struck. My heartquickened as I listened.
"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this afternoonit came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could never get nearenough to see--to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, andsometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could have swornit was not outside at all, but within myself--you know--the way a sound inthe fourth dimension is supposed to come."
I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listenedcarefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I couldthink of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, comingnearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot saythat it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical,yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I hadnever heard it.
"The wind blowing in those sand-funnels," I said determined to find anexplanation, "or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps."
"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes fromeverywhere at once." He ignored my explanations. "It comes from the willowbushes somehow--"
"But now the wind has dropped," I objected. "The willows can hardly make anoise by themselves, can they?"
His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly,because I knew intuitively it was true.
"It is because the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned before.It is the cry, I believe, of the--"
I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew wasin danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation.I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded,too, that he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, orsomething else disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand forwhat might happen later. There was another night to be faced before weescaped from this distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what itmight bring forth.
"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously stirringthe appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and thethought made me laugh.
He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling inits mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon theground-sheet at his feet.
"Hurry up!" I cried; "it's boiling."
The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forcedlaughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.
"There's nothing here!" he shouted, holding his sides.
"Bread, I mean."
"It's gone. There is no bread. They've taken it!"
I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained layupon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.
The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then Iburst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of mylaughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressurecaused it--this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was aneffort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve.And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.
"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be consistentand find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. Thatchattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left itlying on the counter or--"
"The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning," the Swedeinterrupted.
Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.
"There's enough for tomorrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can getlots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles fromhere."
"I hope so--to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack,"unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added with afoolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, Isuppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that itseemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.
Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence,avoiding one another's eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed upand prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied withany definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became moreand more acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the veryvagueness of its origin distressed me far more that if I had been able toticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the noteof a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of thenight with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinctnotes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us.Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our left, and then againfrom the clumps on our right. More often it hovered directly overhead likethe whirring of wings. It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front,at our sides and over our heads, completely surrounding us. The soundreally defies description. But nothing within my knowledge is like thatceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world of swamps andwillows.
We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minutegreater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did notknow what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by wayof defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in thesunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and whollyunsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to us that some kindof plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not.After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the sametent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer without thesupport of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. Aslong as possible, however, I postponed this little climax, and tried toignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.
Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration,too--which made it so much more convincing--from a totally different pointof view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in suchan inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought wassecret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found itimpossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relievedhim. It was like being sick.
"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder,disintegration, destruction, our destruction," he said once, while the fireblazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."
And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing muchlouder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talkingto himself:
"I don't think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sounddoesn't come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in anothermanner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how afourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard."
I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fireand peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over thesky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everythingwas, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own way.
"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of commonexperience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it really; it is anon-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity."
Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time,but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief tohave the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of wordsfrom dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.
The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? Thefeeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ranincessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul,as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had passedthrough by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinkingbeer, tables beneath the trees,
hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on therocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have beenwelcome.
Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitelygreater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense ofterror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of.We had "strayed," as the Swede put it, into some region or some set ofconditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where thefrontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held bythe dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spyupon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worna little thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should becarried over the border and deprived