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diff --git a/11438-h/11438-h.htm b/11438-h/11438-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c8b094d --- /dev/null +++ b/11438-h/11438-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2710 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<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’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—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. +</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—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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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> +“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.” +</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’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—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. +</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—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> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather +jolly laugh as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What in the world’s this?” 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> +“Good heavens, it’s a man’s body!” he cried excitedly. +“Look!” +</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> +“An otter, by gad!” 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—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an +impression on me out of all proportion to its cause. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s crossing himself!” I cried. “Look, he’s +making the sign of the Cross!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“If they had enough imagination,” I laughed loudly—I remember +trying to make as much <i>noise</i> 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.” +</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—what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more +than they said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish the <i>wind</i> would go down,” I said. “I +don’t care a fig for the river.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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—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’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 <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> +“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. +</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 “scenery” +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—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 “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. <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—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’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> +“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, +“I thought something must have happened to you.” +</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> +“River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the +moonlight, “and the wind’s simply awful.” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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’s reply struck me +oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this +“diabolical wind.” +</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’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. +</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—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—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—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’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. +</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—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—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. +</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—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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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’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. +</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> +“River still rising,” he said, “and several islands out in +mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island’s much +smaller.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any wood left?” I asked sleepily. +</p> + +<p> +“The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,” he +laughed, “but there’s enough to last us till then.” +</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’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? +</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—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? +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who’ll let us? The elements?” I asked quickly, with affected +indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.” +</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> +“Further disaster! Why, what’s happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“For one thing—the steering paddle’s gone,” he said +quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“And there’s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,” 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> +“There’s only one,” he said, stooping to pick it up. +“And here’s the rent in the base-board.” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t there last night,” he said presently, +straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me. +</p> + +<p> +“We must have scratched her in landing, of course,” I stopped +whistling to say. “The stones are very sharp.” +</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> +“And then there’s this to explain too,” 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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, “you +can explain everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” 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 “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. +</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>—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. +</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 “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. +</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> +“Yes,” he said, “I know. They’re all over the island. +But <i>you</i> can explain them, no doubt!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise, +and I looked up sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy +things—” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean that, of course,” he interrupted. “I +mean—do you think—did you think it really was an otter?” +</p> + +<p> +“What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed—so +<i>much</i> bigger than an otter.” +</p> + +<p> +“The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,” I +replied. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other +thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,” he went on half to +himself. +</p> + +<p> +“That was the sun too,” I laughed, a trifle boisterously. “I +suppose you’ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat—” +</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> +“I <i>did</i> 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.” +</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> +“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 <i>was</i> an otter, so don’t +let’s play the fool about it!” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>fool!</i>” 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.” +</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> +“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 <i>thinks</i> finds expression +in words, and what one <i>says</i>, happens.” +</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’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’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. +</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—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 <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’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. +</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> +“Come and listen,” he said, “and see what you make of +it.” He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Now</i> do you hear anything?” 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—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> +“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 <i>within myself</i>—you +know—the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come.” +</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> +“The wind blowing in those sand-funnels,” I said determined to find +an explanation, “or the bushes rubbing together after the storm +perhaps.” +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“But now the wind has dropped,” I objected. “The willows can +hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?” +</p> + +<p> +His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because +I knew intuitively it was true. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</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> +“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. +</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> +“Hurry up!” I cried; “it’s boiling.” +</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> +“There’s nothing here!” he shouted, holding his sides. +</p> + +<p> +“Bread, I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s gone. There is no bread. They’ve taken it!” +</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—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> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning,” the +Swede interrupted. +</p> + +<p> +Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“It has that about it,” he went on, “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.” +</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 +“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. +</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 +“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. +</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 “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 <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—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> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t I explained all that once?” I interrupted viciously. +</p> + +<p> +“You have,” he answered dryly; “you have indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have +not <i>found</i> 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 +<i>feel</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Death, you mean?” I stammered, icy with the horror of his +suggestion. +</p> + +<p> +“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. <i>You</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>who</i> are aware?” 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> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>had</i> to come. +</p> + +<p> +“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—<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.” +</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> +“And what do you propose?” I began again. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he +continued. +</p> + +<p> +“It’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’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, <i>undiscovered</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you really think a sacrifice would—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hush!” he whispered, holding up his hand. “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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Even in thought?” He was extraordinarily agitated. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“Were you awake all last night?” he went on suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I know. But the wind won’t account for all the noises.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you heard it too?” +</p> + +<p> +“The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard,” he said, +adding, after a moment’s hesitation, “and that other +sound—” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something +tremendous, gigantic?” +</p> + +<p> +He nodded significantly. +</p> + +<p> +“It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s <i>their</i> 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.” +</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> +“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 <i>think</i>, for what you think happens!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. <i>They</i> have put it into my mind; try your +hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“You damned old pagan!” I cried, laughing aloud in his face. +“You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You—” +</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—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?” 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> +“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 <i>not +thinking fear!</i>” +</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> +“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. +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. “<i>They’ve found us.</i>” +</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> +“I lost consciousness for a moment or two,” I heard him say. +“That’s what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them.” +</p> + +<p> +“You nearly broke my arm in two,” I said, uttering my only +connected thought at the moment. A numbness came over me. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what saved <i>you!</i>” 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our +feet in sand. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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 +“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. +</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—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’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 “going <i>inside</i> 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. +</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—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> +“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!” +</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—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. +</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> +“River’s falling at last,” he said, “and I’m glad +of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“The humming has stopped too,” 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> +“Everything has stopped,” he said, “because—” +</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> +“Because ‘They’ve found another victim’?” I said, +forcing a little laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” he answered, “exactly! I feel as positive of it as +though—as though—I feel quite safe again, I mean,” 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> +“Come,” he said; “I think if we look, we shall find +it.” +</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> +“Ah!” he exclaimed presently, “ah!” +</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> +“See,” he said quietly, “the victim that made our escape +possible!” +</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—<i>at the very time the fit had passed.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“We must give it a decent burial, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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—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. +</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 +“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. +</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> +“Their mark!” I heard my companion mutter under his breath. +“Their awful mark!” +</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> |