The Willows

at the moment ofdiscovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. Hehimself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was whatsaved him.

  I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, Ifound myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches,and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assistme. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me.Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

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

  "You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connectedthought at the moment. A numbness came over me.

  "That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set themoff on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone--for themoment at any rate!"

  A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to myfriend too--great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought atremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fireand put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tenthad fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

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

  "It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up againand the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. "And lookat the size of them!"

  All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the movingshadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similarto the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger anddeeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit thewhole of my foot and leg.

  Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing wecould do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, havingfirst thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddleinside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at theend of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion woulddisturb and wake us.

  In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for asudden start.

  It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but theexhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a whilecame over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companionalso slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly satup, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He tossed about on hiscork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen overthe point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned withthe report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still.Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable soundsof snoring--the first and only time in my life when snoring has been awelcome and calming influence.

  This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.

  A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face.But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my firstthought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own inhis sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to methat the tent was surrounded. That sound of multitudinous soft patteringwas again audible outside, filling the night with horror.

  I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missedthe sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent wasdown. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hookit back securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positivelythat the Swede was not here. He had gone.

  I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment Iwas out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded mecompletely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It wasthat same familiar humming--gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees mighthave been about me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the veryatmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.

  But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.

  The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwardsover the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. Icould just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandypatches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island,calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first words thatcame into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and the hummingmuffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round me. I plungedamong the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots, and scraping myface as I tore this way and that among the preventing branches.

  Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a darkfigure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. Andalready he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have takenthe plunge.

  I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging himshorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making anoise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the mostoutlandish phrases in his anger about "going inside to Them," and "takingthe way of the water and the wind," and God only knows what more besides,that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me sick withhorror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get himinto the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless andcursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.

  I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coincidingas it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and patteringoutside--I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole businessperhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to meso that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said,for all the world just like a frightened child:

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

  Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under myeyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as thoughnothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as asacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hourslater--hours of ceaseless vigil for me--it became so clear to me that heremembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemedit wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.

  He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already highin a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparationof the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he didnot attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remarkabout the extra coldness of the water.

  "River's falling at last," he said, "and I'm glad of it."

  "The humming has stopped too," I said.

  He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently heremembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.

  "Everything has stopped," he said, "because--"

  He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made justbefore he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.

  "Because 'They've found another victim'?" I said, forcing a little laugh.

  "Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though--asthough--I feel quite safe again, I mean," he finished.

  He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches onthe sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose tofeet.

  "Come," he said; "I think if we look, we shall find it."

  He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, pokingwith a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back-waters, myselfalways close on his heels.

  "Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"

  The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of thehorror of the last twenty-four hour
s, and I hurried up to join him. He waspointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the waterand half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow rootsso that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot musthave been under water.

  "See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"

  And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on thebody of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and theface was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a fewhours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our islandsomewhere about the hour of the dawn--at the very time the fit had passed.

  "We must give it a decent burial, you know."

  "I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little