"Of what should a town beware," he said, "but the Saracens?"
"Saracens?" I said.
"Yes, Saracens, Saracens," he answered and brandished his horn.
"And who are you?" I said.
"I, I am the spirit of the tower," he said.
When I asked him how he came by so human an aspect and was so unlike
the material tower beside him he told me that the lives of all the
watchers who had ever held the horn in the tower there had gone to
make the spirit of the tower. "It takes a hundred lives," he said.
"None hold the horn of late and men neglect the tower. When the walls
are in ill repair the Saracens come: it was ever so."
"The Saracens don't come nowadays," I said.
But he was gazing past me watching, and did not seem to heed me.
"They will run down those hills," he said, pointing away to the South,
"out of the woods about nightfall, and I shall blow my horn. The
people will all come up from the town to the tower again; but the
loopholes are in very ill repair."
"We never hear of the Saracens now," I said.
"Hear of the Saracens!" the old spirit said. "Hear of the Saracens!
They slip one evening out of that forest, in the long white robes that
they wear, and I blow my horn. That is the first that anyone ever
hears of the Saracens."
"I mean," I said, "that they never come at all. They cannot come and
men fear other things." For I thought the old spirit might rest if he
knew that the Saracens can never come again. But he said, "There is
nothing in the world to fear but the Saracens. Nothing else matters.
How can men fear other things?"
Then I explained, so that he might have rest, and told him how all
Europe, and in particular France, had terrible engines of war, both on
land and sea; and how the Saracens had not these terrible engines
either on sea or land, and so could by no means cross the
Mediterranean or escape destruction on shore even though they should
come there. I alluded to the European railways that could move armies
night and day faster than horses could gallop. And when as well as I
could I had explained all, he answered, "In time all these things pass
away and then there will still be the Saracens."
And then I said, "There has not been a Saracen either in France
or Spain for over four hundred years."
And he said, "The Saracens! You do not know their cunning. That was
ever the way of the Saracens. They do not come for a while, no not
they, for a long while, and then one day they come."
And peering southwards, but not seeing clearly because of the rising
mist, he silently moved to his tower and up its broken steps.