"And safer," she added almost in a whisper; "especially--at night, I
mean."
"Safer, Joan?" I repeated, thinking I had never seen her eyes so soft
and tender. She nodded her head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face.
It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my thoughts and judgment may
have been, and somehow I understood that she spoke with good reason,
though for the life of me I could not have put it into words.
"Happier--and safer," she said gravely, the canoe giving a dangerous
lurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my answer. Perhaps,
after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and make light of it,
easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its cause.
"All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise," and the instant look
of relief in her face, and the smile that came back like sunlight to her
eyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was capable
of considerable sacrifice after all.
"But, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of," I added sharply; and
she looked up in my face with the smile women use when they know we are
talking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so.
"_You_ don't feel afraid, I know," she observed quietly.
"Of course not; why should I?"
"So, if you will just humour me this once I--I will never ask anything
foolish of you again as long as I live," she said gratefully.
"You have my promise," was all I could find to say.
She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon lying a quarter of a
mile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or two later she paused
again and stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across the thwarts.
"You've not heard anything at night yourself, have you?" she asked.
"I never hear anything at night," I replied shortly, "from the moment I
lie down till the moment I get up."
"That dismal howling, for instance," she went on, determined to get it
out, "far away at first and then getting closer, and stopping just
outside the Camp?"
"Certainly not."
"Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it."
"Most likely you did," was my unsympathetic response.
"And you don't think father has heard it either, then?"
"No. He would have told me if he had."
This seemed to relieve her mind a little. "I know mother hasn't," she
added, as if speaking to herself, "for she hears nothing--ever."
* * * * *
It was two nights after this conversation that I woke out of deep sleep
and heard sounds of screaming. The voice was really horrible, breaking
the peace and silence with its shrill clamour. In less than ten seconds
I was half dressed and out of my tent. The screaming had stopped
abruptly, but I knew the general direction, and ran as fast as the
darkness would allow over to the women's quarters, and on getting close
I heard sounds of suppressed weeping. It was Joan's voice. And just as I
came up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling with a
lantern. Other voices became audible in the same moment behind me, and
Timothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed, and
carrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being banged
against a tree. Dawn was just breaking, and a chill wind blew in from
the sea. Heavy black clouds drove low overhead.
The scene of confusion may be better imagined than described. Questions
in frightened voices filled the air against this background of
suppressed weeping. Briefly--Joan's silk tent had been torn, and the
girl was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat reassured by our
noisy presence, however,--for she was plucky at heart,--she pulled
herself together and tried to explain what had happened; and her broken
words, told there on the edge of night and morning upon this wild island
ridge, were oddly thrilling and distressingly convincing.
"Something touched me and I woke," she said simply, but in a voice
still hushed and broken with the terror of it, "something pushing
against the tent; I felt it through the canvas. There was the same
sniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent give a little as
when wind shakes it. I heard breathing--very loud, very heavy
breathing--and then came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvas
ripped open close to my face."
She had instantly dashed out through the open flap and screamed at the
top of her voice, thinking the creature had actually got into the tent.
But nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not the faintest
sound of an animal making off under cover of the darkness. The brief
account seemed to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all as we
listened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this day, the wind
blowing the women's hair, and Maloney craning his head forward to
listen, and his wife, open-mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pine
tree.
"Come over to the stockade and we'll get the fire going," I said;
"that's the first thing," for we were all shaking with the cold in our
scanty garments. And at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a blanket
and carrying his gun; he was still drunken with sleep.
"The dog again," Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions;
"been at Joan's tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It's time we did
something." He went on mumbling confusedly to himself.
Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly in the darkness. I saw
his eyes aflame in the glare of the flickering lanterns. He made a
movement as though to start out and hunt--and kill. Then his glance fell
on the girl crouching on the ground, her face hidden in her hands, and
there leaped into his features an expression of savage anger that
transformed them. He could have faced a dozen lions with a walking stick
at that moment, and again I liked him for the strength of his anger, his
self-control, and his hopeless devotion.
But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless chase.
"Come and help me start the fire, Sangree," I said, anxious also to
relieve the girl of our presence; and a few minutes later the ashes,
still growing from the night's fire, had kindled the fresh wood, and
there was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up the
surrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards.
"I heard nothing," he whispered; "what in the world do you think it is?
It surely can't be only a dog!"
"We'll find that out later," I said, as the others came up to the
grateful warmth; "the first thing is to make as big a fire as we can."
Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on some warmer, and less
miraculous, garments. And while they stood talking in low voices
Maloney and I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little enough
to see, but that little was unmistakable. Some animal had scratched up
the ground at the head of the tent, and with a great blow of a powerful
paw--a paw clearly provided with good claws--had struck the silk and
torn it open. There was a hole large enough to pass a fist and arm
through.
"It can't be far away," Maloney said excitedly. "We'll organise a hunt
at once; this very minute."
We hurried back to the fire, Maloney talking boisterously about his
proposed hunt. "There's nothing like prompt action to dispel alarm," he
whispered in my ear; and then turned to the rest of us.
"We'll hunt the island from end to end at once," he said, with
excitement; "that's what we'll do. The beast can't be far away. And the
Bo'sun's Mate and Joan must come too, because they can't be left alone.
Hubbard, you take the right shore, and you, Sangree, the left, and I'll
go in the middle with the women. In this way we can stretch clean across
the ridge, and nothing bigger than a rabbit can possibly escape us." He
was extraordinarily excited, I thought. Anything affecting Joan, of
course, stirred him prodigiously. "Get your guns and we'll start the
drive at once," he cried. He lit another lantern and handed one each to
his wife and Joan, and while I ran to fetch my gun I heard him singing
to himself with the excitement of it all.
Meanwhile the dawn had come on quickly. It made the flickering lanterns
look pale. The wind, too, was rising, and I heard the trees moaning
overhead and the waves breaking with increasing clamour on the shore. In
the lagoon the boat dipped and splashed, and the sparks from the fire
were carried aloft in a stream and scattered far and wide.
We made our way to the extreme end of the island, measured our distances
carefully, and then began to advance. None of us spoke. Sangree and I,
with cocked guns, watched the shore lines, and all within easy touch and
speaking distance. It was a slow and blundering drive, and there were
many false alarms, but after the best part of half an hour we stood on
the farther end, having made the complete tour, and without putting up
so much as a squirrel. Certainly there was no living creature on that
island but ourselves.
"I know what it is!" cried Maloney, looking out over the dim expanse of
grey sea, and speaking with the air of a man making a discovery; "it's a
dog from one of the farms on the larger islands"--he pointed seawards
where the archipelago thickened--"and it's escaped and turned wild. Our
fires and voices attracted it, and it's probably half starved as well as
savage, poor brute!"
No one said anything in reply, and he began to sing again very low to
himself.
The point where we stood--a huddled, shivering group--faced the wider
channels that led to the open sea and Finland. The grey dawn had broken
in earnest at last, and we could see the racing waves with their angry
crests of white. The surrounding islands showed up as dark masses in the
distance, and in the east, almost as Maloney spoke, the sun came up with
a rush in a stormy and magnificent sky of red and gold. Against this
splashed and gorgeous background black clouds, shaped like fantastic and
legendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing stream, and to this
day I have only to close my eyes to see again that vivid and hurrying
procession in the air. All about us the pines made black splashes
against the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, indeed, had already
begun to fall in big drops.
We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our way
back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs,
Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment's notice,
and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the extinguished
lanterns.
Yet it was only a dog!
Really, it was most singular when one came to reflect soberly upon it
all. Events, say the occultists, have souls, or at least that
agglomerate life due to the emotions and thoughts of all concerned in
them, so that cities, and even whole countries, have great astral shapes
which may become visible to the eye of vision; and certainly here, the
soul of this drive--this vain, blundering, futile drive--stood somewhere
between ourselves and--laughed.
All of us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the
sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and
with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible
against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might
so easily conceal itself from us, or swim away before we had time to
light upon its trail. For we all spoke of that "trail" as though it
really existed, and we had more to go upon than the mere marks of paws
about the tents of Joan and the Canadian. Indeed, but for these, and the
torn tent, I think it would, of course, have been possible to ignore the
existence of this beast intruder altogether.
And it was here, under this angry dawn, as we stood in the shelter of
the stockade from the pouring rain, weary yet so strangely excited--it
was here, out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that--very
stealthily--the ghost of something horrible slipped in and stood among
us. It made all our explanations seem childish and untrue; the false
relation was instantly exposed. Eyes exchanged quick, anxious glances,
questioning, expressive of dismay. There was a sense of wonder, of
poignant distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting at our
elbows. We shivered.
Then, suddenly, as we looked into each other's faces, came the long,
unwelcome pause in which this new arrival established itself in our
hearts.
And, without further speech, or attempt at explanation, Maloney moved
off abruptly to mix the porridge for an early breakfast; Sangree to
clean the fish; myself to chop wood and tend the fire; Joan and her
mother to change their wet garments; and, most significant of all, to
prepare her mother's tent for its future complement of two.
Each went to his duty, but hurriedly, awkwardly, silently; and this new
arrival, this shape of terror and distress stalked, viewless, by the
side of each.
"If only I could have traced that dog," I think was the thought in the
minds of all.
But in Camp, where every one realises how important the individual
contribution is to the comfort and well-being of all, the mind speedily
recovers tone and pulls itself together.
During the day, a day of heavy and ceaseless rain, we kept more or less
to our tents, and though there were signs of mysterious conferences
between the three members of the Maloney family, I think that most of us
slept a good deal and stayed alone with his thoughts. Certainly, I did,
because when Maloney came to say that his wife invited us all to a
special "tea" in her tent, he had to shake me awake before I realised
that he was there at all.
And by supper-time we were more or less even-minded again, and almost
jolly. I only noticed that there was an undercurrent of what is best
described as "jumpiness," and that the merest snapping of a twig, or
plop of a fish in the lagoon, was sufficient to make us start and look
over our shoulders. Pauses were rare in our talk, and the fire was never
for one instant allowed to get low. The wind and rain had ceased, but
the dripping of the branches still kept up an excellent imitation of a
downpour. In particular, Maloney was vigilant and alert, telling us a
series of tales in which the wholesome humorous element was especially
strong. He lingered, too, behind with me after Sangree had gone to bed,
and while I mixed myself a glass of hot Swedish punch, he did a thing I
had never known him do before--he mixed one for himself, and then asked
me to light him over to his tent. We said nothing on the way, but I felt
that he was glad of my companionship.
I returned alone to the stockade, and for a long time after that kept
the fire blazing, and sat up smoking and thinking. I hardly knew why;
but sleep was far from me for one thing, and for another, an idea was
taking form in my mind that required the comfort of tobacco and a
bright fire for its growth. I lay against a corner of the stockade
seat, listening to the wind whispering and to the ceaseless drip-drip of
the trees. The night, otherwise, was very still, and the sea quiet as a
lake. I remember that I was conscious, peculiarly conscious, of this
host of desolate islands crowding about us in the darkness, and that we
were the one little spot of humanity in a rather wonderful kind of
wilderness.
But this, I think, was the only symptom that came to warn me of highly
strung nerves, and it certainly was not sufficiently alarming to destroy
my peace of mind. One thing, however, did come to disturb my peace, for
just as I finally made ready to go, and had kicked the embers of the
fire into a last effort, I fancied I saw, peering at me round the
farther end of the stockade wall, a dark and shadowy mass that might
have been--that strongly resembled, in fact--the body of a large animal.
Two glowing eyes shone for an instant in the middle of it. But the next
second I saw that it was merely a projecting mass of moss and lichen in
the wall of our stockade, and the eyes were a couple of wandering sparks
from the dying ashes I had kicked. It was easy enough, too, to imagine I
saw an animal moving here and there between the trees, as I picked my
way stealthily to my tent. Of course, the shadows tricked me.
And though it was after one o'clock, Maloney's light was still burning,
for I saw his tent shining white among the pines.
It was, however, in the short space between consciousness and
sleep--that time when the body is low and the voices of the submerged
region tell sometimes true--that the idea which had been all this while
maturing reached the point of an actual decision, and I suddenly
realised that I had resolved to send word to Dr. Silence. For, with a
sudden wonder that I had hitherto been so blind, the unwelcome
conviction dawned upon me all at once that some dreadful thing was
lurking about us on this island, and that the safety of at least one of
us was threatened by something monstrous and unclean that was too
horrible to contemplate. And, again remembering those last words of his
as the train moved out of the platform, I understood that Dr. Silence
would hold himself in readiness to come.
"Unless you should send for me sooner," he had said.
* * * * *
I found myself suddenly wide awake. It is impossible to say what woke
me, but it was no gradual process, seeing that I jumped from deep sleep
to absolute alertness in a single instant. I had evidently slept for an
hour and more, for the night had cleared, stars crowded the sky, and a
pallid half-moon just sinking into the sea threw a spectral light
between the trees.
I went outside to sniff the air, and stood upright. A curious
impression that something was astir in the Camp came over me, and when I
glanced across at Sangree's tent, some twenty feet away, I saw that it
was moving. He too, then, was awake and restless, for I saw the canvas
sides bulge this way and that as he moved within.
The flap pushed forward. He was coming out, like myself, to sniff
the air; and I was not surprised, for its sweetness after the rain was
intoxicating. And he came on all fours, just as I had done. I saw a head
thrust round the edge of the tent.
And then I saw that it was not Sangree at all. It was an animal. And the
same instant I realised something else too--it was _the_ animal; and its
whole presentment for some unaccountable reason was unutterably malefic.
A cry I was quite unable to suppress escaped me, and the creature turned
on the instant and stared at me with baleful eyes. I could have dropped
on the spot, for the strength all ran out of my body with a rush.
Something about it touched in me the living terror that grips and
paralyses. If the mind requires but the tenth of a second to form an
impression, I must have stood there stockstill for several seconds while
I seized the ropes for support and stared. Many and vivid impressions
flashed through my mind, but not one of them resulted in action, because
I was in instant dread that the beast any moment would leap in my
direction and be upon me. Instead, however, after what seemed a vast
period, it slowly turned its eyes from my face, uttered a low whining
sound, and came out altogether into the open.
Then, for the first time, I saw it in its entirety and noted two things:
it was about the size of a large dog, but at the same time it was
utterly unlike any animal that I had ever seen. Also, that the quality
that had impressed me first as being malefic was really only its
singular and original strangeness. Foolish as it may sound, and
impossible as it is for me to adduce proof, I can only say that the
animal seemed to me then to be--not real.
But all this passed through my mind in a flash, almost subconsciously,
and before I had time to check my impressions, or even properly verify
them, I made an involuntary movement, catching the tight rope in my hand
so that it twanged like a banjo string, and in that instant the creature
turned the corner of Sangree's tent and was gone into the darkness.
Then, of course, my senses in some measure returned to me, and I
realised only one thing: it had been inside his tent!
I dashed out, reached the door in half a dozen strides, and looked in.
The Canadian, thank God! lay upon his bed of branches. His arm was
stretched outside, across the blankets, the fist tightly clenched, and
the body had an appearance of unusual rigidity that was alarming. On his
face there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort, so far
as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to be
very profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, and
in some indefinable way, too, he looked smaller--shrunken.
I called to him to wake, but called many times in vain. Then I decided
to shake him, and had already moved forward to do so vigorously when
there came a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I felt a
stream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped. I turned sharply. The
tent door was darkened and something silently swept in. I felt a rough
and shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal had returned. It
seemed to leap forward between me and Sangree--in fact, to leap upon
Sangree, for its dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in that
moment my soul turned sick and coward with a horror that rose from the
very dregs and depths of life, and gripped my existence at its central
source.
The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though it
belonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the same
instant--that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in my
mind--it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterly
unaccountable fashion, it was gone. And the Canadian woke and sat up
with a start.
"Quick! You fool!" I cried, in my excitement, "the beast has been in
your tent, here at your very throat while you sleep like the dead. Up,
man! Get your gun! Only this second it disappeared over there behind
your head. Quick! or Joan--!"
And somehow the fact that he was there, wide-awake now, to corroborate
me, brought the additional conviction to my own mind that this was no
animal, but some perplexing and dreadful form of life that drew upon my
deeper knowledge, that much reading had perhaps assented to, but that
had never yet come within actual range of my senses.
He was up in a flash, and out. He was trembling, and very white. We
searched hurriedly, feverishly, but found only the traces of paw-marks
passing from the door of his own tent across the moss to the women's.
And the sight of the tracks about Mrs. Maloney's tent, where Joan now
slept, set him in a perfect fury.
"Do you know what it is, Hubbard, this beast?" he hissed under his
breath at me; "it's a damned wolf, that's what it is--a wolf lost among
the islands, and starving to death--desperate. So help me God, I believe
it's that!"
He talked a lot of rubbish in his excitement. He declared he would
sleep by day and sit up every night until he killed it. Again his rage
touched my admiration; but I got him away before he made enough noise to
wake the whole Camp.
"I have a better plan than that," I said, watching his face closely. "I
don't think this is anything we can deal with. I'm going to send for the
only man I know who can help. We'll go to Waxholm this very morning and
get a telegram through."
Sangree stared at me with a curious expression as the fury died out of
his face and a new look of alarm took its place.
"John Silence," I said, "will know--"
"You think it's something--of that sort?" he stammered.
"I am sure of it."
There was a moment's pause. "That's worse, far worse than anything
material," he said, turning visibly paler. He looked from my face to the
sky, and then added with sudden resolution, "Come; the wind's rising.
Let's get off at once. From there you can telephone to Stockholm and get
a telegram sent without delay."
I sent him down to get the boat ready, and seized the opportunity myself
to run and wake Maloney. He was sleeping very lightly, and sprang up the
moment I put my head inside his tent. I told him briefly what I had
seen, and he showed so little surprise that I caught myself wondering
for the first time whether he himself had seen more going on than he had
deemed wise to communicate to the rest of us.
He agreed to my plan without a moment's hesitation, and my last words to
him were to let his wife and daughter think that the great psychic
doctor was coming merely as a chance visitor, and not with any
professional interest.
So, with frying-pan, provisions, and blankets aboard, Sangree and I
sailed out of the lagoon fifteen minutes later, and headed with a good
breeze for the direction of Waxholm and the borders of civilisation.