"But you really think a sacrifice would—"
That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke7, but it was my friend's scared face that really stopped my mouth.
"Hush8!" 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 inevitable9 clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us."
"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 instinctively12 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 countless13 little footsteps I heard," he said, adding, after a moment's hesitation14, "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 suffocation15?" I said.
"Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been altered—had increased enormously, so that we should have been crushed."
"And that," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards16 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 ascending17 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, stolid18!
"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 forth19; 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 more thing 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 apparently20, 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 entirely21 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 wholesome22 view of the modern skeptical23 world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass24 bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate25 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 superstitious26 idolater! You—"
I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother27 the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.
He had turned ashen28 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, frantic29 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 dictated30 by abject31 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 hysterical32 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 kaleidoscopic33 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 possessed34 you to do such a thing?" he whispered with the awe35 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 touching36, 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 clump37 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 gasps38.
"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 willow1 bushes, rounded at the top, and moving all over upon its surface—"coiling upon itself like smoke," he said afterwards.
"I watched it settle downwards39 through the bushes," he sobbed40 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 collapsed41 backwards42 with a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on 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 enveloping43 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 spasm44 of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably45. It was the way he caught at me in falling.
But it was the 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 concealed46 my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade47 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 date, how long or short is impossible to say, I found myself scrambling48 up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing49 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 numbness50 came over me.
"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack51 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 gusts52 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 tangled53 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 propped54 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.
It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the exhaustion55 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 cork56 mattress57, 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.
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 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 positively59 that the Swede was not here. He had gone.
I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation60, and the moment I was out I plunged62 into a sort of torrent63 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 swarm64 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 frantically65 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 smothered66 my voice, and the humming muffled67 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 plunge61.
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 amazement68 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 abrupt69 cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway70, 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 literally71 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 curiously72 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, poking73 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 corpse74 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 shuddered75 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, an undecipherable expression on his face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely76. 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.
Halfway77 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 momentum78 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 rose from its surface the loud sound of humming—the sound of several hummings—which passed with a vast commotion79 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 abruptly80 dropped upon his knees on the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.
I saw what he had seen.
For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented81 with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.
"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful mark!"
And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter82.
The End
The End
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1
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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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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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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suffocation
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| n.窒息 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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skeptical
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| adj.怀疑的，多疑的 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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kaleidoscopic
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| adj.千变万化的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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scrambling
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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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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numbness
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| n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆 | |
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51
tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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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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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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momentum
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| n.动力，冲力，势头；动量 | |
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commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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indented
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| adj.锯齿状的，高低不平的；缩进排版 | |
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otter
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| n.水獭 | |
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