Peter took me north, alone, on six successive trips. We had rain, we had
snow, we had mud, and hard-frozen ground. It took us four, it took us
six, it took us on one occasion--after a heavy October snowfall--nearly
eleven hours to make the trip. That last adventure decided me. It was
unavoidable that I should buy a second horse. The roads were getting
too heavy for single driving over such a distance. This time I wanted a
horse that I could sell in the spring to a farmer for any kind of work
on the land. I looked around for a while. Then I found Dan. He was a
sorrel, with some Clyde blood in him. He looked a veritable skate of a
horse. You could lay your fingers between his ribs, and he played out
on the first trip I ever made with this newly-assembled, strange-looking
team. But when I look back at that winter, I cannot but say that again
I chose well. After I had fed him up, he did the work in a thoroughly
satisfactory manner, and he learnt to know the road far better than
Peter. Several times I should have been lost without his unerring road
sense. In the spring I sold him for exactly what I had paid; the farmer
who bought him has him to this very day [Footnote: Spring, 1919.] and
says he never had a better horse.
I also had found that on moonless nights it was indispensable for me to
have lights along. Now maybe the reader has already noticed that I am
rather a thorough-going person. For a week I worked every day after four
at my buggy and finally had a blacksmith put on the finishing touches.
What I rigged up, was as follows: On the front springs I fastened with
clamps two upright iron supports; between them with thumbscrews the
searchlight of a wrecked steam tractor which I got for a “Thank-you”
from a junk-pile. Into the buggy box I laid a borrowed acetylene
gas tank, strapped down with two bands of galvanized tin. I made the
connection by a stout rubber tube, “guaranteed not to harden in the
severest weather.” To the side of the box I attached a short piece of
bandiron, bent at an angle, so that a bicycle lamp could be slipped over
it. Against the case that I should need a handlight, I carried besides
a so-called dashboard coal-oil lantern with me. With all lamps going, it
must have been a strange outfit to look at from a distance in the dark.
I travelled by this time in fur coat and cap, and I carried a robe for
myself and blankets for the horses, for I now fed them on the road soon
after crossing the creek.
Now on the second Friday of November there had been a smell of smoke in
the air from the early morning. The marsh up north was afire--as it had
been off and on for a matter of twenty-odd years. The fire consumes
on the surface everything that will burn; the ground cools down, a new
vegetation springs up, and nobody would suspect--as there is nothing to
indicate--that only a few feet below the heat lingers, ready to leap up
again if given the opportunity In this case I was told that a man had
started to dig a well on a newly filed claim, and that suddenly he found
himself wrapped about in smoke and flames. I cannot vouch for the truth
of this, but I can vouch for the fact that the smoke of the fire was
smelt for forty miles north and that in the afternoon a combination
of this smoke (probably furnishing “condensation nuclei”) and of the
moisture in the air, somewhere along or above the lake brought about
the densest fog I had ever seen on the prairies. How it spread, I shall
discuss later on. To give an idea of its density I will mention right
here that on the well travelled road between two important towns a man
abandoned his car during the early part of the night because he lost his
nerve when his lights could no longer penetrate the fog sufficiently to
reach the road.
I was warned at noon. “You surely do not intend to go out to-night?”
remarked a lawyer-acquaintance to me at the dinner table in the hotel;
for by telephone from lake-points reports of the fog had already reached
the town. “I intend to leave word at the stable right now,” I replied,
“to have team and buggy in front of the school at four o’clock.” “Well,”
said the lawyer in getting up, “I would not; you’ll run into fog.”
And into fog I did run. At this time of the year I had at best only a
little over an hour’s start in my race against darkness. I always drove
my horses hard now while daylight lasted; I demanded from them their
very best strength at the start. Then, till we reached the last clear
road over the dam, I spared them as much as I could. I had met up with a
few things in the dark by now, and I had learned, if a difficulty arose,
how much easier it is to cope with it even in failing twilight than by
the gleam of lantern or headlight; for the latter never illumine more
than a limited spot.
So I had turned Bell’s corner by the time I hit the fog. I saw it in
front and to the right. It drew a slanting line across the road. There
it stood like a wall. Not a breath seemed to be stirring. The fog,
from a distance, appeared to rise like a cliff, quite smoothly, and it
blotted out the world beyond. When I approached it, I saw that its face
was not so smooth as it had appeared from half a mile back; nor was it
motionless. In fact, it was rolling south and west like a wave of great
viscosity. Though my senses failed to perceive the slightest breath of a
breeze, the fog was brewing and whirling, and huge spheres seemed to be
forming in it, and to roll forward, slowly, and sometimes to recede, as
if they had encountered an obstacle and rebounded clumsily. I had seen
a tidal wave, fifty or more feet high, sweep up the “bore” of a river
at the head of the Bay of Fundy. I was reminded of the sight; but here
everything seemed to proceed in a strangely, weirdly leisurely
way. There was none of that rush, of that hurry about this fog that
characterizes water. Besides there seemed to be no end to the wave
above; it reached up as far as your eye could see--now bulging in, now
out, but always advancing. It was not so slow however, as for the moment
I judged it to be; for I was later on told that it reached the town at
about six o’clock. And here I was, at five, six and a half miles from
its limits as the crow flies.
I had hardly time to take in the details that I have described before I
was enveloped in the folds of the fog. I mean this quite literally, for
I am firmly convinced that an onlooker from behind would have seen the
grey masses fold in like a sheet when I drove against them. It must have
looked as if a driver were driving against a canvas moving in a slight
breeze--canvas light and loose enough to be held in place by the
resistance of the air so as to enclose him. Or maybe I should say
“veiling” instead of canvas--or something still lighter and airier.
Have you ever seen milk poured carefully down the side of a glass vessel
filled with water? Well, clear air and fog seemed to behave towards
each other pretty much the same way as milk in that case behaves towards
water.
I am rather emphatic about this because I have made a study of just such
mists on a very much smaller scale. In that northern country where my
wife taught her school and where I was to live for nearly two years as
a convalescent, the hollows of the ground on clear cold summer nights,
when the mercury dipped down close to the freezing point, would
sometimes fill with a white mist of extraordinary density. Occasionally
this mist would go on forming in higher and higher layers by
condensation; mostly however, it seemed rather to come from below.
But always, when it was really dense, there was a definite plane of
demarcation. In fact, that was the criterion by which I recognised this
peculiar mist. Mostly there is, even in the north, a layer of lesser
density over the pools, gradually shading off into the clear air above.
Nothing of what I am going to describe can be observed in that case.
One summer, when I was living not over two miles from the lakeshore, I
used to go down to these pools whenever they formed in the right way;
and when I approached them slowly and carefully, I could dip my hand
into the mist as into water, and I could feel the coolness of the
misty layers. It was not because my hand got moist, for it did not. No
evaporation was going on there, nor any condensation either. Nor did
noticeable bubbles form because there was no motion in the mass which
might have caused the infinitesimal droplets to collide and to coalesce
into something perceivable to my senses.
Once, of a full-moon night, I spent an hour getting into a pool like
that, and when I looked down at my feet, I could not see them. But after
I had been standing in it for a while, ten minutes maybe, a clear space
had formed around my body, and I could see the ground. The heat of my
body helped the air to redissolve the mist into steam. And as I watched,
I noticed that a current was set up. The mist was continually flowing
in towards my feet and legs where the body-heat was least. And where
evaporation proceeded fastest, that is at the height of my waist, little
wisps of mist would detach themselves from the side of the funnel of
clear air in which I stood, and they would, in a slow, graceful motion,
accelerated somewhat towards the last, describe a downward and inward
curve towards the lower part of my body before they dissolved. I thought
of that elusive and yet clearly defined layer of mist that forms in
the plane of contact between the cold air flowing from Mammoth Cave
in Kentucky and the ambient air of a sultry summer day. [Footnote: See
Burroughs’ wonderful description of this phenomenon in “Riverby.”]
On another of the rare occasions when the mists had formed in the
necessary density I went out again, put a stone in my pocket and took a
dog along. I approached a shallow mist pool with the greatest caution.
The dog crouched low, apparently thinking that I was stalking some game.
Then, when I had arrived within about ten or fifteen yards from the edge
of the pool, I took the stone from my pocket, showed it to the dog, and
threw it across the pool as fast and as far as I could. The dog dashed
in and tore through the sheet. Where the impact of his body came, the
mist bulged in, then broke. For a while there were two sheets, separated
by a more or less clearly defined, vertical layer of transparency
or maybe blackness rather. The two sheets were in violent commotion,
approaching, impinging upon each other, swinging back again to complete
separation, and so on. But the violence of the motion consisted by
no means in speed: it suggested a very much retarded rolling off of a
motion picture reel. There was at first an element of disillusion in the
impression. I felt tempted to shout and to spur the mist into greater
activity. On the surface, to both sides of the tear, waves ran out, and
at the edges of the pool they rose in that same leisurely, stately
way which struck me as one of the most characteristic features of that
November mist; and at last it seemed as if they reared and reached up,
very slowly as a dying man may stand up once more before he falls. And
only after an interval that seemed unconscionably long to me the whole
pool settled back to comparative smoothness, though without its definite
plane of demarcation now. Strange to say, the dog had actually started
something, a rabbit maybe or a jumping deer, and did not return.
When fogs spread, as a rule they do so in air already saturated with
moisture. What really spreads, is the cold air which by mixing with,
and thereby cooling, the warmer, moisture-laden atmosphere causes
the condensation. That is why our fall mists mostly are formed in an
exceedingly slight but still noticeable breeze. But in the case of these
northern mist pools, whenever the conditions are favourable for their
formation, the moisture of the upper air seems to be pretty well
condensed as dew It is only in the hollows of the ground that it remains
suspended in this curious way. I cannot, so far, say whether it is due
to the fact that where radiation is largely thrown back upon the walls
of the hollow, the fall in temperature at first is very much slower
than in the open, thus enabling the moisture to remain in suspension; or
whether the hollows serve as collecting reservoirs for the cold air
from the surrounding territory--the air carrying the already condensed
moisture with it; or whether, lastly, it is simply due to a greater
saturation of the atmosphere in these cavities, consequent upon the
greater approach of their bottom to the level of the ground water. I
have seen a “waterfall” of this mist overflow from a dent in the edge of
ground that contained a pool. That seems to argue for an origin similar
to that of a spring; as if strongly moisture-laden air welled up from
underground, condensing its steam as it got chilled. It is these strange
phenomena that are familiar, too, in the northern plains of Europe which
must have given rise to the belief in elves and other weird creations of
the brain--“the earth has bubbles as the water has”--not half as weird,
though, as some realities are in the land which I love.
Now this great, memorable fog of that November Friday shared the nature
of the mist pools of the north in as much as to a certain extent it
refused to mingle with the drier and slightly warmer air into which it
travelled. It was different from them in as much as it fairly dripped
and oozed with a very palpable wetness. Just how it displaced the air in
its path, is something which I cannot with certainty say. Was it formed
as a low layer somewhere over the lake and slowly pushed along by a
gentle, imperceptible, fan-shaped current of air? Fan-shaped, I say;
for, as we shall see, it travelled simultaneously south and north; and
I must infer that in exactly the same way it travelled west. Or was it
formed originally like a tremendous column which flattened out by and
by, through its own greater gravity slowly displacing the lighter air in
the lower strata? I do not know, but I am inclined to accept the latter
explanation. I do know that it travelled at the rate of about six miles
an hour; and its coming was observed somewhat in detail by two other
observers besides myself--two people who lived twenty-five miles apart,
one to the north, one to the south of where I hit it. Neither one was as
much interested in things meteorological as I am, but both were struck
by the unusual density of the fog, and while one saw it coming from the
north, the other one saw it approaching from the south.
I have no doubt that at last it began to mingle with the clearer air and
to thin out; in fact, I have good testimony to that effect. And early
next morning it was blown by a wind like an ordinary fog-cloud all over
Portage Plains.
I also know that further north, at my home, for instance, it had the
smell of the smoke which could not have proceeded from anywhere but the
marsh; and the marsh lay to the south of it. That seemed to prove that
actually the mist was spreading from a common centre in at least two
directions. These points, which I gathered later, strongly confirmed my
own observations, which will be set down further on. It must, then,
have been formed as a layer of a very considerable height, to be able to
spread over so many square miles.
As I said, I was reminded of those mist pools in the north when I
approached the cliff of the fog, especially of that “waterfall” of mist
of which I spoke. But besides the difference in composition--the fog,
as we shall see, was not homogeneous, this being the cause of its
wetness--there was another important point of distinction. For, while
the mist of the pools is of the whitest white, this fog showed from the
outside and in the mass--the single wreaths seemed white enough--rather
the colour of that “wet, unbleached linen” of which Burroughs speaks in
connection with rain-clouds.
Now, as soon as I was well engulfed in the fog, I had a few surprises.
I could no longer see the road ahead; I could not see the fence along
which I had been driving; I saw the horses’ rumps, but I did not see
their heads. I bent forward over the dashboard: I could not even see
the ground below It was a series of negatives. I stopped the horses. I
listened--then looked at my watch. The stillness of the grave enveloped
me. It was a little past five o’clock. The silence was oppressive--the
misty impenetrability of the atmosphere was appalling. I do not say
“darkness,” for as yet it was not really dark. I could still see the
dial of my watch clearly enough to read the time. But darkness was
falling fast--“falling,” for it seemed to come from above: mostly it
rises--from out of the shadows under the trees--advancing, fighting back
the powers of light above.
One of the horses, I think it was Peter, coughed. It was plain they felt
chilly. I thought of my lights and started with stiffening fingers
to fumble at the valves of my gas tank. When reaching into my trouser
pockets for matches, I was struck with the astonishing degree to which
my furs had been soaked in these few minutes. As for wetness, the fog
was like a sponge. At last, kneeling in the buggy box, I got things
ready. I smelt the gas escaping from the burner of my bicycle lantern
and heard it hissing in the headlight. The problem arose of how to light
a match. I tried various places--without success. Even the seat of my
trousers proved disappointing. I got a sizzling and sputtering flame, it
is true, but it went out before I could apply it to the gas. The water
began to drip from the backs of my hands. It was no rain because it did
not fall. It merely floated along; but the droplets, though smaller,
were infinitely more numerous than in a rain--there were more of them
in a given space. At last I lifted the seat cushion under which I had a
tool box filled with ropes, leather straps and all manner of things that
I might ever be in need of during my nights in the open. There I found
a dry spot where to strike the needed match. I got the bicycle lantern
started. It burned quite well, and I rather admired it: unreasoningly
I seemed to have expected that it would not burn in so strange an
atmosphere. So I carefully rolled a sheet of letter paper into a fairly
tight roll, working with my back to the fog and under the shelter of my
big raccoon coat. I took a flame from the bicycle light and sheltered
and nursed it along till I thought it would stand the drizzle. Then I
turned and thrust the improvised torch into the bulky reflector case of
the searchlight. The result was startling. A flame eighteen inches high
leaped up with a crackling and hissing sound.
The horses bolted, and the buggy jumped. I was lucky, for inertia
carried me right back on the seat, and as soon as I had the lines in
my hands again, I felt that the horses did not really mean it. I do not
think we had gone more than two or three hundred yards before the team
was under control. I stopped and adjusted the overturned valves. When
I succeeded, I found to my disappointment that the heat of that first
flame had partly spoiled the reflector. Still, my range of vision now
extended to the belly-band in the horses’ harness. The light that used
to show me the road for about fifty feet in front of the horses’ heads
gave a short truncated cone of great luminosity, which was interesting
and looked reassuring; but it failed to reach the ground, for it was so
adjusted that the focus of the converging light rays lay ahead and not
below. Before, therefore, the point of greatest luminosity was reached,
the light was completely absorbed by the fog.
I got out of the buggy, went to the horses’ heads and patted their noses
which were dripping with wetness. But now that I faced the headlight,
I could see it though I had failed to see the horses’ heads when seated
behind it. This, too, was quite reassuring, for it meant that the horses
probably could see the ground even though I did not.
But where was I? I soon found out that we had shot off the trail. And to
which side? I looked at my watch again. Already the incident had cost me
half an hour. It was really dark by now, even outside the fog, for there
was no moon. I tried out how far I could get away from the buggy without
losing sight of the light. It was only a very few steps, not more than a
dozen. I tried to visualize where I had been when I struck the fog. And
fortunately my habit of observing the smallest details, even, if only
subconsciously, helped me out. I concluded that the horses had bolted
straight ahead, thus missing an s-shaped curve to the right.
At this moment I heard Peter paw the ground impatiently; so I quickly
returned to the horses, for I did not relish the idea of being left
alone. There was an air of impatience and nervousness about both of
them.
I took my bicycle lantern and reached for the lines. Then, standing
clear of the buggy, I turned the horses at right angles, to the north,
as I imagined it to be. When we started, I walked alongside the team
through dripping underbrush and held the lantern with my free hand close
down to the ground.
Two or three times I stopped during the next half hour, trying, since we
still did not strike the trail, to reason out a different course. I was
now wet through and through up to my knees; and I had repeatedly run
into willow-clumps, which did not tend to make me any drier either. At
last I became convinced that in bolting the horses must have swerved
a little to the south, so that in starting up again we had struck a
tangent to the big bend north, just beyond Bell’s farm. If that was
the case, we should have to make another turn to the right in order to
strike the road again, for at best we were then simply going parallel
to it. The trouble was that I had nothing to tell me the directions, not
even a tree the bark or moss of which might have vouchsafed information.
Suddenly I had an inspiration. Yes, the fog was coming from the
northeast! So, by observing the drift of the droplets I could find at
least an approximate meridian line. I went to the headlight, and an
observation immediately confirmed my conjecture. I was now convinced
that I was on that wild land where two months ago I had watched the
goldfinches disporting themselves in the evening sun. But so as not to
turn back to the south, I struck out at an angle of only about sixty
degrees to my former direction. I tried not to swerve, which involved
rough going, and I had many a stumble. Thus I walked for another half
hour or thereabout.
Then, certainly! This was the road! The horses turned into it of their
own accord. That was the most reassuring thing of all. There was one
strange doubt left. Somehow I was not absolutely clear about it whether
north might not after all be behind. I stopped. Even a new observation
of the fog did not remove the last vestige of a doubt. I had to take a
chance, some landmark might help after a while.
I believe in getting ready before I start. So I took my coal-oil
lantern, lighted and suspended it under the rear springs of the buggy
in such a way that it would throw its light back on the road. Having the
light away down, I expected to be able to see at least whether I was
on a road or not. In this I was only partly successful; for on the
rut-trails nothing showed except the blades of grass and the tops of
weeds; while on the grades where indeed I could make out the ground, I
did not need a light, for, as I found out, I could more confidently rely
on my ear.
I got back to my seat and proceeded to make myself as comfortable as
I could. I took off my shoes and socks keeping well under the
robe--extracted a pair of heavy woollens from my suitcase under the
seat, rubbed my feet dry and then wrapped up, without putting my shoes
on again, as carefully and scientifically as only a man who has had
pneumonia and is a chronic sufferer from pleuritis knows how to do.
At last I proceeded. After listening again with great care for any sound
I touched the horses with my whip, and they fell into a quiet trot. It
was nearly seven now, and I had probably not yet made eight miles. We
swung along. If I was right in my calculations and the horses kept
to the road, I should strike the “twelve-mile bridge” in about
three-quarters of an hour. That was the bridge leading through the
cottonwood gate to the grade past the “hovel.” I kept the watch in the
mitt of my left hand.
Not for a moment did it occur to me to turn back. Way up north there was
a young woman preparing supper for me. The fog might not be there--she
would expect me--I could not disappoint her. And then there was the
little girl, who usually would wake up and in her “nightie” come out of
bed and sleepily smile at me and climb on to my knee and nod off again.
I thought of them, to be sure, of the hours and hours in wait for them,
and a great tenderness came over me, and gratitude for the belated home
they gave an aging man...
And slowly my mind reverted to the things at hand. And this is what was
the most striking feature about them: I was shut in, closed off from
the world around. Apart from that cone of visibility in front of the
headlight, and another much smaller one from the bicycle lamp, there was
not a thing I could see. If the road was the right one, I was passing
now through some square miles of wild land. Right and left there were
poplar thickets, and ahead there was that line of stately cottonwoods.
But no suggestion of a landmark--nothing except a cone of light which
was filled with fog and cut into on both sides by two steaming and
rhythmically moving horseflanks. It was like a very small room, this
space of light--the buggy itself, in darkness, forming an alcove to it,
in which my hand knew every well-appointed detail. Gradually, while
I was warming up, a sense of infinite comfort came, and with it the
enjoyment of the elvish aspect.
I began to watch the fog. By bending over towards the dashboard and
looking into the soon arrested glare I could make out the component
parts of the fog. It was like the mixture of two immiscible
liquids--oil, for instance, shaken up with water. A fine, impalpable,
yet very dense mist formed the ground mass. But in it there floated
myriads of droplets, like the droplets of oil in water. These droplets
would sometimes sparkle in a mild, unobtrusive way as they were nearing
the light; and then they would dash against the pane and keep it
dripping, dripping down.
I leaned back again; and I watched the whole of the light-cone. Snow
white wisps would float and whirl through it in graceful curves, stirred
into motion by the horses’ trot. Or a wreath of it would start to dance,
as if gently pulled or plucked at from above; and it would revolve,
faster towards the end, and fade again into the shadows behind. I
thought of a summer in Norrland, in Sweden, in the stone-and-birch waste
which forms the timberline, where I had also encountered the mist pools.
And a trip down a stream in the borderland of the Finns came back with
great vividness into my mind. That trip had been made in a fog like
this; only it had been begun in the early morning, and the whole mass
of the mist had been suffused with the whitest of lights. But strange
to say, what stood out most strikingly in the fleeting memory of the
voyage, was the weird and mocking laughter of the magpies all along the
banks. The Finnish woods seemed alive with that mocking laughter, and
it truly belongs to the land of the mists. For a moment I thought
that something after all was missing here on the prairies. But then I
reflected again that this silence of the grave was still more perfect,
still more uncanny and ghostly, because it left the imagination entirely
free, without limiting it by even as much as a suggestion.
No wonder, I thought, that the Northerners in their land of heath and
bog were the poets of elves and goblins and of the fear of ghosts.
Shrouds were these fogs, hanging and waving and floating shrouds!
Mocking spirits were plucking at them and setting them into their gentle
motions. Gleams of light, that dance over the bog, lured you in, and
once caught in these veils after veils of mystery, madness would seize
you, and you would wildly dash here and there in a vain attempt at
regaining your freedom; and when, exhausted at last, you broke down and
huddled together on the ground, the werwolf would come, ghostly himself,
and huge and airy and weird, his body woven of mist, and in the fog’s
stately and leisurely way he would kneel down on your chest,
slowly crushing you beneath his exceeding weight; and bending and
straightening, bending and stretching, slowly--slowly down came his head
to your throat; and then he would lie and not stir until morning and
suck; and after few or many days people would find you, dead in the
woods--a victim of fog and mist...
A rumbling sound made me sit up at last. We were crossing over the
“twelve-mile bridge.” In spite of my dreaming I was keeping my eyes on
the look-out for any sign of a landmark, but this was the only one I
had known so far, and it came through the ear, not the eye. I promptly
looked back and up, to where the cottonwoods must be; but no sign of
high, weeping trees, no rustling of fall-dry leaves, not even a deeper
black in the black betrayed their presence. Well, never before had I
failed to see some light, to hear some sound around the house of the
“moneyed” type or those of the “half way farms.” Surely, somehow I
should be aware of their presence when I got there! Some sign, some
landmark would tell me how far I had gone!... The horses were trotting
along, steaming, through the brewing fog. I had become all ear. Even
though my buggy was silent and though the road was coated with a thin
film of soft clay-mud, I could distinctly hear by the muffled thud of
the horses’ hoofs on the ground that they were running over a grade.
That confirmed my bearings. I had no longer a moment’s doubt or anxiety
over my drive.
The grade was left behind, the rut-road started again, was passed
and outrun. So now I was close to the three-farm cluster. I listened
intently for the horses’ thump. Yes, there was that muffled hoof-beat
again--I was on the last grade that led to the angling road across the
corner of the marsh.
Truly, this was very much like lying down in the sleeping-car of an
overland train. You recline and act as if nothing unusual were going on;
and meanwhile a force that has something irresistible about it and is
indeed largely beyond your control, wafts you over mile after mile of
fabled distance; now and then the rumble of car on rail will stop, the
quiet awakens you, lights flash their piercing darts, a voice calls out;
it is a well known stop on your journey and then the rumbling resumes,
you doze again, to be awakened again, and so on. And when you get up
in the morning--there she lies, the goal of your dreams-the resplendent
city...
My goal was my “home,” and mildly startling, at least one such
mid-nightly awakening came. I had kept peering about for a landmark,
a light. Somewhere here in those farmhouses which I saw with my mind’s
eye, people were sitting around their fireside, chatting or reading.
Lamps shed their homely light; roof and wall kept the fog-spook securely
out: nothing as comfortable then as to listen to stories of being lost
on the marsh, or to tell them... But between those people and myself
the curtain had fallen--no sign of their presence, no faintest gleam
of their light and warmth! They did not know of the stranger passing
outside, his whole being a-yearn with the desire for wife and child.
I listened intently--no sound of man or beast, no soughing of wind in
stems or rustling of the very last leaves that were now fast falling...
And then the startling neighing of Dan, my horse! This was the third
trip he made with me, and I might have known and expected it, but it
always came as a surprise. Whenever we passed that second farm, he
stopped and raising his head, with a sideways motion, neighed a loud and
piercing call. And now he had stopped and done it again. He knew where
we were. I lowered my whip and patted his rump. How did he know? And why
did he do it? Was there a horse on this farmstead which he had known in
former life? Or was it a man? Or did he merely feel that it was about
time to put in for the night? I enquired later on, but failed to
discover any reason for his behaviour.
Now came that angling road past the “White Range Line House.” I relied
on the horses entirely. This “Range Line House” was inhabited now--a
settler was putting in winter-residence so he might not lose his claim.
He had taken down the clapboards that closed the windows, and always had
I so far seen a light in the house.
It seemed to me that in this corner of the marsh the fog was less dense
than it had been farther south, and the horses, once started, were
swinging along though in a leisurely way, yet without hesitation.
Another half hour passed. Once, at a bend in the trail, the rays from
the powerful tractor searchlight, sweeping sideways past the horses,
struck a wetly glistening, greyish stone to the right of the road. I
knew that stone. Yes, surely the fog must be thinning, or I could not
have seen it. I could now also dimly make out the horses’ heads, as they
nodded up and down...
And then, like a phantom, way up in the mist, I made out a blacker black
in the black--the majestic poplars north of the “Range Line House.” Not
that I could really see them or pick out the slightest detail--no! But
it seemed to my searching eyes as if there was a quiet pool in the slow
flow of the fog--as the water in a slow flowing stream will come to rest
when it strikes the stems of a willow submerged at its margin. I was
trying even at the time to decide how much of what I seemed to divine
rather than to perceive was imagination and how much reality. And I was
just about ready to contend that I also saw to the north something like
the faintest possible suggestion of an eddy, such as would form in the
flowing water below a pillar or a rock--when I was rudely shaken up and
jolted.
Trap, trap, I heard the horses’ feet on the culvert. Crash! And Peter
went stumbling down. Then a violent lurch of the buggy, I holding
on--Peter rallied, and then, before I had time to get a firmer grasp
on the lines, both horses bolted again. It took me some time to realize
what had happened. It was the culvert, of course; it had broken down,
and lucky I was that the ditch underneath was shallow. Only much later,
when reflecting upon the incident, did I see that this accident was
really the best verification of what I was nearly inclined to regard as
the product of my imagination. The trees must indeed have stood where I
had seemed to see that quiet reach in the fog and that eddy...
We tore along. I spoke to the horses and quietly and evenly pulled at
the lines. I think it must have been several minutes before I had
them under control again. And then--in this night of weird things--the
weirdest sight of them all showed ahead.
I was just beginning to wonder, whether after all we had not lost the
road again, when the faintest of all faint glimmers began to define
itself somewhere in front. And... was I right? Yes, a small, thin voice
came out of the fog that incessantly floated into my cone of light and
was left behind in eddies. What did it mean?...
The glimmer was now defining itself more clearly. Somewhere, not very
far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of the faintest iridescent
luminosity seemed suspended in the brewing and waving mist. The horses
turned at right angles on to the bridge, the glimmer swinging round to
the other side of the buggy. Their hoofs struck wood, and both beasts
snorted and stopped.
In a flash a thought came. I had just broken through a culvert--the
bridge, too, must have broken down, and somebody had put a light there
to warn the chance traveller who might stray along on a night like this!
I was on the point of getting out of my wraps, when a thinner wave in
the mist permitted me to see the flames of three lanterns hung to the
side-rails of the bridge. And that very moment a thin, piping voice came
out of the darkness beyond. “Daddy, is that you?” I did not know the
child’s voice, but I sang out as cheerily as I could. “I am a daddy all
right, but I am afraid, not yours. Is the bridge broken down, sonny?
Anything wrong?” “No, Sir,” the answer came, “nothing wrong.” So I
pulled up to the lanterns, and there I saw, dimly enough, God wot, a
small, ten-year old boy standing and shivering by the signal which
he had rigged up. He was barefooted and bareheaded, in shirt and torn
knee-trousers. I pointed to the lanterns with my whip. “What’s the
meaning of this, my boy?” I asked in as friendly a voice as I could
muster. “Daddy went to town this morning,” he said rather haltingly,
“and he must have got caught in the fog. We were afraid he might not
find the bridge.” “Well, cheer up, son,” I said, “he is not the only
one as you see; his horses will know the road. Where did he go?” The boy
named the town--it was to the west, not half the distance away that I
had come. “Don’t worry,” I said; “I don’t think he has started out at
all. The fog caught me about sixteen miles south of here. It’s nine
o’clock now If he had started before the fog got there, he would be here
by now.” I sat and thought for a moment. Should I say anything about
the broken culvert? “Which way would your daddy come, along the creek or
across the marsh?” “Along the creek.” All right then, no use in saying
anything further. “Well, as I said,” I sang out and clicked my tongue
to the horses, “don’t worry; better go home; he will come to-morrow”
“I guess so,” replied the boy the moment I lost sight of him and the
lanterns.
I made the turn to the southeast and walked my horses. Here, where the
trail wound along through the chasm of the bush, the light from my cone
would, over the horses’ backs, strike twigs and leaves now and then.
Everything seemed to drip and to weep. All nature was weeping I walked
the horses for ten minutes more. Then I stopped. It must have been just
at the point where the grade began; but I do not know for sure.
I fumbled a long while for my shoes; but at last I found them and put
them on over my dry woollens. When I had shaken myself out of my robes,
I jumped to the ground. There was, here, too, a film of mud on top, but
otherwise the road was firm enough. I quickly threw the blankets over
the horses’ backs, dropped the traces, took the bits out of their
mouths, and slipped the feed-bags over their heads. I looked at my
watch, for it was my custom to let them eat for just ten minutes, then
to hook them up again and walk them for another ten before trotting. I
had found that that refreshed them enough to make the remainder of the
trip in excellent shape.
While I was waiting, I stood between the wheels of the buggy, leaning
against the box and staring into the light. It was with something akin
to a start that I realized the direction from which the fog rolled by:
it came from the south! I had, of course, seen that already, but it had
so far not entered my consciousness as a definite observation. It was
this fact that later set me to thinking about the origin of the fog
along the lines which I have indicated above. Again I marvelled at the
density of the mist which somehow seemed greater while we were standing
than while we were driving. I had repeatedly been in the clouds, on
mountainsides, but they seemed light and thin as compared with this.
Finland, Northern Sweden, Canada--no other country which I knew had
anything resembling it. The famous London fogs are different altogether.
These mists, like the mist pools, need the swamp as their mother, I
suppose, and the ice-cool summer night for their nurse...
The time was up. I quickly did what had to be done, and five minutes
later we were on the road again. I watched the horses for a while, and
suddenly I thought once more of that fleeting impression of an eddy in
the lee of the poplar bluff at the “White Range Line House.” It was on
the north side of the trees, if it was there at all! The significance of
the fact had escaped me at the time. It again confirmed my observation
of the flow of the fog in both directions. It came from a common centre.
And still there was no breath of air. I had no doubt any longer; it
was not the air that pushed the fog; the floating bubbles, the
infinitesimally small ones as well as those that were quite perceptible,
simply displaced the lighter atmosphere. I wondered what kept these
bubbles apart. Some repellent force with which they were charged?
Something, at any rate, must be preventing them from coalescing into
rain. Maybe it was merely the perfect evenness of their flow, for they
gathered thickly enough on the twigs and the few dried leaves, on any
obstacles in their way. And again I thought of the fact that the mist
had seemed thinner when I came out on the marsh. This double flow
explained it, of course. There were denser and less dense waves in
it: like veils hung up one behind the other. So long as I went in a
direction opposite to its flow, I had to look through sheet after sheet
of the denser waves. Later I could every now and then look along a plane
of lesser density...
It was Dan who found the turn off the grade into the bushy glades. I
could see distinctly how he pushed Peter over. Here, where again the
road was winding, and where the light, therefore, once more frequently
struck the twigs and boughs, as they floated into my cone of luminosity,
to disappear again behind, a new impression thrust itself upon me. I
call it an impression, not an observation. It is very hard to say, what
was reality, what fancy on a night like that. In spite of its air of
unreality, of improbability even, it has stayed with me as one of my
strongest visions. I nearly hesitate to put it in writing.
These boughs and twigs were like fingers held into a stream that carried
loose algae, arresting them in their gliding motion. Or again, those
wisps of mist were like gossamers as they floated along, and they would
bend and fold over on the boughs before they tore; and where they broke,
they seemed like comets to trail a thinner tail of themselves behind.
There was tenacity in them, a certain consistency which made them appear
as if woven of different things from air and mere moisture. I have
often doubted my memory here, and yet I have my very definite notes, and
besides there is the picture in my mind. In spite of my own uncertainty
I can assure you, that this is only one quarter a poem woven of
impressions; the other three quarters are reality. But, while I am
trying to set down facts, I am also trying to render moods and images
begot by them...
We went on for an hour, and it lengthened out into two. No twigs and
boughs any longer, at last. But where I was, I knew not. Much as I
listened, I could not make out any difference in the tramp of the horses
now I looked down over the back of my buggy seat, and I seemed to see
the yellow or brownish clay of a grade. I went on rather thoughtlessly.
Then, about eleven o’clock, I noticed that the road was rough. I had
long since, as I said, given myself over to the horses. But now I grew
nervous. No doubt, unless we had entirely strayed from our road, we were
by this time riding the last dam; for no other trail over which we
went was quite so rough. But then I should have heard the rumble on the
bridge, and I felt convinced that I had not. It shows to what an extent
a man may be hypnotised into insensibility by a constant sameness of
view, that I was mistaken. If we were on the dam and missed the turn at
the end of it, on to the correction line, we should infallibly go down
from the grade, on to muskeg ground, for there was a gap in the dam. At
that place I had seen a horse disappear, and many a cow had ended there
in the deadly struggle against the downward suck of the swamp...
I pulled the horses back to a walk, and we went on for another half
hour. I was by this time sitting on the left hand side of the side,
bicycle lantern in my left hand, and bending over as far as I could to
the left, trying, with arm outstretched, to reach the ground with my
light. The lantern at the back of the buggy was useless for this. Here
and there the drop-laden, glistening tops of the taller grasses and
weeds would float into this auxiliary cone of light--but that was all.
Then no weeds appeared any longer, so I must be on the last half-mile of
the dam, the only piece of it that was bare and caution extreme was the
word. I made up my mind to go on riding for another five minutes and
timed myself, for there was hardly enough room for a team and a walking
man besides. When the time was up, I pulled in and got out. I took
the lines short, laid my right hand on Peter’s back and proceeded. The
bicycle lantern was hanging down from my left and showed plainly the
clayey gravel of the dam. And so I walked on for maybe ten minutes.
Suddenly I became again aware of a glimmer to the left, and the very
next moment a lantern shot out of the mist, held high by an arm wrapped
in white. A shivering woman, tall, young, with gleaming eyes, dressed
in a linen house dress, an apron flung over breast and shoulders, gasped
out two words, “You came!” “Have you been standing here and waiting?” I
asked. “No, no! I just could not bear it any longer. Something told me.
He’s at the culvert now, and if I do not run, he will go down into the
swamp!” There was something of a catch in the voice. I did not reply I
swung the horses around and crossed the culvert that bridges the master
ditch.
And while we were walking up to the yard--had my drive been anything
brave--anything at all deserving of the slightest reward--had it not in
itself been a thing of beauty, not to be missed by selfish me--surely,
the touch of that arm, as we went, would have been more than enough to
reward even the most chivalrous deeds of yore.