The Willows

uted above the wind, "I thought so

more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real reason for his coming. It

inting to the flood in the moonlig

t was the cry for companionship that

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

ing half angry with him for putting the thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself

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

th yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a willow-stem, and the w

hes and the stars and the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our taut lit

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

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

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

sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there star

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, for

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 lo

e 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 th

ven 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 th

t seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of real

dreadfully. I took a quick look round-a look of horror that came near to panic-calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and la

ore I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept,

that woke me, but the slow approach of something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow small

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 th

the wind. Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brus

the tent was free. There was no hanging bough;

s. 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 n

f anything to cause alarm. This deep, prolonged dis

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

he 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 u

rvousness and malaise

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 r

es 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 re

nd round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery l

e me a different view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to the willows, and o

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, find

e no more readily than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings brought the ad

and 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-ye

. Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I cou

austed, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of multitudinous patter

sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just tim

islands out in mid-stream have disappeared

eft?" I ask

morrow in a dead heat," he laughed, "bu

ent. 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 s

leave post-haste, and had changed his mind. "Enough to last till tomorrow"-he assumed we should stay on the island a

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 differ

tted to smoke his pipe. He had the map spread

opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any r

nts?" I asked quickly, wi

he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. "The gods

rally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my

e if we get away with

the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the

ster! Why, wh

teering paddle's gon

xcited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube i

of the canoe," he added, with a

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

ooping to pick it up. "And here

oticed two paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse mad

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

" I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims ra

en utterly nonplussed-and purposely paid no attention t

resently, straightening up from his exa

ng, of course," I stopped whistling

et my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did how imposs

oo," he added quietly, handing me t

s scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had sand-papered it with ca

d feebly, "or-or it has been filed by the constant stream

g away, laughing a little, "

k that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out after him

his head to look at me before di

ow 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, wa

curious alteration had come about in his mind-that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hith

rs, 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 diminishin

ugh under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for travelin

re all over the island. But yo

tched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl eve

ring 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