+river.”
+
+The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten
+minutes’ notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an
+increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds
+that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
+
+Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It
+seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the
+willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes,
+like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the
+island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the
+sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through
+space.
+
+But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full
+moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of
+shouting willows with a light like the day.
+
+We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the
+noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had
+already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of
+the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we
+lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was
+enough to smoke and see each other’s faces by, and the sparks flew
+about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled
+and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling
+away of further portions of the bank.
+
+Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of
+our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether
+remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual
+moment more than was necessary—almost as though we had agreed tacitly
+to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter
+nor the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention,
+though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater
+part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a
+place.
+
+The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the
+wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the
+same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some
+foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede
+brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time
+finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left
+alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the
+bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long
+day’s battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us
+both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made
+the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in
+desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and
+listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place
+had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit
+the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering
+would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the
+human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now
+carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out
+loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not
+quite _safe_, to be overheard.
+
+The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept
+by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us
+both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there
+beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of
+another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the
+souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even
+to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred
+in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the
+leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
+
+“When this has burnt up,” I said firmly, “I shall turn in,” and my
+companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding
+shadows.
+
+For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
+night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He
+too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not
+altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,
+and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far
+point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be
+seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon
+me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me
+I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
+
+When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell
+of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere “scenery”
+could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,
+something to alarm.
+
+I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering
+willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one
+and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange
+distress. But the _willows_ especially; for ever they went on
+chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly
+crying out, sometimes sighing—but what it was they made so much to-do
+about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited.
+And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild
+yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from
+another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all
+discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving
+busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their
+myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will
+as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own
+keen sense of the _horrible_.
+
+There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our
+camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all
+ready for an attack.
+
+The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very
+vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their “note” either of
+welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because
+the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first
+pause—after supper usually—it comes and announces itself. And the note
+of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were
+interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of
+unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the
+frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night’s
+lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and
+inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no!
+We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not
+wanted. _The willows were against us_.
+
+Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence,
+found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if,
+after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they
+should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods
+whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps,
+booming overhead in the night—and then _settle down!_ As I looked it
+was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a
+little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind
+that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their
+aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more
+closely together.
+
+The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and
+suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon
+fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I
+stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half
+laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and
+cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede’s remark about moving on
+next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I
+turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing
+immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the
+elements had covered his approach.
+
+“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, “I thought
+something must have happened to you.”
+
+But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well,
+that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I
+understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of
+the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.
+
+“River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight,
+“and the wind’s simply awful.”
+
+He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship
+that gave the real importance to his words.
+
+“Lucky,” I cried back, “our tent’s in the hollow. I think it’ll hold
+all right.” I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in
+order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung
+them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me
+through the branches, nodding his head.
+
+“Lucky if we get away without disaster!” he shouted, or words to that
+effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the
+thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was
+disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay
+unpleasantly upon me.
+
+We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our
+feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have
+been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my
+friend’s reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the
+ordinary July weather, than this “diabolical wind.”
+
+Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside
+the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack
+hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe
+distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.
+
+We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The
+flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and
+the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of
+the wind against our taut little house were the last things I
+remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and
+delicious forgetfulness.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress
+through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the
+canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve
+o’clock—the threshold of a new day—and I had therefore slept a couple
+of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as
+before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There
+was a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighborhood.
+
+I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to
+and fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay
+snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting
+enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did
+not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our
+belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my
+companion. A curious excitement was on me.
+
+I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in
+that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of
+leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and
+stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly
+above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and
+as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves
+about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted
+rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw
+these things.
+
+My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see
+them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably,
+that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there
+staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember
+saying to myself that I was _not_ dreaming.
+
+They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the
+tops of the bushes—immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly
+independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and
+noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much
+larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance
+proclaimed them to be _not human_ at all. Certainly they were not
+merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They
+shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from
+earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the
+sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and
+I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other,
+forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally
+with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid
+shapes, passing up the bushes, _within_ the leaves almost—rising up in
+a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see.
+Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with
+a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.
+
+I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long
+time I thought they _must_ every moment disappear and resolve
+themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an
+optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when
+all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had
+changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these
+figures were real and living, though perhaps not according to the
+standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.
+
+Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder
+such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified
+elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had
+stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the
+cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories
+and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been
+acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world’s history.
+But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something
+impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and
+stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the
+wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my
+ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved
+that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from
+earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and
+strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of
+worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship—absolutely worship.
+
+Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind
+swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly
+stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At
+least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still
+remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but
+my reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective
+experience, I argued—none the less real for that, but still subjective.
+The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon
+the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them
+outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case,
+of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open
+patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it
+merely subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from
+the little standard of the known?
+
+I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky
+for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete
+measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then
+suddenly they were gone!
+
+And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great
+presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The
+esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up
+within me, and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look
+round—a look of horror that came near to panic—calculating vainly ways
+of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything
+really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down
+again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut
+out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head
+as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the
+terrifying wind.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I
+remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled
+and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and
+underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but
+lay alert and on the watch.
+
+But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was
+neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of
+something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and
+smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting
+bolt upright—listening.
+
+Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had
+been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had
+first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had
+not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with
+difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my
+body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered.
+Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent
+and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was
+this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown
+from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought
+quickly of a dozen things.
+
+Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the
+poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind.
+Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next
+gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the
+tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out,
+calling to the Swede to follow.
+
+But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free.
+There was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing
+approached.
+
+A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the
+faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead,
+and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any
+glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees.
+Several hours must have passed since I stood there before watching the
+ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly,
+like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless
+raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on
+me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless
+apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river
+I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray
+made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.
+
+Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause
+alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly
+unaccounted for.
+
+My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need
+to waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the
+turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles—two of them, I’m certain; the
+provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree;
+and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those
+endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string
+of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand
+whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.
+
+I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush,
+so that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the
+same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again
+as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon,
+looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly
+here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite
+pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It
+_must_ have been the wind, I reflected—the wind bearing upon the loose,
+hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas—the
+wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.
+
+Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.
+
+I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had
+altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away.
+I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my
+forehead. Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the
+exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely
+beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising
+into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself
+overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure
+went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did….
+
+It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward
+again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror
+diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember
+saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under
+the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an
+unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt
+before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to
+counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the
+middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river,
+crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so
+overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought
+a cry up into the throat.
+
+But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the
+plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half
+hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me,
+compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at
+all.
+
+For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of
+the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different
+view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the
+relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent.
+Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly
+close. _They had moved nearer._
+
+Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing
+imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come
+closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved
+of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and
+the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake
+in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it
+hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a
+suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of
+aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.
+
+Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd,
+that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily
+than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such
+dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through
+our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would
+come, and was coming.
+
+The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came
+up over the horizon, for it was after four o’clock, and I must have
+stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to
+come down to close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly,
+creepily, to the tent, first taking another exhaustive look round
+and—yes, I confess it—making a few measurements. I paced out on the
+warm sand the distances between the willows and the tent, making a note
+of the shortest distance particularly.
+
+I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all
+appearances, still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so.
+Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength
+somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade
+myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the
+night, a projection of the excited imagination.
+
+Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at
+once, utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird
+sound of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my
+heart that had made it difficult to breathe.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy
+sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just
+time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent
+door.
+
+“River still rising,” he said, “and several islands out in mid-stream
+have disappeared altogether. Our own island’s much smaller.”
+
+“Any wood left?” I asked sleepily.
+
+“The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,” he
+laughed, “but there’s enough to last us till then.”
+
+I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a
+lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment
+to the landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the
+banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under
+such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the
+night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the
+brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the
+wind, however, had not abated one little jot.
+
+Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede’s words flashed
+across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and
+had changed his mind. “Enough to last till tomorrow”—he assumed we
+should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night
+before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?
+
+Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy
+splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our
+frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the
+difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in
+flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more
+than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had
+changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different—a
+trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice
+and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but
+at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing—that he had
+become frightened?
+
+He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe.
+He had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.
+
+“We’d better get off sharp in an hour,” I said presently, feeling for
+an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at
+any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: “Rather! If they’ll
+let us.”
+
+“Who’ll let us? The elements?” I asked quickly, with affected
+indifference.
+
+“The powers of this awful place, whoever they are,” he replied, keeping
+his eyes on the map. “The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in
+the world.”
+
+“The elements are always the true immortals,” I replied, laughing as
+naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face
+reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke
+across the smoke:
+
+“We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.”
+
+This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the
+point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist
+to extract the tooth; it _had_ to come anyhow in the long run, and the
+rest was all pretence.
+
+“Further disaster! Why, what’s happened?”
+
+“For one thing—the steering paddle’s gone,” he said quietly.
+
+“The steering paddle gone!” I repeated, greatly excited, for this was
+our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. “But
+what—”
+
+“And there’s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,” he added, with a
+genuine little tremor in his voice.
+
+I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face
+somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning
+sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got
+up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way
+towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The
+canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs
+uppermost, the paddles, or rather, _the_ paddle, on the sand beside
+her.
+
+“There’s only one,” he said, stooping to pick it up. “And here’s the
+rent in the base-board.”
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed
+_two_ paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think
+better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.
+
+There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a
+little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if
+the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and
+investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in
+her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first
+the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but
+once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe,
+never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and
+sunk very rapidly.
+
+“There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice,” I
+heard him saying, more to himself than to me, “two victims rather,” he
+added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.
+
+I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly
+nonplussed—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was
+determined to consider them foolish.
+
+“It wasn’t there last night,” he said presently, straightening up from
+his examination and looking anywhere but at me.
+
+“We must have scratched her in landing, of course,” I stopped whistling
+to say. “The stones are very sharp.”
+
+I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye
+squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation
+was. There were no stones, to begin with.
+
+“And then there’s this to explain too,” he added quietly, handing me
+the paddle and pointing to the blade.
+
+A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and
+examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped,
+as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that
+the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.
+
+“One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing,” I said feebly,
+“or—or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown
+against it by the wind, perhaps.”
+
+“Ah,” said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, “you can explain
+everything.”
+
+“The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
+bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,” I called out
+after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything
+he showed me.
+
+“I see,” he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
+disappearing among the willow bushes.
+
+Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think
+my first thoughts took the form of “One of us must have done this
+thing, and it certainly was not I.” But my second thought decided how
+impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either
+of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen
+similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a
+suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed
+the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature
+had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.
+
+Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear
+actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the
+clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his
+_mind_—that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he
+did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto
+unmentionable events—waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected,
+and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind
+intuitively—I hardly knew how.
+
+I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
+measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows
+formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and
+of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large
+bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters,
+just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water.
+The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite
+inexplicable; and, after all, it _was_ conceivable that a sharp point
+had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did
+not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that
+diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my “reason.” An
+explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some
+working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the
+happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and
+face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact
+parallel.
+
+I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at
+the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could
+not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention
+casually to the hollows in the sand.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “I know. They’re all over the island. But _you_ can
+explain them, no doubt!”
+
+“Wind, of course,” I answered without hesitation. “Have you never
+watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl
+everything into a circle? This sand’s loose enough to yield, that’s
+all.”
+
+He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him
+surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He
+seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could
+not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he
+kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky,
+and out across the water where it was visible through the openings
+among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held
+it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it,
+and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe
+with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his
+absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he
+would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had
+noticed _that_, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient
+explanation of it.
+
+At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.
+
+“Queer thing,” he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted
+to say something and get it over. “Queer thing. I mean, about that
+otter last night.”
+
+I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with
+surprise, and I looked up sharply.
+
+“Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things—”
+
+“I don’t mean that, of course,” he interrupted. “I mean—do you
+think—did you think it really was an otter?”
+
+“What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?”
+
+“You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed—so _much_
+bigger than an otter.”
+
+“The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,” I
+replied.
+
+He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with
+other thoughts.
+
+“It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,” he went on half to himself.
+
+“That was the sun too,” I laughed, a trifle boisterously. “I suppose
+you’ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat—”
+
+I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again
+of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the
+expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went
+on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished
+sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the
+canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.
+
+“I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know,” he said slowly, “what
+that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not
+a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the
+water.”
+
+I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was
+impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.
+
+“Look here now,” I cried, “this place is quite queer enough without
+going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,
+and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going
+down-stream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter,
+so don’t let’s play the fool about it!”
+
+He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in
+the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.
+
+“And, for Heaven’s sake,” I went on, “don’t keep pretending you hear
+things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there’s nothing to hear
+but the river and this cursed old thundering wind.”
+
+“You _fool!_” he answered in a low, shocked voice, “you utter fool.
+That’s just the way all victims talk. As if you didn’t understand just
+as well as I do!” he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of
+resignation. “The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to
+hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at
+self-deception only makes the truth harder when you’re forced to meet
+it.”
+
+My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew
+quite well his words were true, and that _I_ was the fool, not _he_. Up
+to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I
+think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic,
+less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half
+ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. _He
+knew_ from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly
+missed the point of his words about the necessity of there being a
+victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I
+dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear
+increased steadily to the climax.
+
+“But you’re quite right about one thing,” he added, before the subject
+passed, “and that is that we’re wiser not to talk about it, or even to
+think about it, because what one _thinks_ finds expression in words,
+and what one _says_, happens.”
+
+That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to
+fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous
+flood of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores
+sometimes, and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island
+grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps
+and splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four
+o’clock, and then for the first time for three days the wind showed
+signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the south-west, spreading
+thence slowly over the sky.
+
+This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant
+roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the
+silence that came about five o’clock with its sudden cessation was in a
+manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in
+its own way then; it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical
+than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held
+many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great
+elemental tune; whereas the river’s song lay between three notes at
+most—dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the
+wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound
+wonderfully well the music of doom.
+
+It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright
+sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for
+cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed
+to convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course
+was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the
+darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself
+more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would
+get up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly
+interfere with her lighting of the little island.
+
+With this general hush of the wind—though it still indulged in
+occasional brief gusts—the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the
+willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort
+of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no
+wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common
+objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they
+stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance;
+and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the
+darkness a bizarre _grotesquerie_ of appearance that lent to them
+somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very
+ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The
+forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were
+focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For
+thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really
+indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present
+themselves.
+
+I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered
+somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served
+apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing
+spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as
+absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet,
+in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I
+dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach
+of darkness.
+
+The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the
+day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede
+to the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From
+five o’clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations
+for dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes,
+onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavor, and a general thick residue
+from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up
+into it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of
+plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile
+of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy.
+My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between
+cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice—an admitted privilege of
+the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in
+re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for
+driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had
+passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the
+gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not fully a
+third smaller than when we first landed.
+
+The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me
+from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran
+up.
+
+“Come and listen,” he said, “and see what you make of it.” He held his
+hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.
+
+“_Now_ do you hear anything?” he asked, watching me curiously.
+
+We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only
+the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent
+surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a
+sound began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound—something like
+the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the
+darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated
+at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell
+nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much
+as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky,
+repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as
+it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.
+
+“I’ve heard it all day,” said my companion. “While you slept this
+afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could
+never get near enough to see—to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was
+overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too,
+I could have sworn it was not outside at all, but _within myself_—you
+know—the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come.”
+
+I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened
+carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I
+could think of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too,
+coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I
+cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed
+distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling
+that made me wish I had never heard it.
+
+“The wind blowing in those sand-funnels,” I said determined to find an
+explanation, “or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps.”
+
+“It comes off the whole swamp,” my friend answered. “It comes from
+everywhere at once.” He ignored my explanations. “It comes from the
+willow bushes somehow—”
+
+“But now the wind has dropped,” I objected. “The willows can hardly
+make a noise by themselves, can they?”
+
+His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly,
+because I knew intuitively it was true.
+
+“It is _because_ the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned
+before. It is the cry, I believe, of the—”
+
+I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew
+was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape further
+conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of
+views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin about the gods, or the
+elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep
+myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another
+night to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and
+there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.
+
+“Come and cut up bread for the pot,” I called to him, vigorously
+stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both,
+and the thought made me laugh.
+
+He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling
+in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon
+the ground-sheet at his feet.
+
+“Hurry up!” I cried; “it’s boiling.”
+
+The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was
+forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.
+
+“There’s nothing here!” he shouted, holding his sides.
+
+“Bread, I mean.”
+
+“It’s gone. There is no bread. They’ve taken it!”
+
+I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained
+lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.
+
+The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me.
+Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the
+sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The stain of
+psychical pressure caused it—this explosion of unnatural laughter in
+both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was
+a temporary safety-valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.
+
+“How criminally stupid of me!” I cried, still determined to be
+consistent and find an explanation. “I clean forgot to buy a loaf at
+Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I
+must have left it lying on the counter or—”
+
+“The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning,” the Swede
+interrupted.
+
+Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.
+
+“There’s enough for tomorrow,” I said, stirring vigorously, “and we can
+get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles
+from here.”
+
+“I hope so—to God,” he muttered, putting the things back into the sack,
+“unless we’re claimed first as victims for the sacrifice,” he added
+with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety’s
+sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so
+indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.
+
+Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in
+silence, avoiding one another’s eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then
+we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds
+unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all
+day long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I
+think, but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more that
+if I had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I
+have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and
+filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing
+rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and
+at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the
+bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More
+often it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was
+really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our
+heads, completely surrounding us. The sound really defies description.
+But nothing within my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming
+rising off the deserted world of swamps and willows.
+
+We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute
+greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did
+not know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of
+preparation by way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My
+explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with
+their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and
+more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion was
+inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the
+night together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that
+I could not get along much longer without the support of his mind, and
+for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As long as possible,
+however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh
+at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.
+
+Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,
+coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself;
+corroboration, too—which made it so much more convincing—from a totally
+different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled
+them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main
+line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were mere
+bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering
+them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.
+
+“There are things about us, I’m sure, that make for disorder,
+disintegration, destruction, our destruction,” he said once, while the
+fire blazed between us. “We’ve strayed out of a safe line somewhere.”
+
+And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much
+louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though
+talking to himself:
+
+“I don’t think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound
+doesn’t come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in
+another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely
+how a fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard.”
+
+I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the
+fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all
+over the sky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too,
+everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their
+own way.
+
+“It has that about it,” he went on, “which is utterly out of common
+experience. It is _unknown_. Only one thing describes it really; it is
+a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity.”
+
+Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a
+time, but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a
+relief to have the thought out, and to have confined it by the
+limitation of words from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.
+
+The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The
+feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran
+incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my
+soul, as the saying is, for the “feel” of those Bavarian villages we
+had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces;
+peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a
+ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the
+tourists would have been welcome.
+
+Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was
+infinitely greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim
+ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I
+had known or dreamed of. We had “strayed,” as the Swede put it, into
+some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet
+unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay
+close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space,
+a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves
+unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the
+final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over the
+border and deprived of what we called “our lives,” yet by mental, not
+physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the
+victims of our adventure—a sacrifice.
+
+It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his
+sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a
+personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with
+the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our
+audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw
+it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient
+shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the
+emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral
+portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.
+
+At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the
+winds from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual
+agencies were within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have
+I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a “beyond region,”
+of another scheme of life, another revolution not parallel to the
+human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the
+awful spell, and we should be drawn across the frontier into _their_
+world.
+
+Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now
+in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by
+the mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to
+distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the
+hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had
+been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its
+other aspect—as it existed across the border to that other region. And
+this changed aspect I felt was now not merely to me, but to the race.
+The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at
+all. It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the
+word _unearthly_.
+
+“It’s the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one’s courage to
+zero,” the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my
+thoughts. “Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle,
+the canoe, the lessening food—”
+
+“Haven’t I explained all that once?” I interrupted viciously.
+
+“You have,” he answered dryly; “you have indeed.”
+
+He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the “plain
+determination to provide a victim”; but, having now arranged my
+thoughts better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his
+frightened soul against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a
+vital part, and that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The
+situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither
+of us could compass, and I have never before been so clearly conscious
+of two persons in me—the one that explained everything, and the other
+that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.
+
+Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile
+grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the
+darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet
+beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray
+puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but apart from this
+not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken
+only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air overhead.
+
+We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.
+
+At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the
+wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of
+saturation, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief
+in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical
+extravagance that must have been far worse in its effect upon both of
+us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion
+abruptly. He looked up with a start.
+
+“I can’t disguise it any longer,” I said; “I don’t like this place, and
+the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There’s
+something here that beats me utterly. I’m in a blue funk, and that’s
+the plain truth. If the other shore was—different, I swear I’d be
+inclined to swim for it!”
+
+The Swede’s face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and
+wind. He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice
+betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment,
+at any rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic,
+for one thing.
+
+“It’s not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,” he
+replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; “we
+must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a
+herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly.
+Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps
+may save us.”
+
+I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words.
+It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease
+whose symptoms had puzzled me.
+
+“I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they
+have not _found_ us—not ‘located’ us, as the Americans say,” he went
+on. “They’re blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The
+paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they _feel_ us, but
+cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet—it’s our minds
+they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it’s all up with us.”
+
+“Death, you mean?” I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.
+
+“Worse—by far,” he said. “Death, according to one’s belief, means
+either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but
+it involves no change of character. _You_ don’t suddenly alter just
+because the body’s gone. But this means a radical alteration, a
+complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution—far worse
+than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a
+spot where their region touches ours, where the veil between has worn
+thin”—horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words—“so
+that they are aware of our being in their neighborhood.”
+
+“But _who_ are aware?” I asked.
+
+I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming
+overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I
+dreaded more than I can possibly explain.
+
+He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over
+the fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes
+and look down upon the ground.
+
+“All my life,” he said, “I have been strangely, vividly conscious of
+another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet
+wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where
+immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes
+compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the
+destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as
+dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the
+soul, and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul—”
+
+“I suggest just now—” I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I
+was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his
+torrent that _had_ to come.
+
+“You think,” he said, “it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought
+perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is—_neither_. These
+would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men,
+depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who
+are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is
+mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our
+own.”
+
+The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I
+listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set
+me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my
+movements.
+
+“And what do you propose?” I began again.
+
+“A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we
+could get away,” he went on, “just as the wolves stop to devour the
+dogs and give the sleigh another start. But—I see no chance of any
+other victim now.”
+
+I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently
+he continued.
+
+“It’s the willows, of course. The willows _mask_ the others, but the
+others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear,
+we’re lost, lost utterly.” He looked at me with an expression so calm,
+so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his
+sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. “If we can hold out through
+the night,” he added, “we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or
+rather, _undiscovered_.”
+
+“But you really think a sacrifice would—”
+
+That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke,
+but it was my friend’s scared face that really stopped my mouth.
+
+“Hush!” he whispered, holding up his hand. “Do not mention them more
+than you can help. Do not refer to them _by name_. To name is to
+reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring
+them, in order that they may ignore us.”
+
+“Even in thought?” He was extraordinarily agitated.
+
+“Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We
+must keep them _out of our minds_ at all costs if possible.”
+
+I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its
+own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the
+awful blackness of that summer night.
+
+“Were you awake all last night?” he went on suddenly.
+
+“I slept badly a little after dawn,” I replied evasively, trying to
+follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, “but the
+wind, of course—”
+
+“I know. But the wind won’t account for all the noises.”
+
+“Then you heard it too?”
+
+“The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard,” he said, adding,
+after a moment’s hesitation, “and that other sound—”
+
+“You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something
+tremendous, gigantic?”
+
+He nodded significantly.
+
+“It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?” I said.
+
+“Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had
+been altered—had increased enormously, so that we should have been
+crushed.”
+
+“And that,” I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards
+where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like
+wind. “What do you make of that?”
+
+“It’s _their_ sound,” he whispered gravely. “It’s the sound of their
+world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that
+it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you’ll find
+it’s not above so much as around us. It’s in the willows. It’s the
+willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made
+symbols of the forces that are against us.”
+
+I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and
+idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I
+realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his.
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my
+hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he
+suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and
+began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness
+and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for
+years deemed unimaginative, stolid!
+
+“Now listen,” he said. “The only thing for us to do is to go on as
+though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so
+forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question
+wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our
+chance of escape. Above all, don’t _think_, for what you think
+happens!”
+
+“All right,” I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and
+the strangeness of it all; “all right, I’ll try, but tell me one more
+thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all
+about us, those sand-funnels?”
+
+“No!” he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. “I dare not,
+simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I
+am glad. Don’t try to. _They_ have put it into my mind; try your
+hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.”
+
+He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not
+press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me
+as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our
+pipes busily in silence.
+
+Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way
+is when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small
+thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I
+chanced to look down at my sand-shoe—the sort we used for the canoe—and
+something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the
+London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had in
+fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical
+operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the
+modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought
+of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen
+other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The
+effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I
+suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain
+of living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness
+must seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it
+momentarily lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short
+space of a minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my
+friend opposite.
+
+“You damned old pagan!” I cried, laughing aloud in his face. “You
+imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You—”
+
+I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to
+smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of
+course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that
+sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.
+
+He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front
+of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.
+
+“After that,” he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, “we must go!
+We can’t stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on—down
+the river.”
+
+He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
+terror—the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
+last.
+
+“In the dark?” I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical
+outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. “Sheer
+madness! The river’s in flood, and we’ve only got a single paddle.
+Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There’s nothing ahead
+for fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!”
+
+He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of
+those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and
+the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last
+had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.
+
+“What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?” he whispered with the
+awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.
+
+I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
+kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.
+
+“We’ll make one more blaze,” I said firmly, “and then turn in for the
+night. At sunrise we’ll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull
+yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about _not
+thinking fear!_”
+
+He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some
+measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion
+into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost
+touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming
+overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased
+our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!
+
+We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows
+where some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the
+branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon
+the sand. It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching
+me for support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.
+
+“Look! By my soul!” he whispered, and for the first time in my
+experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice.
+He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the
+direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.
+
+There, in front of the dim glow, _something was moving_.
+
+I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze
+drop-curtain used at the back of a theater—hazily a little. It was
+neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange
+impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like
+horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar
+result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped
+and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving
+all over upon its surface—“coiling upon itself like smoke,” he said
+afterwards.
+
+“I watched it settle downwards through the bushes,” he sobbed at me.
+“Look, by God! It’s coming this way! Oh, oh!”—he gave a kind of
+whistling cry. “_They’ve found us._”
+
+I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the
+shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I
+collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of
+course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we
+fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was
+happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of
+icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted
+them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were
+tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my
+consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way
+to another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.
+
+An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the
+Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was
+the way he caught at me in falling.
+
+But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused
+me to _forget them_ and think of something else at the very instant
+when they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the
+moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing
+of me. He himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and
+that was what saved him.
+
+I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to
+say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow
+branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a
+hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he
+had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.
+
+“I lost consciousness for a moment or two,” I heard him say. “That’s
+what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them.”
+
+“You nearly broke my arm in two,” I said, uttering my only connected
+thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.
+
+“That’s what saved _you!_” he replied. “Between us, we’ve managed to
+set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It’s
+gone—for the moment at any rate!”
+
+A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to
+my friend too—great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a
+tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the
+fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that
+the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.
+
+We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and
+caught our feet in sand.
+
+“It’s those sand-funnels,” exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up
+again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.
+“And look at the size of them!”
+
+All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving
+shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly
+similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far
+bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some
+instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.
+
+Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing
+we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay,
+having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and
+the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such
+a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least
+motion would disturb and wake us.
+
+In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready
+for a sudden start.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the
+exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a
+while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my
+companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and
+constantly sat up, asking me if I “heard this” or “heard that.” He
+tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the
+river had risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out
+to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he
+grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular
+and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring—the first and only time in
+my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.
+
+This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.
+
+A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my
+face. But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and
+my first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on
+to my own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same
+moment it came to me that the tent was _surrounded_. That sound of
+multitudinous soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the
+night with horror.
+
+I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I
+missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the
+tent was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the
+darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I
+realized positively that the Swede was not here. He had gone.
+
+I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the
+moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that
+surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens
+at once. It was that same familiar humming—gone mad! A swarm of great
+invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to
+thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with
+difficulty.
+
+But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.
+
+The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread
+upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind
+stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the
+pale sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about
+the island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the
+first words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice,
+and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet
+round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over
+roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the
+preventing branches.
+
+Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island’s point and saw a
+dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede.
+And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would
+have taken the plunge.
+
+I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging
+him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously,
+making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using
+the most outlandish phrases in his anger about “going _inside_ to
+Them,” and “taking the way of the water and the wind,” and God only
+knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but
+which turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in
+the end I managed to get him into the comparative safety of the tent,
+and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him
+until the fit had passed.
+
+I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm,
+coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming
+and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the
+whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his
+tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through
+the doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:
+
+“My life, old man—it’s my life I owe you. But it’s all over now anyhow.
+They’ve found a victim in our place!”
+
+Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally
+under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as
+healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to
+offer his own life as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight
+woke him three hours later—hours of ceaseless vigil for me—it became so
+clear to me that he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had
+attempted to do, that I deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no
+dangerous questions.
+
+He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already
+high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the
+preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at
+bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head
+and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.
+
+“River’s falling at last,” he said, “and I’m glad of it.”
+
+“The humming has stopped too,” I said.
+
+He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he
+remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.
+
+“Everything has stopped,” he said, “because—”
+
+He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just
+before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.
+
+“Because ‘They’ve found another victim’?” I said, forcing a little
+laugh.
+
+“Exactly,” he answered, “exactly! I feel as positive of it as though—as
+though—I feel quite safe again, I mean,” he finished.
+
+He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches
+on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly
+rose to feet.
+
+“Come,” he said; “I think if we look, we shall find it.”
+
+He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks,
+poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little
+back-waters, myself always close on his heels.
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed presently, “ah!”
+
+The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the
+horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He
+was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in
+the water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some
+twisted willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few
+hours before the spot must have been under water.
+
+“See,” he said quietly, “the victim that made our escape possible!”
+
+And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on
+the body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant,
+and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned,
+but a few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our
+island somewhere about the hour of the dawn—_at the very time the fit
+had passed._
+
+“We must give it a decent burial, you know.”
+
+“I suppose so,” I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for
+there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that
+turned me cold.
+
+The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his
+face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more
+leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing
+from the body, so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.
+
+Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his
+hand in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much
+momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and
+sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled
+together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water.
+And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily
+against the corpse.
+
+The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.
+
+At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud
+sound of humming—the sound of several hummings—which passed with a vast
+commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared
+upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally
+ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some
+living yet invisible creatures at work.
+
+My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either
+of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw
+that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it
+became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it
+had turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the
+sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would
+be swept away.
+
+The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch
+about a “proper burial”—and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the
+sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an
+instant.
+
+I saw what he had seen.
+
+For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the
+exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin
+and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and
+exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found
+all over the island.
+
+“Their mark!” I heard my companion mutter under his breath. “Their
+awful mark!”
+
+And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the
+current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into
+mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight,
+turning over and over on the waves like an otter.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11438 ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood</title>
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11438 ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Willows</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Algernon Blackwood</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+(1907)
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<p>
+After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a
+region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on
+all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for
+miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps
+this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it
+leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the
+word <i>Sümpfe</i>, meaning marshes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown
+islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend
+and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an
+ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the
+dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with
+rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the
+least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that
+they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For
+the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves
+instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches
+turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders
+about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands
+everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound;
+making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks;
+carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands
+innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an
+impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river&rsquo;s life begins soon
+after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and
+frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July.
+That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had
+slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours
+later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the
+horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees
+roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth,
+Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under
+the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March
+steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and
+Hungary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and
+the muddy waters&mdash;sure sign of flood&mdash;sent us aground on many a
+shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool
+before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Pozsóny) showed against the sky; and
+then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey
+walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned
+the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness
+of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond&mdash;the land of the willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on
+the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and
+forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an
+hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign
+of human habitation and civilization within sight. The sense of remoteness from
+the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular
+world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so
+that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
+some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
+audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder
+and magic&mdash;a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a
+right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who
+had the imagination to discover them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
+tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a
+suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of the
+islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then
+swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to
+stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into the water before
+at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and
+managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing
+after our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the
+full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army
+of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with
+spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success
+of our efforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a river!&rdquo; I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we
+had traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
+obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t stand much nonsense now, will it?&rdquo; he said, pulling
+the canoe a little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself
+for a nap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements&mdash;water,
+wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun&mdash;thinking of the long journey
+that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea, and
+how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling companion as
+my friend, the Swede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other
+river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its <i>aliveness</i>.
+From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of
+Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river-game of
+losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had
+seemed to us like following the growth of some living creature. Sleepy at
+first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep
+soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had
+passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with
+us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come
+inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret
+life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering
+that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the rapid
+tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew,
+too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up on a surface
+previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows and swift rapids; its constant
+steady thundering below all mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of
+its icy waters at the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell
+flat upon its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew
+up-stream and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and
+voices, its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the
+bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the
+affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too
+important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun caught
+it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew it.
+There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the
+first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear
+through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous
+limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so
+little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the
+canoe through miles of shallows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was to
+lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries came to
+join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in, but to run
+for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very levels
+different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer. Below
+Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn comes in
+with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the
+parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that
+follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs, and
+forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro in order to
+get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped down from its
+shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life among the struggling
+waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and after Passau it no longer
+pretended to ignore new arrivals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know other
+aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of Straubing
+she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could well imagine
+only the surface inches were water, while below there moved, concealed as by a
+silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the
+sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be discovered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and animals
+that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows
+like short black palings; grey crows crowded the shingle-beds; storks stood
+fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands,
+and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting
+wings and singing, petulant cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the
+river&rsquo;s vagaries after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at
+sunrise and swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at
+us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we
+charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes,
+too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and
+disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the Danube
+became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the Black Sea,
+within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries where no tricks
+would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly grown-up, and claimed our
+respect and even our awe. It broke out into three arms, for one thing, that
+only met again a hundred kilometers farther down, and for a canoe there were no
+indications which one was intended to be followed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you take a side channel,&rdquo; said the Hungarian officer we met in
+the Pressburg shop while buying provisions, &ldquo;you may find yourselves,
+when the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may
+easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to
+continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being left
+high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious, and we had
+consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the
+officer&rsquo;s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly
+clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly gale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two
+from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I
+wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found, was
+less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or three feet
+above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the sunset, was
+covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off the crests of the
+broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing
+down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep
+it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams on either side. The
+ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while the furious movement of
+the willow bushes as the wind poured over them increased the curious illusion
+that the island itself actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see
+the great river descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a
+sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the
+sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking
+pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of
+course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the
+flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great
+puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible,
+pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep
+into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian
+creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like
+growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from
+sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre
+suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion began to
+stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the wild beauty,
+there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost
+of alarm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of the
+little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the
+morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe.
+Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and
+wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the
+driving wind&mdash;this shouting hurricane that might almost carry up a few
+acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the
+landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the
+flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a
+kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with
+the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was
+impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was
+aware somehow that it had to do with my realization of our utter insignificance
+before this unrestrained power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river
+had something to do with it too&mdash;a vague, unpleasant idea that we had
+somehow trifled with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay
+helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were
+gigantically at play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more
+particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows,
+crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach,
+pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile
+after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from
+the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise,
+attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and
+contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and
+mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or
+another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and
+oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly
+its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately
+with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if
+alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I
+felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe
+awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried
+ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving
+furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome
+suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a
+world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to
+remain&mdash;where we ran grave risks perhaps!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to
+analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it never
+left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up the tent
+in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It remained, just
+enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful camping-ground of a
+good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I said nothing, for he was
+a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never
+have explained to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed
+stupidly at me if I had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we pitched
+the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A poor camp,&rdquo; observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the
+tent stood upright, &ldquo;no stones and precious little firewood. I&rsquo;m
+for moving on early tomorrow&mdash;eh? This sand won&rsquo;t hold
+anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many devices,
+and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set about
+collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop no
+branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores
+pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising flood tore
+at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a gurgle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The island&rsquo;s much smaller than when we landed,&rdquo; said the
+accurate Swede. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t last long at this rate. We&rsquo;d better
+drag the canoe close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment&rsquo;s
+notice. I shall sleep in my clothes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather
+jolly laugh as he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what
+had caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows,
+and I could not find him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in the world&rsquo;s this?&rdquo; I heard him cry again, and this
+time his voice had become serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river,
+pointing at something in the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens, it&rsquo;s a man&rsquo;s body!&rdquo; he cried excitedly.
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past.
+It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty
+feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood it lurched
+round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and
+gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping
+plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An otter, by gad!&rdquo; we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the
+body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it came to
+the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining in the
+sunlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another thing
+happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a man, and
+what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was an unusual
+sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at flood time, it was
+so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood and stared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
+wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it
+difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed,
+however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering
+with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous
+pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was
+too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he
+was about. It seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us.
+His voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the
+wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something curious
+about the whole appearance&mdash;man, boat, signs, voice&mdash;that made an
+impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s crossing himself!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Look, he&rsquo;s
+making the sign of the Cross!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe you&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; the Swede said, shading his eyes
+with his hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a
+moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught
+them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of
+beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded
+river?&rdquo; I said, half to myself. &ldquo;Where is he going at such a time,
+and what did he mean by his signs and shouting? D&rsquo;you think he wished to
+warn us about something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably,&rdquo; laughed
+my companion. &ldquo;These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you
+remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here
+because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man&rsquo;s world! I suppose
+they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in
+the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life,&rdquo; he
+added, after a slight pause, &ldquo;and it scared him, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede&rsquo;s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
+something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he talked,
+though without being able to label it precisely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they had enough imagination,&rdquo; I laughed loudly&mdash;I remember
+trying to make as much <i>noise</i> as I could&mdash;&ldquo;they might well
+people a place like this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have
+haunted all this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and
+elemental deities.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not
+given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember
+feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical
+nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable
+temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot
+dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a
+canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength when
+untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly hair as
+he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I
+experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then that the
+Swede was&mdash;what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more
+than they said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The river&rsquo;s still rising, though,&rdquo; he added, as if following
+out some thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. &ldquo;This
+island will be under water in two days if it goes on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish the <i>wind</i> would go down,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t care a fig for the river.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten
+minutes&rsquo; notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an
+increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so
+often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed
+to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the willows round
+us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like the explosion of
+heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of
+immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must make, could we only
+hear it, driving along through space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full moon
+rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting willows
+with a light like the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises of
+the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had already made, and
+of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the tent, but the high
+wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the curtain and
+extinguished the lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and see each
+other&rsquo;s faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead like fireworks. A
+few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time to time a heavy
+splash announced the falling away of further portions of the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of our
+first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether remote from
+the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment more than was
+necessary&mdash;almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid discussion of
+the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor the boatman, for instance,
+received the honor of a single mention, though ordinarily these would have
+furnished discussion for the greater part of the evening. They were, of course,
+distinct events in such a place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the wind,
+that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same time to
+make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging expeditions
+into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel
+that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care
+much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub
+about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight.
+The long day&rsquo;s battle with wind and water&mdash;such wind and such
+water!&mdash;had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet
+neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire,
+talking in desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes,
+and listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had
+entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound
+of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the
+fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather
+absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost
+illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it
+was not lawful, perhaps not quite <i>safe</i>, to be overheard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a
+hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy.
+Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote
+from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world
+tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had
+dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of
+its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up
+through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When this has burnt up,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;I shall turn
+in,&rdquo; and my companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the
+surrounding shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that night,
+unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too was touched
+by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether pleased, I
+remember, to recognize this slight change in him, and instead of immediately
+collecting sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island where the
+moonlight on plain and river could be seen to better advantage. The desire to
+be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned in force; there
+was a vague feeling in me I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of the
+place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere &ldquo;scenery&rdquo;
+could have produced such an effect. There was something more here, something to
+alarm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I
+heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its
+own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the
+<i>willows</i> especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among
+themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing&mdash;but
+what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of the
+great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to
+that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings
+from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all
+discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily
+together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves
+even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive, and
+they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the
+<i>horrible</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp,
+shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all ready for an
+attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for
+the wanderer, especially, camps have their &ldquo;note&rdquo; either of welcome
+or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy
+preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause&mdash;after
+supper usually&mdash;it comes and announces itself. And the note of this
+willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers,
+trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I
+stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence
+was resented. For a night&rsquo;s lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but
+for a prolonged and inquisitive stay&mdash;No! by all the gods of the trees and
+wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we
+were not wanted. <i>The willows were against us</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence, found
+lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if, after all, these
+crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should rise up, like a
+swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods whose territory we had
+invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps, booming overhead in the
+night&mdash;and then <i>settle down!</i> As I looked it was so easy to imagine
+they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled together in
+masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind that should finally start them
+a-running. I could have sworn their aspect changed a little, and their ranks
+deepened and pressed more closely together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and suddenly I
+nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great
+splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just in time,
+and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd fancies that
+crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their spell upon me. I recalled the
+Swede&rsquo;s remark about moving on next day, and I was just thinking that I
+fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw the subject of my
+thoughts standing immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of
+the elements had covered his approach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been gone so long,&rdquo; he shouted above the wind,
+&ldquo;I thought something must have happened to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that
+conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real
+reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had entered his
+soul too, and he did not like being alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;River still rising,&rdquo; he cried, pointing to the flood in the
+moonlight, &ldquo;and the wind&rsquo;s simply awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave
+the real importance to his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucky,&rdquo; I cried back, &ldquo;our tent&rsquo;s in the hollow. I
+think it&rsquo;ll hold all right.&rdquo; I added something about the difficulty
+of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words
+and flung them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me
+through the branches, nodding his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucky if we get away without disaster!&rdquo; he shouted, or words to
+that effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought
+into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster impending
+somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We
+took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I
+put this thought into words, and I remember my friend&rsquo;s reply struck me
+oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this
+&ldquo;diabolical wind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent,
+with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a
+willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the fire,
+all ready for the morning meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of
+the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white
+moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our
+taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and
+covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the
+door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by
+the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o&rsquo;clock&mdash;the threshold
+of a new day&mdash;and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was
+asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my
+heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my immediate
+neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as
+the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the
+hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough resistance to make
+it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled
+quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully
+so as not to waken my companion. A curious excitement was on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the
+tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes
+against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible,
+surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some
+indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind
+they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of
+monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty
+feet in front of me, I saw these things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but
+something made me hesitate&mdash;the sudden realization, probably, that I
+should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in
+amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself
+that I was <i>not</i> dreaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of
+the bushes&mdash;immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the
+swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine
+them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that
+something in their appearance proclaimed them to be <i>not human</i> at all.
+Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the
+moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream
+from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the
+sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw
+their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this
+serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions
+of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes,
+<i>within</i> the leaves almost&mdash;rising up in a living column into the
+heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards,
+swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I
+thought they <i>must</i> every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the
+movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched
+everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well
+that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more
+certain I became that these figures were real and living, though perhaps not
+according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I
+have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of
+this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the
+place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my
+brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of
+places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the
+world&rsquo;s history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation,
+something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and
+stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore
+at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a
+sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were
+acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent,
+majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at
+length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and
+worship&mdash;absolutely worship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept
+against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and
+fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it gave me
+another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into
+heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last began to assert
+itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued&mdash;none the less real
+for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work
+out these pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I
+projected them outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the
+case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open
+patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely
+subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little
+standard of the known?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for what
+seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of reality
+as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they were gone!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had
+passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning of this
+lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began to tremble
+dreadfully. I took a quick look round&mdash;a look of horror that came near to
+panic&mdash;calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless
+I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent
+and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to
+shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as
+deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying
+wind.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<p>
+As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that
+it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and
+even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something
+that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was neither
+the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that
+caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it
+vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright&mdash;listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been
+coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become
+audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It
+seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great
+weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy
+with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the
+sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the
+wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown
+from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a
+dozen things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar, the
+only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half caught by
+the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and
+meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas surface of the
+tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the Swede to follow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no
+hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly
+gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind
+howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the
+east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed
+since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it
+now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me
+feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless
+night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally
+tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The
+river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray
+made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm.
+This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly unaccounted for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to waken
+him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the turned-over canoe;
+the yellow paddles&mdash;two of them, I&rsquo;m certain; the provision sack and
+the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and, crowding everywhere
+about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird
+uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight
+overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare
+feet in the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so that I
+could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet
+indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable
+sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan
+light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd
+sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had
+wakened me. It <i>must</i> have been the wind, I reflected&mdash;the wind
+bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the
+taut canvas&mdash;the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had altered in
+the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I dipped my hands
+and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead. Already there was a
+glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way
+back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of
+figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found
+myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure
+went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did….
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again, and
+once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished strangely. The
+winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself, for the winds often
+move like great presences under the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered
+about me was such an unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had
+ever felt before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to
+counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of
+the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the
+sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of
+wild yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond
+to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows,
+a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the
+walking winds seemed as nothing at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the
+landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but
+that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to
+the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much
+closer&mdash;unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. <i>They had moved nearer.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer
+by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But
+had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound
+of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own
+heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like
+a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There
+was a suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of
+aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I
+felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than the cry, for
+the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings
+brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our
+physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up over
+the horizon, for it was after four o&rsquo;clock, and I must have stood on that
+little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to close
+quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent, first
+taking another exhaustive look round and&mdash;yes, I confess it&mdash;making a
+few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the
+willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances, still
+slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my experiences were
+not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the
+daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a
+fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once,
+utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of
+multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had made
+it difficult to breathe.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV.</h2>
+<p>
+The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy sleep
+and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to bathe.
+The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;River still rising,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and several islands out in
+mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island&rsquo;s much
+smaller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any wood left?&rdquo; I asked sleepily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,&rdquo; he
+laughed, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s enough to last us till then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot in
+size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the
+landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like
+the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an
+exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me
+by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud
+showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede&rsquo;s words flashed
+across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had
+changed his mind. &ldquo;Enough to last till tomorrow&rdquo;&mdash;he assumed
+we should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night
+before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and
+clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my
+fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth
+steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind
+interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the
+difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before.
+His manner was different&mdash;a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of
+suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in
+cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one
+thing&mdash;that he had become frightened?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He had
+the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;d better get off sharp in an hour,&rdquo; I said presently,
+feeling for an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession
+at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: &ldquo;Rather! If
+they&rsquo;ll let us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;ll let us? The elements?&rdquo; I asked quickly, with affected
+indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The powers of this awful place, whoever they are,&rdquo; he replied,
+keeping his eyes on the map. &ldquo;The gods are here, if they are anywhere at
+all in the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The elements are always the true immortals,&rdquo; I replied, laughing
+as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected
+my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the smoke:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point of
+the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the
+tooth; it <i>had</i> to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was all
+pretence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Further disaster! Why, what&rsquo;s happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For one thing&mdash;the steering paddle&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; he said
+quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The steering paddle gone!&rdquo; I repeated, greatly excited, for this
+was our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide.
+&ldquo;But what&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,&rdquo; he added,
+with a genuine little tremor in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face somewhat
+foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand, I was aware
+of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he
+merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on
+the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still lay there as I had last seen
+her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather, <i>the</i> paddle, on
+the sand beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one,&rdquo; he said, stooping to pick it up.
+&ldquo;And here&rsquo;s the rent in the base-board.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed
+<i>two</i> paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think
+better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little
+slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a
+sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation showed that the
+hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must
+inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so
+as to close the hole, but once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in,
+and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled
+and sunk very rapidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice,&rdquo;
+I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, &ldquo;two victims
+rather,&rdquo; he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to whistle&mdash;a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly
+nonplussed&mdash;and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined
+to consider them foolish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t there last night,&rdquo; he said presently,
+straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must have scratched her in landing, of course,&rdquo; I stopped
+whistling to say. &ldquo;The stones are very sharp.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely.
+I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was. There were no
+stones, to begin with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then there&rsquo;s this to explain too,&rdquo; he added quietly,
+handing me the paddle and pointing to the blade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined it.
+The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had
+sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first vigorous stroke
+must have snapped it off at the elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing,&rdquo; I said feebly,
+&ldquo;or&mdash;or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles
+blown against it by the wind, perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, &ldquo;you
+can explain everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
+bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,&rdquo; I called out
+after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he
+showed me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
+disappearing among the willow bushes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first
+thoughts took the form of &ldquo;One of us must have done this thing, and it
+certainly was not I.&rdquo; But my second thought decided how impossible it was
+to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my
+companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have
+knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for a
+moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and
+densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane
+purposes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively
+alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty
+that some curious alteration had come about in his <i>mind</i>&mdash;that he
+was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about,
+watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable events&mdash;waiting, in
+a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought, expected very soon. This
+grew up in my mind intuitively&mdash;I hardly knew how.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
+measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed in
+the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various depths
+and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt,
+was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the
+paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only
+thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it <i>was</i> conceivable
+that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the
+shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that
+diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my &ldquo;reason.&rdquo;
+An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working
+explanation of the universe is necessary&mdash;however absurd&mdash;to the
+happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face
+the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the work,
+though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for
+traveling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to the hollows
+in the sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I know. They&rsquo;re all over the island.
+But <i>you</i> can explain them, no doubt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wind, of course,&rdquo; I answered without hesitation. &ldquo;Have you
+never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl
+everything into a circle? This sand&rsquo;s loose enough to yield, that&rsquo;s
+all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him
+surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed,
+too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or
+perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and
+staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it
+was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his
+hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me,
+however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that
+torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his
+absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would
+speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed <i>that</i>,
+my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Queer thing,&rdquo; he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he
+wanted to say something and get it over. &ldquo;Queer thing. I mean, about that
+otter last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise,
+and I looked up sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy
+things&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that, of course,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;I
+mean&mdash;do you think&mdash;did you think it really was an otter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed&mdash;so
+<i>much</i> bigger than an otter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,&rdquo; I
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other
+thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,&rdquo; he went on half to
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the sun too,&rdquo; I laughed, a trifle boisterously. &ldquo;I
+suppose you&rsquo;ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of
+listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of his
+face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking.
+Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later,
+however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his
+face exceedingly grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>did</i> rather wonder, if you want to know,&rdquo; he said slowly,
+&ldquo;what that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was
+not a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the
+water.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience,
+and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look here now,&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;this place is quite queer enough
+without going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,
+and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going down-stream as
+fast as they could lick. And that otter <i>was</i> an otter, so don&rsquo;t
+let&rsquo;s play the fool about it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the
+least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t keep
+pretending you hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and
+there&rsquo;s nothing to hear but the river and this cursed old thundering
+wind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>fool!</i>&rdquo; he answered in a low, shocked voice, &ldquo;you
+utter fool. That&rsquo;s just the way all victims talk. As if you didn&rsquo;t
+understand just as well as I do!&rdquo; he sneered with scorn in his voice, and
+a sort of resignation. &ldquo;The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and
+try to hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at
+self-deception only makes the truth harder when you&rsquo;re forced to meet
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew quite
+well his words were true, and that <i>I</i> was the fool, not <i>he</i>. Up to
+a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt
+annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than
+himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of
+what was going on under my very nose. <i>He knew</i> from the very beginning,
+apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the
+necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to
+satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward
+likewise my fear increased steadily to the climax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re quite right about one thing,&rdquo; he added, before
+the subject passed, &ldquo;and that is that we&rsquo;re wiser not to talk about
+it, or even to think about it, because what one <i>thinks</i> finds expression
+in words, and what one <i>says</i>, happens.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to fish,
+testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood of rising
+water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and we fished for
+them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the
+banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept
+brilliantly fine till about four o&rsquo;clock, and then for the first time for
+three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the
+south-west, spreading thence slowly over the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant roaring,
+banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the silence that came
+about five o&rsquo;clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner quite as
+oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way then; it
+filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but
+infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising, falling always
+beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river&rsquo;s song
+lay between three notes at most&mdash;dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious
+quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous
+state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight took
+everything out of the landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since this
+particular landscape had already managed to convey the suggestion of something
+sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For
+me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found
+myself more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get
+up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with
+her lighting of the little island.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this general hush of the wind&mdash;though it still indulged in occasional
+brief gusts&mdash;the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand
+more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent movement
+of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly
+from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way be come charged with
+the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things
+of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for
+me in the darkness a bizarre <i>grotesquerie</i> of appearance that lent to
+them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very
+ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The forces
+of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were focusing upon our
+island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms
+of the imagination, did my really indescribable sensations in this
+extraordinary place present themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered somewhat
+from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served apparently to
+render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing spell of the haunting.
+I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very
+obvious physiological explanations, yet, in spite of every effort, they gained
+in strength upon me so that I dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest
+must dread the approach of darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day, and
+the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to the base of a
+tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five o&rsquo;clock onwards
+I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for dinner, it being my turn
+to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavor,
+and a general thick residue from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with
+black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was
+followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried
+milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my
+duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions
+between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice&mdash;an admitted privilege
+of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in
+re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for driftwood
+while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us, and
+I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island,
+which he declared was not fully a third smaller than when we first landed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from the
+bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come and listen,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and see what you make of
+it.&rdquo; He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Now</i> do you hear anything?&rdquo; he asked, watching me curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the deep
+note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent surface. The
+willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to reach my
+ears faintly, a peculiar sound&mdash;something like the humming of a distant
+gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps
+and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but it was
+certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I
+can liken it to nothing so much as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended
+far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and
+musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard it all day,&rdquo; said my companion. &ldquo;While you
+slept this afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could
+never get near enough to see&mdash;to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was
+overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could
+have sworn it was not outside at all, but <i>within myself</i>&mdash;you
+know&mdash;the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened
+carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I could think
+of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, coming nearer, and
+then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was
+ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must
+admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I had never heard
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wind blowing in those sand-funnels,&rdquo; I said determined to find
+an explanation, &ldquo;or the bushes rubbing together after the storm
+perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It comes off the whole swamp,&rdquo; my friend answered. &ldquo;It comes
+from everywhere at once.&rdquo; He ignored my explanations. &ldquo;It comes
+from the willow bushes somehow&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But now the wind has dropped,&rdquo; I objected. &ldquo;The willows can
+hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because
+I knew intuitively it was true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is <i>because</i> the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned
+before. It is the cry, I believe, of the&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was in
+danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation. I was
+resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded, too, that
+he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else
+disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand for what might happen
+later. There was another night to be faced before we escaped from this
+distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come and cut up bread for the pot,&rdquo; I called to him, vigorously
+stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and the
+thought made me laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in its
+mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the ground-sheet
+at his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hurry up!&rdquo; I cried; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s boiling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced
+laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing here!&rdquo; he shouted, holding his sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bread, I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s gone. There is no bread. They&rsquo;ve taken it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay upon
+the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I
+burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my
+laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure caused
+it&mdash;this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort
+of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve. And with
+both of us it ceased quite suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How criminally stupid of me!&rdquo; I cried, still determined to be
+consistent and find an explanation. &ldquo;I clean forgot to buy a loaf at
+Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have
+left it lying on the counter or&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning,&rdquo; the
+Swede interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s enough for tomorrow,&rdquo; I said, stirring vigorously,
+&ldquo;and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we
+shall be miles from here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so&mdash;to God,&rdquo; he muttered, putting the things back into
+the sack, &ldquo;unless we&rsquo;re claimed first as victims for the
+sacrifice,&rdquo; he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the
+tent, for safety&rsquo;s sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself,
+but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence,
+avoiding one another&rsquo;s eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed
+up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied with any
+definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more and more
+acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the very vagueness of its
+origin distressed me far more that if I had been able to ticket and face it
+squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now
+almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint,
+continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was
+behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the
+bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it
+hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere
+at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely
+surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within my
+knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world
+of swamps and willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute greater.
+The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not know what to
+expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way of defense. We
+could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now
+came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it
+was more and more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion
+was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night
+together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not
+get along much longer without the support of his mind, and for that, of course,
+plain talk was imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this
+little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he
+flung into the emptiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me, coming
+as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration,
+too&mdash;which made it so much more convincing&mdash;from a totally different
+point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in
+such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was
+secret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found it impossible to
+digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved him. It was like
+being sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are things about us, I&rsquo;m sure, that make for disorder,
+disintegration, destruction, our destruction,&rdquo; he said once, while the
+fire blazed between us. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve strayed out of a safe line
+somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much louder
+than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talking to himself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think a gramophone would show any record of that. The
+sound doesn&rsquo;t come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in
+another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a
+fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fire and
+peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and
+no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everything was, so that
+the river and the frogs had things all their own way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has that about it,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;which is utterly out of
+common experience. It is <i>unknown</i>. Only one thing describes it really; it
+is a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time, but he
+had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the
+thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words from dangerous
+wandering to and fro in the mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The feeling of
+being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran incessantly upon cities
+and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the
+&ldquo;feel&rdquo; of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the
+score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking beer, tables
+beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the rocks behind the
+red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have been welcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely
+greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of terror
+more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of. We had
+&ldquo;strayed,&rdquo; as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of
+conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the
+frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the
+dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon
+the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little
+thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over
+the border and deprived of what we called &ldquo;our lives,&rdquo; yet by
+mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the
+victims of our adventure&mdash;a sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his
+sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a
+personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the
+horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious
+intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the
+unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where
+the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers
+still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds from
+coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were within reach
+and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by
+indescribable suggestions of a &ldquo;beyond region,&rdquo; of another scheme
+of life, another revolution not parallel to the human. And in the end our minds
+would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we should be drawn
+across the frontier into <i>their</i> world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in the
+silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the mind. The
+very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to distort every
+indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making
+signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural
+character, and revealed in something of its other aspect&mdash;as it existed
+across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was now
+not merely to me, but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we touched
+was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience, and in the
+true sense of the word <i>unearthly</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one&rsquo;s
+courage to zero,&rdquo; the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually
+following my thoughts. &ldquo;Otherwise imagination might count for much. But
+the paddle, the canoe, the lessening food&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I explained all that once?&rdquo; I interrupted viciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have,&rdquo; he answered dryly; &ldquo;you have indeed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the &ldquo;plain
+determination to provide a victim&rdquo;; but, having now arranged my thoughts
+better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul
+against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that he
+would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage and
+calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before
+been so clearly conscious of two persons in me&mdash;the one that explained
+everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was
+horribly afraid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small.
+Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came
+up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was
+inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about
+us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence
+reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air
+overhead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the wind
+were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation, the point
+where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to
+betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have been far worse in
+its effect upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my
+companion abruptly. He looked up with a start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t disguise it any longer,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t like this place, and the darkness, and the noises, and the awful
+feelings I get. There&rsquo;s something here that beats me utterly. I&rsquo;m
+in a blue funk, and that&rsquo;s the plain truth. If the other shore
+was&mdash;different, I swear I&rsquo;d be inclined to swim for it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede&rsquo;s face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind.
+He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge
+excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any rate, he was the
+strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a physical condition we can escape from by running
+away,&rdquo; he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease;
+&ldquo;we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill
+a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our
+only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It was
+precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease whose symptoms
+had puzzled me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have
+not <i>found</i> us&mdash;not &lsquo;located&rsquo; us, as the Americans
+say,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re blundering about like men hunting
+for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they
+<i>feel</i> us, but cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds
+quiet&mdash;it&rsquo;s our minds they feel. We must control our thoughts, or
+it&rsquo;s all up with us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Death, you mean?&rdquo; I stammered, icy with the horror of his
+suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Worse&mdash;by far,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Death, according to
+one&rsquo;s belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations
+of the senses, but it involves no change of character. <i>You</i> don&rsquo;t
+suddenly alter just because the body&rsquo;s gone. But this means a radical
+alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by
+substitution&mdash;far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen
+to have camped in a spot where their region touches ours, where the veil
+between has worn thin&rdquo;&mdash;horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my
+actual words&mdash;&ldquo;so that they are aware of our being in their
+neighborhood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>who</i> are aware?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead,
+everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I
+can possibly explain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the fire,
+an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and look down
+upon the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All my life,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have been strangely, vividly
+conscious of another region&mdash;not far removed from our own world in one
+sense, yet wholly different in kind&mdash;where great things go on unceasingly,
+where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes
+compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies
+of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance;
+vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly
+with mere expressions of the soul&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suggest just now&mdash;&rdquo; I began, seeking to stop him, feeling
+as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with
+his torrent that <i>had</i> to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it is the spirit of the elements, and
+I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it
+is&mdash;<i>neither</i>. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have
+relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these
+beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it
+is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I listened
+to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me shaking a
+little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do you propose?&rdquo; I began again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could
+get away,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs
+and give the sleigh another start. But&mdash;I see no chance of any other
+victim now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he
+continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the willows, of course. The willows <i>mask</i> the others,
+but the others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear,
+we&rsquo;re lost, lost utterly.&rdquo; He looked at me with an expression so
+calm, so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his
+sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. &ldquo;If we can hold out through
+the night,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or
+rather, <i>undiscovered</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you really think a sacrifice would&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but it
+was my friend&rsquo;s scared face that really stopped my mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he whispered, holding up his hand. &ldquo;Do not mention
+them more than you can help. Do not refer to them <i>by name</i>. To name is to
+reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in
+order that they may ignore us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even in thought?&rdquo; He was extraordinarily agitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must
+keep them <i>out of our minds</i> at all costs if possible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own
+way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful blackness
+of that summer night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were you awake all last night?&rdquo; he went on suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I slept badly a little after dawn,&rdquo; I replied evasively, trying to
+follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, &ldquo;but the
+wind, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know. But the wind won&rsquo;t account for all the noises.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you heard it too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard,&rdquo; he said,
+adding, after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, &ldquo;and that other
+sound&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something
+tremendous, gigantic?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been
+altered&mdash;had increased enormously, so that we should have been
+crushed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that,&rdquo; I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing
+upwards where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like
+wind. &ldquo;What do you make of that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>their</i> sound,&rdquo; he whispered gravely.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The
+division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen
+carefully, you&rsquo;ll find it&rsquo;s not above so much as around us.
+It&rsquo;s in the willows. It&rsquo;s the willows themselves humming, because
+here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea in
+my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I realized what he
+realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the tip of my
+tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and
+the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine
+across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me
+by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I
+had for years deemed unimaginative, stolid!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The only thing for us to do is to go
+on as though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so
+forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of
+the mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape.
+Above all, don&rsquo;t <i>think</i>, for what you think happens!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words
+and the strangeness of it all; &ldquo;all right, I&rsquo;ll try, but tell me
+one more thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all
+about us, those sand-funnels?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. &ldquo;I
+dare not, simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed
+I am glad. Don&rsquo;t try to. <i>They</i> have put it into my mind; try your
+hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not press
+him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as I could
+hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes busily in
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when
+the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing for a
+brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to look down
+at my sand-shoe&mdash;the sort we used for the canoe&mdash;and something to do
+with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I had
+bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the
+uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a
+wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at
+home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and
+a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The
+effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I
+suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living
+in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must seem
+impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted the
+spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free
+and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend opposite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You damned old pagan!&rdquo; I cried, laughing aloud in his face.
+&ldquo;You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the
+sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it
+too&mdash;the strange cry overhead in the darkness&mdash;and that sudden drop
+in the air as though something had come nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of the
+fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After that,&rdquo; he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, &ldquo;we
+must go! We can&rsquo;t stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go
+on&mdash;down the river.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
+terror&mdash;the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
+last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the dark?&rdquo; I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical
+outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. &ldquo;Sheer
+madness! The river&rsquo;s in flood, and we&rsquo;ve only got a single paddle.
+Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There&rsquo;s nothing ahead for
+fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of those
+kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of
+our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had reached the point
+where it was beginning to weaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?&rdquo; he whispered with
+the awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
+kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make one more blaze,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;and then
+turn in for the night. At sunrise we&rsquo;ll be off full speed for Komorn.
+Now, pull yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about <i>not
+thinking fear!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure, too,
+it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the darkness for
+more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping among the bushes
+and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow
+louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where some
+driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when my body
+was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was the Swede. He
+had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I heard his breath
+coming and going in short gasps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look! By my soul!&rdquo; he whispered, and for the first time in my
+experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was
+pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his
+finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, in front of the dim glow, <i>something was moving</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain
+used at the back of a theater&mdash;hazily a little. It was neither a human
+figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as
+several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The
+Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differently, for he
+thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the
+top, and moving all over upon its surface&mdash;&ldquo;coiling upon itself like
+smoke,&rdquo; he said afterwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I watched it settle downwards through the bushes,&rdquo; he sobbed at
+me. &ldquo;Look, by God! It&rsquo;s coming this way! Oh, oh!&rdquo;&mdash;he
+gave a kind of whistling cry. &ldquo;<i>They&rsquo;ve found us.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy form
+was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I collapsed backwards with
+a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to support my weight, so
+that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I
+really hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of
+enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly
+covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes
+were tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my
+consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to
+another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had
+hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way he caught
+at me in falling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused me to
+<i>forget them</i> and think of something else at the very instant when they
+were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of
+discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He himself,
+he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what saved him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I
+found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and
+saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist me. I
+stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me. Nothing
+came to me to say, somehow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I lost consciousness for a moment or two,&rdquo; I heard him say.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You nearly broke my arm in two,&rdquo; I said, uttering my only
+connected thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what saved <i>you!</i>&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Between
+us, we&rsquo;ve managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming
+has ceased. It&rsquo;s gone&mdash;for the moment at any rate!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my
+friend too&mdash;great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a
+tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire and
+put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent had fallen
+over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our
+feet in sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s those sand-funnels,&rdquo; exclaimed the Swede, when the tent
+was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.
+&ldquo;And look at the size of them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows
+there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones
+we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully
+formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and
+leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we
+could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first
+thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the
+tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent
+that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a
+sudden start.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the exhaustion
+of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while came over me with
+a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion also slept quickened
+its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat up, asking me if I
+&ldquo;heard this&rdquo; or &ldquo;heard that.&rdquo; He tossed about on his
+cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over the
+point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with the
+report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still. Then at
+length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds of
+snoring&mdash;the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a
+welcome and calming influence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face. But
+something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first thought
+was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in his sleep. I
+called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me that the tent
+was <i>surrounded</i>. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering was again
+audible outside, filling the night with horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed the
+sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was down. This
+was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook it back
+securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positively that the
+Swede was not here. He had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I was
+out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me completely
+and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was that same familiar
+humming&mdash;gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might have been about
+me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that
+my lungs worked with difficulty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards over
+the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I could just
+make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy patches. In my
+excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island, calling him by name,
+shouting at the top of my voice the first words that came into my head. But the
+willows smothered my voice, and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only
+traveled a few feet round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong,
+tumbling over roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the
+preventing branches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island&rsquo;s point and saw a
+dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And
+already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have taken the
+plunge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging him
+shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a
+noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the most outlandish
+phrases in his anger about &ldquo;going <i>inside</i> to Them,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;taking the way of the water and the wind,&rdquo; and God only knows what
+more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me
+sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get
+him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and
+cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as
+it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering
+outside&mdash;I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business
+perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so
+that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said, for all
+the world just like a frightened child:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My life, old man&mdash;it&rsquo;s my life I owe you. But it&rsquo;s all
+over now anyhow. They&rsquo;ve found a victim in our place!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my
+eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though
+nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a
+sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours
+later&mdash;hours of ceaseless vigil for me&mdash;it became so clear to me that
+he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed
+it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high in
+a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation of the
+fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did not attempt
+to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark about the extra
+coldness of the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;River&rsquo;s falling at last,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m glad
+of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The humming has stopped too,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he remembered
+everything except his own attempt at suicide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything has stopped,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just before
+he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because &lsquo;They&rsquo;ve found another victim&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said,
+forcing a little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;exactly! I feel as positive of it as
+though&mdash;as though&mdash;I feel quite safe again, I mean,&rdquo; he
+finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on the
+sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose to feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I think if we look, we shall find
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking with
+a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back-waters, myself always
+close on his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed presently, &ldquo;ah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the horror of
+the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He was pointing with
+his stick at a large black object that lay half in the water and half on the
+sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow roots so that the river
+could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot must have been under
+water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;the victim that made our escape
+possible!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body
+of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was
+hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few hours before,
+and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour
+of the dawn&mdash;<i>at the very time the fit had passed.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must give it a decent burial, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself,
+for there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that
+turned me cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face,
+and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current,
+I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck
+and part of the chest lay bare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in
+warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring
+myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward with a
+sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that
+our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had
+collided a little heavily against the corpse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud sound of
+humming&mdash;the sound of several hummings&mdash;which passed with a vast
+commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards into
+the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance.
+It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet invisible creatures
+at work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of us
+had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a movement
+of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became released from the
+grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned completely over, the
+dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream.
+In another moment it would be swept away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a
+&ldquo;proper burial&rdquo;&mdash;and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on
+the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw what he had seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest
+turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented
+with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind
+to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their mark!&rdquo; I heard my companion mutter under his breath.
+&ldquo;Their awful mark!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current
+had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was
+already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the
+waves like an otter.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11438 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #11438 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11438)
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILLOWS, BY ALGRENON BLACKWOOD ***
+
+
+The Willows
+
+by Algernon Blackwood
+
+(1907)
+
+
+Contents
+
+ I.
+ II.
+ III.
+ IV.
+ V.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube
+enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters
+spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country
+becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low
+willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a
+fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and
+across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word _Sümpfe_,
+meaning marshes.
+
+In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and
+willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal
+seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their
+silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering
+beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have
+no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft
+outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of
+the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they
+somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive.
+For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface,
+waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea,
+too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their
+underside turns to the sun.
+
+Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here
+wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels
+intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the
+waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and
+foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of
+shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which
+shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life,
+since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
+
+Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins
+soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy
+tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood
+about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening
+before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna,
+leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the
+blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below
+Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had
+then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the
+old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning
+heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals
+in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria
+and Hungary.
+
+Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into
+Hungary, and the muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on
+many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden
+belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Pozsóny)
+showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited
+horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the
+sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply
+to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands,
+sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond—the land of the willows.
+
+The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps
+down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the
+scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings,
+and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut
+nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization
+within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the
+utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows,
+winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we
+allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
+some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
+audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom
+of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others
+who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to
+trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.
+
+Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
+tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about
+for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering
+character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood
+carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches
+tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many
+a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a
+great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach
+the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after
+our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in
+the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an
+immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all
+sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as
+though to applaud the success of our efforts.
+
+“What a river!” I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
+traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
+obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of
+June.
+
+“Won’t stand much nonsense now, will it?” he said, pulling the canoe a
+little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for
+a nap.
+
+I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the
+elements—water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun—thinking of
+the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us
+to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and
+charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.
+
+We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than
+any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
+_aliveness_. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the
+pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to
+play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps,
+unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the growth
+of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent
+desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some
+huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our
+little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us
+sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had
+come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.
+
+How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its
+secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our
+tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be
+caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is
+its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools,
+suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of
+its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all
+mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at
+the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon
+its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream
+and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices,
+its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the
+bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on;
+the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little
+towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet
+whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured
+down upon it till the steam rose.
+
+It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world
+knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian
+forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it,
+where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear
+again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new
+river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed
+that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of
+shallows.
+
+And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth,
+was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent
+tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge
+them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well
+marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to
+recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this
+particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power
+impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river
+that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that
+follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs,
+and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro
+in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped
+down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life
+among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson,
+and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.
+
+This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know
+other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat
+plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun
+that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while
+below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of
+Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very
+leisurely too, lest they be discovered.
+
+Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and
+animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely
+places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the
+shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water
+that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds
+of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant
+cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river’s vagaries
+after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and
+swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us
+from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag
+as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the
+river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily
+among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible
+to see how they managed it.
+
+But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the
+Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the
+Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries
+where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly
+grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into
+three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers
+farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was
+intended to be followed.
+
+“If you take a side channel,” said the Hungarian officer we met in the
+Pressburg shop while buying provisions, “you may find yourselves, when
+the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you
+may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn
+you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind
+will increase.”
+
+The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being
+left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be
+serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions.
+For the rest, the officer’s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing
+down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the
+dignity of a westerly gale.
+
+It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour
+or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot
+sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The
+island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank
+standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far
+end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the
+tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was
+triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.
+
+I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood
+bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as
+though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming
+streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and
+rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind
+poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself
+actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river
+descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill,
+white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.
+
+The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make
+walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end
+the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry.
+Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam,
+and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from
+behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the
+islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows,
+which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures
+crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like
+growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to
+vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering
+numbers.
+
+Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
+bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular
+emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my
+delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a
+curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.
+
+A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many
+of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept
+away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched
+the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far
+than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it
+directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting
+hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the
+air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind
+was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape
+to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind
+of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do
+with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I
+experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal
+with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with
+my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained
+power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to
+do with it too—a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled
+with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every
+hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at
+play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
+
+But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach
+itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres
+of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the
+eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it,
+standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching,
+waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows
+connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind
+insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in
+some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty
+power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
+
+Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one
+way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains
+overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests
+exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or
+another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human
+experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They
+tend on the whole to exalt.
+
+With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far
+different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the
+heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a
+vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me
+as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke
+in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here
+upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a
+world where we were not wanted or invited to remain—where we ran grave
+risks perhaps!
+
+The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely
+to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet
+it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of
+putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the
+stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a
+most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my
+companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered
+devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained
+to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly
+at me if I had.
+
+There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
+pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
+
+“A poor camp,” observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent
+stood upright, “no stones and precious little firewood. I’m for moving
+on early tomorrow—eh? This sand won’t hold anything.”
+
+But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many
+devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then
+set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow
+bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply.
+We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were
+crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great
+portions with a splash and a gurgle.
+
+“The island’s much smaller than when we landed,” said the accurate
+Swede. “It won’t last long at this rate. We’d better drag the canoe
+close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment’s notice. I shall
+sleep in my clothes.”
+
+He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his
+rather jolly laugh as he spoke.
+
+“By Jove!” I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had
+caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the
+willows, and I could not find him.
+
+“What in the world’s this?” I heard him cry again, and this time his
+voice had become serious.
+
+I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the
+river, pointing at something in the water.
+
+“Good heavens, it’s a man’s body!” he cried excitedly. “Look!”
+
+A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept
+rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again.
+It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to
+where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its
+eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body
+turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of
+sight in a flash.
+
+“An otter, by gad!” we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
+
+It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly
+like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far
+below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet
+and shining in the sunlight.
+
+Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another
+thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was
+a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the
+Danube was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted
+region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real
+event. We stood and stared.
+
+Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
+wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I
+found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying
+apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort
+of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down
+the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking
+across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light
+too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It
+seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His
+voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the
+wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something
+curious about the whole appearance—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an
+impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.
+
+“He’s crossing himself!” I cried. “Look, he’s making the sign of the
+Cross!”
+
+“I believe you’re right,” the Swede said, shading his eyes with his
+hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a
+moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun
+caught them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great
+crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air
+was hazy.
+
+“But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?”
+I said, half to myself. “Where is he going at such a time, and what did
+he mean by his signs and shouting? D’you think he wished to warn us
+about something?”
+
+“He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably,” laughed my
+companion. “These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you
+remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed
+here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man’s world! I
+suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too.
+That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time
+in his life,” he added, after a slight pause, “and it scared him,
+that’s all.”
+
+The Swede’s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
+something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he
+talked, though without being able to label it precisely.
+
+“If they had enough imagination,” I laughed loudly—I remember trying to
+make as much _noise_ as I could—“they might well people a place like
+this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all
+this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and
+elemental deities.”
+
+The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was
+not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I
+remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his
+stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting.
+It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids
+like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than
+any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an
+adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I
+looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along
+under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I
+experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then
+that the Swede was—what he was, and that he never made remarks that
+suggested more than they said.
+
+“The river’s still rising, though,” he added, as if following out some
+thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. “This island
+will be under water in two days if it goes on.”
+
+“I wish the _wind_ would go down,” I said. “I don’t care a fig for the
+river.”
+
+The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten
+minutes’ notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an
+increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds
+that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
+
+Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It
+seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the
+willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes,
+like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the
+island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the
+sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through
+space.
+
+But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full
+moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of
+shouting willows with a light like the day.
+
+We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the
+noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had
+already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of
+the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we
+lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was
+enough to smoke and see each other’s faces by, and the sparks flew
+about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled
+and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling
+away of further portions of the bank.
+
+Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of
+our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether
+remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual
+moment more than was necessary—almost as though we had agreed tacitly
+to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter
+nor the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention,
+though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater
+part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a
+place.
+
+The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the
+wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the
+same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some
+foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede
+brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time
+finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left
+alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the
+bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long
+day’s battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us
+both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made
+the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in
+desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and
+listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place
+had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit
+the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering
+would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the
+human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now
+carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out
+loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not
+quite _safe_, to be overheard.
+
+The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept
+by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us
+both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there
+beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of
+another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the
+souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even
+to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred
+in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the
+leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
+
+“When this has burnt up,” I said firmly, “I shall turn in,” and my
+companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding
+shadows.
+
+For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
+night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He
+too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not
+altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,
+and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far
+point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be
+seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon
+me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me
+I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
+
+When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell
+of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere “scenery”
+could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,
+something to alarm.
+
+I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering
+willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one
+and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange
+distress. But the _willows_ especially; for ever they went on
+chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly
+crying out, sometimes sighing—but what it was they made so much to-do
+about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited.
+And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild
+yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from
+another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all
+discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving
+busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their
+myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will
+as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own
+keen sense of the _horrible_.
+
+There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our
+camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all
+ready for an attack.
+
+The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very
+vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their “note” either of
+welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because
+the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first
+pause—after supper usually—it comes and announces itself. And the note
+of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were
+interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of
+unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the
+frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night’s
+lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and
+inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no!
+We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not
+wanted. _The willows were against us_.
+
+Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence,
+found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if,
+after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they
+should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods
+whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps,
+booming overhead in the night—and then _settle down!_ As I looked it
+was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a
+little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind
+that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their
+aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more
+closely together.
+
+The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and
+suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon
+fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I
+stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half
+laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and
+cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede’s remark about moving on
+next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I
+turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing
+immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the
+elements had covered his approach.
+
+“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, “I thought
+something must have happened to you.”
+
+But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well,
+that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I
+understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of
+the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.
+
+“River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight,
+“and the wind’s simply awful.”
+
+He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship
+that gave the real importance to his words.
+
+“Lucky,” I cried back, “our tent’s in the hollow. I think it’ll hold
+all right.” I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in
+order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung
+them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me
+through the branches, nodding his head.
+
+“Lucky if we get away without disaster!” he shouted, or words to that
+effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the
+thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was
+disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay
+unpleasantly upon me.
+
+We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our
+feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have
+been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my
+friend’s reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the
+ordinary July weather, than this “diabolical wind.”
+
+Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside
+the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack
+hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe
+distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.
+
+We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The
+flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and
+the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of
+the wind against our taut little house were the last things I
+remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and
+delicious forgetfulness.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress
+through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the
+canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve
+o’clock—the threshold of a new day—and I had therefore slept a couple
+of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as
+before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There
+was a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighborhood.
+
+I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to
+and fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay
+snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting
+enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did
+not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our
+belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my
+companion. A curious excitement was on me.
+
+I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in
+that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of
+leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and
+stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly
+above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and
+as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves
+about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted
+rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw
+these things.
+
+My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see
+them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably,
+that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there
+staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember
+saying to myself that I was _not_ dreaming.
+
+They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the
+tops of the bushes—immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly
+independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and
+noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much
+larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance
+proclaimed them to be _not human_ at all. Certainly they were not
+merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They
+shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from
+earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the
+sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and
+I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other,
+forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally
+with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid
+shapes, passing up the bushes, _within_ the leaves almost—rising up in
+a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see.
+Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with
+a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.
+
+I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long
+time I thought they _must_ every moment disappear and resolve
+themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an
+optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when
+all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had
+changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these
+figures were real and living, though perhaps not according to the
+standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.
+
+Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder
+such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified
+elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had
+stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the
+cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories
+and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been
+acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world’s history.
+But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something
+impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and
+stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the
+wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my
+ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved
+that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from
+earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and
+strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of
+worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship—absolutely worship.
+
+Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind
+swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly
+stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At
+least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still
+remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but
+my reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective
+experience, I argued—none the less real for that, but still subjective.
+The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon
+the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them
+outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case,
+of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open
+patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it
+merely subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from
+the little standard of the known?
+
+I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky
+for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete
+measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then
+suddenly they were gone!
+
+And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great
+presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The
+esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up
+within me, and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look
+round—a look of horror that came near to panic—calculating vainly ways
+of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything
+really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down
+again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut
+out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head
+as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the
+terrifying wind.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I
+remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled
+and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and
+underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but
+lay alert and on the watch.
+
+But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was
+neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of
+something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and
+smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting
+bolt upright—listening.
+
+Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had
+been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had
+first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had
+not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with
+difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my
+body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered.
+Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent
+and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was
+this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown
+from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought
+quickly of a dozen things.
+
+Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the
+poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind.
+Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next
+gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the
+tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out,
+calling to the Swede to follow.
+
+But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free.
+There was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing
+approached.
+
+A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the
+faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead,
+and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any
+glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees.
+Several hours must have passed since I stood there before watching the
+ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly,
+like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless
+raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on
+me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless
+apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river
+I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray
+made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.
+
+Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause
+alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly
+unaccounted for.
+
+My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need
+to waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the
+turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles—two of them, I’m certain; the
+provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree;
+and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those
+endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string
+of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand
+whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.
+
+I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush,
+so that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the
+same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again
+as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon,
+looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly
+here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite
+pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It
+_must_ have been the wind, I reflected—the wind bearing upon the loose,
+hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas—the
+wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.
+
+Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.
+
+I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had
+altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away.
+I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my
+forehead. Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the
+exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely
+beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising
+into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself
+overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure
+went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did….
+
+It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward
+again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror
+diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember
+saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under
+the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an
+unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt
+before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to
+counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the
+middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river,
+crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so
+overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought
+a cry up into the throat.
+
+But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the
+plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half
+hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me,
+compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at
+all.
+
+For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of
+the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different
+view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the
+relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent.
+Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly
+close. _They had moved nearer._
+
+Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing
+imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come
+closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved
+of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and
+the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake
+in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it
+hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a
+suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of
+aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.
+
+Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd,
+that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily
+than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such
+dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through
+our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would
+come, and was coming.
+
+The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came
+up over the horizon, for it was after four o’clock, and I must have
+stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to
+come down to close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly,
+creepily, to the tent, first taking another exhaustive look round
+and—yes, I confess it—making a few measurements. I paced out on the
+warm sand the distances between the willows and the tent, making a note
+of the shortest distance particularly.
+
+I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all
+appearances, still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so.
+Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength
+somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade
+myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the
+night, a projection of the excited imagination.
+
+Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at
+once, utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird
+sound of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my
+heart that had made it difficult to breathe.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy
+sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just
+time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent
+door.
+
+“River still rising,” he said, “and several islands out in mid-stream
+have disappeared altogether. Our own island’s much smaller.”
+
+“Any wood left?” I asked sleepily.
+
+“The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,” he
+laughed, “but there’s enough to last us till then.”
+
+I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a
+lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment
+to the landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the
+banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under
+such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the
+night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the
+brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the
+wind, however, had not abated one little jot.
+
+Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede’s words flashed
+across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and
+had changed his mind. “Enough to last till tomorrow”—he assumed we
+should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night
+before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?
+
+Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy
+splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our
+frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the
+difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in
+flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more
+than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had
+changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different—a
+trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice
+and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but
+at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing—that he had
+become frightened?
+
+He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe.
+He had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.
+
+“We’d better get off sharp in an hour,” I said presently, feeling for
+an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at
+any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: “Rather! If they’ll
+let us.”
+
+“Who’ll let us? The elements?” I asked quickly, with affected
+indifference.
+
+“The powers of this awful place, whoever they are,” he replied, keeping
+his eyes on the map. “The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in
+the world.”
+
+“The elements are always the true immortals,” I replied, laughing as
+naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face
+reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke
+across the smoke:
+
+“We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.”
+
+This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the
+point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist
+to extract the tooth; it _had_ to come anyhow in the long run, and the
+rest was all pretence.
+
+“Further disaster! Why, what’s happened?”
+
+“For one thing—the steering paddle’s gone,” he said quietly.
+
+“The steering paddle gone!” I repeated, greatly excited, for this was
+our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. “But
+what—”
+
+“And there’s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,” he added, with a
+genuine little tremor in his voice.
+
+I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face
+somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning
+sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got
+up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way
+towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The
+canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs
+uppermost, the paddles, or rather, _the_ paddle, on the sand beside
+her.
+
+“There’s only one,” he said, stooping to pick it up. “And here’s the
+rent in the base-board.”
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed
+_two_ paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think
+better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.
+
+There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a
+little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if
+the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and
+investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in
+her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first
+the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but
+once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe,
+never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and
+sunk very rapidly.
+
+“There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice,” I
+heard him saying, more to himself than to me, “two victims rather,” he
+added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.
+
+I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly
+nonplussed—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was
+determined to consider them foolish.
+
+“It wasn’t there last night,” he said presently, straightening up from
+his examination and looking anywhere but at me.
+
+“We must have scratched her in landing, of course,” I stopped whistling
+to say. “The stones are very sharp.”
+
+I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye
+squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation
+was. There were no stones, to begin with.
+
+“And then there’s this to explain too,” he added quietly, handing me
+the paddle and pointing to the blade.
+
+A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and
+examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped,
+as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that
+the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.
+
+“One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing,” I said feebly,
+“or—or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown
+against it by the wind, perhaps.”
+
+“Ah,” said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, “you can explain
+everything.”
+
+“The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
+bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,” I called out
+after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything
+he showed me.
+
+“I see,” he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
+disappearing among the willow bushes.
+
+Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think
+my first thoughts took the form of “One of us must have done this
+thing, and it certainly was not I.” But my second thought decided how
+impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either
+of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen
+similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a
+suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed
+the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature
+had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.
+
+Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear
+actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the
+clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his
+_mind_—that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he
+did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto
+unmentionable events—waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected,
+and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind
+intuitively—I hardly knew how.
+
+I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
+measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows
+formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and
+of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large
+bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters,
+just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water.
+The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite
+inexplicable; and, after all, it _was_ conceivable that a sharp point
+had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did
+not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that
+diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my “reason.” An
+explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some
+working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the
+happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and
+face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact
+parallel.
+
+I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at
+the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could
+not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention
+casually to the hollows in the sand.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “I know. They’re all over the island. But _you_ can
+explain them, no doubt!”
+
+“Wind, of course,” I answered without hesitation. “Have you never
+watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl
+everything into a circle? This sand’s loose enough to yield, that’s
+all.”
+
+He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him
+surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He
+seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could
+not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he
+kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky,
+and out across the water where it was visible through the openings
+among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held
+it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it,
+and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe
+with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his
+absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he
+would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had
+noticed _that_, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient
+explanation of it.
+
+At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.
+
+“Queer thing,” he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted
+to say something and get it over. “Queer thing. I mean, about that
+otter last night.”
+
+I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with
+surprise, and I looked up sharply.
+
+“Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things—”
+
+“I don’t mean that, of course,” he interrupted. “I mean—do you
+think—did you think it really was an otter?”
+
+“What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?”
+
+“You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed—so _much_
+bigger than an otter.”
+
+“The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,” I
+replied.
+
+He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with
+other thoughts.
+
+“It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,” he went on half to himself.
+
+“That was the sun too,” I laughed, a trifle boisterously. “I suppose
+you’ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat—”
+
+I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again
+of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the
+expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went
+on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished
+sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the
+canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.
+
+“I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know,” he said slowly, “what
+that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not
+a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the
+water.”
+
+I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was
+impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.
+
+“Look here now,” I cried, “this place is quite queer enough without
+going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,
+and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going
+down-stream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter,
+so don’t let’s play the fool about it!”
+
+He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in
+the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.
+
+“And, for Heaven’s sake,” I went on, “don’t keep pretending you hear
+things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there’s nothing to hear
+but the river and this cursed old thundering wind.”
+
+“You _fool!_” he answered in a low, shocked voice, “you utter fool.
+That’s just the way all victims talk. As if you didn’t understand just
+as well as I do!” he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of
+resignation. “The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to
+hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at
+self-deception only makes the truth harder when you’re forced to meet
+it.”
+
+My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew
+quite well his words were true, and that _I_ was the fool, not _he_. Up
+to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I
+think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic,
+less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half
+ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. _He
+knew_ from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly
+missed the point of his words about the necessity of there being a
+victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I
+dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear
+increased steadily to the climax.
+
+“But you’re quite right about one thing,” he added, before the subject
+passed, “and that is that we’re wiser not to talk about it, or even to
+think about it, because what one _thinks_ finds expression in words,
+and what one _says_, happens.”
+
+That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to
+fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous
+flood of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores
+sometimes, and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island
+grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps
+and splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four
+o’clock, and then for the first time for three days the wind showed
+signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the south-west, spreading
+thence slowly over the sky.
+
+This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant
+roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the
+silence that came about five o’clock with its sudden cessation was in a
+manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in
+its own way then; it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical
+than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held
+many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great
+elemental tune; whereas the river’s song lay between three notes at
+most—dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the
+wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound
+wonderfully well the music of doom.
+
+It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright
+sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for
+cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed
+to convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course
+was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the
+darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself
+more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would
+get up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly
+interfere with her lighting of the little island.
+
+With this general hush of the wind—though it still indulged in
+occasional brief gusts—the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the
+willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort
+of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no
+wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common
+objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they
+stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance;
+and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the
+darkness a bizarre _grotesquerie_ of appearance that lent to them
+somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very
+ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The
+forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were
+focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For
+thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really
+indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present
+themselves.
+
+I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered
+somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served
+apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing
+spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as
+absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet,
+in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I
+dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach
+of darkness.
+
+The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the
+day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede
+to the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From
+five o’clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations
+for dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes,
+onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavor, and a general thick residue
+from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up
+into it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of
+plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile
+of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy.
+My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between
+cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice—an admitted privilege of
+the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in
+re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for
+driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had
+passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the
+gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not fully a
+third smaller than when we first landed.
+
+The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me
+from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran
+up.
+
+“Come and listen,” he said, “and see what you make of it.” He held his
+hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.
+
+“_Now_ do you hear anything?” he asked, watching me curiously.
+
+We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only
+the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent
+surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a
+sound began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound—something like
+the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the
+darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated
+at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell
+nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much
+as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky,
+repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as
+it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.
+
+“I’ve heard it all day,” said my companion. “While you slept this
+afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could
+never get near enough to see—to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was
+overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too,
+I could have sworn it was not outside at all, but _within myself_—you
+know—the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come.”
+
+I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened
+carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I
+could think of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too,
+coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I
+cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed
+distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling
+that made me wish I had never heard it.
+
+“The wind blowing in those sand-funnels,” I said determined to find an
+explanation, “or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps.”
+
+“It comes off the whole swamp,” my friend answered. “It comes from
+everywhere at once.” He ignored my explanations. “It comes from the
+willow bushes somehow—”
+
+“But now the wind has dropped,” I objected. “The willows can hardly
+make a noise by themselves, can they?”
+
+His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly,
+because I knew intuitively it was true.
+
+“It is _because_ the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned
+before. It is the cry, I believe, of the—”
+
+I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew
+was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape further
+conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of
+views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin about the gods, or the
+elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep
+myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another
+night to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and
+there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.
+
+“Come and cut up bread for the pot,” I called to him, vigorously
+stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both,
+and the thought made me laugh.
+
+He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling
+in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon
+the ground-sheet at his feet.
+
+“Hurry up!” I cried; “it’s boiling.”
+
+The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was
+forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.
+
+“There’s nothing here!” he shouted, holding his sides.
+
+“Bread, I mean.”
+
+“It’s gone. There is no bread. They’ve taken it!”
+
+I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained
+lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.
+
+The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me.
+Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the
+sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The stain of
+psychical pressure caused it—this explosion of unnatural laughter in
+both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was
+a temporary safety-valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.
+
+“How criminally stupid of me!” I cried, still determined to be
+consistent and find an explanation. “I clean forgot to buy a loaf at
+Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I
+must have left it lying on the counter or—”
+
+“The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning,” the Swede
+interrupted.
+
+Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.
+
+“There’s enough for tomorrow,” I said, stirring vigorously, “and we can
+get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles
+from here.”
+
+“I hope so—to God,” he muttered, putting the things back into the sack,
+“unless we’re claimed first as victims for the sacrifice,” he added
+with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety’s
+sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so
+indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.
+
+Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in
+silence, avoiding one another’s eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then
+we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds
+unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all
+day long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I
+think, but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more that
+if I had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I
+have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and
+filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing
+rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and
+at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the
+bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More
+often it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was
+really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our
+heads, completely surrounding us. The sound really defies description.
+But nothing within my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming
+rising off the deserted world of swamps and willows.
+
+We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute
+greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did
+not know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of
+preparation by way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My
+explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with
+their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and
+more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion was
+inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the
+night together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that
+I could not get along much longer without the support of his mind, and
+for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As long as possible,
+however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh
+at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.
+
+Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,
+coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself;
+corroboration, too—which made it so much more convincing—from a totally
+different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled
+them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main
+line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were mere
+bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering
+them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.
+
+“There are things about us, I’m sure, that make for disorder,
+disintegration, destruction, our destruction,” he said once, while the
+fire blazed between us. “We’ve strayed out of a safe line somewhere.”
+
+And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much
+louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though
+talking to himself:
+
+“I don’t think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound
+doesn’t come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in
+another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely
+how a fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard.”
+
+I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the
+fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all
+over the sky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too,
+everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their
+own way.
+
+“It has that about it,” he went on, “which is utterly out of common
+experience. It is _unknown_. Only one thing describes it really; it is
+a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity.”
+
+Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a
+time, but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a
+relief to have the thought out, and to have confined it by the
+limitation of words from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.
+
+The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The
+feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran
+incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my
+soul, as the saying is, for the “feel” of those Bavarian villages we
+had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces;
+peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a
+ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the
+tourists would have been welcome.
+
+Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was
+infinitely greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim
+ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I
+had known or dreamed of. We had “strayed,” as the Swede put it, into
+some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet
+unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay
+close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space,
+a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves
+unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the
+final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over the
+border and deprived of what we called “our lives,” yet by mental, not
+physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the
+victims of our adventure—a sacrifice.
+
+It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his
+sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a
+personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with
+the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our
+audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw
+it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient
+shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the
+emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral
+portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.
+
+At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the
+winds from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual
+agencies were within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have
+I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a “beyond region,”
+of another scheme of life, another revolution not parallel to the
+human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the
+awful spell, and we should be drawn across the frontier into _their_
+world.
+
+Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now
+in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by
+the mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to
+distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the
+hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had
+been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its
+other aspect—as it existed across the border to that other region. And
+this changed aspect I felt was now not merely to me, but to the race.
+The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at
+all. It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the
+word _unearthly_.
+
+“It’s the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one’s courage to
+zero,” the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my
+thoughts. “Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle,
+the canoe, the lessening food—”
+
+“Haven’t I explained all that once?” I interrupted viciously.
+
+“You have,” he answered dryly; “you have indeed.”
+
+He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the “plain
+determination to provide a victim”; but, having now arranged my
+thoughts better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his
+frightened soul against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a
+vital part, and that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The
+situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither
+of us could compass, and I have never before been so clearly conscious
+of two persons in me—the one that explained everything, and the other
+that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.
+
+Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile
+grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the
+darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet
+beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray
+puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but apart from this
+not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken
+only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air overhead.
+
+We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.
+
+At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the
+wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of
+saturation, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief
+in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical
+extravagance that must have been far worse in its effect upon both of
+us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion
+abruptly. He looked up with a start.
+
+“I can’t disguise it any longer,” I said; “I don’t like this place, and
+the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There’s
+something here that beats me utterly. I’m in a blue funk, and that’s
+the plain truth. If the other shore was—different, I swear I’d be
+inclined to swim for it!”
+
+The Swede’s face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and
+wind. He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice
+betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment,
+at any rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic,
+for one thing.
+
+“It’s not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,” he
+replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; “we
+must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a
+herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly.
+Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps
+may save us.”
+
+I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words.
+It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease
+whose symptoms had puzzled me.
+
+“I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they
+have not _found_ us—not ‘located’ us, as the Americans say,” he went
+on. “They’re blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The
+paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they _feel_ us, but
+cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet—it’s our minds
+they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it’s all up with us.”
+
+“Death, you mean?” I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.
+
+“Worse—by far,” he said. “Death, according to one’s belief, means
+either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but
+it involves no change of character. _You_ don’t suddenly alter just
+because the body’s gone. But this means a radical alteration, a
+complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution—far worse
+than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a
+spot where their region touches ours, where the veil between has worn
+thin”—horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words—“so
+that they are aware of our being in their neighborhood.”
+
+“But _who_ are aware?” I asked.
+
+I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming
+overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I
+dreaded more than I can possibly explain.
+
+He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over
+the fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes
+and look down upon the ground.
+
+“All my life,” he said, “I have been strangely, vividly conscious of
+another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet
+wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where
+immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes
+compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the
+destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as
+dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the
+soul, and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul—”
+
+“I suggest just now—” I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I
+was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his
+torrent that _had_ to come.
+
+“You think,” he said, “it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought
+perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is—_neither_. These
+would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men,
+depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who
+are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is
+mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our
+own.”
+
+The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I
+listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set
+me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my
+movements.
+
+“And what do you propose?” I began again.
+
+“A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we
+could get away,” he went on, “just as the wolves stop to devour the
+dogs and give the sleigh another start. But—I see no chance of any
+other victim now.”
+
+I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently
+he continued.
+
+“It’s the willows, of course. The willows _mask_ the others, but the
+others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear,
+we’re lost, lost utterly.” He looked at me with an expression so calm,
+so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his
+sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. “If we can hold out through
+the night,” he added, “we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or
+rather, _undiscovered_.”
+
+“But you really think a sacrifice would—”
+
+That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke,
+but it was my friend’s scared face that really stopped my mouth.
+
+“Hush!” he whispered, holding up his hand. “Do not mention them more
+than you can help. Do not refer to them _by name_. To name is to
+reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring
+them, in order that they may ignore us.”
+
+“Even in thought?” He was extraordinarily agitated.
+
+“Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We
+must keep them _out of our minds_ at all costs if possible.”
+
+I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its
+own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the
+awful blackness of that summer night.
+
+“Were you awake all last night?” he went on suddenly.
+
+“I slept badly a little after dawn,” I replied evasively, trying to
+follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, “but the
+wind, of course—”
+
+“I know. But the wind won’t account for all the noises.”
+
+“Then you heard it too?”
+
+“The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard,” he said, adding,
+after a moment’s hesitation, “and that other sound—”
+
+“You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something
+tremendous, gigantic?”
+
+He nodded significantly.
+
+“It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?” I said.
+
+“Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had
+been altered—had increased enormously, so that we should have been
+crushed.”
+
+“And that,” I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards
+where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like
+wind. “What do you make of that?”
+
+“It’s _their_ sound,” he whispered gravely. “It’s the sound of their
+world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that
+it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you’ll find
+it’s not above so much as around us. It’s in the willows. It’s the
+willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made
+symbols of the forces that are against us.”
+
+I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and
+idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I
+realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his.
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my
+hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he
+suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and
+began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness
+and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for
+years deemed unimaginative, stolid!
+
+“Now listen,” he said. “The only thing for us to do is to go on as
+though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so
+forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question
+wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our
+chance of escape. Above all, don’t _think_, for what you think
+happens!”
+
+“All right,” I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and
+the strangeness of it all; “all right, I’ll try, but tell me one more
+thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all
+about us, those sand-funnels?”
+
+“No!” he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. “I dare not,
+simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I
+am glad. Don’t try to. _They_ have put it into my mind; try your
+hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.”
+
+He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not
+press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me
+as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our
+pipes busily in silence.
+
+Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way
+is when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small
+thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I
+chanced to look down at my sand-shoe—the sort we used for the canoe—and
+something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the
+London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had in
+fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical
+operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the
+modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought
+of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen
+other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The
+effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I
+suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain
+of living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness
+must seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it
+momentarily lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short
+space of a minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my
+friend opposite.
+
+“You damned old pagan!” I cried, laughing aloud in his face. “You
+imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You—”
+
+I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to
+smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of
+course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that
+sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.
+
+He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front
+of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.
+
+“After that,” he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, “we must go!
+We can’t stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on—down
+the river.”
+
+He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
+terror—the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
+last.
+
+“In the dark?” I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical
+outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. “Sheer
+madness! The river’s in flood, and we’ve only got a single paddle.
+Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There’s nothing ahead
+for fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!”
+
+He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of
+those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and
+the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last
+had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.
+
+“What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?” he whispered with the
+awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.
+
+I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
+kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.
+
+“We’ll make one more blaze,” I said firmly, “and then turn in for the
+night. At sunrise we’ll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull
+yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about _not
+thinking fear!_”
+
+He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some
+measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion
+into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost
+touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming
+overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased
+our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!
+
+We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows
+where some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the
+branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon
+the sand. It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching
+me for support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.
+
+“Look! By my soul!” he whispered, and for the first time in my
+experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice.
+He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the
+direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.
+
+There, in front of the dim glow, _something was moving_.
+
+I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze
+drop-curtain used at the back of a theater—hazily a little. It was
+neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange
+impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like
+horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar
+result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped
+and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving
+all over upon its surface—“coiling upon itself like smoke,” he said
+afterwards.
+
+“I watched it settle downwards through the bushes,” he sobbed at me.
+“Look, by God! It’s coming this way! Oh, oh!”—he gave a kind of
+whistling cry. “_They’ve found us._”
+
+I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the
+shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I
+collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of
+course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we
+fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was
+happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of
+icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted
+them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were
+tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my
+consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way
+to another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.
+
+An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the
+Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was
+the way he caught at me in falling.
+
+But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused
+me to _forget them_ and think of something else at the very instant
+when they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the
+moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing
+of me. He himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and
+that was what saved him.
+
+I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to
+say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow
+branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a
+hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he
+had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.
+
+“I lost consciousness for a moment or two,” I heard him say. “That’s
+what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them.”
+
+“You nearly broke my arm in two,” I said, uttering my only connected
+thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.
+
+“That’s what saved _you!_” he replied. “Between us, we’ve managed to
+set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It’s
+gone—for the moment at any rate!”
+
+A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to
+my friend too—great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a
+tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the
+fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that
+the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.
+
+We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and
+caught our feet in sand.
+
+“It’s those sand-funnels,” exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up
+again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.
+“And look at the size of them!”
+
+All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving
+shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly
+similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far
+bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some
+instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.
+
+Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing
+we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay,
+having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and
+the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such
+a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least
+motion would disturb and wake us.
+
+In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready
+for a sudden start.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the
+exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a
+while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my
+companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and
+constantly sat up, asking me if I “heard this” or “heard that.” He
+tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the
+river had risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out
+to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he
+grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular
+and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring—the first and only time in
+my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.
+
+This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.
+
+A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my
+face. But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and
+my first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on
+to my own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same
+moment it came to me that the tent was _surrounded_. That sound of
+multitudinous soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the
+night with horror.
+
+I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I
+missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the
+tent was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the
+darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I
+realized positively that the Swede was not here. He had gone.
+
+I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the
+moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that
+surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens
+at once. It was that same familiar humming—gone mad! A swarm of great
+invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to
+thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with
+difficulty.
+
+But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.
+
+The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread
+upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind
+stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the
+pale sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about
+the island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the
+first words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice,
+and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet
+round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over
+roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the
+preventing branches.
+
+Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island’s point and saw a
+dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede.
+And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would
+have taken the plunge.
+
+I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging
+him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously,
+making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using
+the most outlandish phrases in his anger about “going _inside_ to
+Them,” and “taking the way of the water and the wind,” and God only
+knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but
+which turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in
+the end I managed to get him into the comparative safety of the tent,
+and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him
+until the fit had passed.
+
+I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm,
+coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming
+and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the
+whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his
+tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through
+the doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:
+
+“My life, old man—it’s my life I owe you. But it’s all over now anyhow.
+They’ve found a victim in our place!”
+
+Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally
+under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as
+healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to
+offer his own life as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight
+woke him three hours later—hours of ceaseless vigil for me—it became so
+clear to me that he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had
+attempted to do, that I deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no
+dangerous questions.
+
+He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already
+high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the
+preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at
+bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head
+and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.
+
+“River’s falling at last,” he said, “and I’m glad of it.”
+
+“The humming has stopped too,” I said.
+
+He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he
+remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.
+
+“Everything has stopped,” he said, “because—”
+
+He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just
+before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.
+
+“Because ‘They’ve found another victim’?” I said, forcing a little
+laugh.
+
+“Exactly,” he answered, “exactly! I feel as positive of it as though—as
+though—I feel quite safe again, I mean,” he finished.
+
+He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches
+on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly
+rose to feet.
+
+“Come,” he said; “I think if we look, we shall find it.”
+
+He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks,
+poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little
+back-waters, myself always close on his heels.
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed presently, “ah!”
+
+The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the
+horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He
+was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in
+the water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some
+twisted willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few
+hours before the spot must have been under water.
+
+“See,” he said quietly, “the victim that made our escape possible!”
+
+And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on
+the body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant,
+and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned,
+but a few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our
+island somewhere about the hour of the dawn—_at the very time the fit
+had passed._
+
+“We must give it a decent burial, you know.”
+
+“I suppose so,” I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for
+there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that
+turned me cold.
+
+The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his
+face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more
+leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing
+from the body, so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.
+
+Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his
+hand in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much
+momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and
+sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled
+together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water.
+And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily
+against the corpse.
+
+The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.
+
+At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud
+sound of humming—the sound of several hummings—which passed with a vast
+commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared
+upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally
+ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some
+living yet invisible creatures at work.
+
+My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either
+of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw
+that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it
+became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it
+had turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the
+sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would
+be swept away.
+
+The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch
+about a “proper burial”—and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the
+sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an
+instant.
+
+I saw what he had seen.
+
+For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the
+exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin
+and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and
+exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found
+all over the island.
+
+“Their mark!” I heard my companion mutter under his breath. “Their
+awful mark!”
+
+And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the
+current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into
+mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight,
+turning over and over on the waves like an otter.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILLOWS, BY ALGRENON BLACKWOOD ***
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+  <div style='text-align:center'>
+    *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILLOWS, BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD ***
+  </div>
+
+<h1>The Willows</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Algernon Blackwood</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+(1907)
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<p>
+After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a
+region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on
+all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for
+miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps
+this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it
+leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the
+word <i>Sümpfe</i>, meaning marshes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown
+islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend
+and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an
+ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the
+dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with
+rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the
+least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that
+they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For
+the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves
+instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches
+turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders
+about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands
+everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound;
+making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks;
+carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands
+innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an
+impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river&rsquo;s life begins soon
+after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and
+frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July.
+That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had
+slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours
+later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the
+horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees
+roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth,
+Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under
+the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March
+steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and
+Hungary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and
+the muddy waters&mdash;sure sign of flood&mdash;sent us aground on many a
+shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool
+before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Pozsóny) showed against the sky; and
+then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey
+walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned
+the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness
+of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond&mdash;the land of the willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on
+the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and
+forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an
+hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign
+of human habitation and civilization within sight. The sense of remoteness from
+the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular
+world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so
+that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
+some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
+audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder
+and magic&mdash;a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a
+right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who
+had the imagination to discover them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
+tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a
+suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of the
+islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then
+swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to
+stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into the water before
+at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and
+managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing
+after our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the
+full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army
+of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with
+spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success
+of our efforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a river!&rdquo; I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we
+had traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
+obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t stand much nonsense now, will it?&rdquo; he said, pulling
+the canoe a little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself
+for a nap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements&mdash;water,
+wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun&mdash;thinking of the long journey
+that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea, and
+how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling companion as
+my friend, the Swede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other
+river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its <i>aliveness</i>.
+From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of
+Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river-game of
+losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had
+seemed to us like following the growth of some living creature. Sleepy at
+first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep
+soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had
+passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with
+us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come
+inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret
+life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering
+that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the rapid
+tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew,
+too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up on a surface
+previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows and swift rapids; its constant
+steady thundering below all mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of
+its icy waters at the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell
+flat upon its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew
+up-stream and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and
+voices, its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the
+bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the
+affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too
+important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun caught
+it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew it.
+There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the
+first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear
+through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous
+limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so
+little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the
+canoe through miles of shallows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was to
+lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries came to
+join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in, but to run
+for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very levels
+different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer. Below
+Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn comes in
+with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the
+parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that
+follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs, and
+forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro in order to
+get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped down from its
+shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life among the struggling
+waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and after Passau it no longer
+pretended to ignore new arrivals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know other
+aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of Straubing
+she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could well imagine
+only the surface inches were water, while below there moved, concealed as by a
+silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the
+sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be discovered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and animals
+that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows
+like short black palings; grey crows crowded the shingle-beds; storks stood
+fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands,
+and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting
+wings and singing, petulant cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the
+river&rsquo;s vagaries after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at
+sunrise and swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at
+us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we
+charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes,
+too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and
+disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the Danube
+became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the Black Sea,
+within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries where no tricks
+would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly grown-up, and claimed our
+respect and even our awe. It broke out into three arms, for one thing, that
+only met again a hundred kilometers farther down, and for a canoe there were no
+indications which one was intended to be followed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you take a side channel,&rdquo; said the Hungarian officer we met in
+the Pressburg shop while buying provisions, &ldquo;you may find yourselves,
+when the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may
+easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to
+continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being left
+high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious, and we had
+consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the
+officer&rsquo;s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly
+clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly gale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two
+from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I
+wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found, was
+less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or three feet
+above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the sunset, was
+covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off the crests of the
+broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing
+down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep
+it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams on either side. The
+ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while the furious movement of
+the willow bushes as the wind poured over them increased the curious illusion
+that the island itself actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see
+the great river descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a
+sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the
+sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking
+pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of
+course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the
+flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great
+puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible,
+pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep
+into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian
+creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like
+growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from
+sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre
+suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion began to
+stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the wild beauty,
+there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost
+of alarm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of the
+little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the
+morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe.
+Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and
+wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the
+driving wind&mdash;this shouting hurricane that might almost carry up a few
+acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the
+landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the
+flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a
+kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with
+the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was
+impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was
+aware somehow that it had to do with my realization of our utter insignificance
+before this unrestrained power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river
+had something to do with it too&mdash;a vague, unpleasant idea that we had
+somehow trifled with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay
+helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were
+gigantically at play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more
+particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows,
+crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach,
+pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile
+after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from
+the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise,
+attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and
+contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and
+mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or
+another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and
+oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly
+its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately
+with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if
+alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I
+felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe
+awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried
+ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving
+furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome
+suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a
+world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to
+remain&mdash;where we ran grave risks perhaps!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to
+analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it never
+left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up the tent
+in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It remained, just
+enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful camping-ground of a
+good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I said nothing, for he was
+a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never
+have explained to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed
+stupidly at me if I had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we pitched
+the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A poor camp,&rdquo; observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the
+tent stood upright, &ldquo;no stones and precious little firewood. I&rsquo;m
+for moving on early tomorrow&mdash;eh? This sand won&rsquo;t hold
+anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many devices,
+and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set about
+collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop no
+branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores
+pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising flood tore
+at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a gurgle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The island&rsquo;s much smaller than when we landed,&rdquo; said the
+accurate Swede. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t last long at this rate. We&rsquo;d better
+drag the canoe close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment&rsquo;s
+notice. I shall sleep in my clothes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather
+jolly laugh as he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what
+had caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows,
+and I could not find him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in the world&rsquo;s this?&rdquo; I heard him cry again, and this
+time his voice had become serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river,
+pointing at something in the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens, it&rsquo;s a man&rsquo;s body!&rdquo; he cried excitedly.
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past.
+It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty
+feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood it lurched
+round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and
+gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping
+plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An otter, by gad!&rdquo; we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the
+body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it came to
+the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining in the
+sunlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another thing
+happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a man, and
+what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was an unusual
+sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at flood time, it was
+so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood and stared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
+wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it
+difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed,
+however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering
+with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous
+pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was
+too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he
+was about. It seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us.
+His voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the
+wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something curious
+about the whole appearance&mdash;man, boat, signs, voice&mdash;that made an
+impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s crossing himself!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Look, he&rsquo;s
+making the sign of the Cross!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe you&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; the Swede said, shading his eyes
+with his hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a
+moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught
+them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of
+beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded
+river?&rdquo; I said, half to myself. &ldquo;Where is he going at such a time,
+and what did he mean by his signs and shouting? D&rsquo;you think he wished to
+warn us about something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably,&rdquo; laughed
+my companion. &ldquo;These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you
+remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here
+because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man&rsquo;s world! I suppose
+they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in
+the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life,&rdquo; he
+added, after a slight pause, &ldquo;and it scared him, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede&rsquo;s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
+something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he talked,
+though without being able to label it precisely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they had enough imagination,&rdquo; I laughed loudly&mdash;I remember
+trying to make as much <i>noise</i> as I could&mdash;&ldquo;they might well
+people a place like this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have
+haunted all this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and
+elemental deities.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not
+given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember
+feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical
+nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable
+temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot
+dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a
+canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength when
+untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly hair as
+he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I
+experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then that the
+Swede was&mdash;what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more
+than they said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The river&rsquo;s still rising, though,&rdquo; he added, as if following
+out some thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. &ldquo;This
+island will be under water in two days if it goes on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish the <i>wind</i> would go down,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t care a fig for the river.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten
+minutes&rsquo; notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an
+increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so
+often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed
+to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the willows round
+us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like the explosion of
+heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of
+immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must make, could we only
+hear it, driving along through space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full moon
+rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting willows
+with a light like the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises of
+the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had already made, and
+of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the tent, but the high
+wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the curtain and
+extinguished the lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and see each
+other&rsquo;s faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead like fireworks. A
+few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time to time a heavy
+splash announced the falling away of further portions of the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of our
+first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether remote from
+the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment more than was
+necessary&mdash;almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid discussion of
+the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor the boatman, for instance,
+received the honor of a single mention, though ordinarily these would have
+furnished discussion for the greater part of the evening. They were, of course,
+distinct events in such a place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the wind,
+that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same time to
+make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging expeditions
+into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel
+that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care
+much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub
+about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight.
+The long day&rsquo;s battle with wind and water&mdash;such wind and such
+water!&mdash;had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet
+neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire,
+talking in desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes,
+and listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had
+entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound
+of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the
+fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather
+absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost
+illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it
+was not lawful, perhaps not quite <i>safe</i>, to be overheard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a
+hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy.
+Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote
+from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world
+tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had
+dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of
+its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up
+through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When this has burnt up,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;I shall turn
+in,&rdquo; and my companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the
+surrounding shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that night,
+unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too was touched
+by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether pleased, I
+remember, to recognize this slight change in him, and instead of immediately
+collecting sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island where the
+moonlight on plain and river could be seen to better advantage. The desire to
+be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned in force; there
+was a vague feeling in me I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of the
+place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere &ldquo;scenery&rdquo;
+could have produced such an effect. There was something more here, something to
+alarm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I
+heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its
+own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the
+<i>willows</i> especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among
+themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing&mdash;but
+what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of the
+great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to
+that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings
+from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all
+discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily
+together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves
+even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive, and
+they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the
+<i>horrible</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp,
+shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all ready for an
+attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for
+the wanderer, especially, camps have their &ldquo;note&rdquo; either of welcome
+or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy
+preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause&mdash;after
+supper usually&mdash;it comes and announces itself. And the note of this
+willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers,
+trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I
+stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence
+was resented. For a night&rsquo;s lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but
+for a prolonged and inquisitive stay&mdash;No! by all the gods of the trees and
+wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we
+were not wanted. <i>The willows were against us</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence, found
+lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if, after all, these
+crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should rise up, like a
+swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods whose territory we had
+invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps, booming overhead in the
+night&mdash;and then <i>settle down!</i> As I looked it was so easy to imagine
+they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled together in
+masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind that should finally start them
+a-running. I could have sworn their aspect changed a little, and their ranks
+deepened and pressed more closely together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and suddenly I
+nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great
+splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just in time,
+and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd fancies that
+crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their spell upon me. I recalled the
+Swede&rsquo;s remark about moving on next day, and I was just thinking that I
+fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw the subject of my
+thoughts standing immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of
+the elements had covered his approach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been gone so long,&rdquo; he shouted above the wind,
+&ldquo;I thought something must have happened to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that
+conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real
+reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had entered his
+soul too, and he did not like being alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;River still rising,&rdquo; he cried, pointing to the flood in the
+moonlight, &ldquo;and the wind&rsquo;s simply awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave
+the real importance to his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucky,&rdquo; I cried back, &ldquo;our tent&rsquo;s in the hollow. I
+think it&rsquo;ll hold all right.&rdquo; I added something about the difficulty
+of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words
+and flung them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me
+through the branches, nodding his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucky if we get away without disaster!&rdquo; he shouted, or words to
+that effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought
+into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster impending
+somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We
+took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I
+put this thought into words, and I remember my friend&rsquo;s reply struck me
+oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this
+&ldquo;diabolical wind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent,
+with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a
+willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the fire,
+all ready for the morning meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of
+the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white
+moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our
+taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and
+covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the
+door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by
+the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o&rsquo;clock&mdash;the threshold
+of a new day&mdash;and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was
+asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my
+heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my immediate
+neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as
+the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the
+hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough resistance to make
+it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled
+quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully
+so as not to waken my companion. A curious excitement was on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the
+tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes
+against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible,
+surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some
+indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind
+they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of
+monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty
+feet in front of me, I saw these things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but
+something made me hesitate&mdash;the sudden realization, probably, that I
+should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in
+amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself
+that I was <i>not</i> dreaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of
+the bushes&mdash;immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the
+swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine
+them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that
+something in their appearance proclaimed them to be <i>not human</i> at all.
+Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the
+moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream
+from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the
+sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw
+their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this
+serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions
+of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes,
+<i>within</i> the leaves almost&mdash;rising up in a living column into the
+heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards,
+swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I
+thought they <i>must</i> every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the
+movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched
+everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well
+that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more
+certain I became that these figures were real and living, though perhaps not
+according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I
+have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of
+this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the
+place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my
+brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of
+places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the
+world&rsquo;s history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation,
+something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and
+stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore
+at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a
+sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were
+acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent,
+majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at
+length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and
+worship&mdash;absolutely worship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept
+against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and
+fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it gave me
+another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into
+heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last began to assert
+itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued&mdash;none the less real
+for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work
+out these pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I
+projected them outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the
+case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open
+patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely
+subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little
+standard of the known?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for what
+seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of reality
+as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they were gone!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had
+passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning of this
+lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began to tremble
+dreadfully. I took a quick look round&mdash;a look of horror that came near to
+panic&mdash;calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless
+I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent
+and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to
+shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as
+deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying
+wind.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<p>
+As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that
+it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and
+even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something
+that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was neither
+the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that
+caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it
+vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright&mdash;listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been
+coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become
+audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It
+seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great
+weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy
+with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the
+sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the
+wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown
+from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a
+dozen things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar, the
+only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half caught by
+the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and
+meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas surface of the
+tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the Swede to follow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no
+hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly
+gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind
+howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the
+east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed
+since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it
+now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me
+feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless
+night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally
+tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The
+river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray
+made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm.
+This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly unaccounted for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to waken
+him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the turned-over canoe;
+the yellow paddles&mdash;two of them, I&rsquo;m certain; the provision sack and
+the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and, crowding everywhere
+about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird
+uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight
+overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare
+feet in the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so that I
+could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet
+indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable
+sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan
+light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd
+sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had
+wakened me. It <i>must</i> have been the wind, I reflected&mdash;the wind
+bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the
+taut canvas&mdash;the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had altered in
+the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I dipped my hands
+and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead. Already there was a
+glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way
+back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of
+figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found
+myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure
+went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did….
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again, and
+once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished strangely. The
+winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself, for the winds often
+move like great presences under the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered
+about me was such an unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had
+ever felt before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to
+counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of
+the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the
+sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of
+wild yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond
+to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows,
+a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the
+walking winds seemed as nothing at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the
+landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but
+that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to
+the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much
+closer&mdash;unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. <i>They had moved nearer.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer
+by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But
+had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound
+of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own
+heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like
+a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There
+was a suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of
+aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I
+felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than the cry, for
+the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings
+brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our
+physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up over
+the horizon, for it was after four o&rsquo;clock, and I must have stood on that
+little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to close
+quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent, first
+taking another exhaustive look round and&mdash;yes, I confess it&mdash;making a
+few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the
+willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances, still
+slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my experiences were
+not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the
+daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a
+fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once,
+utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of
+multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had made
+it difficult to breathe.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV.</h2>
+<p>
+The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy sleep
+and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to bathe.
+The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;River still rising,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and several islands out in
+mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island&rsquo;s much
+smaller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any wood left?&rdquo; I asked sleepily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,&rdquo; he
+laughed, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s enough to last us till then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot in
+size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the
+landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like
+the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an
+exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me
+by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud
+showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede&rsquo;s words flashed
+across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had
+changed his mind. &ldquo;Enough to last till tomorrow&rdquo;&mdash;he assumed
+we should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night
+before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and
+clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my
+fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth
+steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind
+interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the
+difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before.
+His manner was different&mdash;a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of
+suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in
+cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one
+thing&mdash;that he had become frightened?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He had
+the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;d better get off sharp in an hour,&rdquo; I said presently,
+feeling for an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession
+at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: &ldquo;Rather! If
+they&rsquo;ll let us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;ll let us? The elements?&rdquo; I asked quickly, with affected
+indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The powers of this awful place, whoever they are,&rdquo; he replied,
+keeping his eyes on the map. &ldquo;The gods are here, if they are anywhere at
+all in the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The elements are always the true immortals,&rdquo; I replied, laughing
+as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected
+my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the smoke:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point of
+the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the
+tooth; it <i>had</i> to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was all
+pretence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Further disaster! Why, what&rsquo;s happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For one thing&mdash;the steering paddle&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; he said
+quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The steering paddle gone!&rdquo; I repeated, greatly excited, for this
+was our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide.
+&ldquo;But what&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,&rdquo; he added,
+with a genuine little tremor in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face somewhat
+foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand, I was aware
+of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he
+merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on
+the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still lay there as I had last seen
+her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather, <i>the</i> paddle, on
+the sand beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one,&rdquo; he said, stooping to pick it up.
+&ldquo;And here&rsquo;s the rent in the base-board.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed
+<i>two</i> paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think
+better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little
+slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a
+sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation showed that the
+hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must
+inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so
+as to close the hole, but once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in,
+and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled
+and sunk very rapidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice,&rdquo;
+I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, &ldquo;two victims
+rather,&rdquo; he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to whistle&mdash;a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly
+nonplussed&mdash;and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined
+to consider them foolish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t there last night,&rdquo; he said presently,
+straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must have scratched her in landing, of course,&rdquo; I stopped
+whistling to say. &ldquo;The stones are very sharp.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely.
+I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was. There were no
+stones, to begin with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then there&rsquo;s this to explain too,&rdquo; he added quietly,
+handing me the paddle and pointing to the blade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined it.
+The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had
+sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first vigorous stroke
+must have snapped it off at the elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing,&rdquo; I said feebly,
+&ldquo;or&mdash;or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles
+blown against it by the wind, perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, &ldquo;you
+can explain everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
+bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,&rdquo; I called out
+after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he
+showed me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
+disappearing among the willow bushes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first
+thoughts took the form of &ldquo;One of us must have done this thing, and it
+certainly was not I.&rdquo; But my second thought decided how impossible it was
+to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my
+companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have
+knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for a
+moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and
+densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane
+purposes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively
+alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty
+that some curious alteration had come about in his <i>mind</i>&mdash;that he
+was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about,
+watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable events&mdash;waiting, in
+a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought, expected very soon. This
+grew up in my mind intuitively&mdash;I hardly knew how.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
+measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed in
+the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various depths
+and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt,
+was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the
+paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only
+thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it <i>was</i> conceivable
+that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the
+shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that
+diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my &ldquo;reason.&rdquo;
+An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working
+explanation of the universe is necessary&mdash;however absurd&mdash;to the
+happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face
+the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the work,
+though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for
+traveling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to the hollows
+in the sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I know. They&rsquo;re all over the island.
+But <i>you</i> can explain them, no doubt!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wind, of course,&rdquo; I answered without hesitation. &ldquo;Have you
+never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl
+everything into a circle? This sand&rsquo;s loose enough to yield, that&rsquo;s
+all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him
+surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed,
+too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or
+perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and
+staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it
+was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his
+hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me,
+however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that
+torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his
+absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would
+speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed <i>that</i>,
+my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Queer thing,&rdquo; he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he
+wanted to say something and get it over. &ldquo;Queer thing. I mean, about that
+otter last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise,
+and I looked up sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy
+things&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that, of course,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;I
+mean&mdash;do you think&mdash;did you think it really was an otter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed&mdash;so
+<i>much</i> bigger than an otter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,&rdquo; I
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other
+thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,&rdquo; he went on half to
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the sun too,&rdquo; I laughed, a trifle boisterously. &ldquo;I
+suppose you&rsquo;ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of
+listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of his
+face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking.
+Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later,
+however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his
+face exceedingly grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>did</i> rather wonder, if you want to know,&rdquo; he said slowly,
+&ldquo;what that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was
+not a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the
+water.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience,
+and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look here now,&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;this place is quite queer enough
+without going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,
+and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going down-stream as
+fast as they could lick. And that otter <i>was</i> an otter, so don&rsquo;t
+let&rsquo;s play the fool about it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the
+least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t keep
+pretending you hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and
+there&rsquo;s nothing to hear but the river and this cursed old thundering
+wind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>fool!</i>&rdquo; he answered in a low, shocked voice, &ldquo;you
+utter fool. That&rsquo;s just the way all victims talk. As if you didn&rsquo;t
+understand just as well as I do!&rdquo; he sneered with scorn in his voice, and
+a sort of resignation. &ldquo;The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and
+try to hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at
+self-deception only makes the truth harder when you&rsquo;re forced to meet
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew quite
+well his words were true, and that <i>I</i> was the fool, not <i>he</i>. Up to
+a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt
+annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than
+himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of
+what was going on under my very nose. <i>He knew</i> from the very beginning,
+apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the
+necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to
+satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward
+likewise my fear increased steadily to the climax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re quite right about one thing,&rdquo; he added, before
+the subject passed, &ldquo;and that is that we&rsquo;re wiser not to talk about
+it, or even to think about it, because what one <i>thinks</i> finds expression
+in words, and what one <i>says</i>, happens.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to fish,
+testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood of rising
+water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and we fished for
+them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the
+banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept
+brilliantly fine till about four o&rsquo;clock, and then for the first time for
+three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the
+south-west, spreading thence slowly over the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant roaring,
+banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the silence that came
+about five o&rsquo;clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner quite as
+oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way then; it
+filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but
+infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising, falling always
+beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river&rsquo;s song
+lay between three notes at most&mdash;dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious
+quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous
+state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight took
+everything out of the landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since this
+particular landscape had already managed to convey the suggestion of something
+sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For
+me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found
+myself more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get
+up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with
+her lighting of the little island.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this general hush of the wind&mdash;though it still indulged in occasional
+brief gusts&mdash;the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand
+more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent movement
+of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly
+from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way be come charged with
+the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things
+of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for
+me in the darkness a bizarre <i>grotesquerie</i> of appearance that lent to
+them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very
+ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The forces
+of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were focusing upon our
+island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms
+of the imagination, did my really indescribable sensations in this
+extraordinary place present themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered somewhat
+from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served apparently to
+render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing spell of the haunting.
+I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very
+obvious physiological explanations, yet, in spite of every effort, they gained
+in strength upon me so that I dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest
+must dread the approach of darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day, and
+the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to the base of a
+tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five o&rsquo;clock onwards
+I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for dinner, it being my turn
+to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavor,
+and a general thick residue from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with
+black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was
+followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried
+milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my
+duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions
+between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice&mdash;an admitted privilege
+of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in
+re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for driftwood
+while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us, and
+I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island,
+which he declared was not fully a third smaller than when we first landed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from the
+bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come and listen,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and see what you make of
+it.&rdquo; He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Now</i> do you hear anything?&rdquo; he asked, watching me curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the deep
+note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent surface. The
+willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to reach my
+ears faintly, a peculiar sound&mdash;something like the humming of a distant
+gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps
+and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but it was
+certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I
+can liken it to nothing so much as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended
+far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and
+musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard it all day,&rdquo; said my companion. &ldquo;While you
+slept this afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could
+never get near enough to see&mdash;to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was
+overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could
+have sworn it was not outside at all, but <i>within myself</i>&mdash;you
+know&mdash;the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened
+carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I could think
+of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, coming nearer, and
+then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was
+ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must
+admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I had never heard
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The wind blowing in those sand-funnels,&rdquo; I said determined to find
+an explanation, &ldquo;or the bushes rubbing together after the storm
+perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It comes off the whole swamp,&rdquo; my friend answered. &ldquo;It comes
+from everywhere at once.&rdquo; He ignored my explanations. &ldquo;It comes
+from the willow bushes somehow&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But now the wind has dropped,&rdquo; I objected. &ldquo;The willows can
+hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because
+I knew intuitively it was true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is <i>because</i> the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned
+before. It is the cry, I believe, of the&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was in
+danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation. I was
+resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded, too, that
+he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else
+disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand for what might happen
+later. There was another night to be faced before we escaped from this
+distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come and cut up bread for the pot,&rdquo; I called to him, vigorously
+stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and the
+thought made me laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in its
+mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the ground-sheet
+at his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hurry up!&rdquo; I cried; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s boiling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced
+laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing here!&rdquo; he shouted, holding his sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bread, I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s gone. There is no bread. They&rsquo;ve taken it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay upon
+the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I
+burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my
+laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure caused
+it&mdash;this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort
+of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve. And with
+both of us it ceased quite suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How criminally stupid of me!&rdquo; I cried, still determined to be
+consistent and find an explanation. &ldquo;I clean forgot to buy a loaf at
+Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have
+left it lying on the counter or&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning,&rdquo; the
+Swede interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s enough for tomorrow,&rdquo; I said, stirring vigorously,
+&ldquo;and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we
+shall be miles from here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so&mdash;to God,&rdquo; he muttered, putting the things back into
+the sack, &ldquo;unless we&rsquo;re claimed first as victims for the
+sacrifice,&rdquo; he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the
+tent, for safety&rsquo;s sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself,
+but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence,
+avoiding one another&rsquo;s eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed
+up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied with any
+definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more and more
+acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the very vagueness of its
+origin distressed me far more that if I had been able to ticket and face it
+squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now
+almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint,
+continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was
+behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the
+bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it
+hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere
+at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely
+surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within my
+knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world
+of swamps and willows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute greater.
+The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not know what to
+expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way of defense. We
+could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now
+came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it
+was more and more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion
+was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night
+together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not
+get along much longer without the support of his mind, and for that, of course,
+plain talk was imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this
+little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he
+flung into the emptiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me, coming
+as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration,
+too&mdash;which made it so much more convincing&mdash;from a totally different
+point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in
+such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was
+secret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found it impossible to
+digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved him. It was like
+being sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are things about us, I&rsquo;m sure, that make for disorder,
+disintegration, destruction, our destruction,&rdquo; he said once, while the
+fire blazed between us. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve strayed out of a safe line
+somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much louder
+than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talking to himself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think a gramophone would show any record of that. The
+sound doesn&rsquo;t come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in
+another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a
+fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fire and
+peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and
+no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everything was, so that
+the river and the frogs had things all their own way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has that about it,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;which is utterly out of
+common experience. It is <i>unknown</i>. Only one thing describes it really; it
+is a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time, but he
+had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the
+thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words from dangerous
+wandering to and fro in the mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The feeling of
+being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran incessantly upon cities
+and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the
+&ldquo;feel&rdquo; of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the
+score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking beer, tables
+beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the rocks behind the
+red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have been welcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely
+greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of terror
+more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of. We had
+&ldquo;strayed,&rdquo; as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of
+conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the
+frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the
+dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon
+the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little
+thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over
+the border and deprived of what we called &ldquo;our lives,&rdquo; yet by
+mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the
+victims of our adventure&mdash;a sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his
+sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a
+personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the
+horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious
+intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the
+unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where
+the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers
+still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds from
+coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were within reach
+and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by
+indescribable suggestions of a &ldquo;beyond region,&rdquo; of another scheme
+of life, another revolution not parallel to the human. And in the end our minds
+would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we should be drawn
+across the frontier into <i>their</i> world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in the
+silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the mind. The
+very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to distort every
+indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making
+signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural
+character, and revealed in something of its other aspect&mdash;as it existed
+across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was now
+not merely to me, but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we touched
+was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience, and in the
+true sense of the word <i>unearthly</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one&rsquo;s
+courage to zero,&rdquo; the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually
+following my thoughts. &ldquo;Otherwise imagination might count for much. But
+the paddle, the canoe, the lessening food&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I explained all that once?&rdquo; I interrupted viciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have,&rdquo; he answered dryly; &ldquo;you have indeed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the &ldquo;plain
+determination to provide a victim&rdquo;; but, having now arranged my thoughts
+better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul
+against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that he
+would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage and
+calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before
+been so clearly conscious of two persons in me&mdash;the one that explained
+everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was
+horribly afraid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small.
+Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came
+up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was
+inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about
+us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence
+reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air
+overhead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the wind
+were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation, the point
+where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to
+betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have been far worse in
+its effect upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my
+companion abruptly. He looked up with a start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t disguise it any longer,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t like this place, and the darkness, and the noises, and the awful
+feelings I get. There&rsquo;s something here that beats me utterly. I&rsquo;m
+in a blue funk, and that&rsquo;s the plain truth. If the other shore
+was&mdash;different, I swear I&rsquo;d be inclined to swim for it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede&rsquo;s face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind.
+He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge
+excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any rate, he was the
+strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a physical condition we can escape from by running
+away,&rdquo; he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease;
+&ldquo;we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill
+a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our
+only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It was
+precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease whose symptoms
+had puzzled me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have
+not <i>found</i> us&mdash;not &lsquo;located&rsquo; us, as the Americans
+say,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re blundering about like men hunting
+for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they
+<i>feel</i> us, but cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds
+quiet&mdash;it&rsquo;s our minds they feel. We must control our thoughts, or
+it&rsquo;s all up with us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Death, you mean?&rdquo; I stammered, icy with the horror of his
+suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Worse&mdash;by far,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Death, according to
+one&rsquo;s belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations
+of the senses, but it involves no change of character. <i>You</i> don&rsquo;t
+suddenly alter just because the body&rsquo;s gone. But this means a radical
+alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by
+substitution&mdash;far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen
+to have camped in a spot where their region touches ours, where the veil
+between has worn thin&rdquo;&mdash;horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my
+actual words&mdash;&ldquo;so that they are aware of our being in their
+neighborhood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>who</i> are aware?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead,
+everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I
+can possibly explain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the fire,
+an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and look down
+upon the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All my life,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have been strangely, vividly
+conscious of another region&mdash;not far removed from our own world in one
+sense, yet wholly different in kind&mdash;where great things go on unceasingly,
+where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes
+compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies
+of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance;
+vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly
+with mere expressions of the soul&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suggest just now&mdash;&rdquo; I began, seeking to stop him, feeling
+as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with
+his torrent that <i>had</i> to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it is the spirit of the elements, and
+I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it
+is&mdash;<i>neither</i>. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have
+relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these
+beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it
+is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I listened
+to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me shaking a
+little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do you propose?&rdquo; I began again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could
+get away,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs
+and give the sleigh another start. But&mdash;I see no chance of any other
+victim now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he
+continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the willows, of course. The willows <i>mask</i> the others,
+but the others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear,
+we&rsquo;re lost, lost utterly.&rdquo; He looked at me with an expression so
+calm, so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his
+sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. &ldquo;If we can hold out through
+the night,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or
+rather, <i>undiscovered</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you really think a sacrifice would&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but it
+was my friend&rsquo;s scared face that really stopped my mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he whispered, holding up his hand. &ldquo;Do not mention
+them more than you can help. Do not refer to them <i>by name</i>. To name is to
+reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in
+order that they may ignore us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even in thought?&rdquo; He was extraordinarily agitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must
+keep them <i>out of our minds</i> at all costs if possible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own
+way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful blackness
+of that summer night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were you awake all last night?&rdquo; he went on suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I slept badly a little after dawn,&rdquo; I replied evasively, trying to
+follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, &ldquo;but the
+wind, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know. But the wind won&rsquo;t account for all the noises.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you heard it too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard,&rdquo; he said,
+adding, after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, &ldquo;and that other
+sound&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something
+tremendous, gigantic?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been
+altered&mdash;had increased enormously, so that we should have been
+crushed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that,&rdquo; I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing
+upwards where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like
+wind. &ldquo;What do you make of that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>their</i> sound,&rdquo; he whispered gravely.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The
+division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen
+carefully, you&rsquo;ll find it&rsquo;s not above so much as around us.
+It&rsquo;s in the willows. It&rsquo;s the willows themselves humming, because
+here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea in
+my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I realized what he
+realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the tip of my
+tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and
+the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine
+across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me
+by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I
+had for years deemed unimaginative, stolid!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The only thing for us to do is to go
+on as though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so
+forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of
+the mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape.
+Above all, don&rsquo;t <i>think</i>, for what you think happens!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words
+and the strangeness of it all; &ldquo;all right, I&rsquo;ll try, but tell me
+one more thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all
+about us, those sand-funnels?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. &ldquo;I
+dare not, simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed
+I am glad. Don&rsquo;t try to. <i>They</i> have put it into my mind; try your
+hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not press
+him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as I could
+hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes busily in
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when
+the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing for a
+brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to look down
+at my sand-shoe&mdash;the sort we used for the canoe&mdash;and something to do
+with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I had
+bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the
+uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a
+wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at
+home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and
+a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The
+effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I
+suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living
+in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must seem
+impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted the
+spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free
+and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend opposite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You damned old pagan!&rdquo; I cried, laughing aloud in his face.
+&ldquo;You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the
+sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it
+too&mdash;the strange cry overhead in the darkness&mdash;and that sudden drop
+in the air as though something had come nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of the
+fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After that,&rdquo; he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, &ldquo;we
+must go! We can&rsquo;t stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go
+on&mdash;down the river.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
+terror&mdash;the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
+last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the dark?&rdquo; I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical
+outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. &ldquo;Sheer
+madness! The river&rsquo;s in flood, and we&rsquo;ve only got a single paddle.
+Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There&rsquo;s nothing ahead for
+fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of those
+kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of
+our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had reached the point
+where it was beginning to weaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?&rdquo; he whispered with
+the awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
+kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make one more blaze,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;and then
+turn in for the night. At sunrise we&rsquo;ll be off full speed for Komorn.
+Now, pull yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about <i>not
+thinking fear!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure, too,
+it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the darkness for
+more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping among the bushes
+and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow
+louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where some
+driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when my body
+was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was the Swede. He
+had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I heard his breath
+coming and going in short gasps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look! By my soul!&rdquo; he whispered, and for the first time in my
+experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was
+pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his
+finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, in front of the dim glow, <i>something was moving</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain
+used at the back of a theater&mdash;hazily a little. It was neither a human
+figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as
+several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The
+Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differently, for he
+thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the
+top, and moving all over upon its surface&mdash;&ldquo;coiling upon itself like
+smoke,&rdquo; he said afterwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I watched it settle downwards through the bushes,&rdquo; he sobbed at
+me. &ldquo;Look, by God! It&rsquo;s coming this way! Oh, oh!&rdquo;&mdash;he
+gave a kind of whistling cry. &ldquo;<i>They&rsquo;ve found us.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy form
+was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I collapsed backwards with
+a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to support my weight, so
+that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I
+really hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of
+enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly
+covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes
+were tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my
+consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to
+another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had
+hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way he caught
+at me in falling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused me to
+<i>forget them</i> and think of something else at the very instant when they
+were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of
+discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He himself,
+he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what saved him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I
+found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and
+saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist me. I
+stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me. Nothing
+came to me to say, somehow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I lost consciousness for a moment or two,&rdquo; I heard him say.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You nearly broke my arm in two,&rdquo; I said, uttering my only
+connected thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what saved <i>you!</i>&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Between
+us, we&rsquo;ve managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming
+has ceased. It&rsquo;s gone&mdash;for the moment at any rate!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my
+friend too&mdash;great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a
+tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire and
+put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent had fallen
+over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our
+feet in sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s those sand-funnels,&rdquo; exclaimed the Swede, when the tent
+was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.
+&ldquo;And look at the size of them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows
+there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones
+we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully
+formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and
+leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we
+could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first
+thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the
+tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent
+that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a
+sudden start.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the exhaustion
+of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while came over me with
+a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion also slept quickened
+its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat up, asking me if I
+&ldquo;heard this&rdquo; or &ldquo;heard that.&rdquo; He tossed about on his
+cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over the
+point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with the
+report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still. Then at
+length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds of
+snoring&mdash;the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a
+welcome and calming influence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face. But
+something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first thought
+was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in his sleep. I
+called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me that the tent
+was <i>surrounded</i>. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering was again
+audible outside, filling the night with horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed the
+sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was down. This
+was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook it back
+securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positively that the
+Swede was not here. He had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I was
+out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me completely
+and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was that same familiar
+humming&mdash;gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might have been about
+me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that
+my lungs worked with difficulty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards over
+the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I could just
+make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy patches. In my
+excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island, calling him by name,
+shouting at the top of my voice the first words that came into my head. But the
+willows smothered my voice, and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only
+traveled a few feet round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong,
+tumbling over roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the
+preventing branches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island&rsquo;s point and saw a
+dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And
+already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have taken the
+plunge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging him
+shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a
+noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the most outlandish
+phrases in his anger about &ldquo;going <i>inside</i> to Them,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;taking the way of the water and the wind,&rdquo; and God only knows what
+more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me
+sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get
+him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and
+cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as
+it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering
+outside&mdash;I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business
+perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so
+that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said, for all
+the world just like a frightened child:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My life, old man&mdash;it&rsquo;s my life I owe you. But it&rsquo;s all
+over now anyhow. They&rsquo;ve found a victim in our place!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my
+eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though
+nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a
+sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours
+later&mdash;hours of ceaseless vigil for me&mdash;it became so clear to me that
+he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed
+it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high in
+a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation of the
+fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did not attempt
+to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark about the extra
+coldness of the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;River&rsquo;s falling at last,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m glad
+of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The humming has stopped too,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he remembered
+everything except his own attempt at suicide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything has stopped,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just before
+he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because &lsquo;They&rsquo;ve found another victim&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said,
+forcing a little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;exactly! I feel as positive of it as
+though&mdash;as though&mdash;I feel quite safe again, I mean,&rdquo; he
+finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on the
+sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose to feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I think if we look, we shall find
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking with
+a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back-waters, myself always
+close on his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed presently, &ldquo;ah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the horror of
+the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He was pointing with
+his stick at a large black object that lay half in the water and half on the
+sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow roots so that the river
+could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot must have been under
+water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;the victim that made our escape
+possible!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body
+of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was
+hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few hours before,
+and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour
+of the dawn&mdash;<i>at the very time the fit had passed.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must give it a decent burial, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself,
+for there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that
+turned me cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face,
+and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current,
+I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck
+and part of the chest lay bare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in
+warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring
+myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward with a
+sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that
+our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had
+collided a little heavily against the corpse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud sound of
+humming&mdash;the sound of several hummings&mdash;which passed with a vast
+commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards into
+the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance.
+It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet invisible creatures
+at work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of us
+had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a movement
+of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became released from the
+grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned completely over, the
+dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream.
+In another moment it would be swept away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a
+&ldquo;proper burial&rdquo;&mdash;and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on
+the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw what he had seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest
+turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented
+with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind
+to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their mark!&rdquo; I heard my companion mutter under his breath.
+&ldquo;Their awful mark!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current
+had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was
+already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the
+waves like an otter.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+  <div style='text-align:center'>
+    *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILLOWS, BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD ***
+  </div>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Willows
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2004 [EBook #11438]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILLOWS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Newman and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE WILLOWS
+
+Algernon Blackwood
+(1907)
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube
+enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters
+spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country
+becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low
+willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy
+blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be
+seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.
+
+In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown
+islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes
+bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the
+sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never
+attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain
+humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems
+that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so
+continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire
+plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over
+the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells
+like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white
+as their underside turns to the sun.
+
+Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here
+wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting
+the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a
+shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at
+the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and
+forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and
+possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their
+very existence.
+
+Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon
+after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and
+frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about
+mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before
+sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a
+couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the
+Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a
+grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing
+current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus
+Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the
+Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and the
+frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.
+
+Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary,
+and the muddy waters--sure sign of flood--sent us aground on many a
+shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool
+before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky;
+and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under
+the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke
+ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam
+into the wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond--the land
+of the willows.
+
+The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down
+on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of
+lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less
+than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor
+any single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. The
+sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the
+fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly
+laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another
+that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit
+us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a
+separate little kingdom of wonder and magic--a kingdom that was reserved
+for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten
+warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.
+
+Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
+tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for
+a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of
+the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore
+and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we
+seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into
+the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind
+into a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we
+lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand,
+sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a
+cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow
+bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their
+thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.
+
+"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
+traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
+obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.
+
+"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a
+little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a
+nap.
+
+I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements--water,
+wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun--thinking of the long journey
+that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea,
+and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling
+companion as my friend, the Swede.
+
+We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any
+other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
+aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood
+gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the
+great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved,
+unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living
+creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it
+became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being,
+through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its
+mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly
+and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a
+Great Personage.
+
+How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret
+life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent,
+uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by
+the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying
+speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly
+bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows
+and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surface
+sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the banks. How it
+stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how its
+laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream and tried to stop its
+growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its tumblings and
+foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; that
+self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the affected
+dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too
+important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun
+caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam
+rose.
+
+It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew
+it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when
+yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected
+to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side
+of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name;
+leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and
+wade and push the canoe through miles of shallows.
+
+And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was
+to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries
+came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in,
+but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very
+levels different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer.
+Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn
+comes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and
+incommodes the parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long
+twisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that
+against the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much
+dashing to and fro in order to get through in time. And during the fight
+our canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of
+its life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a
+lesson, and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.
+
+This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know
+other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of
+Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could
+well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there moved,
+concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently
+and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be
+discovered.
+
+Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and
+animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely
+places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the
+shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that
+opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all
+sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It
+was impossible to feel annoyed with the river's vagaries after seeing a
+deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and swim past the bows of
+the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or
+looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round
+a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere
+haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing
+so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed it.
+
+But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the
+Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the
+Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries
+where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly
+grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into three
+arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers farther down,
+and for a canoe there were no indications which one was intended to be
+followed.
+
+"If you take a side channel," said the Hungarian officer we met in the
+Pressburg shop while buying provisions, "you may find yourselves, when the
+flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may easily
+starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to
+continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase."
+
+The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being
+left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious,
+and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest,
+the officer's prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly
+clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly
+gale.
+
+It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or
+two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I
+wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found,
+was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or
+three feet above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the
+sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off
+the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex
+up stream.
+
+I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood
+bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as
+though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams
+on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while
+the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind poured over them
+increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually moved.
+Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me;
+it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and
+leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.
+
+The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking
+pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light,
+of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of
+the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by
+the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile
+it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing
+with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of
+monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think
+of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves.
+They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such
+overpowering numbers.
+
+Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
+bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion
+began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the
+wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of
+disquietude, almost of alarm.
+
+A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of
+the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by
+the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense
+of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions
+of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with
+the power of the driving wind--this shouting hurricane that might almost
+carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much
+chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing
+rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing
+its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel
+emotion had nothing to do with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of
+distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source
+and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do
+with my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained
+power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do
+with it too--a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with
+these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of
+the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play
+together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
+
+But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself
+more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of
+willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye
+could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in
+dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening.
+And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly
+with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their
+vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the
+imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether
+friendly to us.
+
+Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or
+another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and
+oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell
+peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link
+on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir
+comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to
+exalt.
+
+With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I
+felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of
+awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their
+serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened,
+moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and
+unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an
+alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not
+wanted or invited to remain--where we ran grave risks perhaps!
+
+The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to
+analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it
+never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up
+the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It
+remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful
+camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I
+said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the
+first place, I could never have explained to him what I meant, and in the
+second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.
+
+There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
+pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
+
+"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood
+upright, "no stones and precious little firewood. I'm for moving on early
+tomorrow--eh? This sand won't hold anything."
+
+But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many
+devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set
+about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop
+no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the
+shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising
+flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a
+gurgle.
+
+"The island's much smaller than when we landed," said the accurate Swede.
+"It won't last long at this rate. We'd better drag the canoe close to the
+tent, and be ready to start at a moment's notice. I shall sleep in my
+clothes."
+
+He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his
+rather jolly laugh as he spoke.
+
+"By Jove!" I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had
+caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows,
+and I could not find him.
+
+"What in the world's this?" I heard him cry again, and this time his voice
+had become serious.
+
+I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river,
+pointing at something in the water.
+
+"Good heavens, it's a man's body!" he cried excitedly. "Look!"
+
+A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly
+past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about
+twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood
+it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the
+sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a
+swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.
+
+"An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
+
+It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like
+the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it
+came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining
+in the sunlight.
+
+Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another
+thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a
+man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was
+an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at
+flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood
+and stared.
+
+Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
+wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found
+it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It
+seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed
+boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore
+at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction,
+but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make
+out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he was
+gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water to us
+shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single
+word was audible. There was something curious about the whole
+appearance--man, boat, signs, voice--that made an impression on me out of
+all proportion to its cause.
+
+"He's crossing himself!" I cried. "Look, he's making the sign of the
+Cross!"
+
+"I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand
+and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment,
+melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them
+in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of
+beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.
+
+"But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?" I
+said, half to myself. "Where is he going at such a time, and what did he
+mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us about
+something?"
+
+"He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my
+companion. "These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember
+the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because
+it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I suppose they
+believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in
+the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life," he
+added, after a slight pause, "and it scared him, that's all."
+
+The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
+something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he
+talked, though without being able to label it precisely.
+
+"If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly--I remember trying to
+make as much noise as I could--"they might well people a place like this
+with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all this
+region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental
+deities."
+
+The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not
+given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember
+feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical
+nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable
+temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot
+dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a
+canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength
+when untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly
+hair as he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of
+mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad
+just then that the Swede was--what he was, and that he never made remarks
+that suggested more than they said.
+
+"The river's still rising, though," he added, as if following out some
+thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. "This island will
+be under water in two days if it goes on."
+
+"I wish the wind would go down," I said. "I don't care a fig for the
+river."
+
+The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten minutes'
+notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an increasing
+current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so often
+threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
+
+Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It
+seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the
+willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like
+the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in
+great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet
+must make, could we only hear it, driving along through space.
+
+But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full
+moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting
+willows with a light like the day.
+
+We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises
+of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had already
+made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the tent,
+but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the
+curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and
+see each other's faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead like
+fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time
+to time a heavy splash announced the falling away of further portions of
+the bank.
+
+Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of our
+first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether remote
+from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment more
+than was necessary--almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid
+discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor the
+boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention, though
+ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater part of
+the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a place.
+
+The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the
+wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same
+time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging
+expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back
+always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the
+fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always
+seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the
+slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and
+water--such wind and such water!--had tired us both, and an early bed was
+the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay
+there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion, peering about us
+into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the thunder of wind and
+river. The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence
+seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle
+unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of
+communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the
+roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It
+was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not
+lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard.
+
+The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a
+hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I
+fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the
+moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an
+alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And
+we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it!
+Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the
+sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the
+last time I rose to get firewood.
+
+"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my
+companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding shadows.
+
+For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
+night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too
+was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether
+pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him, and instead of
+immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island
+where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen to better advantage.
+The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned
+in force; there was a vague feeling in me I wished to face and probe to the
+bottom.
+
+When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of
+the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere "scenery" could
+have produced such an effect. There was something more here, something to
+alarm.
+
+I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows;
+I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each
+in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the
+willows especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among
+themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing--but
+what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of
+the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I
+knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a
+host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether,
+perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them
+moving busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their
+myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as
+though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen
+sense of the horrible.
+
+There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp,
+shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all ready for an
+attack.
+
+The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid;
+for the wanderer, especially, camps have their "note" either of welcome or
+rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy
+preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause--after
+supper usually--it comes and announces itself. And the note of this
+willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers,
+trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me
+as I stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our
+presence was resented. For a night's lodging we might perhaps be tolerated;
+but for a prolonged and inquisitive stay--No! by all the gods of the trees
+and wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island,
+and we were not wanted. The willows were against us.
+
+Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence,
+found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if, after
+all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should
+rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods whose
+territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps, booming
+overhead in the night--and then settle down! As I looked it was so easy to
+imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled
+together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind that should finally
+start them a-running. I could have sworn their aspect changed a little, and
+their ranks deepened and pressed more closely together.
+
+The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and suddenly I
+nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great
+splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just in
+time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd
+fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their spell upon me.
+I recalled the Swede's remark about moving on next day, and I was just
+thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw
+the subject of my thoughts standing immediately in front of me. He was
+quite close. The roar of the elements had covered his approach.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"You've been gone so long," he shouted above the wind, "I thought something
+must have happened to you."
+
+But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well,
+that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood
+the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had
+entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.
+
+"River still rising," he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight,
+"and the wind's simply awful."
+
+He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that
+gave the real importance to his words.
+
+"Lucky," I cried back, "our tent's in the hollow. I think it'll hold all
+right." I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in order to
+explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them across the
+river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through the branches,
+nodding his head.
+
+"Lucky if we get away without disaster!" he shouted, or words to that
+effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought
+into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster
+impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon
+me.
+
+We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our
+feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been
+unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend's reply
+struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July
+weather, than this "diabolical wind."
+
+Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the
+tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from
+a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the
+fire, all ready for the morning meal.
+
+We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap
+of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white
+moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against
+our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down
+and covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.
+
+Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through
+the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and
+saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o'clock--the threshold
+of a new day--and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was
+asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my
+heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my
+immediate neighborhood.
+
+I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and
+fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly
+safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough
+resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass,
+however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings
+were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious
+excitement was on me.
+
+I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that
+the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made
+shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was
+incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes
+of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in
+the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a
+series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close,
+about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.
+
+My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them,
+but something made me hesitate--the sudden realization, probably, that I
+should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in
+amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself
+that I was not dreaming.
+
+They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the
+tops of the bushes--immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent
+of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to
+examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and
+indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human
+at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches
+against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a
+continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they
+reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making
+a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of
+each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted
+spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude,
+fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost--rising up in
+a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see.
+Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a
+hue of dull bronze upon their skins.
+
+I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long
+time I thought they must every moment disappear and resolve themselves into
+the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I
+searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood
+quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I
+looked the more certain I became that these figures were real and living,
+though perhaps not according to the standards that the camera and the
+biologist would insist upon.
+
+Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such
+as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental
+forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the
+powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the
+disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of
+the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and
+worshipped by men in all ages of the world's history. But, before I could
+arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther
+out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground
+still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the
+sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I
+knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the
+figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great
+spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine
+deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and
+worship--absolutely worship.
+
+Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept
+against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled
+and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it
+gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still
+ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last
+began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued--none
+the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the
+branches combined to work out these pictures upon the mirror of my
+imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them
+appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage,
+and began to move forward across the open patches of sand. By Jove, though,
+was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my reason argue
+in the old futile way from the little standard of the known?
+
+I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for
+what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of
+reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they
+were gone!
+
+And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence
+had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning
+of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began
+to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round--a look of horror that
+came near to panic--calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing
+how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back
+silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first
+lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the
+moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the
+blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.
+
+As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember
+that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless
+sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there
+was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the
+watch.
+
+But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was
+neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of
+something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and
+smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting
+bolt upright--listening.
+
+Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been
+coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become
+audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all.
+It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was
+a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I
+felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily
+against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it
+the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the
+leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big
+drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.
+
+Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar,
+the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half
+caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush
+us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas
+surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the
+Swede to follow.
+
+But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There
+was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.
+
+A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly
+gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind
+howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw
+the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have
+passed since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the
+memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how
+tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep
+lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the
+activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was
+out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled
+the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.
+
+Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause
+alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly
+unaccounted for.
+
+My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to
+waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the
+turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles--two of them, I'm certain; the
+provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and,
+crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless,
+shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck
+passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry
+and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.
+
+I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so
+that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same
+profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw
+the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly
+and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still
+puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure
+upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I
+reflected--the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry
+particles smartly against the taut canvas--the wind dropping heavily upon
+our fragile roof.
+
+Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.
+
+I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had
+altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I
+dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead.
+Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness
+of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes
+where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway
+among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast
+terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me,
+as sure as ever man did....
+
+It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again,
+and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished
+strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself,
+for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And
+altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense
+kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a
+sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst
+effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from
+which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the
+whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild
+yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.
+
+But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain
+beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among
+the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my
+terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.
+
+For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the
+landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view,
+but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the
+tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now
+crowded much closer--unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They had moved
+nearer.
+
+Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly
+nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the
+night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I
+recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the
+tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a
+moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position
+on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of personal agency, of
+deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a
+sort of rigidity.
+
+Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd,
+that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than
+the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous
+imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and
+not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.
+
+The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up
+over the horizon, for it was after four o'clock, and I must have stood on
+that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to
+close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent,
+first taking another exhaustive look round and--yes, I confess it--making a
+few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the
+willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.
+
+I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances,
+still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my
+experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny
+them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a
+subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the
+excited imagination.
+
+Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once,
+utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of
+multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had
+made it difficult to breathe.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy
+sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to
+bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.
+
+"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in mid-stream have
+disappeared altogether. Our own island's much smaller."
+
+"Any wood left?" I asked sleepily.
+
+"The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat," he laughed,
+"but there's enough to last us till then."
+
+I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot
+in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the
+landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by
+like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was
+an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out
+of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot;
+not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one
+little jot.
+
+Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed across
+me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had changed
+his mind. "Enough to last till tomorrow"--he assumed we should stay on the
+island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before he was so
+positive the other way. How had the change come about?
+
+Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings
+and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my
+fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth
+steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind
+interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the
+difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening
+before. His manner was different--a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a
+sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to
+describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite
+certain of one thing--that he had become frightened?
+
+He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He
+had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.
+
+"We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an
+opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate.
+And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let us."
+
+"Who'll let us? The elements?" I asked quickly, with affected indifference.
+
+"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping his
+eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the
+world."
+
+"The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as
+naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected
+my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the
+smoke:
+
+"We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."
+
+This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point
+of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to
+extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was
+all pretence.
+
+"Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"
+
+"For one thing--the steering paddle's gone," he said quietly.
+
+"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our
+rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But what--"
+
+"And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a genuine
+little tremor in his voice.
+
+I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face
+somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning
+sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to
+follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards
+the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still
+lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles,
+or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.
+
+"There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the rent
+in the base-board."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two
+paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of
+it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.
+
+There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a
+little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the
+tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation
+showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without
+observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would
+have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in
+mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than
+two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.
+
+"There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I heard
+him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rather," he added as
+he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.
+
+I began to whistle--a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly
+nonplussed--and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined
+to consider them foolish.
+
+"It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from his
+examination and looking anywhere but at me.
+
+"We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling to
+say. "The stones are very sharp."
+
+I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye
+squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was.
+There were no stones, to begin with.
+
+"And then there's this to explain too," he added quietly, handing me the
+paddle and pointing to the blade.
+
+A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined
+it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though
+someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first
+vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.
+
+"One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly, "or--or
+it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown against it
+by the wind, perhaps."
+
+"Ah," said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, "you can explain
+everything."
+
+"The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
+bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out after
+him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he showed
+me.
+
+"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
+disappearing among the willow bushes.
+
+Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my
+first thoughts took the form of "One of us must have done this thing, and
+it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how impossible it
+was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it.
+That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could
+have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for
+a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and
+densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with
+insane purposes.
+
+Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear
+actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the
+clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his
+mind--that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not
+speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable
+events--waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought,
+expected very soon. This grew up in my mind intuitively--I hardly knew how.
+
+I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
+measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed
+in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various
+depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind,
+no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for
+lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe
+was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was
+conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The
+examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the
+same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my intelligence which I
+called my "reason." An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity,
+just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary--however
+absurd--to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in
+the world and face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the
+time an exact parallel.
+
+I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the
+work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be
+safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to
+the hollows in the sand.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But you can explain
+them, no doubt!"
+
+"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never watched
+those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl everything into
+a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's all."
+
+He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him
+surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He
+seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not
+hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept
+turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out
+across the water where it was visible through the openings among the
+willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for
+several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no
+questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and
+address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work,
+for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the changed
+aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed that, my imagination could no
+longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.
+
+"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted to
+say something and get it over. "Queer thing. I mean, about that otter last
+night."
+
+I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with
+surprise, and I looked up sharply.
+
+"Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things--"
+
+"I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted. "I mean--do you think--did
+you think it really was an otter?"
+
+"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"
+
+"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed--so much bigger
+than an otter."
+
+"The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something," I replied.
+
+He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other
+thoughts.
+
+"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.
+
+"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll
+wonder next if that fellow in the boat--"
+
+I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of
+listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of
+his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our
+caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five
+minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch
+in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.
+
+"I did rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that
+thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man.
+The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."
+
+I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was
+impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.
+
+"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without going
+out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat, and the
+man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going down-stream as fast
+as they could lick. And that otter was an otter, so don't let's play the
+fool about it!"
+
+He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the
+least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.
+
+"And, for Heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear
+things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's nothing to hear but
+the river and this cursed old thundering wind."
+
+"You fool!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool. That's
+just the way all victims talk. As if you didn't understand just as well as
+I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of resignation. "The
+best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold your mind as firm as
+possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception only makes the truth harder
+when you're forced to meet it."
+
+My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew
+quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not he. Up to a
+certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I
+felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less
+sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant
+all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very
+beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his
+words about the necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves
+were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward,
+but thenceforward likewise my fear increased steadily to the climax.
+
+"But you're quite right about one thing," he added, before the subject
+passed, "and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to
+think about it, because what one thinks finds expression in words, and what
+one says, happens."
+
+That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to
+fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood of
+rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and we
+fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly
+smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The
+weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o'clock, and then for the
+first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to
+gather in the south-west, spreading thence slowly over the sky.
+
+This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant
+roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the silence
+that came about five o'clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner
+quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way
+then; it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind
+noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising,
+falling always beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the
+river's song lay between three notes at most--dull pedal notes, that held a
+lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my
+then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.
+
+It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight
+took everything out of the landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since
+this particular landscape had already managed to convey the suggestion of
+something sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and
+noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more
+alarming, and I found myself more than once calculating how soon after
+sunset the full moon would get up in the east, and whether the gathering
+clouds would greatly interfere with her lighting of the little island.
+
+With this general hush of the wind--though it still indulged in occasional
+brief gusts--the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand
+more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent
+movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and
+shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way be
+come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination
+far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding
+huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of
+appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living
+creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and
+hostile to us. The forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of
+night. They were focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon
+ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my
+really indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present
+themselves.
+
+I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered
+somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served
+apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing spell
+of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and
+childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet, in spite of
+every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I dreaded the night
+as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach of darkness.
+
+The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day,
+and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to the
+base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five o'clock
+onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for dinner, it
+being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon
+fat to add flavor, and a general thick residue from former stews at the
+bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into it the result was most
+excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of
+strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the
+absence of wind made my duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me,
+dividing his attentions between cleaning his pipe and giving useless
+advice--an admitted privilege of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet
+all the afternoon, engaged in re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent
+ropes, and fishing for driftwood while I slept. No more talk about
+undesirable things had passed between us, and I think his only remarks had
+to do with the gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not
+fully a third smaller than when we first landed.
+
+The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from
+the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.
+
+"Come and listen," he said, "and see what you make of it." He held his hand
+cupwise to his ear, as so often before.
+
+"Now do you hear anything?" he asked, watching me curiously.
+
+We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the
+deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent surface.
+The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to
+reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound--something like the humming of a
+distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste
+of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but
+it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant
+steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much as to the sound of an immense
+gong, suspended far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its muffled
+metallic note, soft and musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart
+quickened as I listened.
+
+"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this afternoon
+it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could never get near
+enough to see--to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, and
+sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could have sworn
+it was not outside at all, but within myself--you know--the way a sound in
+the fourth dimension is supposed to come."
+
+I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened
+carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I could
+think of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, coming
+nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say
+that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical,
+yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I had
+never heard it.
+
+"The wind blowing in those sand-funnels," I said determined to find an
+explanation, "or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps."
+
+"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes from
+everywhere at once." He ignored my explanations. "It comes from the willow
+bushes somehow--"
+
+"But now the wind has dropped," I objected. "The willows can hardly make a
+noise by themselves, can they?"
+
+His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly,
+because I knew intuitively it was true.
+
+"It is because the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned before.
+It is the cry, I believe, of the--"
+
+I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was
+in danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation.
+I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded,
+too, that he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or
+something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand for
+what might happen later. There was another night to be faced before we
+escaped from this distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it
+might bring forth.
+
+"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously stirring
+the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and the
+thought made me laugh.
+
+He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in
+its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the
+ground-sheet at his feet.
+
+"Hurry up!" I cried; "it's boiling."
+
+The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced
+laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.
+
+"There's nothing here!" he shouted, holding his sides.
+
+"Bread, I mean."
+
+"It's gone. There is no bread. They've taken it!"
+
+I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay
+upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.
+
+The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I
+burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my
+laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure
+caused it--this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an
+effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve.
+And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.
+
+"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be consistent
+and find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That
+chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left it
+lying on the counter or--"
+
+"The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning," the Swede
+interrupted.
+
+Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.
+
+"There's enough for tomorrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can get
+lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles from
+here."
+
+"I hope so--to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack,
+"unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added with a
+foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I
+suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that it
+seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.
+
+Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence,
+avoiding one another's eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed up
+and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied with
+any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more
+and more acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the very
+vagueness of its origin distressed me far more that if I had been able to
+ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note
+of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the
+night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct
+notes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us.
+Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our left, and then again
+from the clumps on our right. More often it hovered directly overhead like
+the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front,
+at our sides and over our heads, completely surrounding us. The sound
+really defies description. But nothing within my knowledge is like that
+ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world of swamps and
+willows.
+
+We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute
+greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not
+know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way
+of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the
+sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly
+unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to us that some kind
+of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not.
+After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the same
+tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer without the
+support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As
+long as possible, however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to
+ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.
+
+Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,
+coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration,
+too--which made it so much more convincing--from a totally different point
+of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in such
+an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was
+secret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found it
+impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved
+him. It was like being sick.
+
+"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder,
+disintegration, destruction, our destruction," he said once, while the fire
+blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."
+
+And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much
+louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talking
+to himself:
+
+"I don't think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound
+doesn't come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in another
+manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a
+fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard."
+
+I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fire
+and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the
+sky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everything
+was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own way.
+
+"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of common
+experience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it really; it is a
+non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity."
+
+Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time,
+but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to
+have the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words
+from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.
+
+The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The
+feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran
+incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul,
+as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had passed
+through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking
+beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the
+rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have been
+welcome.
+
+Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely
+greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of
+terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of.
+We had "strayed," as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of
+conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the
+frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by
+the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy
+upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn
+a little thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be
+carried over the border and deprived of what we called "our lives," yet by
+mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be
+the victims of our adventure--a sacrifice.
+
+It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his
+sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a
+personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the
+horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious
+intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the
+unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place
+where the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former
+worshippers still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the
+old pagan spell.
+
+At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds
+from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were
+within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so
+attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another
+scheme of life, another revolution not parallel to the human. And in the
+end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we
+should be drawn across the frontier into their world.
+
+Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in
+the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the mind.
+The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to distort every
+indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making
+signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural
+character, and revealed in something of its other aspect--as it existed
+across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was
+now not merely to me, but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we
+touched was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience,
+and in the true sense of the word unearthly.
+
+"It's the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one's courage to
+zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my
+thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle, the
+canoe, the lessening food--"
+
+"Haven't I explained all that once?" I interrupted viciously.
+
+"You have," he answered dryly; "you have indeed."
+
+He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the "plain
+determination to provide a victim"; but, having now arranged my thoughts
+better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul
+against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that
+he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage
+and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have
+never before been so clearly conscious of two persons in me--the one that
+explained everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish
+explanations, yet was horribly afraid.
+
+Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew
+small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness
+consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle
+of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the
+willows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a
+deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the
+river and the humming in the air overhead.
+
+We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.
+
+At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the
+wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation,
+the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech,
+or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have
+been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a
+blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up with a start.
+
+"I can't disguise it any longer," I said; "I don't like this place, and the
+darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There's something
+here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, and that's the plain truth.
+If the other shore was--different, I swear I'd be inclined to swim for it!"
+
+The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind. He
+stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge
+excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any rate, he was
+the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one thing.
+
+"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he
+replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; "we must
+sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of
+elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only
+chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us."
+
+I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It
+was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease whose
+symptoms had puzzled me.
+
+"I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have
+not found us--not 'located' us, as the Americans say," he went on. "They're
+blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe
+and provisions prove that. I think they feel us, but cannot actually see
+us. We must keep our minds quiet--it's our minds they feel. We must control
+our thoughts, or it's all up with us."
+
+"Death, you mean?" I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.
+
+"Worse--by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means either
+annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves
+no change of character. You don't suddenly alter just because the body's
+gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible
+loss of oneself by substitution--far worse than death, and not even
+annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot where their region touches
+ours, where the veil between has worn thin"--horrors! he was using my very
+own phrase, my actual words--"so that they are aware of our being in their
+neighborhood."
+
+"But who are aware?" I asked.
+
+I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming
+overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded
+more than I can possibly explain.
+
+He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the
+fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and
+look down upon the ground.
+
+"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of
+another region--not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly
+different in kind--where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and
+terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which
+earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires,
+the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast
+purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with
+more expressions of the soul--"
+
+"I suggest just now--" I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I
+was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his
+torrent that had to come.
+
+"You think," he said, "it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought
+perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is--neither. These would
+be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending
+upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about
+us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that
+their space happens just at this spot to touch our own."
+
+The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I
+listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me
+shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.
+
+"And what do you propose?" I began again.
+
+"A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could
+get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and give
+the sleigh another start. But--I see no chance of any other victim now."
+
+I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he
+continued.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"It's the willows, of course. The willows mask the others, but the others
+are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear, we're lost,
+lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm, so determined,
+so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his sanity. He was as
+sane as any man ever was. "If we can hold out through the night," he added,
+"we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or rather, undiscovered."
+
+"But you really think a sacrifice would--"
+
+That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but
+it was my friend's scared face that really stopped my mouth.
+
+"Hush!" he whispered, holding up his hand. "Do not mention them more than
+you can help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal; it is the
+inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in order that
+they may ignore us."
+
+"Even in thought?" He was extraordinarily agitated.
+
+"Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must
+keep them out of our minds at all costs if possible."
+
+I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own
+way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful
+blackness of that summer night.
+
+"Were you awake all last night?" he went on suddenly.
+
+"I slept badly a little after dawn," I replied evasively, trying to follow
+his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, "but the wind, of
+course--"
+
+"I know. But the wind won't account for all the noises."
+
+"Then you heard it too?"
+
+"The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard," he said, adding,
+after a moment's hesitation, "and that other sound--"
+
+"You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something
+tremendous, gigantic?"
+
+He nodded significantly.
+
+"It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?" I said.
+
+"Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been
+altered--had increased enormously, so that we should have been crushed."
+
+"And that," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards
+where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like wind.
+"What do you make of that?"
+
+"It's their sound," he whispered gravely. "It's the sound of their world,
+the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it leaks
+through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's not above
+so much as around us. It's in the willows. It's the willows themselves
+humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that
+are against us."
+
+I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea
+in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I realized
+what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the
+tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the
+ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face
+again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very
+earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent
+control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed unimaginative,
+stolid!
+
+"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as though
+nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so forth;
+pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of the
+mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape.
+Above all, don't think, for what you think happens!"
+
+"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and the
+strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one more thing
+first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all about us,
+those sand-funnels?"
+
+"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not,
+simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I am
+glad. Don't try to. They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to
+prevent their putting it into yours."
+
+He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not
+press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as
+I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes
+busily in silence.
+
+Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is
+when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing
+for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to
+look down at my sand-shoe--the sort we used for the canoe--and something to
+do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I
+had bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other
+details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its
+train, followed a wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was
+accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale,
+motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that
+proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate
+and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I suppose, it was simply a
+sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living in an atmosphere of
+things that to the normal consciousness must seem impossible and
+incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted the spell from
+my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free and
+utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend opposite.
+
+"You damned old pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You
+imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You--"
+
+I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother
+the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course,
+heard it too--the strange cry overhead in the darkness--and that sudden
+drop in the air as though something had come nearer.
+
+He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of
+the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.
+
+"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go! We
+can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on--down the
+river."
+
+He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
+terror--the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
+last.
+
+"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical outburst,
+but still realizing our position better than he did. "Sheer madness! The
+river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle. Besides, we only go
+deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for fifty miles but
+willows, willows, willows!"
+
+He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of
+those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the
+control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had
+reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.
+
+"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered with the awe
+of genuine terror in his voice and face.
+
+I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
+kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.
+
+"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the
+night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself
+together a bit, and remember your own advice about not thinking fear!"
+
+He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure,
+too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the
+darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping
+among the bushes and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but
+seemed to me to grow louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It
+was shivery work!
+
+We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where
+some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when
+my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was
+the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I
+heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.
+
+"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my experience I
+knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing
+to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his finger,
+and I swear my heart missed a beat.
+
+There, in front of the dim glow, something was moving.
+
+I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze
+drop-curtain used at the back of a theater--hazily a little. It was neither
+a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being
+as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three,
+moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it
+differently, for he thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow
+bushes, rounded at the top, and moving all over upon its surface--"coiling
+upon itself like smoke," he said afterwards.
+
+"I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me. "Look,
+by God! It's coming this way! Oh, oh!"--he gave a kind of whistling cry.
+"They've found us."
+
+I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy
+form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I collapsed
+backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to
+support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a
+struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was happening. I
+was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that
+plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and
+that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were tightly shut; something in
+my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness was expanding,
+extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another feeling that I was
+losing it altogether, and about to die.
+
+An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede
+had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way he
+caught at me in falling.
+
+But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused me to
+forget them and think of something else at the very instant when they were
+about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of
+discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He
+himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what
+saved him.
+
+I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I
+found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches,
+and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist
+me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me.
+Nothing came to me to say, somehow.
+
+"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's what
+saved me. It made me stop thinking about them."
+
+"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected
+thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.
+
+"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them
+off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone--for the
+moment at any rate!"
+
+A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my
+friend too--great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a
+tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire
+and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent
+had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.
+
+We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught
+our feet in sand.
+
+"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again
+and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. "And look
+at the size of them!"
+
+All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving
+shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar
+to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and
+deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the
+whole of my foot and leg.
+
+Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we
+could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having
+first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle
+inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the
+end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would
+disturb and wake us.
+
+In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a
+sudden start.
+
+It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the
+exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while
+came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion
+also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat
+up, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He tossed about on his
+cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over
+the point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with
+the report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still.
+Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds
+of snoring--the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a
+welcome and calming influence.
+
+This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.
+
+A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face.
+But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first
+thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in
+his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me
+that the tent was surrounded. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering
+was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.
+
+I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed
+the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was
+down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook
+it back securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positively
+that the Swede was not here. He had gone.
+
+I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I
+was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me
+completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was
+that same familiar humming--gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might
+have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very
+atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.
+
+But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.
+
+The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards
+over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I
+could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy
+patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island,
+calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first words that
+came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and the humming
+muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round me. I plunged
+among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots, and scraping my
+face as I tore this way and that among the preventing branches.
+
+Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a dark
+figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And
+already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have taken
+the plunge.
+
+I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging him
+shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a
+noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the most
+outlandish phrases in his anger about "going inside to Them," and "taking
+the way of the water and the wind," and God only knows what more besides,
+that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me sick with
+horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get him
+into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and
+cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.
+
+I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding
+as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering
+outside--I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business
+perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me
+so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said,
+for all the world just like a frightened child:
+
+"My life, old man--it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow.
+They've found a victim in our place!"
+
+Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my
+eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though
+nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a
+sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours
+later--hours of ceaseless vigil for me--it became so clear to me that he
+remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed
+it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.
+
+He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high
+in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation
+of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did
+not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark
+about the extra coldness of the water.
+
+"River's falling at last," he said, "and I'm glad of it."
+
+"The humming has stopped too," I said.
+
+He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he
+remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.
+
+"Everything has stopped," he said, "because--"
+
+He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just
+before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.
+
+"Because 'They've found another victim'?" I said, forcing a little laugh.
+
+"Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though--as
+though--I feel quite safe again, I mean," he finished.
+
+He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on
+the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose to
+feet.
+
+"Come," he said; "I think if we look, we shall find it."
+
+He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking
+with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back-waters, myself
+always close on his heels.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"
+
+The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the
+horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He was
+pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the water
+and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow roots
+so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot must
+have been under water.
+
+"See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"
+
+And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the
+body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the
+face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few
+hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island
+somewhere about the hour of the dawn--at the very time the fit had passed.
+
+"We must give it a decent burial, you know."
+
+"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for
+there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that
+turned me cold.
+
+The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his
+face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely.
+The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body,
+so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.
+
+Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in
+warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to
+bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward
+with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard
+sand so that our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could
+be done, we had collided a little heavily against the corpse.
+
+The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.
+
+At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud
+sound of humming--the sound of several hummings--which passed with a vast
+commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards
+into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the
+distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet
+invisible creatures at work.
+
+My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of
+us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a
+movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became
+released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned
+completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the
+edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept away.
+
+The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch
+about a "proper burial"--and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the
+sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.
+
+I saw what he had seen.
+
+For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed
+chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh
+were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar
+in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the
+island.
+
+"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful
+mark!"
+
+And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the
+current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream
+and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and
+over on the waves like an otter.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood
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