The Willows.........................................................................................................................................................0

AFTER leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapesth, the Danube enters a region of singular

loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the

country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willowbushes. On the big

maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in colour as it leaves the banks, and across

In high flood this great acreage of sand, shinglebeds, and willowgrown islands is almost topped by the

water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the

sunshine in an evermoving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees;

they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender

stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they

somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and

falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until

the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.

Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the

intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters

pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks;

carrying away masses of shore and willowclumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily

in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the floodtime obliterates their very

Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our

Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and fryingpan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about

midJuly. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly

through stillsleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills

of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees

roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman

Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians,

where the March steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.

Racing along at twelve kilometres an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters sure

sign of flood sent us aground on many a shinglebed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden

belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky; and then the

canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain

of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the

The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the streets of a town and

shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in

less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishinghut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human

habitation and civilisation within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of human kind, the utter

isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us

both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of

passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little

kingdom of wonder and magic a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it,

with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.

Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind made us feel weary,

and we at once began casting about for a suitable campingground for the night. But the bewildering

character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then swept us out

again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of

sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a

backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our

exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless

blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining

with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.

"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had travelled from the source in the Black

Forest, and how he had often been obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.

"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a little farther into safety up the sand,

I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the

sun thinking of the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea, and

how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming travelling companion as my friend, the Swede.

We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed

us from the very beginning with its aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the

pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great rivergame of

losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the

grown of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of

its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little

craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and wellmeaning, till

How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret life? At night we heard it singing to

the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the

rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its

gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows and

swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy

waters at the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how its laughter

roared out when the wind blew upstream and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and

voices, its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; that selfconscious chatter

when there were hills to look on; the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far

too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow

It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew it. There were places in the upper

reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it

elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous limestone

hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb

And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before

the little turbulent tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in, but to

run for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly

declining to recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the

Inn comes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river

that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way

and that against the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and mush dashing to and fro in order to

get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the

time of its life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and after Passau it no

This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know other aspects of the great creature,

and across the Bavarian wheat plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we

could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there moved, concealed as by a silken

mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too, lest

Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and animals that haunted the shores.

Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the

shinglebeds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands, and

hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It was

impossible to feel annoyed with the river's vagaries after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at

sunrise and swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or

looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach

of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and

But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the Danube became more serious. It ceased

trifling. It was halfway to the Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries where

no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly grownup, and claimed our respect and even

our awe. It broke out into three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometres farther down,

and for a canoe there were no indications which one was intended to be followed.

"If you take a side channel," said the Hungarian officer we met in the Pressburg shop while buying

provisions, "you may find yourselves, when the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and

you may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to continue. The river,

The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being left high and dry by a sudden subsidence

of the waters might be serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the

officer's prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it

It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two from the horizon, and leaving

my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I

found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or three feet above the level of

the river. The far end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind

drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.

I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing down with a shouting roar,

dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming

streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while the furious movement of

the willow bushes as the wind poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually

moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me; it was like looking up the

slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.

The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I made the tour,

nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the

backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind

that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and

then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous

antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic spongelike growths that

sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such

Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long

and curiously, a singular emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the

wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.

A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of the little islands I saw before me

would probably have been swept away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the

sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was

not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the driving wind this shouting hurricane that

might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the

landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was

conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing

to do with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it

to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my realisation

of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements about me. The hugegrown river

had something to do with it too a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with these great

elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were

But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow

bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the

eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile

beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected

themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers,

and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power,

Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I was no stranger to

moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell

peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and

human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.

With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from

them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague

terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving furiously

yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon

the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited

The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to analysis, did not at the time trouble

me by passing into menace. Yet it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up

the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stewpot. It remained, just enough to bother and

perplex, and to rob a most delightful campingground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion,

however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never

have explained to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.

There was a slight depression in the centre of the island, and here we pitched the tent. The surrounding

"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood upright, "no stones and

precious little firewood. I'm for moving on early tomorrow eh? This sand won't hold anything."

But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many devices, and we made the cosy gipsy

house as safe as possible, and then set about collecting a store of wood to last till bedtime. Willow bushes

drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly.

Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a

"The island's much smaller than when we landed," said the accurate Swede. "It won't last long at this rate.

We'd better drag the canoe close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment's notice. I shall sleep in my

He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather jolly laugh as he spoke.

"By Jove!" I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had caused his exclamation. But for the

"What in the world's this?" I heard him cry again, and this time his voice had become serious.

I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river, pointing at something in the

A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past. It kept disappearing and

coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where

we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an

odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.

It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the body of a drowned man turning

helplessly in the current. Far below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and

Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another thing happened to recall us to the river

bank. This time it really was a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube

was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as

Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot

say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It

seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flatbottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and

being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our

direction, but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he

was about. It seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water

to us shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was

something curious about the whole appearance man, boat, signs, voice that made an impression on me

"I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand and watching the man out of sight. He

seemed to be gone in a moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them

in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so

"But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?" I said, half to myself. "Where is he

going at such a time, and what did he mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us

"He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my companion. "These Hungarians

believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed

here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I suppose they believe in fairies and

elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his

The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked something that was usually there. I

noted the change instantly while he talked, though without being able to label it precisely.

"If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly I remember trying to make as much noise as I could

"they might well people a place like this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted

all this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental deities."

The subject dropped and we returned to our stewpot, for my friend was not given to imaginative

conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his

stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable temperament, I

felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any

white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength when

untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along under his pile

of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just

then that the Swede was what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more than they said.

"The river's still rising, though," he added, as if following out some thoughts of his own, and dropping his

The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten minute's notice, and the more water the better

we liked it. It meant an increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shinglebeds that so often

Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed to increase with the darkness,

howling overhead and shaking the willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes,

like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of immense

power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through

But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full moon rose up in the east and covered

We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises of the night round us, and talking

happily of the journey we had already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the

tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the curtain and extinguished the

lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and see each other's faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead

like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash

Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of our first camps in the Black Forest, or

of other subjects altogether remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment

more than was necessary almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid discussion of the camp and its

incidents. Neither the otter nor the boatman, for instance, received the honour of a single mention, though

ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater part of the evening. They were, of course,

The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the wind, that drove the smoke in our faces

wherever we sat, helped at the same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging

expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an

absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always

seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight.

The long day's battle with wind and water such wind and such water! had tired us both, and an early

bed was the obvious programme. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire,

talking in desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the thunder of

wind and river. The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a

bit the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of

communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried

with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not

The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by

hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there

beneath he moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world

tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to

make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire,

and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.

"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my companion watched me lazily as I moved off

For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that night, unusually open to suggestion

of things other than sensory. He too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not

altogether pleased, I remember, to recognise this slight change in him, and instead of immediately collecting

sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen to

better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned in force;

When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of the place descended upon me with

a positive shock. No mere "scenery" could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of

the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But

the willows especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little,

shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing but what it was they made so much todo about belonged to the

secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild

yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution

altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily

together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even when there was no wind.

They moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen

There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp, shaking their innumerable silver

The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps

have their "note" either of welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy

preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause after supper usually it comes and

announces itself. And the note of this willowcamp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were

interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there

watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night's lodging we

might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and inquisitive stay No! by all the gods of the trees and

wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not wanted. The willows

Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence, found lodgment in my mind as I stood

listening. What, I thought, if, after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should

rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshalled by the gods whose territory we had invaded, sweep

towards us off the vast swamps, booming overhead in the night and then settle down! As I looked it was

so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled together in masses, hostile,

waiting for the great wind that should finally start them arunning. I could have sworn their aspect changed a

The melancholy shrill cry of a nightbird sounded overhead, and suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the

piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just

in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into

my mind and cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede's remark about moving on next day, and I was

just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts

standing immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the elements had covered his approach.

"You've been gone so long," he shouted above the wind, "I thought something must have happened to you."

But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that conveyed to me more than his usual

words, and in a flash I understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had

"River still rising," he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight, "and the wind's simply awful."

He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave the real importance to his

"Lucky," I cried back, "our tent's in the hollow. I think it'll hold all right." I added something about the

difficulty of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them

across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through the branches, nodding his head.

"Lucky if we get away without disaster!" he shouted, or words to that effect; and I remember feeling half

angry with him for putting the thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster

We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We took a last look round. But for

the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend's

reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this "diabolical

Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent, with both yellow paddles

beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a willowstem, and the washedup dishes removed to a safe

We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of the tent door was up, and I

saw the branches and the stars and the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the

wind against our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and covered all with

Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the door of the tent. I looked

at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o'clock the

threshold of a new day and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me;

the wind howled as before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of

I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as the gusts smote them, but our

little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough

resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of

the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious

I was halfway out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with

their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was

incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among

the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes,

forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front

My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate

the sudden realisation, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched

there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself that I was not

They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes immense,

bronzecoloured, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and

noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed

that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely

the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in

a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They

were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in

and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the

contortions of the windtossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves

almost rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they

poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.

I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I thought they must every

moment disappear and resolve themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical

illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the

standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real

and living, though perhaps not according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.

Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed

to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred

the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to

bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and

worshipped by men in all ages of the world's history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation,

something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground

still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my

ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally.

Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that

overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship

Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept against me with such force that it

blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least

it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into heaven from the

heart of the night, but my reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued

none the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these

pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them

appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across

the open patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my

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

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, realising 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

doorcurtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as

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

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

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no hanging bough; there was no

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

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm. This deep, prolonged

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 turnedover 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

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

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coastline 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in midstream have disappeared altogether. Our own

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

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 landingplace opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks

flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an exhilarating operation,

and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was

blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed across me, showing that he no longer

wished to leave posthaste, and had changed his mind. "Enough to last till 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

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and clouds of spray which the

wind brought into our fryingpan, and my fellowtraveller talked incessantly about the difficulty the

ViennaPesth 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

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

"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."

"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. "The gods are

"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

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

"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube in flood

"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,

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

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two paddles a few hours before, but a

second impulse made me think better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little slither of wood had been neatly

taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation

showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably have

foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in

midstream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface,

"There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I heard him saying, more to himself than to

me, "two victims rather," he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.

I began to whistle a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly nonplussed and purposely paid no

"It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere

"We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling to say. "The stones are very sharp."

I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did

"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 sandpapered it with care, making it so thin that

"One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly, "or or it has been filed by the constant

"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

"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first thoughts took the form of

"One of us must have done this thing, and it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how

impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my companion,

the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not

to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and densely

practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively alive even in this blaze of

sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his mind

that the was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret

and hitherto unmentionable events waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought,

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, basinshaped and of

various depths and sizes, varying from that of a teacup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible

for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the

canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was conceivable that a sharp point

had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same

I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my "reason". An explanation of

some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary

however absurd to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the

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 travelling till the following day. I drew his attention

"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But you can explain them, no doubt!"

"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never watched those little whirlwinds in the

street that twist and twirl everything into a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's all."

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him surreptitiously all the time, and I had

an idea he was watching me. He seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear,

or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and

up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows.

Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me,

however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and

address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my

heart that he would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed that, my imagination

"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted to say something and get it over.

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

"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed so much bigger than an otter."

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

"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of listening, turning his head to the

wind, and something in the expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with

our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked

at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.

"I did rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that thing in the boat was. I remember

thinking at the time it was not a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my

"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without going out of our way to imagine things!

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

downstream as fast as they could lick. And that otter was an otter, so don't let's play the fool about it!"

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the least annoyed. I took courage

"And, for Heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear things, because it only gives me the

jumps, and there's nothing to hear but the river and this cursed old thundering wind."

"You fool!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool. That's just the way all victims talk. As if

you didn't understand just as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of resignation. "The

best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at

My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew quite well his words were true, and that

I was the fool, not he. Up to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt

annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary

happenings, and half ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very

beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the necessity of there

being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward,

"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

That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to fish, testing the leak, collecting wood,

and watching the enormous flood of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and

we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn

away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o'clock, and then for the

first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the southwest,

This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant roaring, banging, and thundering had

irritated our nerves. Yet the silence that came about five o'clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner

quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way then; it filled the air with deep

murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes,

rising, falling always beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river's song lay between

three notes at most dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow

seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.

It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight took everything out of the

landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed to convey the

suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I

know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself more than once calculating

how soon after sunset the full moon would get up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly

With this general hush of the wind though it still indulged in occasional brief gusts the river seemed to

me to grow blacker, the willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent

movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots

upwards. When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate

the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us,

assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of

purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.

The forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were focusing upon our island, and more

particularly upon ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really indescribable

I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered somewhat from the exhaustion of a

disturbed night, but this only served apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing

spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very obvious

physiological explanations, yet, in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I dreaded the

The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day, and the one remaining paddle

had been securely tied by the Swede to the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five

o'clock onwards I busied myself with the stewpot and preparations for dinner, it being my turn to cook that

night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavour, and a general thick residue from former

stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was

followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood lay

close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing

his attentions between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice an admitted privilege of the offduty

man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in recaulking the canoe, strengthening the tent

ropes, and fishing for driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us,

and I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not

The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from the bank, where he had wandered

"Come and listen," he said, "and see what you make of it." He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often

We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the deep note of the water and the hissings

rising from its turbulent surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to

reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound something like the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come

across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular

intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to

nothing so much as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its

muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.

"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this afternoon it came all round the island. I

hunted it down, but could never get near enough to see to localise it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead,

and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could have sword 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 the direction, too, coming

nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was ominous in quality,

because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me

"The wind blowing in those sandfunnels," I said determined to find an explanation, "or the bushes rubbing

"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes from everywhere at once." He ignored my

"But now the wind has dropped," I objected. "The willows can hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?"

His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because I knew intuitively it was true.

"It is because the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned before. It is the cry, I believe, of the "

I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was in danger, but determined at the

same time to escape further conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I

dreaded, too, that he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I

wanted to keep myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another night to be faced before

we escaped from this distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.

"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously stirring the appetising mixture. That

He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in its mysterious depths, and then

The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but

I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay upon the groundsheet, but there

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 laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical

pressure caused it this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to

seek relief; it was a temporary safetyvalve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.

"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be consistent and find an explanation. "I clean

forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left

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

"There's enough for tomorrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In

"I hope so to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack, "unless we're claimed first as

victims for the sacrifice," he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I

suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to

Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence, avoiding one another's eyes,

and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds

unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more and more acute. It

was not then active fear, I think, but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more that if I had been

able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now almost

incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct

notes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the

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

the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads,

completely surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within my knowledge is like that

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 defence. 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 us that

some kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to

spend the night together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much

longer without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As long as possible,

however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he flung into

Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me, coming as they did to corroborate

much that I felt myself; corroboration, too which made it so much more convincing from a totally

different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in such an

inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments

were mere bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved him. It

"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder, disintegration, destruction, our destruction," he

said once, while the fire blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."

And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much louder than before, and directly

"I don't think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound doesn't come to me by the ears at all.

The vibrations reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a

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

"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of common experience. It is unknown. Only one thing

Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time, but he had so admirably expressed my

own feeling that it was a relief to have the though out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words from

The solitude of that Danube campingplace, 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 redroofed church. Even the tourists would have been welcome.

Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely greater, stranger, and seemed to arise

from some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed

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

great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot

held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peephole whence they could spy upon the earth,

themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a

sojourn here, we should be carried over the border and deprived of what we called "our lives", yet by mental,

not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure a sacrifice.

It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I

translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror

of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breedingplace; whereas

my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where the

old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral

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 revolution not

parallel to the human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we

Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in the silence round the fire they

allowed themselves to be noted by the mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to

distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting

willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other aspect

as it existed across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was now not merely to me,

but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new

"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

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 recognised 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

Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small. Neither of us moved to

replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the

circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but

apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of

At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the wind were about to rise again, I

reached the point for me of saturation, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain

speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have been far worse in its effect

upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up with a

"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

The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind. He stared straight at me and

answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at

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

"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he replied, in the tone of a doctor

diagnosing some grave disease; "we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd

of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still.

I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It was precisely like listening to an

"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 radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution

far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot where their region

touches ours, where the veil between has worn thin" horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual

I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead, everything except that I was

He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the fire, an indefinable change in his face

"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region not far removed from

our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind where great things go on unceasingly, where

immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the

rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the

balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with more expressions of

"I suggest just now " I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I was face to face with a madman.

"You think," he said, "it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you

now it is neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending

upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do

with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own."

The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I listened to them there in the dark

stillness of that lonely island, set me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.

"A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could get away," he went on, "just as the

wolves stop to devour the dogs and give the sleigh another start. But I see no chance of any other victim

I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he continued.

"It's the willows, of course. The willows mask the others, but the others are feeling about for us. If we let our

minds betray our fear, we're lost, lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm, so determined, so

sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. "If we can hold

out through the night," he added, "we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or rather, undiscovered."

That gonglike humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but it was my friend's scared face

"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

"Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must keep them out of our minds at all

I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own way. I never longed for the sun as I

"I slept badly a little after dawn," I replied evasively, trying to follow his instructions, which I knew

"The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard," he said, adding, after a moment's hesitation, "and that

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

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

"And that," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards where the gonglike note hummed

"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

I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea in my mind were beyond question

the thought an idea in his. I realised what he realised, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the

tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes,

when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very

earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I

"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

"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

"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

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

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when the nerves are in a very

great state of tension, and this small thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I

chanced to look down at my sandshoe the sort we used for the canoe and something to do with the

hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had

in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a

wholesome view of the modern sceptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef,

and ale, motorcars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of

ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I suppose,

it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living in an atmosphere of things that to the

normal consciousness must seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted

the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked

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

I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the sound of my voice as something

sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too the strange cry overhead in the darkness and that

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go! We can't stay now; we must strike camp

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject terror the terror he had resisted so long,

"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical outburst, but still realising 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 semicollapse. The positions, by one of those kaleidoscopic changes nature

loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had

"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered with the awe of genuine terror in his voice

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine, kneeling down beside him and looking

"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed

for Komorn. Now, pull yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about not thinking fear!"

He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get

up and make an excursion into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping

among the bushes and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow

We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where some driftwood from a former

flood had caught high among the branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon

the sand. It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I heard his breath

"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

I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze dropcurtain used at the back of a theatre

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

"I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me. "Look, by God! It's coming this way!

I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy form was swinging towards us

through the bushes, and then I collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to

support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really

hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that

plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering.

My eyes were tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness was

expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and

An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that

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 concealed my mind from them at the moment of

discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He himself, he says, actually swooned at the

I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I found myself scrambling up out of

the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand

to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to

"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's what saved me. It made me stop thinking

"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected thought at the moment. A numbness

"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere.

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my friend too great healing gusts of

shaking laughter that brought a tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire

and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our feet in sand.

"It's those sandfunnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows there were deep

funnelshaped 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

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we could do, and to bed we went

accordingly without further delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the

paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent that our feet

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 exhaustion of nerves and body decreed

otherwise, and sleep after a while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my

companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat up, asking me if I "heard

this" or "heard that". He tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had

risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with the report that all was well,

and finally he grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard

unmistakable sounds of snoring the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a welcome and

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 realised positively that the Swede was not here. He

I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I was out I plunged into a sort of

torrent of humming that surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It

was that same familiar humming gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might have been about me in

the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.

The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards over the clouds from a thin strip

of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy

patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island, calling him by name, shouting at the

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

humming muffled it, so that the sound only travelled 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

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

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

strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and

using the most outlandish phrases in his anger about "going inside to Them", and "taking the way of the water

and the wind", and God only knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which

turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get him into the

comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him until

I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt

cessation of the humming and pattering outside I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole

business perhaps. For he 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 doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:

"My life, old man it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow. They've found a victim in our

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and

began to snore again as healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life

as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours later hours of ceaseless vigil for

me it became so clear to me that he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I

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

He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he remembered everything except his own

He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just before he fainted was in his mind,

"Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though as though I feel quite safe again, I

He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on the sand. There was no wind. The

He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking with a stick among the sandy bays

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

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body of a man. He turned it over. It

was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a

few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour of the

"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for there was something about the appearance

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face, and began clambering down

the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in warning; but either my

foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him

and sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that our

feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily against the

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 commotion as of winged things in the air about us and

disappeared upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance. It was

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

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a "proper burial" and then

abruptly dropped upon his knees on the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an

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 indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly

similar in shape and kind to the sandfunnels that we had found all over the island.

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 midstream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight,