[Illustration: "LIKE A SWIFT SHADOW IT SPED OVER THE GRASS."]
Knowing nothing of darkness, or stars, or moon, Photogen spent his days
in hunting. On a great white horse he swept over the grassy plains,
glorying in the sun, fighting the wind, and killing the buffaloes. One
morning, when he happened to be on the ground a little earlier than
usual, and before his attendants, he caught sight of an animal unknown
to him, stealing from a hollow into which the sun rays had not yet
reached. Like a swift shadow it sped over the grass, slinking southward
to the forest. He gave chase, noted the body of a buffalo it had half
eaten, and pursued it the harder. But with great leaps and bounds the
creature shot farther and farther ahead of him, and vanished. Turning,
therefore, defeated, he met Fargu, who had been following him as fast as
his horse could carry him.
"What animal was that, Fargu?" he asked. "How he did run!"
Fargu answered he might be a leopard, but he rather thought, from his
pace and look, that he was a young lion.
"What a coward he must be!" said Photogen.
"Don't be too sure of that," rejoined Fargu. "He is one of the creatures
the sun makes uncomfortable. As soon as the sun is down he will be brave
enough."
He had scarcely said it when he repented; nor did he regret it the less
when he found that Photogen made no reply. But, alas! said was said.
"Then," said Photogen to himself, "that contemptible beast is one of the
terrors of sundown, of which Madam Watho spoke."
He hunted all day, but not with his usual spirit. He did not ride so
hard, and did not kill one buffalo. Fargu, to his dismay, observed also
that he took every pretext for moving farther south, nearer to the
forest. But all at once, the sun now sinking in the west, he seemed to
change his mind, for he turned his horse's head, and rode home so fast
that the rest could not keep him in sight. When they arrived, they found
his horse in the stable, and concluded that he had gone into the castle.
But he had, in truth, set out again by the back of it. Crossing the
river a good way up the valley, he reascended to the ground they had
left, and just before sunset reached the skirts of the forest.
The level orb shone straight in between the bare stems, and saying to
himself he could not fail to find the beast, he rushed into the wood.
But even as he entered, he turned and looked to the west. The rim of the
red sun was touching the horizon, all jagged with broken hills. "Now,"
said Photogen, "we shall see;" but he said it in the face of a darkness
he had not proved. The moment the sun began to sink among the spikes and
saw-edges, with a kind of sudden flap at his heart, a fear inexplicable
laid hold of the youth; and as he had never felt anything of the kind
before, the very fear itself terrified him. As the sun sank, it rose
like the shadow of the world, and grew deeper and darker. He could not
even think what it might be, so utterly did it enfeeble him. When the
last flaming cimeter-edge of the sun went out like a lamp, his horror
seemed to blossom into very madness. Like the closing lids of an
eye--for there was no twilight, and this night no moon--the terror and
the darkness rushed together, and he knew them for one. He was no longer
the man he had known, or rather thought himself. The courage he had had
was in no sense his own; he had only had courage, not been courageous;
it had left him, and he could scarcely stand--certainly not stand
straight, for not one of his joints could he make stiff or keep from
trembling. He was but a spark of the sun, in himself nothing.
The beast was behind him--stealing upon him! He turned. All was dark in
the wood, but to his fancy the darkness here and there broke into pairs
of green eyes, and he had not the power even to raise his bow-hand from
his side. In the strength of despair he strove to rouse courage enough,
not to fight--that he did not even desire--but to run. Courage to flee
home was all he could even imagine, and it would not come. But what he
had not was ignominiously given him. A cry in the wood, half a screech,
half a growl, sent him running like a boar-wounded cur. It was not even
himself that ran, it was the fear that had come alive in his legs: he
did not know that they moved. But as he ran he grew able to run--gained
courage at least to be a coward. The stars gave a little light. Over the
grass he sped, and nothing followed him. "How fallen, how changed," from
the youth who had climbed the hill as the sun went down! A mere contempt
of himself, the self that contemned was a coward with the self it
contemned! There lay the shapeless black of a buffalo, humped upon the
grass: he made a wide circuit, and swept on like a shadow driven in the
wind. For the wind had arisen, and added to his terror: it blew from
behind him. He reached the brow of the valley, and shot down the steep
descent like a falling star. Instantly the whole upper country behind
him arose and pursued him! The wind came howling after him, filled with
screams, shrieks, yells, roars, laughter, and chattering, as if all the
animals of the forest were careering with it. In his ears was a
trampling rush, the thunder of the hoofs of the cattle, in career from
every quarter of the wide plains to the brow of the hill above him! He
fled straight for the castle, scarcely with breath enough to pant.
As he reached the bottom of the valley, the moon peered up over its
edge. He had never seen the moon before--except in the daytime, when he
had taken her for a thin bright cloud. She was a fresh terror to him--so
ghostly! so ghastly! so grewsome!--so knowing as she looked over the top
of her garden wall upon the world outside! That was the night itself!
the darkness alive--and after him! the horror of horrors coming down the
sky to curdle his blood, and turn his brain to a cinder! He gave a sob,
and made straight for the river, where it ran between the two walls, at
the bottom of the garden. He plunged in, struggled through, clambered up
the bank, and fell senseless on the grass.