IV

The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy

sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just

time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent

door.

"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in midstream

have disappeared altogether. Our own island's much smaller."

"Any wood left?" I asked sleepily.

"The wood and the island will finish to-morrow in a dead heat," he

laughed, "but there's enough to last us till then."

I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a

lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment

to the landing place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks

flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such

conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night

seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The

sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind,

however, had not abated one little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed

across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave posthaste, and had

changed his mind. "Enough to last till to-morrow"--he assumed we should

stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before

he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy

splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our

frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the

difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in

flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more

than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had

changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different--a

trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice

and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at

the time I remember being quite certain of one thing, viz., that he had

become frightened!

He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He

had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.

"We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an

opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any

rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let

us."

"Who'll let us? The elements?" I asked quickly, with affected

indifference.

"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping

his eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in

the world."

"The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as

naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face

reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke

across the smoke:

"We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the

point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist

to extract the tooth; it _had_ to come anyhow in the long run, and the

rest was all pretense.

"Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"

"For one thing--the steering paddle's gone," he said quietly.

"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was

our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But

what----"

"And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a

genuine little tremor in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face

somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning

sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up

to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way

towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The

canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs

uppermost, the paddles, or rather, _the_ paddle, on the sand beside her.

"There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the

rent in the base-board."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed

_two_ paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think

better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a

little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if

the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and

investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in

her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the

water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once

out in midstream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never

more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very

rapidly.

"There, you see, an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I

heard him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rather," he

added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.

I began to whistle--a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly

nonplused--and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was

determined to consider them foolish.

"It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from

his examination and looking anywhere but at me.

"We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling

to say, "The stones are very sharp----"

I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye

squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation

was. There were no stones, to begin with.

"And then there's this to explain too," he added quietly, handing me the

paddle and pointing to the blade.

A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and

examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped,

as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that

the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.

"One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly,

"or--or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown

against it by the wind, perhaps."

"Ah," said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, "you can explain

everything!"

"The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the

bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out

after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything

he showed me.

"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before

disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think

my first thought took the form of "One of us must have done this thing,

and it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how

impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either

of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen

similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a

suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the

explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature had

suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear

actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the

clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his

_mind_--that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he

did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto

unmentionable events--waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected,

and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind

intuitively--I hardly knew how.

I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the

measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows

formed in the sand, I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and

of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a teacup to a large

bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters,

just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water.

The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable;

and, after all, it _was_ conceivable that a sharp point had caught it

when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this

theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of

my intelligence which I called my "reason." An explanation of some kind

was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the

universe is necessary--however absurd--to the happiness of every

individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems

of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.

I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at

the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could

not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention

casually to the hollows in the sand.

"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But _you_ can

explain them, no doubt!"

"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never

watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl

everything into a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's

all."

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him

surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He

seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not

hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept

turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out

across the water where it was visible through the openings among the

willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for

several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked

no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill

and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the

work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the

changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed _that_, my

imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.

At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.

"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted

to say something and get it over. "Queer thing, I mean, about that otter

last night."

I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with

surprise, and I looked up sharply.

"Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things--"

"I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted. "I mean--do you

think--did you think it really was an otter?"

"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"

"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed--so _much_

bigger than an otter."

"The sunset as you looked upstream magnified it, or something," I

replied.

He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with

other thoughts.

"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.

"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose

you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat----"

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again

of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the

expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on

with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence.

Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the

smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.

"I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that

thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man.

The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was

impatience and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.

"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without

going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,

and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going

downstream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter, so

don't let's play the fool about it!"

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in

the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.

"And for heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear

things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's nothing to hear

but the river and this cursed old thundering wind."

"You _fool_!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool.

That's just the way all victims talk. As if you didn't understand just

as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of

resignation. "The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold

your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception

only makes the truth harder when you're forced to meet it."

My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew

quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not _he_. Up to

a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think

I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less

sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half

ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. _He knew_

from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed

the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and

that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all

pretense thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear increased

steadily to the climax.

"But you're quite right about one thing," he added, before the subject

passed, "and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to

think about it, because what one _thinks_ finds expression in words, and

what one _says_, happens."

That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to

fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood

of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes,

and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew

perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and

splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o'clock, and

then for the first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating.

Clouds began to gather in the southwest, spreading thence slowly over

the sky.

This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant

roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the

silence that came about five o'clock with its sudden cessation was in a

manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything its

own way then: it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the

wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes,

rising, falling, always beating out some sort of great elemental tune;

whereas the river's song lay between three notes at most--dull pedal

notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow

seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the

music of doom.

It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright

sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for

cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed to

convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was

all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening

outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself more than

once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get up in the

east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with her

lighting of the little island.

With this general hush of the wind--though it still indulged in

occasional brief gusts--the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the

willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort

of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no

wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common

objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they

stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance;

and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the

darkness a bizarre _grotesquerie_ of appearance that lent to them

somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very

ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The

forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were

focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For

thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really

indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present themselves.

I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered

somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served

apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing

spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as

absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet,

in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I

dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach of

darkness.

The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the

day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to

the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five

o'clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for

dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions,

bits of bacon fat to add flavour, and a general thick residue from

former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into

it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums

with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood

lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My

companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between

cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice--an admitted privilege of

the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in

re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for

driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had

passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the

gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was now fully a

third smaller than when we first landed.

The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me

from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.

"Come and listen," he said, "and see what you make of it." He held his

hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.

"_Now_ do you hear anything?" he asked, watching me curiously.

We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only

the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent

surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound

began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound--something like the

humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the

darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated

at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell

nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much

as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky,

repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as

it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.

"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this

afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could

never get near enough to see--to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was

overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I

could have sworn it was not outside at all, but _within myself_--you

know--the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come."

I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened

carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I

could think of, but without success. It changed in direction, too,

coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I

cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed

distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling

that made me wish I had never heard it.

"The wind blowing in those sand-funnels," I said, determined to find an

explanation, "or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps."

"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes from

everywhere at once." He ignored my explanations. "It comes from the

willow bushes somehow----"

"But now the wind has dropped," I objected "The willows can hardly make

a noise by themselves, can they?"

His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly,

because I knew intuitively it was true.

"It is _because_ the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned

before. It is the cry, I believe of the----"

I dashed back to my fire, warned by a sound of bubbling that the stew

was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape from further

conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of

views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin again about the gods, or the

elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep

myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another night

to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and there was

no knowing yet what it might bring forth.

"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously

stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both,

and the thought made me laugh.

He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling

in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the

ground-sheet at his feet.

"Hurry up!" I cried; "it's boiling."

The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was

forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.

"There's nothing here!" he shouted, holding his sides.

"Bread, I mean."

"It's gone. There is no bread. They've taken it!"

I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained

lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.

The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then

I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of

my own laughter also made me understand his. The strain of psychical

pressure caused it--this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us;

it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary

safety valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.

"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be

consistent and find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at

Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I

must have left it lying on the counter or----"

"The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning," the Swede

interrupted.

Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.

"There's enough for to-morrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can

get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles

from here."

"I hope so--to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack,

"unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added

with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's

sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling on to himself, but so

indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.

Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in

silence, avoiding one another's eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then

we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds

unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day

long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I think,

but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more than if I

had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have

likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled

the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than

a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and at another

time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our

left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it hovered

directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere

at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely

surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within

my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the

deserted world of swamps and willows.

We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute

greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not

know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by

way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the

sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly

unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to me that some

kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it

or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in

the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer

without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was

imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this little

climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he

flung into the emptiness.

Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,

coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself:

corroboration, too--which made it so much more convincing--from a

totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and

hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his

main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were the

bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering

them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.

"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder,

disintegration, destruction, _our_ destruction," he said once, while the

fire blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."

And another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much

louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said, as though

talking to himself:

"I don't think a phonograph would show any record of that. The sound

doesn't come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in

another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely

how a fourth dimension sound might be supposed to make itself heard."

I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the

fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all

over the sky and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too,

everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own

way.

"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of common

experience. It is _unknown_. Only one thing describes it really: it is a

non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity."

Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time;

but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to

have the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words

from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.

The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The

feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran

incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my

soul, as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had

passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces,

peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a

ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the

tourists would have been welcome.

Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely

greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of

terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed

of. We had "strayed," as the Swede put it, into some region or some set

of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us;

where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a

spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peephole whence

they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil

between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a

sojourn here, we should be carried over the border and deprived of what

we called "our lives," yet by mental, not physical, processes. In that

sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure--a

sacrifice.

It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his

sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a

personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with

the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our

audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw

it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient

shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the

emotional forces of former worshipers still clung, and the ancestral

portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.

At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds

from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were

within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so

attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another

scheme of life, another evolution not parallel to the human. And in the

end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we

should be drawn across the frontier into _their_ world.

Small things testified to this amazing influence of the place, and now

in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the

mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to

distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying

boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed

of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other

aspect--as it existed across the border in that other region. And this

changed aspect I felt was new not merely to me, but to the race. The

whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all.

It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word

_unearthly_.

"It's the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one's courage to

zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my

thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle,

the canoe, the lessening food----"

"Haven't I explained all that once?" I interrupted viciously.

"You have," he answered dryly; "you have indeed."

He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the "plain

determination to provide a victim"; but, having now arranged my thoughts

better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul

against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and

that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a

courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and

I have never before been so clearly conscious of two persons in me--the

one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such

foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.

Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the woodpile grew

small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness

consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the

circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind

set the billows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome

sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling

of the river and the humming in the air overhead.

We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.

At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the

wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation,

the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain

speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that

must have been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the

fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up

with a start.

"I can't disguise it any longer," I said; "I don't like this place, and

the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There's

something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, and that's the

plain truth. If the other shore was--different, I swear I'd be inclined

to swim for it!"

The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind.

He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed

his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any

rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one

thing.

"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he

replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; "we must

sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd

of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our

only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may

save us."

I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words.

It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease

whose symptoms had puzzled me.

"I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they

have not _found_ us--not 'located' us, as the Americans say," he went

on. "They're blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The

paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they _feel_ us, but

cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet--it's our minds

they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it's all up with us."

"Death you mean?" I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.

"Worse--by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means

either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but

it involves no change of character. _You_ don't suddenly alter just

because the body's gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete

change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution--far worse than

death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot

where their region touches ours where the veil between has worn

thin"--horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words--"so

that they are aware of our being in their neighborhood."

"But _who_ are aware?" I asked.

I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming

overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I

dreaded more than I can possibly explain.

He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the

fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and

look down upon the ground.

"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of

another region--not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet

wholly different in kind--where great things go on unceasingly, where

immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes

compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the

destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust

in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul,

and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul--"

"I suggest just now--" I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I

was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his

torrent that _had_ to come.

"You think," he said, "it is the spirits of the elements, and I thought

perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is--_neither_. These

would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men,

depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who

are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is

mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our

own."

The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I

listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set

me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my

movements.

"And what do you propose?" I began again.

"A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could

get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and

give the sleigh another start. But--I see no chance of any other victim

now."

I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eyes was dreadful. Presently

he continued.

"It's the willows, of course. The willows _mask_ the others, but the

others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear,

we're lost, lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm,

so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his

sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. "If we can hold out through

the night," he added, "we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or

rather, _undiscovered_."

"But you really think a sacrifice would----"

That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke,

but it was my friend's scared face that really stopped my mouth.

"Hush!" he whispered, holding up his hand. "Do not mention them more

than you can help. Do not refer to them _by name_. To name is to reveal:

it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in

order that they may ignore us."

"Even in thought?" He was extraordinarily agitated.

"Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We

must keep them _out of our minds_ at all costs if possible."

I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its

own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful

blackness of that summer night.

"Were you awake all last night?" he went on suddenly.

"I slept badly a little after dawn," I replied evasively, trying to

follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, "but the

wind, of course--"

"I know. But the wind won't account for all the noises."

"Then you heard it too?"

"The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard," he said, adding,

after a moment's hesitation, "and that other sound--"

"You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something

tremendous, gigantic?"

He nodded significantly.

"It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?" I said.

"Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been

altered--had increased enormously, so that we should be crushed."

"And _that_," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards

where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like

wind. "What do you make of that?"

"It's _their_ sound," he whispered gravely. "It's the sound of their

world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it

leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's

not above so much as around us. It's in the willows. It's the willows

themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of

the forces that are against us."

I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and

idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I

realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It

was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination

of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust

his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak

in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his

apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed

unimaginative, stolid!

"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as

though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so

forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question

wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our

chance of escape. Above all, don't _think_, for what you think happens!"

"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and

the strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one thing

more first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all

about us, those sand-funnels?"

"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not,

simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I

am glad. Don't try to. _They_ have put it into my mind; try your hardest

to prevent their putting it into yours."

He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not

press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me

as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our

pipes busily in silence.

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is

when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small

thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I

chanced to look down at my sand-shoe--the sort we used for the

canoe--and something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled

to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man

had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical

operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the

modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of

roast beef and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen

other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The

effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I

suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of

living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must

seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily

lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a

minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend

opposite.

"You damned old pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You

imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolator! You----"

I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to

smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of

course, heard it too--that strange cry overhead in the darkness--and

that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front

of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go!

We can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on--down

the river."

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject

terror--the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at

last.

"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical

outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. "Sheer

madness! The river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle.

Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for

fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!"

He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of

those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and

the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last

had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.

"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered, with the

awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,

kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.

"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the

night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself

together a bit, and remember your own advice about _not thinking

fear_!"

He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some

measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion

into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost

touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming

overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased

our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!

We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where

some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches,

when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand.

It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for

support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.

"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my

experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice.

He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the

direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.

There, in front of the dim glow, _something was moving_.

I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze

drop-curtain used at the back of a theater--hazily a little. It was

neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange

impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like

horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar

result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped

and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving

all over upon its surface--"coiling upon itself like smoke," he said

afterwards.

"I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me.

"Look, by God! It's coming this way! Oh, oh!"--he gave a kind of

whistling cry. "_They've found us_."

I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the

shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I

collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of

course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on the top of me we

fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was

happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy

fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them

this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were tightly

shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness

was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another

feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.

An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede

had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way

he caught at me in falling.

But it was this pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me: it caused

me to _forget them_ and think of something else at the very instant when

they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment

of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He

himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what

saved him.

I only know that at a later time, how long or short is impossible to

say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow

branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a

hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he

had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's

what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them."

"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected

thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.

"That's what saved _you_!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set

them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's

gone--for the moment at any rate!"

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to

my friend too--great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a

tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the

fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the

tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and

caught our feet in sand.

"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up

again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.

"And look at the size of them!"

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving

shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly

similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far

bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances

to admit the whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing

we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay,

having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and

the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a

way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least

motion would disturb and wake us.

In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready

for a sudden start.

V

It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the

exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while

came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my

companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and

constantly sat up, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He

tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the

river had risen over the point of the island; but each time I went out

to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he

grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular

and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring--the first and only time in

my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.

This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.

A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face.

But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my

first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my

own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it

came to me that the tent was _surrounded_. That sound of multitudinous

soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.

I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I

missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the

tent door was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the

darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I

realized positively that the Swede was not there. He had gone.

I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the

moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that

surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at

once. It was that same familiar humming--gone mad! A swarm of great

invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to

thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with

difficulty.

But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.

The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread

upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind

stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale

sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the

island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first

words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and

the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round

me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots,

and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the preventing

branches.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a

dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede.

And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would

have taken the plunge.

I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging

him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously,

making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the

most outlandish phrases in his anger about "going _inside_ to Them," and

"taking the way of the water and the wind," and God only knows what more

besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me

sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed

to get him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him

breathless and cursing upon the mattress, where I held him until the fit

had passed.

I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm,

coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming

and pattering outside--I think this was almost the strangest part of the

whole business perhaps. For he just opened his eyes and turned his tired

face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the

doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:

"My life, old man--it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow.

They've found a victim in our place!"

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under

my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as

though nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life

as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours

later--hours of ceaseless vigil for me--it became so clear to me that he

remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I

deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.

He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already

high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the

preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at

bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head

and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.

"River's falling at last," he said, "and I'm glad of it."

"The humming has stopped too," I said.

He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he

remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.

"Everything has stopped," he said, "because----"

He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just

before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.

"Because 'They've found another victim'?" I said, forcing a little

laugh.

"Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though--as

though--I feel quite safe again, I mean," he finished.

He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches

on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly

rose to feet.

"Come," he said; "I think if we look, we shall find it."

He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks,

poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little

back-waters, myself always close on his heels.

"Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"

The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the

horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He

was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the

water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted

willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours

before the spot must have been under water.

"See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the

body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and

the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned but a

few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island

somewhere about the hour of the dawn--_at the very time the fit had

passed_.

"We must give it a decent burial, you know."

"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for

there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that

turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, and began clambering down the bank.

I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away

much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the

chest lay bare.

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand

in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much

momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and

sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled

together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water.

And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily

against the corpse.

The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there arose from its surface the loud

sound of humming--the sound of several hummings--which passed with a

vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared

upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally

ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some

living yet invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either

of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw

that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it

became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had

turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It

lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept

away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch

about a "proper burial" and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the

sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an

instant.