The Willows

a long pause, h

as though he wanted to say something and get it over

y different that he caught me with

s place is. Otters ar

interrupted. "I mean-do you think-d

the name of Hea

u did, and at first it seemed

up-stream magnified it,

oment, as though his mind we

nary yellow eyes," he

rifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll

e expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinis

thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a m

e, but this time there was impatience,

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

rave expression. He was not in the least

hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's not

t 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

f 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 who

"and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to think about it,

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 brilli

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

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 foun

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 o

ore 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

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

is voice calling to me from the bank, where he

hat you make of it." He held his hand

thing?" he asked, wa

liar 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 hooti

er get near enough to see-to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, to

, 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 omi

d determined to find an explanation, "or the bu

"It comes from everywhere at once." He ignored my ex

bjected. "The willows can hardly ma

se I had dreaded it, and secondly, be

has dropped we now hear

ry, I belie

le, 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 we

igorously stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-po

tree, fumbling in its mysterious depths, and then empty

I cried; "it

er that startled me. It was forced laught

ere!" he shouted,

d, I

e is no bread. T

rything the sack had contained lay upon

ound of my laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure caused it-this explosion of unnatural laughter in both o

d an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering wom

less than it was this morni

he draw attention to

orously, "and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gra

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

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 l

shine, 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 te

onvincing-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 tho

tegration, destruction, our destruction," he said once, while the f

rer, ringing much louder than before, and directly o

he ears at all. The vibrations reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within

into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and no trace of moonlight came throu

mmon experience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it rea

mirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the thought out, and to hav

unts 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 commonplace

et 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 peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the v

ing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespas

d aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another scheme of life, another revolution n

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

Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. "Otherwise

all that once?" I i

nswered dryly; "

tened 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 u

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,

hink, the shouting

the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must

, and the awful feelings I get. There's something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, an

and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For

ave disease; "we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as e

und no words. It was precisely like listening to an accura

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,

ammered, icy with the h

st 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

are aware

he humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting f

little over the fire, an indefinable change in his face t

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 empir

ling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he

ould be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are

stened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me

you propose?"

get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and gi

e gleam in his eye was drea