Algernon Blackwood (4 page)

I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for
what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of
reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they
were gone!

And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence
had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning
of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began
to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round—a look of horror that
came near to panic—calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing
how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back
silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first
lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the
moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the
blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.

As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember
that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless
sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there
was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the
watch.

But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was
neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of
something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and
smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting
bolt upright—listening.

Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been
coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become
audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all.
It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was
a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I
felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily
against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it
the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the
leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big
drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.

Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar,
the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half
caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush
us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas
surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the
Swede to follow.

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There
was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.

A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly
gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind
howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw
the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have
passed since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the
memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how
tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep
lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the
activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was
out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled
the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause
alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly
unaccounted for.

My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to
waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the
turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles—two of them, I'm certain; the
provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and,
crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless,
shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck
passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry
and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.

I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so
that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same
profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw
the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly
and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still
puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure
upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I
reflected—the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry
particles smartly against the taut canvas—the wind dropping heavily upon
our fragile roof.

Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had
altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I
dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead.
Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness
of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes
where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway
among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast
terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me,
as sure as ever man did....

It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again,
and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished
strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself,
for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And
altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense
kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a
sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst
effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from
which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the
whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild
yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.

But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain
beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among
the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my
terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.

For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the
landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view,
but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the
tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now
crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They had moved
nearer.

Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly
nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the
night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I
recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the
tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a
moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position
on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of personal agency, of
deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a
sort of rigidity.

Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd,
that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than
the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous
imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and
not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.

The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up
over the horizon, for it was after four o'clock, and I must have stood on
that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to
close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent,
first taking another exhaustive look round and—yes, I confess it—making a
few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the
willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.

I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances,
still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my
experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny
them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a
subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the
excited imagination.

Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once,
utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of
multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had
made it difficult to breathe.

The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy
sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to
bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.

"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in mid-stream have
disappeared altogether. Our own island's much smaller."

"Any wood left?" I asked sleepily.

"The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat," he laughed,
"but there's enough to last us till then."

I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot
in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the
landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by
like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was
an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out
of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot;
not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one
little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed across
me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had changed
his mind. "Enough to last till tomorrow"—he assumed we should stay on the
island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before he was so
positive the other way. How had the change come about?

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings
and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my
fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth
steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind
interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the
difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening
before. His manner was different—a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a
sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to
describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite
certain of one thing—that he had become frightened?

He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He
had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.

"We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an
opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate.
And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let us."

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

"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping his
eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the
world."

"The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as
naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected
my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the
smoke:

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

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point
of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to
extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was
all pretence.

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

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

"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our
rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But what—"

"And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a genuine
little tremor in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face
somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning
sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to
follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards
the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still
lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles,
or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.

"There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the rent
in the base-board."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two
paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of
it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a
little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the
tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation
showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without
observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would
have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in
mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than
two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.