So it came about that I stayed with our island party, putting off my
second exploring trip from day to day, and I think that this far-fetched
instinct to watch Sangree was really the cause of my postponement.
For another ten days the life of the Camp pursued its even and
delightful way, blessed by perfect summer weather, a good harvest of
fish, fine winds for sailing, and calm, starry nights. Maloney's selfish
prayer had been favourably received. Nothing came to disturb or perplex.
There was not even the prowling of night animals to vex the rest of Mrs.
Maloney; for in previous camps it had often been her peculiar affliction
that she heard the porcupines scratching against the canvas, or the
squirrels dropping fir-cones in the early morning with a sound of
miniature thunder upon the roof of her tent. But on this island there
was not even a squirrel or a mouse. I think two toads and a small and
harmless snake were the only living creatures that had been discovered
during the whole of the first fortnight. And these two toads in all
probability were not two toads, but one toad.
Then, suddenly, came the terror that changed the whole aspect of the
place--the devastating terror.
It came, at first, gently, but from the very start it made me realise
the unpleasant loneliness of our situation, our remote isolation in this
wilderness of sea and rock, and how the islands in this tideless Baltic
ocean lay about us like the advance guard of a vast besieging army. Its
entry, as I say, was gentle, hardly noticeable, in fact, to most of us:
singularly undramatic it certainly was. But, then, in actual life this
is often the way the dreadful climaxes move upon us, leaving the heart
undisturbed almost to the last minute, and then overwhelming it with a
sudden rush of horror. For it was the custom at breakfast to listen
patiently while each in turn related the trivial adventures of the
night--how they slept, whether the wind shook their tent, whether the
spider on the ridge pole had moved, whether they had heard the toad, and
so forth--and on this particular morning Joan, in the middle of a little
pause, made a truly novel announcement:
"In the night I heard the howling of a dog," she said, and then flushed
up to the roots of her hair when we burst out laughing. For the idea of
there being a dog on this forsaken island that was only able to support
a snake and two toads was distinctly ludicrous, and I remember Maloney,
half-way through his burnt porridge, capping the announcement by
declaring that he had heard a "Baltic turtle" in the lagoon, and his
wife's expression of frantic alarm before the laughter undeceived her.
But the next morning Joan repeated the story with additional and
convincing detail.
"Sounds of whining and growling woke me," she said, "and I distinctly
heard sniffing under my tent, and the scratching of paws."
"Oh, Timothy! Can it be a porcupine?" exclaimed the Bo'sun's Mate with
distress, forgetting that Sweden was not Canada.
But the girl's voice had sounded to me in quite another key, and looking
up I saw that her father and Sangree were staring at her hard. They,
too, understood that she was in earnest, and had been struck by the
serious note in her voice.
"Rubbish, Joan! You are always dreaming something or other wild," her
father said a little impatiently.
"There's not an animal of any size on the whole island," added Sangree
with a puzzled expression. He never took his eyes from her face.
"But there's nothing to prevent one swimming over," I put in briskly,
for somehow a sense of uneasiness that was not pleasant had woven itself
into the talk and pauses. "A deer, for instance, might easily land in
the night and take a look round--"
"Or a bear!" gasped the Bo'sun's Mate, with a look so portentous that we
all welcomed the laugh.
But Joan did not laugh. Instead, she sprang up and called to us to
follow.
"There," she said, pointing to the ground by her tent on the side farthest
from her mother's; "there are the marks close to my head. You can
see for yourselves."
We saw plainly. The moss and lichen--for earth there was hardly any--had
been scratched up by paws. An animal about the size of a large dog it
must have been, to judge by the marks. We stood and stared in a row.
"Close to my head," repeated the girl, looking round at us. Her face, I
noticed, was very pale, and her lip seemed to quiver for an instant.
Then she gave a sudden gulp--and burst into a flood of tears.
The whole thing had come about in the brief space of a few minutes, and
with a curious sense of inevitableness, moreover, as though it had all
been carefully planned from all time and nothing could have stopped it.
It had all been rehearsed before--had actually happened before, as the
strange feeling sometimes has it; it seemed like the opening movement in
some ominous drama, and that I knew exactly what would happen next.
Something of great moment was impending.
For this sinister sensation of coming disaster made itself felt from the
very beginning, and an atmosphere of gloom and dismay pervaded the
entire Camp from that moment forward.
I drew Sangree to one side and moved away, while Maloney took the
distressed girl into her tent, and his wife followed them, energetic and
greatly flustered.
For thus, in undramatic fashion, it was that the terror I have spoken of
first attempted the invasion of our Camp, and, trivial and unimportant
though it seemed, every little detail of this opening scene is
photographed upon my mind with merciless accuracy and precision. It
happened exactly as described. This was exactly the language used. I see
it written before me in black and white. I see, too, the faces of all
concerned with the sudden ugly signature of alarm where before had been
peace. The terror had stretched out, so to speak, a first tentative
feeler toward us and had touched the hearts of each with a horrid
directness. And from this moment the Camp changed.
Sangree in particular was visibly upset. He could not bear to see the
girl distressed, and to hear her actually cry was almost more than he
could stand. The feeling that he had no right to protect her hurt him
keenly, and I could see that he was itching to do something to help, and
liked him for it. His expression said plainly that he would tear in a
thousand pieces anything that dared to injure a hair of her head.
We lit our pipes and strolled over in silence to the men's quarters, and
it was his odd Canadian expression "Gee whiz!" that drew my attention to
a further discovery.
"The brute's been scratching round my tent too," he cried, as he pointed
to similar marks by the door and I stooped down to examine them. We both
stared in amazement for several minutes without speaking.
"Only I sleep like the dead," he added, straightening up again, "and so
heard nothing, I suppose."
We traced the paw-marks from the mouth of his tent in a direct line
across to the girl's, but nowhere else about the Camp was there a sign
of the strange visitor. The deer, dog, or whatever it was that had twice
favoured us with a visit in the night, had confined its attentions to
these two tents. And, after all, there was really nothing out of the way
about these visits of an unknown animal, for although our own island was
destitute of life, we were in the heart of a wilderness, and the
mainland and larger islands must be swarming with all kinds of
four-footed creatures, and no very prolonged swimming was necessary to
reach us. In any other country it would not have caused a moment's
interest--interest of the kind we felt, that is. In our Canadian camps
the bears were for ever grunting about among the provision bags at
night, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and chipmunks scuttling over
everything.
"My daughter is overtired, and that's the truth of it," explained
Maloney presently when he rejoined us and had examined in turn the other
paw-marks. "She's been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you know,
always means a great excitement to her. It's natural enough, if we take
no notice she'll be all right." He paused to borrow my tobacco pouch and
fill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and spilled the
precious weed on the ground visibly belied the calm of his easy
language. "You might take her out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard, like a
good chap; she's hardly up to the long day in the cutter. Show her some
of the other islands in your canoe, perhaps. Eh?"
And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as suddenly, and as
suspiciously, as it had come.
But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then purposely ignored
the subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a way
that again touched the note of sinister alarm--the note that kept on
sounding and sounding until finally John Silence came with his great
vibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too,
for a while.
"I'm ashamed to ask it," she said abruptly, as she steered me home, her
sleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, "and ashamed of my
silly tears too, because I really can't make out what caused them; but,
Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go off for your long
expeditions--just yet. I beg it of you." She was so in earnest that she
forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us roll
dangerously. "I have tried hard not to ask this," she added, bringing
the canoe round again, "but I simply can't help myself."
It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesitation was plain; for
she went on before I could reply, and her beseeching expression and
intensity of manner impressed me very forcibly.
"For another two weeks only--"
"Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight," I said, seeing at once what she was
driving at, but wondering if it was best to encourage her or not.
"If I knew you were to be on the island till then," she said, her face
alternately pale and blushing, and her voice trembling a little, "I
should feel so much happier."