The First Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK ®. Algernon Blackwood
to sing.
Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Défago changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Défago changed his position in order to hear and smell—all there was to be heard and smelt. And, since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to his marvelously trained nerves.
“Guess now I don’t feel like singing any,” he explained presently of his own accord. “That song kinder brings back memories that’s troublesome to me; I never oughter’ve begun it. It sets me on t’ imagining things, see?”
Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion. He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other. But the explanation, in that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and he knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing—no amount of blazing fire, or chatting on ordinary subjects—could make that camp exactly as it had been before. the shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his companion. the guide’s visible efforts to dissemble the truth only made things worse. Moreover, to add to the younger man’s uneasiness, was the difficulty, nay, the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and also his complete ignorance as to the cause…Indians, wild animals, forest fires—all these, he knew, were wholly out of the question. His imagination searched vigorously, but in vain.…
* * * *
Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of smoking, talking and roasting themselves before the great fire, the shadow that had so suddenly invaded their peaceful camp began to shirt. Perhaps Défago’s efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude accomplished this; perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the affair out of all proportion to the truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause, the feeling of immediate horror seemed to have passed away as mysteriously as it had come, for nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide’s face was, of course, uncommonly hard to explain, yet it might have been due in some way to an effect of firelight, or his own imagination… He gave it the benefit of the doubt; he was Scotch.
When a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, the mind always finds a dozen ways of explaining away its causes… Simpson lit a last pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home to Scotland it would make quite a good story. He did not realize that this laughter was a sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul—that, in fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man, seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is not so.
Défago, however, heard that low laughter and looked up with surprise on his face. the two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about before going to bed. It was ten o’clock—a late hour for hunters to be still awake.
“What’s ticklin’ yer?” he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.
“I—I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that moment,” stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his mind, and startled by the question, “and comparing them to—to all this,” and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.
A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.
“All the same I wouldn’t laugh about it, if I was you,” Défago added, looking over Simpson’s shoulder into the shadows. “There’s places in there nobody won’t never see into—nobody knows what lives in there either.”
“Too big—too far off?” the suggestion in the guide’s manner was immense and horrible.
Défago nodded. the expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt uneasy. the younger man understood that in a hinterland of this size there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the world be known or trodden. the thought was not exactly the sort he welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing. Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult to “get at.”
“Say, you, Boss Simpson,” he began suddenly, as the last shower of sparks went up into the air, “you don’t—smell nothing, do you—nothing pertickler, I mean?” the commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.
“Nothing but burning wood,” he replied firmly, kicking again at the embers. the sound of his own foot made him start.
“And all the evenin’ you ain’t smelt—nothing?” persisted the guide, peering at him through the gloom; “nothing extrordiny, and different to anything else you ever smelt before?”
“No, no, man; nothing at all!” he replied aggressively, half angrily.
Défago’s face cleared. “That’s good!” he exclaimed with evident relief. “That’s good to hear.”
“Have you?” asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the question.
The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. “I guess not,” he said, though without overwhelming conviction. “It must’ve been just that song of mine that did it. It’s the song they sing in lumber camps and godforsaken places like that, when they’re skeered the Wendigo’s somewhere around, doin’ a bit of swift traveling.—”
“And what’s the Wendigo, pray?” Simpson asked quickly, irritated because again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew that he was close upon the man’s terror and the cause of it. Yet a rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.
Défago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said, or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: “It’s nuthin’—nuthin’ but what those lousy fellers believe when they’ve bin hittin’ the bottle too long—a sort of great animal that lives up yonder,” he jerked his head northwards, “quick as lightning in its tracks, an’ bigger’n anything else in the Bush, an’ ain’t supposed to be very good to look at—that’s all!”
“A backwoods superstition—” began Simpson, moving hastily toward the tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm. “Come, come, hurry up for God’s sake, and get the lantern going! It’s time we were in bed and asleep if we’re going to be up with the sun tomorrow.…”
The guide was close on his heels. “I’m coming,” he answered out of the darkness, “I’m coming.” And after a slight delay he appeared with the lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. the shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so, and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.
The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.
Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another shadow that was not a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon Défago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there, watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound stillness of a primeval forest when