Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly drew down in that moment over every face, and three pairs of eyes shone through it as though they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the Unknown.
Défago advanced, his tread faltering6 and uncertain; he made his way straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from his lips—
"Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered someone calling me." It was a faint, dried up voice, made wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion7. "I'm havin' a reg'lar hellfire kind of a trip, I am." And he laughed, thrusting his head forward into the other's face.
But that laugh started the machinery8 of the group of waxwork9 figures with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at all, but thought he had lapsed10 into Indian or some other lingo11. He only realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was welcome—uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and leisurely12, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.
Simpson seems hazy13 as to what was actually said and done in those next few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering at such close quarters into his own utterly14 bewildered his senses at first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance15 of all emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted16. Yet, through the torrent17 of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's tone of authority—hard and forced—saying several things about food and warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of that penetrating19, unaccustomed odor, vile20 yet sweetly bewildering, assailed21 his nostrils22 during all that followed.
It was no less a person than himself, however—less experienced and adroit23 than the others though he was—who gave instinctive24 utterance25 to the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.
"It is—YOU, isn't it, Défago?" he asked under his breath, horror breaking his speech.
And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had time to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only—can't you see—he's nearly dead with exhaustion26, cold and terror! Isn't that enough to change a man beyond all recognition?" It was said in order to convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke27 and acted, he held a handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded28 the whole camp.
For the "Défago" who sat huddled29 by the big fire, wrapped in blankets, drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is like a daguerreotype30 of his early youth in the costume of another generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that parody31, masquerading there in the firelight as Défago. From the ruins of the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the face was more animal than human, the features drawn32 about into wrong proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely33 of those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change their expression as they swell34, and as they collapse35 emit a faint and wailing36 imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such abominable37 resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder38 and become—incoherent....
It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire, apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held anger and affection dreadfully mingled:
"You ain't Défaygo! You ain't Défaygo at all! I don't give a—damn, but that ain't you, my ole pal39 of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddled figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'll swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help me the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.
It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one possessed40, horrible to see, horrible to hear—because it was the truth. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it looked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder," for his hand continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.
But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed41 on the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.
Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined42 air and stood opposite to the figure of Défago huddled over the fire. He looked him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm.
"Défago, tell us what's happened—just a little, so that we can know how best to help you?" he asked in a tone of authority, almost of command. And at that point, it was command. At once afterwards, however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson, watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was on the verge43 of dropping off, and that underneath44 they would discover something black and diabolical45, revealed in utter nakedness. "Out with it, man, out with it!" Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with entreaty46. "None of us can stand this much longer ...!" It was the cry of instinct over reason.
And then "Défago," smiling whitely, answered in that thin and fading voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another character—
"I seen that great Wendigo thing," he whispered, sniffing47 the air about him exactly like an animal. "I been with it too—"
Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known, for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his voice from behind the canvas that concealed48 all but his terrified eyes. Such a howling was never heard.
"His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed—feet!"
Défago, shuffling49 where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him, bundling the folds of blanket about his legs with such speed that the young student caught little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed where moccasined feet ought to have been, and saw even that but with uncertain vision.
Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or Simpson time to even think a question, much less ask it, Défago was standing50 upright in front of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious51 that it was, in the true sense, monstrous52.
"Now you seen it too," he wheezed53, "you seen my fiery54, burning feet! And now—that is, unless you kin5 save me an' prevent—it's 'bout18 time for—"
His piteous and beseeching55 voice was interrupted by a sound that was like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook their tangled56 branches. The blazing fire bent57 its flames as before a blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the little camp and seemed to surround it entirely58 in a single moment of time. Défago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought him—was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him, gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The darkness positively59 swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later, above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind, all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and distance—
"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire ...!" then died away, into untold60 space and silence.
Dr. Cathcart—suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the others—was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to dash headlong into the Bush.
"But I want ter know,—you!" shrieked61 the guide. "I want ter see! That ain't him at all, but some—devil that's shunted into his place ...!"
Somehow or other—he admits he never quite knew how he accomplished62 it—he managed to keep him in the tent and pacify63 him. The doctor, apparently, had reached the stage where reaction had set in and allowed his own innate64 force to conquer. Certainly he "managed" Hank admirably. It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative65 strain had now produced a condition of lachrymose66 hysteria which made it necessary to isolate67 him upon a bed of boughs68 and blankets as far removed from Hank as was possible under the circumstances.
And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted night passed over the lonely camp, crying startled sentences, and fragments of sentences, into the folds of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and height and fire mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom. "People with broken faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful, pace towards the camp!" he would moan one minute; and the next would sit up and stare into the woods, intently listening, and whisper, "How terrible in the wilderness69 are—are the feet of them that—" until his uncle came across to change the direction of his thoughts and comfort him.
The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary. Sleep cured him, just as it cured Hank.
Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr. Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk, and there were strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling70 terror of the soul battled with his will all through those silent hours. These were some of the outer signs ...
At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and woke the others, and by seven they were well on their way back to the home camp—three perplexed71 and afflicted72 men, but each in his own way having reduced his inner turmoil73 to a condition of more or less systematized order again.
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1
laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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2
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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3
fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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4
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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5
kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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6
faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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7
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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8
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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9
waxwork
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| n.蜡像 | |
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10
lapsed
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| adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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11
lingo
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| n.语言不知所云，外国话，隐语 | |
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12
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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13
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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14
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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15
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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16
perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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17
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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18
bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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19
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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20
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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21
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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22
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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23
adroit
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| adj.熟练的，灵巧的 | |
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24
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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25
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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26
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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27
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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28
pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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30
daguerreotype
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| n.银板照相 | |
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31
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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32
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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33
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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34
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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35
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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36
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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37
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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38
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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39
pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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40
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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41
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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42
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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43
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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44
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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45
diabolical
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| adj.恶魔似的，凶暴的 | |
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46
entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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47
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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48
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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49
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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50
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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51
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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52
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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53
wheezed
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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55
beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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56
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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57
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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58
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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59
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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60
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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61
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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62
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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63
pacify
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| vt.使(某人)平静(或息怒)；抚慰 | |
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64
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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65
cumulative
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| adj.累积的，渐增的 | |
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66
lachrymose
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| adj.好流泪的，引人落泪的；adv.眼泪地，哭泣地 | |
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67
isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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68
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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69
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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70
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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71
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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72
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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