Although nothing John Silence did ever took me, properly speaking, by
surprise, it was certainly unexpected to find a letter from Stockholm
waiting for me. “I have finished my Hungary business,” he wrote, “and
am here for ten days. Do not hesitate to send if you need me. If you
telephone any morning from Waxholm I can catch the afternoon steamer.”
My years of intercourse with him were full of “coincidences” of this
description, and although he never sought to explain them by claiming
any magical system of communication with my mind, I have never doubted
that there actually existed some secret telepathic method by which he
knew my circumstances and gauged the degree of my need. And that this
power was independent of time in the sense that it saw into the future,
always seemed to me equally apparent.
Sangree was as much relieved as I was, and within an hour of sunset
that very evening we met him on the arrival of the little coasting
steamer, and carried him off in the dinghy to the camp we had prepared
on a neighbouring island, meaning to start for home early next morning.
“Now,” he said, when supper was over and we were smoking round the
fire, “let me hear your story.” He glanced from one to the other,
smiling.
“You tell it, Mr. Hubbard,” Sangree interrupted abruptly, and went
off a little way to wash the dishes, yet not so far as to be out of
earshot. And while he splashed with the hot water, and scraped the tin
plates with sand and moss, my voice, unbroken by a single question from
Dr. Silence, ran on for the next half-hour with the best account I
could give of what had happened.
My listener lay on the other side of the fire, his face half hidden
by a big sombrero; sometimes he glanced up questioningly when a
point needed elaboration, but he uttered no single word till I had
reached the end, and his manner all through the recital was grave and
attentive. Overhead, the wash of the wind in the pine branches filled
in the pauses; the darkness settled down over the sea, and the stars
came out in thousands, and by the time I finished the moon had risen to
flood the scene with silver. Yet, by his face and eyes, I knew quite
well that the doctor was listening to something he had expected to
hear, even if he had not actually anticipated all the details.
“You did well to send for me,” he said very low, with a significant
glance at me when I finished; “very well,”--and for one swift second
his eye took in Sangree,--“for what we have to deal with here is
nothing more than a werewolf--rare enough, I am glad to say, but often
very sad, and sometimes very terrible.”
I jumped as though I had been shot, but the next second was heartily
ashamed of my want of control; for this brief remark, confirming as
it did my own worst suspicions, did more to convince me of the gravity
of the adventure than any number of questions or explanations. It
seemed to draw close the circle about us, shutting a door somewhere
that locked us in with the animal and the horror, and turning the key.
Whatever it was had now to be faced and dealt with.
“No one has been actually injured so far?” he asked aloud, but in a
matter-of-fact tone that lent reality to grim possibilities.
“Good heavens, no!” cried the Canadian, throwing down his dish-cloths
and coming forward into the circle of firelight. “Surely there can be
no question of this poor starved beast injuring anybody, can there?”
His hair straggled untidily over his forehead, and there was a gleam in
his eyes that was not all reflection from the fire. His words made me
turn sharply. We all laughed a little, short, forced laugh.
“I trust not, indeed,” Dr. Silence said quietly. “But what makes you
think the creature is starved?” He asked the question with his eyes
straight on the other’s face. The prompt question explained to me why
I had started, and I waited with just a tremor of excitement for the
reply.
Sangree hesitated a moment, as though the question took him by
surprise. But he met the doctor’s gaze unflinchingly across the fire,
and with complete honesty.
“Really,” he faltered, with a little shrug of the shoulders, “I can
hardly tell you. The phrase seemed to come out of its own accord. I
have felt from the beginning that it was in pain and--starved, though
why I felt this never occurred to me till you asked.”
“You really know very little about it, then?” said the other, with a
sudden gentleness in his voice.
“No more than that,” Sangree replied, looking at him with a puzzled
expression that was unmistakably genuine. “In fact, nothing at all,
really,” he added, by way of further explanation.
“I am glad of that,” I heard the doctor murmur under his breath, but
so low that I only just caught the words, and Sangree missed them
altogether, as evidently he was meant to do.
“And now,” he cried, getting on his feet and shaking himself with a
characteristic gesture, as though to shake out the horror and the
mystery, “let us leave the problem till to-morrow and enjoy this wind
and sea and stars. I’ve been living lately in the atmosphere of many
people, and feel that I want to wash and be clean. I propose a swim and
then bed. Who’ll second me?” And two minutes later we were all diving
from the boat into cool, deep water, that reflected a thousand moons as
the waves broke away from us in countless ripples.
We slept in blankets under the open sky, Sangree and I taking the
outside places, and were up before sunrise to catch the dawn wind.
Helped by this early start we were half-way home by noon, and then the
wind shifted to a few points behind us so that we fairly ran. In and
out among a thousand islands, down narrow channels where we lost the
wind, out into open spaces where we had to take in a reef, racing along
under a hot and cloudless sky, we flew through the very heart of the
bewildering and lonely scenery.
“A real wilderness,” cried Dr. Silence from his seat in the bows where
he held the jib sheet. His hat was off, his hair tumbled in the wind,
and his lean brown face gave him the touch of an Oriental. Presently
he changed places with Sangree, and came down to talk with me by the
tiller.
“A wonderful region, all this world of islands,” he said, waving his
hand to the scenery rushing past us, “but doesn’t it strike you there’s
something lacking?”
“It’s--hard,” I answered, after a moment’s reflection. “It has a
superficial, glittering prettiness, without----” I hesitated to find
the word I wanted.
John Silence nodded his head with approval.
“Exactly,” he said. “The picturesqueness of stage scenery that is not
real, not alive. It’s like a landscape by a clever painter, yet without
true imagination. Soulless--that’s the word you wanted.”
“Something like that,” I answered, watching the gusts of wind on the
sails. “Not dead so much, as without soul. That’s it.”
“Of course,” he went on, in a voice calculated, it seemed to me, not
to reach our companion in the bows, “to live long in a place like
this--long and alone--might bring about a strange result in some men.”
I suddenly realised he was talking with a purpose and pricked up my
ears.
“There’s no life here. These islands are mere dead rocks pushed up from
below the sea--not living land; and there’s nothing really alive on
them. Even the sea, this tideless, brackish sea, neither salt water nor
fresh, is dead. It’s all a pretty image of life without the real heart
and soul of life. To a man with too strong desires who came here and
lived close to nature, strange things might happen.”
“Let her out a bit,” I shouted to Sangree, who was coming aft. “The
wind’s gusty and we’ve got hardly any ballast.”