After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube
enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters
spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country
becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low
willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a
fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and
across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word _Sümpfe_,
meaning marshes.
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and
willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal
seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their
silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering
beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have
no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft
outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of
the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they
somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive.
For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface,
waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea,
too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their
underside turns to the sun.
Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here
wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels
intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the
waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and
foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of
shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which
shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life,
since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins
soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy
tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood
about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening
before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna,
leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the
blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below
Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had
then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the
old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning
heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals
in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria
and Hungary.
Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into
Hungary, and the muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on
many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden
belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Pozsóny)
showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited
horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the
sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply
to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands,
sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond—the land of the willows.
The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps
down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the
scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings,
and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut
nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization
within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the
utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows,
winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we
allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom
of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others
who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to
trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.
Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about
for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering
character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood
carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches
tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many
a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a
great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach
the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after
our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in
the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an
immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all
sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as
though to applaud the success of our efforts.
“What a river!” I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of
June.
“Won’t stand much nonsense now, will it?” he said, pulling the canoe a
little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for
a nap.
I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the
elements—water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun—thinking of
the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us
to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and
charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.
We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than
any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
_aliveness_. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the
pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to
play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps,
unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the growth
of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent
desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some
huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our
little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us
sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had
come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.
How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its
secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our
tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be
caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is
its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools,
suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of
its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all
mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at
the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon
its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream
and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices,
its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the
bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on;
the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little
towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet
whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured
down upon it till the steam rose.
It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world
knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian
forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it,
where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear
again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new
river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed
that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of
shallows.
And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth,
was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent
tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge
them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well
marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to
recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this
particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power
impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river
that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that
follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs,
and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro
in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped
down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life
among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson,
and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.
This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know
other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat
plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun
that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while
below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of
Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very
leisurely too, lest they be discovered.
Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and
animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely
places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the
shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water
that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds
of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant
cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river’s vagaries
after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and
swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us
from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag
as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the
river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily
among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible
to see how they managed it.
But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the
Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the
Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries
where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly
grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into
three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers
farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was
intended to be followed.
“If you take a side channel,” said the Hungarian officer we met in the
Pressburg shop while buying provisions, “you may find yourselves, when
the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you
may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn
you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind
will increase.”
The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being
left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be
serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions.
For the rest, the officer’s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing
down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the
dignity of a westerly gale.
It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour
or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot
sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The
island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank
standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far
end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the
tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was
triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.
I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood
bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as
though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming
streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and
rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind
poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself
actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river
descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill,
white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.
The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make
walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end
the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry.
Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam,
and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from
behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the
islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows,
which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures
crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like
growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to
vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering
numbers.
Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular
emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my
delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a
curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.
A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many
of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept
away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched
the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far
than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it
directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting
hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the
air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind
was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape
to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind
of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do
with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I
experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal
with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with
my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained
power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to
do with it too—a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled
with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every
hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at
play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach
itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres
of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the
eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it,
standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching,
waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows
connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind
insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in
some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty
power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one
way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains
overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests
exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or
another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human
experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They
tend on the whole to exalt.
With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far
different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the
heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a
vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me
as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke
in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here
upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a
world where we were not wanted or invited to remain—where we ran grave
risks perhaps!
The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely
to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet
it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of
putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the
stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a
most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my
companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered
devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained
to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly
at me if I had.
There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
“A poor camp,” observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent
stood upright, “no stones and precious little firewood. I’m for moving
on early tomorrow—eh? This sand won’t hold anything.”
But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many
devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then
set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow
bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply.
We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were
crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great
portions with a splash and a gurgle.
“The island’s much smaller than when we landed,” said the accurate
Swede. “It won’t last long at this rate. We’d better drag the canoe
close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment’s notice. I shall
sleep in my clothes.”
He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his
rather jolly laugh as he spoke.
“By Jove!” I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had
caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the
willows, and I could not find him.
“What in the world’s this?” I heard him cry again, and this time his
voice had become serious.
I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the
river, pointing at something in the water.
“Good heavens, it’s a man’s body!” he cried excitedly. “Look!”
A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept
rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again.
It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to
where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its
eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body
turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of
sight in a flash.
“An otter, by gad!” we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly
like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far
below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet
and shining in the sunlight.
Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another
thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was
a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the
Danube was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted
region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real
event. We stood and stared.
Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I
found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying
apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort
of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down
the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking
across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light
too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It
seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His
voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the
wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something
curious about the whole appearance—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an
impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.
“He’s crossing himself!” I cried. “Look, he’s making the sign of the
Cross!”
“I believe you’re right,” the Swede said, shading his eyes with his
hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a
moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun
caught them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great
crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to rise, so that the air
was hazy.
“But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?”
I said, half to myself. “Where is he going at such a time, and what did
he mean by his signs and shouting? D’you think he wished to warn us
about something?”
“He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably,” laughed my
companion. “These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you
remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed
here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man’s world! I
suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too.
That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time
in his life,” he added, after a slight pause, “and it scared him,
that’s all.”
The Swede’s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he
talked, though without being able to label it precisely.
“If they had enough imagination,” I laughed loudly—I remember trying to
make as much _noise_ as I could—“they might well people a place like
this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all
this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and
elemental deities.”
The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was
not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I
remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his
stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting.
It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids
like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than
any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an
adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I
looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along
under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I
experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then
that the Swede was—what he was, and that he never made remarks that
suggested more than they said.
“The river’s still rising, though,” he added, as if following out some
thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. “This island
will be under water in two days if it goes on.”
“I wish the _wind_ would go down,” I said. “I don’t care a fig for the
river.”
The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten
minutes’ notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an
increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds
that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It
seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the
willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes,
like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the
island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the
sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through
space.
But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full
moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of
shouting willows with a light like the day.
We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the
noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had
already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of
the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we
lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was
enough to smoke and see each other’s faces by, and the sparks flew
about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled
and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling
away of further portions of the bank.
Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of
our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether
remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual
moment more than was necessary—almost as though we had agreed tacitly
to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter
nor the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention,
though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater
part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a
place.
The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the
wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the
same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some
foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede
brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time
finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left
alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the
bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long
day’s battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us
both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made
the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in
desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and
listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place
had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit
the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering
would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the
human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now
carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out
loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not
quite _safe_, to be overheard.
The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept
by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us
both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there
beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of
another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the
souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even
to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred
in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the
leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
“When this has burnt up,” I said firmly, “I shall turn in,” and my
companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding
shadows.
For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He
too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not
altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,
and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far
point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be
seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon
me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me
I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell
of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere “scenery”
could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,
something to alarm.
I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering
willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one
and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange
distress. But the _willows_ especially; for ever they went on
chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly
crying out, sometimes sighing—but what it was they made so much to-do
about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited.
And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild
yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from
another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all
discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving
busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their
myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will
as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own
keen sense of the _horrible_.
There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our
camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all
ready for an attack.
The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very
vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their “note” either of
welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because
the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first
pause—after supper usually—it comes and announces itself. And the note
of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were
interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of
unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the
frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night’s
lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and
inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no!
We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not
wanted. _The willows were against us_.
Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence,
found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if,
after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they
should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods
whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps,
booming overhead in the night—and then _settle down!_ As I looked it
was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a
little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind
that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their
aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more
closely together.
The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and
suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon
fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I
stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half
laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and
cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede’s remark about moving on
next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I
turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing
immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the
elements had covered his approach.
“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, “I thought
something must have happened to you.”
But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well,
that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I
understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of
the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.
“River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight,
“and the wind’s simply awful.”
He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship
that gave the real importance to his words.
“Lucky,” I cried back, “our tent’s in the hollow. I think it’ll hold
all right.” I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in
order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung
them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me
through the branches, nodding his head.
“Lucky if we get away without disaster!” he shouted, or words to that
effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the
thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was
disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay
unpleasantly upon me.
We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our
feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have
been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my
friend’s reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the
ordinary July weather, than this “diabolical wind.”
Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside
the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack
hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe
distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.
We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The
flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and
the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of
the wind against our taut little house were the last things I
remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and
delicious forgetfulness.