"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 plunged1 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 cleansed2 out of me by a process of evaporation3 in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated4 one little jot5.
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 incessantly7 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 indirectly8 to a partial confession9 at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let us."
"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 spoke12 across the smoke:
"We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."
This was exactly what I had dreaded13, 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 pretense15.
"Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"
"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 tremor17 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 descending18 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, ribs20 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 neatly22 taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation23 showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably24 have foundered25. At first the water would have made the wood swell26 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 bent27 over and ran his fingers along the slit21.
I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly28 nonplused—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined29 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 abruptly30, 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 willow32 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 decided33 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 imperturbable34 and densely35 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 actively37 alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty that some curious alteration38 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 climax39 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 craters40, 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 inexplicable41; 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 simile42 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 casually43 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 hesitation44. "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 attentively45 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 willows46. 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 dread14 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 otter47 last night."
I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise, and I looked up sharply.
"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 boisterously50. "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 caulking51. Apparently52 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 impatience53 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 steadily54 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 sneered55 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 psychic56, 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 destined57 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 gulps58 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 abating59. Clouds began to gather in the southwest, spreading thence slowly over the sky.
This lessening60 of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant6 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 murmurs61, more musical than the wind noises, but infinitely62 more monotonous63. The wind held many notes, rising, falling, always beating out some sort of great elemental tune64; whereas the river's song lay between three notes at most—dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious65 quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom66.
It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal67 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 sinister68, 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 gathering69 clouds would greatly interfere70 with her lighting71 of the little island.
With this general hush72 of the wind—though it still indulged in occasional brief gusts73—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, rustling74 among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards75. When common objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate76 the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled77 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 malignant78 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 exhaustion79 of a disturbed night, but this only served apparently to render me more susceptible80 than before to the obsessing81 spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological82 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 waterproof83 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 stew84-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 residue85 from former stews86 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 brew87 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 undesirable88 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 fully31 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.
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 peculiar90 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 intervals91, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting92 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 muffled93 metallic94 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 ominous95 in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing96 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 secondly97, 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 resolute98, 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 disquieting99, 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 forth100.
"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity101 for us both, and the thought made me laugh.
He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling102 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 psychical103 pressure caused it—this explosion of unnatural104 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 chattering105 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 mumbling106 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 apprehension107 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 distressed108 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 clumps110 on our right. More often it hovered111 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 deserted112 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 defense113. 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 inevitable114, 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 imperative115. As long as possible, however, I postponed116 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 corroborate117 much that I felt myself: corroboration118, too—which made it so much more convincing—from a totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled119 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 disorder120, disintegration121, 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 vibrations122 reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely123 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 morsel124, 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 solitude125 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 unintelligible126 to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers127 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 sojourn128 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 vaguely129 into a personification of the mightily130 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 trespass131 on some ancient shrine132, 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 succumb134 under the weight of the awful spell, and we should be drawn135 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 noted136 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 verge137 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 replenish138 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 puff139 of wind set the billows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned140, 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 saturation141, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical142 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 phlegmatic143, 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 herd144 of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly145 still. Our insignificance146 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."
"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 radical148 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, vividly149 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 personalities150 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 mere19 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 torrent151 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 entities152, 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 devour153 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 sane36 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."
"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 instinctively156 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 countless157 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 suffocation158?" 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 ascending159 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, stolid160!
"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 entirely161 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 wholesome162 view of the modern skeptical163 world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass164 bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate165 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 superstitious166 idolator! You——"
I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother167 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 ashen168 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, frantic169 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 dictated170 by abject171 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 kaleidoscopic172 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 possessed173 you to do such a thing?" he whispered, with the awe174 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 touching175, 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 clump109 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 gasps176.
"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 downwards177 through the bushes," he sobbed178 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 collapsed179 backwards180 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 enveloping181 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 spasm182 of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably183. 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 concealed184 my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade185 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 scrambling186 up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing187 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 numbness188 came over me.
"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack133 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 tangled189 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 propped190 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.
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1
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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cleansed
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| 弄干净，清洗( cleanse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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evaporation
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| n.蒸发，消失 | |
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abated
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| 减少( abate的过去式和过去分词 )； 减去； 降价； 撤消（诉讼） | |
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5
jot
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| n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下 | |
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6
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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7
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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8
indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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10
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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12
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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13
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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14
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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15
pretense
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| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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16
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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17
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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18
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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19
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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20
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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21
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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22
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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23
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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24
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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25
foundered
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| v.创始人( founder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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27
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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28
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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30
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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32
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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34
imperturbable
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| adj.镇静的 | |
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35
densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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36
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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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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38
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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39
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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40
craters
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| n.火山口( crater的名词复数 )；弹坑等 | |
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41
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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42
simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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43
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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44
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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45
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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46
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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47
otter
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| n.水獭 | |
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48
otters
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| n.（水）獭( otter的名词复数 )；獭皮 | |
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49
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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50
boisterously
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| adv.喧闹地，吵闹地 | |
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51
caulking
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| n.堵缝；敛缝；捻缝；压紧v.堵（船的）缝( caulk的现在分词 )；泥…的缝；填塞；使不漏水 | |
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52
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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53
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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54
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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55
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56
psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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57
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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58
gulps
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| n.一大口（尤指液体）( gulp的名词复数 )v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的第三人称单数 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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59
abating
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| 减少( abate的现在分词 )； 减去； 降价； 撤消（诉讼） | |
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60
lessening
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| 减轻，减少，变小 | |
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61
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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62
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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63
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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64
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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65
lugubrious
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| adj.悲哀的，忧郁的 | |
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66
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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67
withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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68
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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69
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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70
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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71
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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72
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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73
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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74
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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75
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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77
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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78
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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79
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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80
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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81
obsessing
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| v.时刻困扰( obsess的现在分词 )；缠住；使痴迷；使迷恋 | |
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82
physiological
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| adj.生理学的，生理学上的 | |
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83
waterproof
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| n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水 | |
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84
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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85
residue
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| n.残余，剩余，残渣 | |
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86
stews
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| n.炖煮的菜肴( stew的名词复数 )；烦恼，焦虑v.炖( stew的第三人称单数 )；煨；思考；担忧 | |
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87
brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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88
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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89
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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90
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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91
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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92
hooting
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| （使）作汽笛声响，作汽车喇叭声( hoot的现在分词 )； 倒好儿； 倒彩 | |
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93
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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94
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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95
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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96
distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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97
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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98
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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99
disquieting
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| adj.令人不安的，令人不平静的v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的现在分词 ) | |
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100
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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101
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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102
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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103
psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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104
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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105
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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106
mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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107
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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108
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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109
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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110
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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111
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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112
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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113
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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114
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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115
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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116
postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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117
corroborate
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| v.支持，证实，确定 | |
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118
corroboration
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| n.进一步的证实，进一步的证据 | |
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119
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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120
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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121
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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122
vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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123
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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124
morsel
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| n.一口，一点点 | |
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125
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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126
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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127
dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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128
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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129
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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130
mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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131
trespass
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| n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地 | |
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132
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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133
tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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134
succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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135
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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136
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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137
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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138
replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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139
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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140
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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141
saturation
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| n.饱和(状态)；浸透 | |
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142
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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143
phlegmatic
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| adj.冷静的，冷淡的，冷漠的，无活力的 | |
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144
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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145
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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146
insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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147
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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148
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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149
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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150
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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151
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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152
entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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153
devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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154
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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155
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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156
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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157
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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158
suffocation
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| n.窒息 | |
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159
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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160
stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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161
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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162
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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163
skeptical
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| adj.怀疑的，多疑的 | |
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164
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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165
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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166
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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167
smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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168
ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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169
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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170
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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171
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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172
kaleidoscopic
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| adj.千变万化的 | |
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173
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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174
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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175
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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176
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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177
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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178
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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179
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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180
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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181
enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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182
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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183
abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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184
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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185
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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186
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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187
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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188
numbness
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| n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆 | |
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189
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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190
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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