الفصل الفصل 5 · THE CAMP OF THE DOG

. THE CAMP OF THE DOG

I

Islands of all shapes and sizes troop northward from Stockholm by the

hundred, and the little steamer that threads their intricate mazes in

summer leaves the traveller in a somewhat bewildered state as regards

the points of the compass when it reaches the end of its journey at

Waxholm. But it is only after Waxholm that the true islands begin, so

to speak, to run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course

of a hundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart

of this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer

holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mere

round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous

stretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitous

cliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between no

wider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretched

like the open sea for miles.

Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the

majority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, their

coast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy

bays, with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the

water’s edge and led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and

mystery into the very heart of primitive forest.

The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue

of paying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in a

picturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a mere

reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-bound

monsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea. The fourth, which we

selected because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for anchorage,

bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall have what description is

necessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent was

concerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of a

hundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees.

It was in the blaze of an evening in July, the air clear as crystal,

the sea a cobalt blue, when we left the steamer on the borders of

civilisation and sailed away with maps, compasses, and provisions for

the little group of dots in the Skärgård that were to be our home for

the next two months. The dinghy and my Canadian canoe trailed behind

us, with tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when the point

of cliff intervened to hide the steamer and the Waxholm hotel we

realised for the first time that the horror of trains and houses was

far behind us, the fever of men and cities, the weariness of streets

and confined spaces. The wilderness opened up on all sides into endless

blue reaches, and the map and compasses were so frequently called

into requisition that we went astray more often than not and progress

was enchantingly slow. It took us, for instance, two whole days to

find our crescent-shaped home, and the camps we made on the way were

so fascinating that we left them with difficulty and regret, for each

island seemed more desirable than the one before it, and over all lay

the spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the turmoil of the world,

and the freedom of open and desolate spaces.

And so many of these spots of world-beauty have I sought out and

dwelt in, that in my mind remains only a composite memory of their

faces, a true map of heaven, as it were, from which this particular

one stands forth with unusual sharpness because of the strange things

that happened there, and also, I think, because anything in which John

Silence played a part has a habit of fixing itself in the mind with a

living and lasting quality of vividness.

For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of the party. Some private

case in the interior of Hungary claimed his attention, and it was not

till later--the 15th of August, to be exact--that I had arranged to

meet him in Berlin and then return to London together for our harvest

of winter work. All the members of our party, however, were known to

him more or less well, and on this third day as we sailed through the

narrow opening into the lagoon and saw the circular ridge of trees in a

gold and crimson sunset before us, his last words to me when we parted

in London for some unaccountable reason came back very sharply to my

memory, and recalled the curious impression of prophecy with which I

had first heard them:

“Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you can,” he had said as

the train slipped out of Victoria; “and we will meet in Berlin on the

15th--unless you should send for me sooner.”

And now suddenly the words returned to me so clearly that it seemed

I almost heard his voice in my ear: “Unless you should send for me

sooner;” and returned, moreover, with a significance I was wholly at a

loss to understand that touched somewhere in the depths of my mind a

vague sense of apprehension that they had all along been intended in

the nature of a prophecy.

In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July evening, as was only

natural behind the shelter of the belt of woods, and we took to the

oars, all breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our island

home, yet all talking in somewhat hushed voices of the best place to

land, the depth of water, the safest place to anchor, to put up the

tents in, the most sheltered spot for the camp-fires, and a dozen

things of importance that crop up when a home in the wilderness has

actually to be made.

And during this busy sunset hour of unloading before the dark, the

souls of my companions adopted the trick of presenting themselves very

vividly anew before my mind, and introducing themselves afresh.

In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense singular. In the

conventional life at home they certainly seemed ordinary enough,

but suddenly, as we passed through these gates of the wilderness,

I saw them more sharply than before, with characters stripped of

the atmosphere of men and cities. A complete change of setting

often furnishes a startlingly new view of people hitherto held for

well-known; they present another facet of their personalities. I seemed

to see my own party almost as new people--people I had not known

properly hitherto, people who would drop all disguises and henceforth

reveal themselves as they really were. And each one seemed to say: “Now

you will see me as I am. You will see me here in this primitive life

of the wilderness without clothes. All my masks and veils I have left

behind in the abodes of men. So, look out for surprises!”

The Reverend Timothy Maloney helped me to put up the tents, long

practice making the process easy, and while he drove in pegs and

tightened ropes, his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without

a tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out

for the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years

of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the

work, and more, without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting

down saplings for the tent-poles was a delight to see, and his eye in

judging the level was unfailing.

Bullied as a young man into a lucrative family living, he had in turn

bullied his mind into some semblance of orthodox beliefs, doing the

honours of the little country church with an energy that made one think

of a coal-heaver tending china; and it was only in the past few years

that he had resigned the living and taken instead to cramming young men

for their examinations. This suited him better. It enabled him, too, to

indulge his passion for spells of “wild life,” and to spend the summer

months of most years under canvas in one part of the world or another

where he could take his young men with him and combine “reading” with

open air.

His wife usually accompanied him, and there was no doubt she enjoyed

the trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of

the wilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The only

difference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regarded

it as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, she

played at camping out with her clothes and body. None the less, she

made a splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over

the fire we had built among the stones was to understand that her heart

was in the business for the moment and that she was happy even with the

detail.

Mrs. Maloney at home, knitting in the sun and believing that the world

was made in six days, was one woman; but Mrs. Maloney, standing with

bare arms over the smoke of a wood fire under the pine trees, was

another; and Peter Sangree, the Canadian pupil, with his pale skin,

and his loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in very

unfavourable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with

slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a

knife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed, too, with

willing pleasure, for in spite of his general appearance of debility he

was as happy to be in camp as any of them.

But more than any other member of the party, Joan Maloney, the

daughter, was the one who seemed a natural and genuine part of the

landscape, who belonged to it all just in the same way that the trees

and the moss and the grey rocks running out into the water belonged to

it. For she was obviously in her right and natural setting, a creature

of the wilds, a gipsy in her own home.

To any one with a discerning eye this would have been more or less

apparent, but to me, who had known her during all the twenty-two

years of her life and was familiar with the ins and outs of her

primitive, utterly un-modern type, it was strikingly clear. To see

her there made it impossible to imagine her again in civilisation. I

lost all recollection of how she looked in a town. The memory somehow

evaporated. This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the

grace of the woodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing

the fire, or stirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly

seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home;

in London she became some one concealed by clothes, an artificial doll

overdressed and moving by clockwork, only a portion of her alive. Here

she was alive all over.

I forget altogether how she was dressed, just as I forget how any

particular tree was dressed, or how the markings ran on any one of the

boulders that lay about the Camp. She looked just as wild and natural

and untamed as everything else that went to make up the scene, and more

than that I cannot say.

Pretty, she was decidedly not. She was thin, skinny, dark-haired, and

possessed of great physical strength in the form of endurance. She had,

too, something of the force and vigorous purpose of a man, tempestuous

sometimes and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzling

her easy-going father with her storms of waywardness, while at the same

time she stirred his admiration by her violence. A pagan of the pagans

she was besides, and with some haunting suggestion of old-world pagan

beauty about her dark face and eyes. Altogether an odd and difficult

character, but with a generosity and high courage that made her very

lovable.

In town life she always seemed to me to feel cramped, bored, a devil

in a cage, in her eyes a hunted expression as though any moment she

dreaded to be caught. But up in these spacious solitudes all this

disappeared. Away from the limitations that plagued and stung her, she

would show at her best, and as I watched her moving about the Camp

I repeatedly found myself thinking of a wild creature that had just

obtained its freedom and was trying its muscles.

Peter Sangree, of course, at once went down before her. But she was so

obviously beyond his reach, and besides so well able to take care of

herself, that I think her parents gave the matter but little thought,

and he himself worshipped at a respectful distance, keeping admirable

control of his passion in all respects save one; for at his age the

eyes are difficult to master, and the yearning, almost the devouring,

expression often visible in them was probably there unknown even to

himself. He, better than any one else, understood that he had fallen in

love with something most hard of attainment, something that drew him

to the very edge of life, and almost beyond it. It, no doubt, was a

secret and terrible joy to him, this passionate worship from afar; only

I think he suffered more than any one guessed, and that his want of

vitality was due in large measure to the constant stream of unsatisfied

yearning that poured for ever from his soul and body. Moreover, it

seemed to me, who now saw them for the first time together, that there

was an unnamable something--an elusive quality of some kind--that

marked them as belonging to the same world, and that although the girl

ignored him she was secretly, and perhaps unknown to herself, drawn by

some attribute very deep in her own nature to some quality equally deep

in his.

This, then, was the party when we first settled down into our two

months’ camp on the island in the Baltic Sea. Other figures flitted

from time to time across the scene, and sometimes one reading man,

sometimes another, came to join us and spend his four hours a day in

the clergyman’s tent, but they came for short periods only, and they

went without leaving much trace in my memory, and certainly they played

no important part in what subsequently happened.

The weather favoured us that night, so that by sunset the tents were

up, the boats unloaded, a store of wood collected and chopped into

lengths, and the candle-lanterns hung round ready for lighting on the

trees. Sangree, too, had picked deep mattresses of balsam boughs for

the women’s beds, and had cleared little paths of brushwood from their

tents to the central fireplace. All was prepared for bad weather. It

was a cosy supper and a well-cooked one that we sat down to and ate

under the stars, and, according to the clergyman, the only meal fit to

eat we had seen since we left London a week before.

The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, trains, and tourists,

held something that thrilled, for as we lay round the fire there was

no sound but the faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of

the waves along the shore and against the sides of the boat in the

lagoon. The ghostly outline of her white sails was just visible

through the trees, idly rocking to and fro in her calm anchorage,

her sheets flapping gently against the mast. Beyond lay the dim blue

shapes of other islands floating in the night, and from all the great

spaces about us came the murmur of the sea and the soft breathing of

great woods. The odours of the wilderness--smells of wind and earth,

of trees and water, clean, vigorous, and mighty--were the true odours

of a virgin world unspoilt by men, more penetrating and more subtly

intoxicating than any other perfume in the whole world. Oh!--and

dangerously strong, too, no doubt, for some natures!

“Ahhh!” breathed out the clergyman after supper, with an indescribable

gesture of satisfaction and relief. “Here there is freedom, and room

for body and mind to turn in. Here one can work and rest and play. Here

one can be alive and absorb something of the earth-forces that never

get within touching-distance in the cities. By George, I shall make a

permanent camp here and come when it is time to die!”

The good man was merely giving vent to his delight at being under

canvas. He said the same thing every year, and he said it often. But it

more or less expressed the superficial feelings of us all. And when, a

little later, he turned to compliment his wife on the fried potatoes,

and discovered that she was snoring, with her back against a tree,

he grunted with content at the sight and put a ground-sheet over her

feet, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to fall

asleep after dinner, and then moved back to his own corner, smoking his

pipe with great satisfaction.

And I, smoking mine too, lay and fought against the most delicious

sleep imaginable, while my eyes wandered from the fire to the stars

peeping through the branches, and then back again to the group about

me. The Rev. Timothy soon let his pipe go out, and succumbed as his

wife had done, for he had worked hard and eaten well. Sangree, also

smoking, leaned against a tree with his gaze fixed on the girl, a

depth of yearning in his face that he could not hide, and that really

distressed me for him. And Joan herself, with wide staring eyes, alert,

full of the new forces of the place, evidently keyed up by the magic of

finding herself among all the things her soul recognised as “home,” sat

rigid by the fire, her thoughts roaming through the spaces, the blood

stirring about her heart. She was as unconscious of the Canadian’s gaze

as she was that her parents both slept. She looked to me more like a

tree, or something that had grown out of the island, than a living

girl of the century; and when I spoke across to her in a whisper and

suggested a tour of investigation, she started and looked up at me as

though she heard a voice in her dreams.

Sangree leaped up and joined us, and without waking the others we three

went over the ridge of the island and made our way down to the shore

behind. The water lay like a lake before us still coloured by the

sunset. The air was keen and scented, wafting the smell of the wooded

islands that hung about us in the darkening air. Very small waves

tumbled softly on the sand. The sea was sown with stars, and everywhere

breathed and pulsed the beauty of the northern summer night. I confess

I speedily lost consciousness of the human presences beside me, and I

have little doubt Joan did too. Only Sangree felt otherwise, I suppose

for presently we heard him sighing; and I can well imagine that he

absorbed the whole wonder and passion of the scene into his aching

heart, to swell the pain there that was more searching even than the

pain at the sight of such matchless and incomprehensible beauty.

The splash of a fish jumping broke the spell.

“I wish we had the canoe now,” remarked Joan; “we could paddle out to

the other islands.”

“Of course,” I said; “wait here and I’ll go across for it,” and was

turning to feel my way back through the darkness when she stopped me in

a voice that meant what it said.

“No; Mr. Sangree will get it. We will wait here and cooee to guide him.”

The Canadian was off in a moment, for she had only to hint of her

wishes and he obeyed.

“Keep out from shore in case of rocks,” I cried out as he went, “and

turn to the right out of the lagoon. That’s the shortest way round by

the map.”

My voice travelled across the still waters and woke echoes in the

distant islands that came back to us like people calling out of space.

It was only thirty or forty yards over the ridge and down the other

side to the lagoon where the boats lay, but it was a good mile to coast

round the shore in the dark to where we stood and waited. We heard him

stumbling away among the boulders, and then the sounds suddenly ceased

as he topped the ridge and went down past the fire on the other side.

“I didn’t want to be left alone with him” the girl said presently in a

low voice. “I’m always afraid he’s going to say or do something----”

She hesitated a moment, looking quickly over her shoulder towards the

ridge where he had just disappeared--“something that might lead to

unpleasantness.”

She stopped abruptly.

“_You_ frightened, Joan!” I exclaimed, with genuine surprise. “This is

a new light on your wicked character. I thought the human being who

could frighten you did not exist.” Then I suddenly realised she was

talking seriously--looking to me for help of some kind--and at once I

dropped the teasing attitude.

“He’s very far gone, I think, Joan,” I added gravely. “You must be kind

to him, whatever else you may feel. He’s exceedingly fond of you.”

“I know, but I can’t help it,” she whispered, lest her voice should

carry in the stillness; “there’s something about him that--that makes

me feel creepy and half afraid.”

“But, poor man, it’s not his fault if he is delicate and sometimes

looks like death,” I laughed gently, by way of defending what I felt to

be a very innocent member of my sex.

“Oh, but it’s not that I mean,” she answered quickly; “it’s something

I feel about him, something in his soul, something he hardly knows

himself, but that may come out if we are much together. It draws me, I

feel, tremendously. It stirs what is wild in me--deep down--oh, very

deep down,--yet at the same time makes me feel afraid.”

“I suppose his thoughts are always playing about you,” I said, “but

he’s nice-minded and----”

“Yes, yes,” she interrupted impatiently, “I can trust myself absolutely

with him. He’s gentle and singularly pure-minded. But there’s something

else that----” She stopped again sharply to listen. Then she came up

close beside me in the darkness, whispering--

“You know, Mr. Hubbard, sometimes my intuitions warn me a little too

strongly to be ignored. Oh yes, you needn’t tell me again that it’s

difficult to distinguish between fancy and intuition. I know all that.

But I also know that there’s something deep down in that man’s soul

that calls to something deep down in mine. And at present it frightens

me. Because I cannot make out what it is; and I know, I _know_, he’ll

do something some day that--that will shake my life to the very

bottom.” She laughed a little at the strangeness of her own description.

I turned to look at her more closely, but the darkness was too great to

show her face. There was an intensity, almost of suppressed passion, in

her voice that took me completely by surprise.

“Nonsense, Joan,” I said, a little severely; “you know him well. He’s

been with your father for months now.”

“But that was in London; and up here it’s different--I mean, I feel

that it may be different. Life in a place like this blows away the

restraints of the artificial life at home. I know, oh, I know what I’m

saying. I feel all untied in a place like this; the rigidity of one’s

nature begins to melt and flow. Surely _you_ must understand what I

mean!”

“Of course I understand,” I replied, yet not wishing to encourage her

in her present line of thought, “and it’s a grand experience--for a

short time. But you’re overtired to-night, Joan, like the rest of us.

A few days in this air will set you above all fears of the kind you

mention.”

Then, after a moment’s silence, I added, feeling I should estrange her

confidence altogether if I blundered any more and treated her like a

child--

“I think, perhaps, the true explanation is that you pity him for loving

you, and at the same time you feel the repulsion of the healthy,

vigorous animal for what is weak and timid. If he came up boldly and

took you by the throat and shouted that he would force you to love

him--well, then you would feel no fear at all. You would know exactly

how to deal with him. Isn’t it, perhaps, something of that kind?”

The girl made no reply, and when I took her hand I felt that it

trembled a little and was cold.

“It’s not his love that I’m afraid of,” she said hurriedly, for at this

moment we heard the dip of a paddle in the water, “it’s something in

his very soul that terrifies me in a way I have never been terrified

before,--yet fascinates me. In town I was hardly conscious of his

presence. But the moment we got away from civilisation, it began to

come. He seems so--so _real_ up here. I dread being alone with him. It

makes me feel that something must burst and tear its way out--that he

would do something--or I should do something--I don’t know exactly what

I mean, probably,--but that I should let myself go and scream----”

“Joan!”

“Don’t be alarmed,” she laughed shortly; “I shan’t do anything silly,

but I wanted to tell you my feelings in case I needed your help. When

I have intuitions as strong as this they are never wrong, only I don’t

know yet what it means exactly.”

“You must hold out for the month, at any rate,” I said in as

matter-of-fact a voice as I could manage, for her manner had somehow

changed my surprise to a subtle sense of alarm. “Sangree only stays the

month, you know. And, anyhow, you are such an odd creature yourself

that you should feel generously towards other odd creatures,” I ended

lamely, with a forced laugh.

She gave my hand a sudden pressure. “I’m glad I’ve told you at any

rate,” she said quickly under her breath, for the canoe was now gliding

up silently like a ghost to our feet, “and I’m glad you’re here too,”

she added as we moved down towards the water to meet it.

I made Sangree change into the bows and got into the steering seat

myself, putting the girl between us so that I could watch them both by

keeping their outlines against the sea and stars. For the intuitions

of certain folk--women and children usually, I confess--I have always

felt a great respect that has more often than not been justified by

experience; and now the curious emotion stirred in me by the girl’s

words remained somewhat vividly in my consciousness. I explained it in

some measure by the fact that the girl, tired out by the fatigue of

many days’ travel, had suffered a vigorous reaction of some kind from

the strong, desolate scenery, and further, perhaps, that she had been

treated to my own experience of seeing the members of the party in a

new light--the Canadian, being partly a stranger, more vividly than the

rest of us. But, at the same time, I felt it was quite possible that

she had sensed some subtle link between his personality and her own,

some quality that she had hitherto ignored and that the routine of town

life had kept buried out of sight. The only thing that seemed difficult

to explain was the fear she had spoken of, and this I hoped the

wholesome effects of camp-life and exercise would sweep away naturally

in the course of time.

We made the tour of the island without speaking. It was all too

beautiful for speech. The trees crowded down to the shore to hear us

pass. We saw their fine dark heads, bowed low with splendid dignity

to watch us, forgetting for a moment that the stars were caught in

the needled network of their hair. Against the sky in the west, where

still lingered the sunset gold, we saw the wild toss of the horizon,

shaggy with forest and cliff, gripping the heart like the motive in

a symphony, and sending the sense of beauty all a-shiver through the

mind--all these surrounding islands standing above the water like low

clouds, and like them seeming to post along silently into the engulfing

night. We heard the musical drip-drip of the paddle, and the little

wash of our waves on the shore, and then suddenly we found ourselves at

the opening of the lagoon again, having made the complete circuit of

our home.

The Reverend Timothy had awakened from sleep and was singing to

himself; and the sound of his voice as we glided down the fifty yards

of enclosed water was pleasant to hear and undeniably wholesome. We saw

the glow of the fire up among the trees on the ridge, and his shadow

moving about as he threw on more wood.

“There you are!” he called aloud. “Good again! Been setting the

night-lines, eh? Capital! And your mother’s still fast asleep, Joan.”

His cheery laugh floated across the water; he had not been in the least

disturbed by our absence, for old campers are not easily alarmed.

“Now, remember,” he went on, after we had told our little tale of

travel by the fire, and Mrs. Maloney had asked for the fourth time

exactly where her tent was and whether the door faced east or south,

“every one takes their turn at cooking breakfast, and one of the men is

always out at sunrise to catch it first. Hubbard, I’ll toss you which

you do in the morning and which I do!” He lost the toss. “Then I’ll

catch it,” I said, laughing at his discomfiture, for I knew he loathed

stirring porridge. “And mind you don’t burn it as you did every blessed

time last year on the Volga,” I added by way of reminder.

Mrs. Maloney’s fifth interruption about the door of her tent, and her

further pointed observation that it was past nine o’clock, set us

lighting lanterns and putting the fire out for safety.

But before we separated for the night the clergyman had a time-honoured

little ritual of his own to go through that no one had the heart to

deny him. He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit habits.

He glanced briefly from one to the other of us, his face grave and

earnest, his hands lifted to the stars and his eyes all closed and

puckered up beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a short,

almost inaudible prayer, thanking Heaven for our safe arrival, begging

for good weather, no illness or accidents, plenty of fish, and strong

sailing winds.

And then, unexpectedly--no one knew why exactly--he ended up with an

abrupt request that nothing from the kingdom of darkness should be

allowed to afflict our peace, and no evil thing come near to disturb us

in the night-time.

And while he uttered these last surprising words, so strangely unlike

his usual ending, it chanced that I looked up and let my eyes wander

round the group assembled about the dying fire. And it certainly seemed

to me that Sangree’s face underwent a sudden and visible alteration.

He was staring at Joan, and as he stared the change ran over it like a

shadow and was gone. I started in spite of myself, for something oddly

concentrated, potent, collected, had come into the expression usually

so scattered and feeble. But it was all swift as a passing meteor, and

when I looked a second time his face was normal and he was looking

among the trees.

And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head being bowed and her

eyes tightly closed while her father prayed.

“The girl has a vivid imagination indeed,” I thought, half laughing,

as I lit the lanterns, “if her thoughts can put a glamour upon mine in

this way;” and yet somehow, when we said good-night, I took occasion to

give her a few vigorous words of encouragement, and went to her tent

to make sure I could find it quickly in the night in case anything

happened. In her quick way the girl understood and thanked me, and

the last thing I heard as I moved off to the men’s quarters was Mrs.

Maloney crying that there were beetles in her tent, and Joan’s laughter

as she went to help her turn them out.

Half an hour later the island was silent as the grave, but for the

mournful voices of the wind as it sighed up from the sea. Like white

sentries stood the three tents of the men on one side of the ridge,

and on the other side, half hidden by some birches, whose leaves just

shivered as the breeze caught them, the women’s tents, patches of

ghostly grey, gathered more closely together for mutual shelter and

protection. Something like fifty yards of broken ground, grey rock,

moss and lichen, lay between, and over all lay the curtain of the night

and the great whispering winds from the forests of Scandinavia.

And the very last thing, just before floating away on that mighty

wave that carries one so softly off into the deeps of forgetfulness,

I again heard the voice of John Silence as the train moved out of

Victoria Station; and by some subtle connection that met me on the very

threshold of consciousness there rose in my mind simultaneously the

memory of the girl’s half-given confidence, and of her distress. As by

some wizardry of approaching dreams they seemed in that instant to be

related; but before I could analyse the why and the wherefore, both

sank away out of sight again, and I was off beyond recall.

“Unless you should send for me sooner.”

II

Whether Mrs. Maloney’s tent door opened south or east I think she

never discovered, for it is quite certain she always slept with the

flap tightly fastened; I only know that my own little “five by seven,

all silk” faced due east, because next morning the sun, pouring in as

only the wilderness sun knows how to pour, woke me early, and a moment

later, with a short run over soft moss and a flying dive from the

granite ledge, I was swimming in the most sparkling water imaginable.

It was barely four o’clock, and the sun came down a long vista of blue

islands that led out to the open sea and Finland. Nearer by rose the

wooded domes of our own property, still capped and wreathed with smoky

trails of fast-melting mist, and looking as fresh as though it was the

morning of Mrs. Maloney’s Sixth Day and they had just issued, clean and

brilliant, from the hands of the great Architect.

In the open spaces the ground was drenched with dew, and from the sea a

cool salt wind stole in among the trees and set the branches trembling

in an atmosphere of shimmering silver. The tents shone white where the

sun caught them in patches. Below lay the lagoon, still dreaming of

the summer night; in the open the fish were jumping busily, sending

musical ripples towards the shore; and in the air hung the magic of

dawn--silent, incommunicable.

I lit the fire, so that an hour later the clergyman should find good

ashes to stir his porridge over, and then set forth upon an examination

of the island, but hardly had I gone a dozen yards when I saw a figure

standing a little in front of me where the sunlight fell in a pool

among the trees.

It was Joan. She had already been up an hour, she told me, and had

bathed before the last stars had left the sky. I saw at once that the

new spirit of this solitary region had entered into her, banishing the

fears of the night, for her face was like the face of a happy denizen

of the wilderness, and her eyes stainless and shining. Her feet were

bare, and drops of dew she had shaken from the branches hung in her

loose-flying hair. Obviously she had come into her own.

“I’ve been all over the island,” she announced laughingly, “and there

are two things wanting.”

“You’re a good judge, Joan. What are they?”

“There’s no animal life, and there’s no--water.”

“They go together,” I said. “Animals don’t bother with a rock like this

unless there’s a spring on it.”

And as she led me from place to place, happy and excited, leaping

adroitly from rock to rock, I was glad to note that my first

impressions were correct. She made no reference to our conversation of

the night before. The new spirit had driven out the old. There was no

room in her heart for fear or anxiety, and Nature had everything her

own way.

The island, we found, was some three-quarters of a mile from point

to point, built in a circle, or wide horseshoe, with an opening of

twenty feet at the mouth of the lagoon. Pine-trees grew thickly all

over, but here and there were patches of silver birch, scrub oak, and

considerable colonies of wild raspberry and gooseberry bushes. The two

ends of the horseshoe formed bare slabs of smooth granite running into

the sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface, but the

rest of the island rose in a forty-foot ridge and sloped down steeply

to the sea on either side, being nowhere more than a hundred yards wide.

The outer shore-line was much indented with numberless coves and bays

and sandy beaches, with here and there caves and precipitous little

cliffs against which the sea broke in spray and thunder. But the inner

shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular, and so well

protected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could ever

send more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges. Eternal shelter

reigned there.

On one of the other islands, a few hundred yards away--for the rest of

the party slept late this first morning, and we took to the canoe--we

discovered a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish flavour of

the Baltic, and having thus solved the most important problem of the

Camp, we next proceeded to deal with the second--fish. And in half an

hour we reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means of storage,

and to clean more fish than may be stored or eaten in a day is no wise

occupation for experienced campers.

And as we landed towards six o’clock we heard the clergyman singing as

usual and saw his wife and Sangree shaking out their blankets in the

sun, and dressed in a fashion that finally dispelled all memories of

streets and civilisation.

“The Little People lit the fire for me,” cried Maloney, looking natural

and at home in his ancient flannel suit and breaking off in the middle

of his singing, “so I’ve got the porridge going--and this time it’s

_not_ burnt.”

We reported the discovery of water and held up the fish.

“Good! Good again!” he cried. “We’ll have the first decent breakfast

we’ve had this year. Sangree’ll clean ’em in no time, and the Bo’sun’s

Mate----”

“Will fry them to a turn,” laughed the voice of Mrs. Maloney, appearing

on the scene in a tight blue jersey and sandals, and catching up the

frying-pan. Her husband always called her the Bo’sun’s Mate in Camp,

because it was her duty, among others, to pipe all hands to meals.

“And as for you, Joan,” went on the happy man, “you look like the

spirit of the island, with moss in your hair and wind in your eyes,

and sun and stars mixed in your face.” He looked at her with delighted

admiration. “Here, Sangree, take these twelve, there’s a good fellow,

they’re the biggest; and we’ll have ’em in butter in less time than you

can say Baltic island!”

I watched the Canadian as he slowly moved off to the cleaning pail.

His eyes were drinking in the girl’s beauty, and a wave of passionate,

almost feverish, joy passed over his face, expressive of the ecstasy of

true worship more than anything else. Perhaps he was thinking that he

still had three weeks to come with that vision always before his eyes;

perhaps he was thinking of his dreams in the night. I cannot say. But

I noticed the curious mingling of yearning and happiness in his eyes,

and the strength of the impression touched my curiosity. Something in

his face held my gaze for a second, something to do with its intensity.

That so timid, so gentle a personality should conceal so virile a

passion almost seemed to require explanation.

But the impression was momentary, for that first breakfast in Camp

permitted no divided attentions, and I dare swear that the porridge,

the tea, the Swedish “flatbread,” and the fried fish flavoured with

points of frizzled bacon, were better than any meal eaten elsewhere

that day in the whole world.

The first clear day in a new camp is always a furiously busy one, and

we soon dropped into the routine upon which in large measure the real

comfort of every one depends. About the cooking-fire, greatly improved

with stones from the shore, we built a high stockade consisting of

upright poles thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with moss

and lichen and weighted with rocks, and round the interior we made low

wooden seats so that we could lie round the fire even in rain and eat

our meals in peace. Paths, too, outlined themselves from tent to tent,

from the bathing places and the landing stage, and a fair division of

the island was decided upon between the quarters of the men and the

women. Wood was stacked, awkward trees and boulders removed, hammocks

slung, and tents strengthened. In a word, Camp was established, and

duties were assigned and accepted as though we expected to live on

this Baltic island for years to come and the smallest detail of the

Community life was important.

Moreover, as the Camp came into being, this sense of a community

developed, proving that we were a definite whole, and not merely

separate human beings living for a while in tents upon a desert island.

Each fell willingly into the routine. Sangree, as by natural selection,

took upon himself the cleaning of the fish and the cutting of the wood

into lengths sufficient for a day’s use. And he did it well. The pan

of water was never without a fish, cleaned and scaled, ready to fry

for whoever was hungry; the nightly fire never died down for lack of

material to throw on without going farther afield to search.

And Timothy, once reverend, caught the fish and chopped down the

trees. He also assumed responsibility for the condition of the boat,

and did it so thoroughly that nothing in the little cutter was ever

found wanting. And when, for any reason, his presence was in demand,

the first place to look for him was--in the boat, and there, too, he

was usually found, tinkering away with sheets, sails, or rudder and

singing as he tinkered.

Nor was the “reading” neglected; for most mornings there came a sound

of droning voices from the white tent by the raspberry bushes, which

signified that Sangree, the tutor, and whatever other man chanced to be

in the party at the time, were hard at it with history or the classics.

And while Mrs. Maloney, also by natural selection, took charge of

the larder and the kitchen, the mending and general supervision of

the rough comforts, she also made herself peculiarly mistress of the

megaphone which summoned to meals and carried her voice easily from one

end of the island to the other; and in her hours of leisure she daubed

the surrounding scenery on to a sketching block with all the honesty

and devotion of her determined but unreceptive soul.

Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the wilds, became I know

not exactly what. She did plenty of work in the Camp, yet seemed to

have no very precise duties. She was everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes

she slept in her tent, sometimes under the stars with a blanket. She

knew every inch of the island and kept turning up in places where she

was least expected--for ever wandering about, reading her books in

sheltered corners, making little fires on sunless days to “worship by

to the gods,” as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive and bathe

in, and swimming day and night in the warm and waveless lagoon like a

fish in a huge tank. She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her

hair down and her skirts caught up to the knees, and if ever a human

being turned into a jolly savage within the compass of a single week,

Joan Maloney was certainly that human being. She ran wild.

So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong spirit of the

place that the little human fear she had yielded to so strangely on

our arrival seemed to have been utterly dispossessed. As I hoped and

expected, she made no reference to our conversation of the first

evening. Sangree bothered her with no special attentions, and after

all they were very little together. His behaviour was perfect in that

respect, and I, for my part, hardly gave the matter another thought.

Joan was ever a prey to vivid fancies of one kind or another, and this

was one of them. Mercifully for the happiness of all concerned, it had

melted away before the spirit of busy, active life and deep content

that reigned over the island. Every one was intensely alive, and peace

was upon all.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the effect of the camp-life began to tell. Always a searching

test of character, its results, sooner or later, are infallible, for

it acts upon the soul as swiftly and surely as the hypo bath upon the

negative of a photograph. A readjustment of the personal forces takes

place quickly; some parts of the personality go to sleep, others wake

up: but the first sweeping change that the primitive life brings about

is that the artificial portions of the character shed themselves one

after another like dead skins. Attitudes and poses that seemed genuine

in the city, drop away. The mind, like the body, grows quickly hard,

simple, uncomplex. And in a camp as primitive and close to nature as

ours was, these effects became speedily visible.

Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the simple life when it

is safely out of reach, betray themselves in camp by for ever peering

about for the artificial excitements of civilisation which they miss.

Some get bored at once; some grow slovenly; some reveal the animal in

most unexpected fashion; and some, the select few, find themselves in

very short order and are happy.

And, in our little party, we could flatter ourselves that we all

belonged to the last category, so far as the general effect was

concerned. Only there were certain other changes as well, varying with

each individual, and all interesting to note.

It was only after the first week or two that these changes became

marked, although this is the proper place, I think, to speak of them.

For, having myself no other duty than to enjoy a well-earned holiday,

I used to load my canoe with blankets and provisions and journey forth

on exploration trips among the islands of several days together; and

it was on my return from the first of these--when I rediscovered the

party, so to speak--that these changes first presented themselves

vividly to me, and in one particular instance produced a rather curious

impression.

In a word, then, while every one had grown wilder, naturally wilder,

Sangree, it seemed to me, had grown much wilder, and what I can only

call unnaturally wilder. He made me think of a savage.

To begin with, he had changed immensely in mere physical appearance,

and the full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and

the general air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace his

customary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that I

hardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and his

manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in

himself. He now had some claims to be called nice-looking, or at least

to a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the

eyes of the opposite sex.

All this, of course, was natural enough, and most welcome. But,

altogether apart from this physical change, which no doubt had also

been going forward in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in his

personality that came to me with a degree of surprise that almost

amounted to shock.

And two things--as he came down to welcome me and pull up the

canoe--leaped up in my mind unbidden, as though connected in some way

I could not at the moment divine--first, the curious judgment formed

of him by Joan; and secondly, that fugitive expression I had caught in

his face while Maloney was offering up his strange prayer for special

protection from Heaven.

The delicacy of manner and feature--to call it by no milder term--which

had always been a distinguishing characteristic of the man, had been

replaced by something far more vigorous and decided, that yet utterly

eluded analysis. The change which impressed me so oddly was not easy

to name. The others--singing Maloney, the bustling Bo’sun’s Mate, and

Joan, that fascinating half-breed of undine and salamander--all showed

the effects of a life so close to nature; but in their case the change

was perfectly natural and what was to be expected, whereas with Peter

Sangree, the Canadian, it was something unusual and unexpected.

It is impossible to explain how he managed gradually to convey to my

mind the impression that something in him had turned savage, yet this,

more or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was not that

he seemed really less civilised, or that his character had undergone

any definite alteration, but rather that something in him, hitherto

dormant, had awakened to life. Some quality, latent till now--so

far, at least, as we were concerned, who, after all, knew him but

slightly--had stirred into activity and risen to the surface of his

being.

And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as I could get, it was

but natural that my mind should continue the intuitive process and

acknowledge that John Silence, owing to his peculiar faculties, and the

girl, owing to her singularly receptive temperament, might each in a

different way have divined this latent quality in his soul, and feared

its manifestation later.

On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it now seems equally

natural that the same process, carried to its logical conclusion,

should have wakened some deep instinct in me that, wholly without

direction from my will, set itself sharply and persistently upon the

watch from that very moment. Thenceforward the personality of Sangree

was never far from my thoughts, and I was for ever analysing and

searching for the explanation that took so long in coming.

“I declare, Hubbard, you’re tanned like an aboriginal, and you look

like one, too,” laughed Maloney.

“And I can return the compliment,” was my reply, as we all gathered

round a brew of tea to exchange news and compare notes.

And later, at supper, it amused me to observe that the distinguished

tutor, once clergyman, did not eat his food quite as “nicely” as he did

at home--he devoured it; that Mrs. Maloney ate more, and, to say the

least, with less delay, than was her custom in the select atmosphere

of her English dining-room; and that while Joan attacked her tin

plateful with genuine avidity, Sangree, the Canadian, bit and gnawed

at his, laughing and talking and complimenting the cook all the while,

and making me think with secret amusement of a starved animal at its

first meal. While, from their remarks about myself, I judged that I had

changed and grown wild as much as the rest of them.

In this and in a hundred other little ways the change showed, ways

difficult to define in detail, but all proving--not the coarsening

effect of leading the primitive life, but, let us say, the more direct

and unvarnished methods that became prevalent. For all day long we

were in the bath of the elements--wind, water, sun--and just as the

body became insensible to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind

grew straightforward and shed many of the disguises required by the

conventions of civilisation.

And in each, according to temperament and character, there stirred the

life-instincts that were natural, untamed, and, in a sense--savage.

III

So it came about that I stayed with our island party, putting off

my second exploring trip from day to day, and I think that this

far-fetched instinct to watch Sangree was really the cause of my

postponement.

For another ten days the life of the Camp pursued its even and

delightful way, blessed by perfect summer weather, a good harvest

of fish, fine winds for sailing, and calm, starry nights. Maloney’s

selfish prayer had been favourably received. Nothing came to disturb

or perplex. There was not even the prowling of night animals to vex

the rest of Mrs. Maloney; for in previous camps it had often been her

peculiar affliction that she heard the porcupines scratching against

the canvas, or the squirrels dropping fir-cones in the early morning

with a sound of miniature thunder upon the roof of her tent. But on

this island there was not even a squirrel or a mouse. I think two toads

and a small and harmless snake were the only living creatures that had

been discovered during the whole of the first fortnight. And these two

toads in all probability were not two toads, but one toad.

Then, suddenly, came the terror that changed the whole aspect of the

place--the devastating terror.

It came, at first, gently, but from the very start it made me realise

the unpleasant loneliness of our situation, our remote isolation in

this wilderness of sea and rock, and how the islands in this tideless

Baltic ocean lay about us like the advance guard of a vast besieging

army. Its entry, as I say, was gentle, hardly noticeable, in fact,

to most of us: singularly undramatic it certainly was. But, then, in

actual life this is often the way the dreadful climaxes move upon us,

leaving the heart undisturbed almost to the last minute, and then

overwhelming it with a sudden rush of horror. For it was the custom at

breakfast to listen patiently while each in turn related the trivial

adventures of the night--how they slept, whether the wind shook their

tent, whether the spider on the ridge pole had moved, whether they had

heard the toad, and so forth--and on this particular morning Joan, in

the middle of a little pause, made a truly novel announcement:

“In the night I heard the howling of a dog,” she said, and then flushed

up to the roots of her hair when we burst out laughing. For the idea

of there being a dog on this forsaken island that was only able to

support a snake and two toads was distinctly ludicrous, and I remember

Maloney, half-way through his burnt porridge, capping the announcement

by declaring that he had heard a “Baltic turtle” in the lagoon, and his

wife’s expression of frantic alarm before the laughter undeceived her.

But the next morning Joan repeated the story with additional and

convincing detail.

“Sounds of whining and growling woke me,” she said, “and I distinctly

heard sniffing under my tent, and the scratching of paws.”

“Oh, Timothy! Can it be a porcupine?” exclaimed the Bo’sun’s Mate with

distress, forgetting that Sweden was not Canada.

But the girl’s voice had sounded to me in quite another key, and

looking up I saw that her father and Sangree were staring at her hard.

They, too, understood that she was in earnest, and had been struck by

the serious note in her voice.

“Rubbish, Joan! You are always dreaming something or other wild,” her

father said a little impatiently.

“There’s not an animal of any size on the whole island,” added Sangree

with a puzzled expression. He never took his eyes from her face.

“But there’s nothing to prevent one swimming over,” I put in briskly,

for somehow a sense of uneasiness that was not pleasant had woven

itself into the talk and pauses. “A deer, for instance, might easily

land in the night and take a look round----”

“Or a bear!” gasped the Bo’sun’s Mate, with a look so portentous that

we all welcomed the laugh.

But Joan did not laugh. Instead, she sprang up and called to us to

follow.

“There,” she said, pointing to the ground by her tent on the side

farthest from her mother’s; “there are the marks close to my head. You

can see for yourselves.”

We saw plainly. The moss and lichen--for earth there was hardly

any--had been scratched up by paws. An animal about the size of a large

dog it must have been, to judge by the marks. We stood and stared in a

row.

“Close to my head,” repeated the girl, looking round at us. Her face,

I noticed, was very pale, and her lip seemed to quiver for an instant.

Then she gave a sudden gulp--and burst into a flood of tears.

The whole thing had come about in the brief space of a few minutes, and

with a curious sense of inevitableness, moreover, as though it had all

been carefully planned from all time and nothing could have stopped it.

It had all been rehearsed before--had actually happened before, as the

strange feeling sometimes has it; it seemed like the opening movement

in some ominous drama, and that I knew exactly what would happen next.

Something of great moment was impending.

For this sinister sensation of coming disaster made itself felt from

the very beginning, and an atmosphere of gloom and dismay pervaded the

entire Camp from that moment forward.

I drew Sangree to one side and moved away, while Maloney took the

distressed girl into her tent, and his wife followed them, energetic

and greatly flustered.

For thus, in undramatic fashion, it was that the terror I have

spoken of first attempted the invasion of our Camp, and, trivial and

unimportant though it seemed, every little detail of this opening scene

is photographed upon my mind with merciless accuracy and precision.

It happened exactly as described. This was exactly the language used.

I see it written before me in black and white. I see, too, the faces

of all concerned with the sudden ugly signature of alarm where before

had been peace. The terror had stretched out, so to speak, a first

tentative feeler towards us and had touched the hearts of each with a

horrid directness. And from this moment the Camp changed.

Sangree in particular was visibly upset. He could not bear to see the

girl distressed, and to hear her actually cry was almost more than he

could stand. The feeling that he had no right to protect her hurt him

keenly, and I could see that he was itching to do something to help,

and liked him for it. His expression said plainly that he would tear in

a thousand pieces anything that dared to injure a hair of her head.

We lit our pipes and strolled over in silence to the men’s quarters,

and it was his odd Canadian expression “Gee whiz!” that drew my

attention to a further discovery.

“The brute’s been scratching round my tent too,” he cried, as he

pointed to similar marks by the door and I stooped down to examine

them. We both stared in amazement for several minutes without speaking.

“Only I sleep like the dead,” he added, straightening up again, “and so

heard nothing, I suppose.”

We traced the paw-marks from the mouth of his tent in a direct line

across to the girl’s, but nowhere else about the Camp was there a

sign of the strange visitor. The deer, dog, or whatever it was that

had twice favoured us with a visit in the night, had confined its

attentions to these two tents. And, after all, there was really

nothing out of the way about these visits of an unknown animal, for

although our own island was destitute of life, we were in the heart

of a wilderness, and the mainland and larger islands must be swarming

with all kinds of four-footed creatures, and no very prolonged swimming

was necessary to reach us. In any other country it would not have

caused a moment’s interest--interest of the kind we felt, that is.

In our Canadian camps the bears were for ever grunting about among

the provision bags at night, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and

chipmunks scuttling over everything.

“My daughter is overtired, and that’s the truth of it,” explained

Maloney presently when he rejoined us and had examined in turn the

other paw-marks. “She’s been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you

know, always means a great excitement to her. It’s natural enough. If

we take no notice she’ll be all right.” He paused to borrow my tobacco

pouch and fill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and

spilled the precious weed on the ground visibly belied the calm of his

easy language. “You might take her out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard,

like a good chap; she’s hardly up to the long day in the cutter. Show

her some of the other islands in your canoe, perhaps. Eh?”

And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as suddenly, and as

suspiciously, as it had come.

But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then purposely ignored

the subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a way

that again touched the note of sinister alarm--the note that kept on

sounding and sounding until finally John Silence came with his great

vibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too,

for a while.

“I’m ashamed to ask it,” she said abruptly, as she steered me home,

her sleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, “and ashamed of

my silly tears too, because I really can’t make out what caused them;

but, Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go off for your long

expeditions--just yet. I beg it of you.” She was so in earnest that

she forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us roll

dangerously. “I have tried hard not to ask this,” she added, bringing

the canoe round again, “but I simply can’t help myself.”

It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesitation was plain; for

she went on before I could reply, and her beseeching expression and

intensity of manner impressed me very forcibly.

“For another two weeks only----”

“Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight,” I said, seeing at once what she

was driving at, but wondering if it was best to encourage her or not.

“If I knew you were to be on the island till then,” she said, her face

alternately pale and blushing, and her voice trembling a little, “I

should feel so much happier.”

I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish.

“And safer,” she added almost in a whisper; “especially--at night, I

mean.”

“Safer, Joan?” I repeated, thinking I had never seen her eyes so soft

and tender. She nodded her head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face.

It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my thoughts and judgment

may have been, and somehow I understood that she spoke with good

reason, though for the life of me I could not have put it into words.

“Happier--and safer,” she said gravely, the canoe giving a dangerous

lurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my answer. Perhaps,

after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and make light of

it, easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its cause.

“All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise,” and the instant look

of relief in her face, and the smile that came back like sunlight to

her eyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was

capable of considerable sacrifice after all.

“But, you know, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” I added sharply; and

she looked up in my face with the smile women use when they know we are

talking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so.

“_You_ don’t feel afraid, I know,” she observed quietly.

“Of course not; why should I?”

“So, if you will just humour me this once I--I will never ask anything

foolish of you again as long as I live,” she said gratefully.

“You have my promise,” was all I could find to say.

She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon lying a quarter of a

mile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or two later she paused

again and stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across the thwarts.

“You’ve not heard anything at night yourself, have you?” she asked.

“I never hear anything at night,” I replied shortly, “from the moment I

lie down till the moment I get up.”

“That dismal howling, for instance,” she went on, determined to get

it out, “far away at first and then getting closer, and stopping just

outside the Camp?”

“Certainly not.”

“Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it.”

“Most likely you did,” was my unsympathetic response.

“And you don’t think father has heard it either, then?”

“No. He would have told me if he had.”

This seemed to relieve her mind a little. “I know mother hasn’t,” she

added, as if speaking to herself, “for she hears nothing--ever.”

* * * * *

It was two nights after this conversation that I woke out of deep

sleep and heard sounds of screaming. The voice was really horrible,

breaking the peace and silence with its shrill clamour. In less than

ten seconds I was half dressed and out of my tent. The screaming had

stopped abruptly, but I knew the general direction, and ran as fast as

the darkness would allow over to the women’s quarters, and on getting

close I heard sounds of suppressed weeping. It was Joan’s voice. And

just as I came up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling

with a lantern. Other voices became audible in the same moment behind

me, and Timothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed,

and carrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being

banged against a tree. Dawn was just breaking, and a chill wind blew in

from the sea. Heavy black clouds drove low overhead.

The scene of confusion may be better imagined than described. Questions

in frightened voices filled the air against this background of

suppressed weeping. Briefly--Joan’s silk tent had been torn, and the

girl was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat reassured by

our noisy presence, however,--for she was plucky at heart,--she pulled

herself together and tried to explain what had happened; and her broken

words, told there on the edge of night and morning upon this wild

island ridge, were oddly thrilling and distressingly convincing.

“Something touched me and I woke,” she said simply, but in a voice

still hushed and broken with the terror of it, “something pushing

against the tent; I felt it through the canvas. There was the same

sniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent give a little

as when wind shakes it. I heard breathing--very loud, very heavy

breathing--and then came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvas

ripped open close to my face.”

She had instantly dashed out through the open flap and screamed at

the top of her voice, thinking the creature had actually got into the

tent. But nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not the

faintest sound of an animal making off under cover of the darkness.

The brief account seemed to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all

as we listened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this day, the

wind blowing the women’s hair, and Maloney craning his head forward to

listen, and his wife, open-mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pine

tree.

“Come over to the stockade and we’ll get the fire going,” I said;

“that’s the first thing,” for we were all shaking with the cold in

our scanty garments. And at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a

blanket and carrying his gun; he was still drunken with sleep.

“The dog again,” Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions;

“been at Joan’s tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It’s time we did

something.” He went on mumbling confusedly to himself.

Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly in the darkness. I

saw his eyes flame in the glare of the flickering lanterns. He made a

movement as though to start out and hunt--and kill. Then his glance

fell on the girl crouching on the ground, her face hidden in her

hands, and there leaped into his features an expression of savage

anger that transformed them. He could have faced a dozen lions with a

walking-stick at that moment, and again I liked him for the strength of

his anger, his self-control, and his hopeless devotion.

But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless chase.

“Come and help me start the fire, Sangree,” I said, anxious also to

relieve the girl of our presence; and a few minutes later the ashes,

still glowing from the night’s fire, had kindled the fresh wood,

and there was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up the

surrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards.

“I heard nothing,” he whispered; “what in the world do you think it is?

It surely can’t be only a dog!”

“We’ll find that out later,” I said, as the others came up to the

grateful warmth; “the first thing is to make as big a fire as we can.”

Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on some warmer, and less

miraculous, garments. And while they stood talking in low voices

Maloney and I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little enough

to see, but that little was unmistakable. Some animal had scratched up

the ground at the head of the tent, and with a great blow of a powerful

paw--a paw clearly provided with good claws--had struck the silk and

torn it open. There was a hole large enough to pass a fist and arm

through.

“It can’t be far away,” Maloney said excitedly. “We’ll organise a hunt

at once; this very minute.”

We hurried back to the fire, Maloney talking boisterously about his

proposed hunt. “There’s nothing like prompt action to dispel alarm,” he

whispered in my ear; and then turned to the rest of us.

“We’ll hunt the island from end to end at once,” he said, with

excitement; “that’s what we’ll do. The beast can’t be far away. And the

Bosun’s Mate and Joan must come too, because they can’t be left alone.

Hubbard, you take the right shore, and you, Sangree, the left, and

I’ll go in the middle with the women. In this way we can stretch clean

across the ridge, and nothing bigger than a rabbit can possibly escape

us.” He was extraordinarily excited, I thought. Anything affecting

Joan, of course, stirred him prodigiously. “Get your guns and we’ll

start the drive at once,” he cried. He lit another lantern and handed

one each to his wife and Joan, and while I ran to fetch my gun I heard

him singing to himself with the excitement of it all.

Meanwhile the dawn had come on quickly. It made the flickering lanterns

look pale. The wind, too, was rising, and I heard the trees moaning

overhead and the waves breaking with increasing clamour on the shore.

In the lagoon the boat dipped and splashed, and the sparks from the

fire were carried aloft in a stream and scattered far and wide.

We made our way to the extreme end of the island, measured our

distances carefully, and then began to advance. None of us spoke.

Sangree and I, with cocked guns, watched the shore lines, and all

within easy touch and speaking distance. It was a slow and blundering

drive, and there were many false alarms, but after the best part of

half an hour we stood on the farther end, having made the complete

tour, and without putting up so much as a squirrel. Certainly there was

no living creature on that island but ourselves.

“_I_ know what it is!” cried Maloney, looking out over the dim expanse

of grey sea, and speaking with the air of a man making a discovery;

“it’s a dog from one of the farms on the larger islands”--he pointed

seawards where the archipelago thickened--“and it’s escaped and turned

wild. Our fires and voices attracted it, and it’s probably half starved

as well as savage, poor brute!”

No one said anything in reply, and he began to sing again very low to

himself.

The point where we stood--a huddled, shivering group--faced the wider

channels that led to the open sea and Finland. The grey dawn had broken

in earnest at last, and we could see the racing waves with their angry

crests of white. The surrounding islands showed up as dark masses

in the distance, and in the east, almost as Maloney spoke, the sun

came up with a rush in a stormy and magnificent sky of red and gold.

Against this splashed and gorgeous background black clouds, shaped

like fantastic and legendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing

stream, and to this day I have only to close my eyes to see again that

vivid and hurrying procession in the air. All about us the pines made

black splashes against the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, indeed,

had already begun to fall in big drops.

We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our way

back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs,

Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment’s notice,

and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the extinguished

lanterns.

Yet it was only a dog!

Really, it was most singular when one came to reflect soberly upon

it all. Events, say the occultists, have souls, or at least that

agglomerate life due to the emotions and thoughts of all concerned

in them, so that cities, and even whole countries, have great

astral shapes which may become visible to the eye of vision; and

certainly here, the soul of this drive--this vain, blundering, futile

drive--stood somewhere between ourselves and--laughed.

All of us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the

sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and

with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible

against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might

so easily conceal itself from us, or swim away before we had time to

light upon its trail. For we all spoke of that “trail” as though it

really existed, and we had more to go upon than the mere marks of

paws about the tents of Joan and the Canadian. Indeed, but for these,

and the torn tent, I think it would, of course, have been possible to

ignore the existence of this beast intruder altogether.

And it was here, under this angry dawn, as we stood in the shelter of

the stockade from the pouring rain, weary yet so strangely excited--it

was here, out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that--very

stealthily--the ghost of something horrible slipped in and stood among

us. It made all our explanations seem childish and untrue; the false

relation was instantly exposed. Eyes exchanged quick, anxious glances,

questioning, expressive of dismay. There was a sense of wonder, of

poignant distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting at our

elbows. We shivered.

Then, suddenly, as we looked into each other’s faces, came the long,

unwelcome pause in which this new arrival established itself in our

hearts.

And, without further speech, or attempt at explanation, Maloney moved

off abruptly to mix the porridge for an early breakfast; Sangree to

clean the fish; myself to chop wood and tend the fire; Joan and her

mother to change their wet garments; and, most significant of all, to

prepare her mother’s tent for its future complement of two.

Each went to his duty, but hurriedly, awkwardly, silently; and this new

arrival, this shape of terror and distress stalked, viewless, by the

side of each.

“If only I could have traced that dog,” I think was the thought in the

minds of all.

* * * * *

But in Camp, where every one realises how important the individual

contribution is to the comfort and well-being of all, the mind speedily

recovers tone and pulls itself together.

During the day, a day of heavy and ceaseless rain, we kept more or less

to our tents, and though there were signs of mysterious conferences

between the three members of the Maloney family, I think that most of

us slept a good deal and stayed alone with his thoughts. Certainly, I

did, because when Maloney came to say that his wife invited us all to a

special “tea” in her tent, he had to shake me awake before I realised

that he was there at all.

And by supper-time we were more or less even-minded again, and almost

jolly. I only noticed that there was an undercurrent of what is best

described as “jumpiness,” and that the merest snapping of a twig, or

plop of a fish in the lagoon, was sufficient to make us start and look

over our shoulders. Pauses were rare in our talk, and the fire was

never for one instant allowed to get low. The wind and rain had ceased,

but the dripping of the branches still kept up an excellent imitation

of a downpour. In particular, Maloney was vigilant and alert, telling

us a series of tales in which the wholesome humorous element was

especially strong. He lingered, too, behind with me after Sangree had

gone to bed, and while I mixed myself a glass of hot Swedish punch, he

did a thing I had never known him do before--he mixed one for himself,

and then asked me to light him over to his tent. We said nothing on

the way, but I felt that he was glad of my companionship.

I returned alone to the stockade, and for a long time after that kept

the fire blazing, and sat up smoking and thinking. I hardly knew why;

but sleep was far from me for one thing, and for another, an idea

was taking form in my mind that required the comfort of tobacco and

a bright fire for its growth. I lay against a corner of the stockade

seat, listening to the wind whispering and to the ceaseless drip-drip

of the trees. The night, otherwise, was very still, and the sea quiet

as a lake. I remember that I was conscious, peculiarly conscious, of

this host of desolate islands crowding about us in the darkness, and

that we were the one little spot of humanity in a rather wonderful kind

of wilderness.

But this, I think, was the only symptom that came to warn me of

highly strung nerves, and it certainly was not sufficiently alarming

to destroy my peace of mind. One thing, however, did come to disturb

my peace, for just as I finally made ready to go, and had kicked the

embers of the fire into a last effort, I fancied I saw, peering at me

round the farther end of the stockade wall, a dark and shadowy mass

that might have been--that strongly resembled, in fact--the body of a

large animal. Two glowing eyes shone for an instant in the middle of

it. But the next second I saw that it was merely a projecting mass of

moss and lichen in the wall of our stockade, and the eyes were a couple

of wandering sparks from the dying ashes I had kicked. It was easy

enough, too, to imagine I saw an animal moving here and there between

the trees, as I picked my way stealthily to my tent. Of course, the

shadows tricked me.

And though it was after one o’clock, Maloney’s light was still burning,

for I saw his tent shining white among the pines.

It was, however, in the short space between consciousness and

sleep--that time when the body is low and the voices of the submerged

region tell sometimes true--that the idea which had been all this

while maturing reached the point of an actual decision, and I suddenly

realised that I had resolved to send word to Dr. Silence. For, with

a sudden wonder that I had hitherto been so blind, the unwelcome

conviction dawned upon me all at once that some dreadful thing was

lurking about us on this island, and that the safety of at least one

of us was threatened by something monstrous and unclean that was too

horrible to contemplate. And, again remembering those last words of his

as the train moved out of the platform, I understood that Dr. Silence

would hold himself in readiness to come.

“Unless you should send for me sooner,” he had said.

* * * * *

I found myself suddenly wide awake. It is impossible to say what woke

me, but it was no gradual process, seeing that I jumped from deep sleep

to absolute alertness in a single instant. I had evidently slept for an

hour and more, for the night had cleared, stars crowded the sky, and

a pallid half-moon just sinking into the sea threw a spectral light

between the trees.

I went outside to sniff the air, and stood upright. A curious

impression that something was astir in the Camp came over me, and when

I glanced across at Sangree’s tent, some twenty feet away, I saw that

it was moving. He too, then, was awake and restless, for I saw the

canvas sides bulge this way and that as he moved within.

Then the flap pushed forward. He was coming out, like myself, to sniff

the air; and I was not surprised, for its sweetness after the rain was

intoxicating. And he came on all fours, just as I had done. I saw a

head thrust round the edge of the tent.

And then I saw that it was not Sangree at all. It was an animal. And

the same instant I realised something else too--it was _the_ animal;

and its whole presentment for some unaccountable reason was unutterably

malefic.

A cry I was quite unable to suppress escaped me, and the creature

turned on the instant and stared at me with baleful eyes. I could

have dropped on the spot, for the strength all ran out of my body

with a rush. Something about it touched in me the living terror that

grips and paralyses. If the mind requires but the tenth of a second

to form an impression, I must have stood there stockstill for several

seconds while I seized the ropes for support and stared. Many and vivid

impressions flashed through my mind, but not one of them resulted in

action, because I was in instant dread that the beast any moment would

leap in my direction and be upon me. Instead, however, after what

seemed a vast period, it slowly turned its eyes from my face, uttered a

low whining sound, and came out altogether into the open.

Then, for the first time, I saw it in its entirety and noted two

things: it was about the size of a large dog, but at the same time it

was utterly unlike any animal that I had ever seen. Also, that the

quality that had impressed me first as being malefic, was really only

its singular and original strangeness. Foolish as it may sound, and

impossible as it is for me to adduce proof, I can only say that the

animal seemed to me then to be--not real.

But all this passed through my mind in a flash, almost subconsciously,

and before I had time to check my impressions, or even properly verify

them; I made an involuntary movement, catching the tight rope in my

hand so that it twanged like a banjo string, and in that instant the

creature turned the corner of Sangree’s tent and was gone into the

darkness.

Then, of course, my senses in some measure returned to me, and I

realised only one thing: it had been inside his tent!

I dashed out, reached the door in half a dozen strides, and looked in.

The Canadian, thank God! lay upon his bed of branches. His arm was

stretched outside, across the blankets, the fist tightly clenched, and

the body had an appearance of unusual rigidity that was alarming. On

his face there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort,

so far as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed

to be very profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally

stiff, and in some indefinable way, too, he looked smaller--shrunken.

I called to him to wake, but called many times in vain. Then I decided

to shake him, and had already moved forward to do so vigorously when

there came a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I felt a

stream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped. I turned sharply. The

tent door was darkened and something silently swept in. I felt a rough

and shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal had returned. It

seemed to leap forward between me and Sangree--in fact, to leap upon

Sangree, for its dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in that

moment my soul turned sick and coward with a horror that rose from the

very dregs and depth of life, and gripped my existence at its central

source.

The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though

it belonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the same

instant--that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in my

mind--it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterly

unaccountable fashion, it was gone! And the Canadian woke and sat up

with a start.

“Quick! You fool!” I cried, in my excitement, “the beast has been in

your tent, here at your very throat while you sleep like the dead. Up,

man! Get your gun! Only this second it disappeared over there behind

your head. Quick! or Joan----!”

And somehow the fact that he was there, wide-awake now, to corroborate

me, brought the additional conviction to my own mind that this was no

animal, but some perplexing and dreadful form of life that drew upon my

deeper knowledge, that much reading had perhaps assented to, but that

had never yet come within actual range of my senses.

He was up in a flash, and out. He was trembling, and very white. We

searched hurriedly, feverishly, but found only the traces of paw-marks

passing from the door of his own tent across the moss to the women’s.

And the sight of the tracks about Mrs. Maloney’s tent, where Joan now

slept, set him in a perfect fury.

“Do you know what it is, Hubbard, this beast?” he hissed under his

breath at me; “it’s a damned wolf, that’s what it is--a wolf lost among

the islands, and starving to death--desperate. So help me God, I

believe it’s that!”

He talked a lot of rubbish in his excitement. He declared he would

sleep by day and sit up every night until he killed it. Again his rage

touched my admiration; but I got him away before he made enough noise

to wake the whole Camp.

“I have a better plan than that,” I said, watching his face closely. “I

don’t think this is anything we can deal with. I’m going to send for

the only man I know who can help. We’ll go to Waxholm this very morning

and get a telegram through.”

Sangree stared at me with a curious expression as the fury died out of

his face and a new look of alarm took its place.

“John Silence,” I said, “will know----”

“You think it’s something--of that sort?” he stammered.

“I am sure of it.”

There was a moment’s pause. “That’s worse, far worse than anything

material,” he said, turning visibly paler. He looked from my face to

the sky, and then added with sudden resolution, “Come; the wind’s

rising. Let’s get off at once. From there you can telephone to

Stockholm and get a telegram sent without delay.”

I sent him down to get the boat ready, and seized the opportunity

myself to run and wake Maloney. He was sleeping very lightly, and

sprang up the moment I put my head inside his tent. I told him briefly

what I had seen, and he showed so little surprise that I caught myself

wondering for the first time whether he himself had seen more going on

than he had deemed wise to communicate to the rest of us.

He agreed to my plan without a moment’s hesitation, and my last

words to him were to let his wife and daughter think that the great

psychic doctor was coming merely as a chance visitor, and not with any

professional interest.

So, with frying-pan, provisions, and blankets aboard, Sangree and I

sailed out of the lagoon fifteen minutes later, and headed with a good

breeze for the direction of Waxholm and the borders of civilisation.

IV

Although nothing John Silence did ever took me, properly speaking, by

surprise, it was certainly unexpected to find a letter from Stockholm

waiting for me. “I have finished my Hungary business,” he wrote, “and

am here for ten days. Do not hesitate to send if you need me. If you

telephone any morning from Waxholm I can catch the afternoon steamer.”

My years of intercourse with him were full of “coincidences” of this

description, and although he never sought to explain them by claiming

any magical system of communication with my mind, I have never doubted