The Mountain of Fears. Henry C. Rowland
gulps of a horse.
“ ‘I’m feverish,’ he said, panting from the long draught, ‘verra nervous and feverish. ’Tis a feverish place, this.’
“ ‘It’s rotten with fever!’ growled Vinckers, who, like myself, spoke English better than the Scotchman. ‘It stinks of fever—smell it! We were fools to stay here so long.’
“ ‘We are a pack of lotus-eaters,’ said I. ‘You are right, Vinckers; it is this accursed stuff we have been eating—this adiposcere! We will get out of here to-morrow.’
“ ‘Do you feel as if your inside was filled with lead, Leyden?’ asked Vinckers.
“ ‘It is worse than that,’ said I—‘molten lead.’
“You see, Doctor, we had been living on this rich, fatty stuff, which certainly contained a great deal of oil and I do not know what else besides—narcotics, no doubt. You know the richness of an avocado? They will tell you in some places that this fruit produces biliousness, but I have never heard that it had a soporific effect, as undoubtedly had the myela fruit. Then we had taken no exercise.
“I think that night was hotter than most; we could not sleep, so up we got and smoked and discussed our plans for the future—at least, we started to discuss them, but even as we argued a lethargy came over us, and one by one we fell asleep, though dreading to do so and striving to keep awake through fear of another nightmare. An odd condition, Doctor, this drowsy fearsomeness; no doubt like a patient narcotized before an operation; dread fighting a drug until the latter triumphs and the patient whimpers off into fear-filled somnolence.
“The sun came to suck away the fever-mist and with it much of our dread. We laughed at the fears of the night and awaited the coming of the Papuans, but awaited in vain. I think, Doctor, that Tomba’s scream had floated across the valley, telephonic beneath the mist to reach the listeners in the hills. At any rate, no human thing came near us that day. Later, when the shadows began to lengthen again, we wandered out, Vinckers and I, prospecting towards the native camp—I with a rifle, watchful for game, Vinckers humming to himself an old Dutch tune, careless in the full force of the sunlight, wandering behind me and clicking on the rocks with his little hammer.
“I was strangely lacking in breath as I climbed the hillside; as for Vinckers, he halted at the end of a hundred steps and would go up no further. Back at our camp MacFarlane lay smoking, with his head in the lap of the girl. I alone toiled up the slope, soft in heart and fibre, the sweat pouring from me in streams, sodden, with the spring gone out of my ankles and everything about me of a strange, sickly yellow hue which darkened as my breath came faster.
“I found the Papuans departed, so back I went, blubbering with breathlessness, muttering, fatigued, depressed, sluggish with sleep. Vinckers I found with his back against a rock, sleeping heavily. As I bent to rouse him my eyes fell upon a specimen which lay between his knees, and I saw that the little hammer had cleft it open to lay bare a thick band of virgin gold. Vinckers had tapped at the door of Fortune and she had opened, and Vinckers had looked within and—fallen asleep! Had the goddess ever a more loutish lover? He was sweating, too, in his sleep, and I saw where the sweat had left a yellow stain upon his neckerchief, and as the late sun struck him it seemed to me that his skin also was of a chromish tint. You know the flabby pallor of the clay-eater? It was like that, fat and flabby, but yellow rather than pale.
“Back we went to the camp, where MacFarlane still lay and smoked or slept with his ugly, shaggy head in the lap of Tomba.
“ ‘Gold!’ I said, ‘the mountain is full of it. It lies about loose here on the hillside, think of what it must be yonder where the mountain springs have done our hydraulic mining and washing in the same formation!’ I pointed above us to the flank of the Malang-o-mor; the late sun struck it aslant, throwing sharp, purple shadows into the numberless seams and fissures eroded in the crumbling crust; it flashed as it had each evening and glowed redly; high above, as the sun sank lower, the quartz beds threw back the deepening azure of the sky.
“ ‘Perhaps it is gold,’ said I, ‘that bright stuff which glitters so; at any rate there is gold to be had for the taking, while we lie here and bloat and rot and waken screaming in the night. To-morrow we must go up.’
“ ‘I’m no fit mysel’, lad,’ said MacFarlane. ‘I hae the fever; I maun rest.’
“ ‘You will rest here through eternity,’ said I, ‘if you do not come away at once. You are yellow as a Chinaman and there’s not a line left in your face.’ And with the aid of the girl I set about preparing a meal.”
Leyden sucked in his breath sharply—filled his deep lungs like a man coming out of the dense, polluted atmosphere of a crowded car or clinic.
“That night I awoke thrice, and each time a cold terror was clamping my heart, until I seemed to shrivel in the utter obliteration of all else. The dread was featureless; there was no dream, only this crushing, numbing, withering fear which froze sound and motion; and I lay and listened to the quick, faint tick-tick-tick of my heart-beats and waited to die—and, instead, I slept again, even while sweating with fear. The last time I remained awake; and as conscience dawned fuller this fear sat upon the distorted objects of the place, the swinging bulks of my companions, the dark roof, and as I looked out into the lambent, mellow-lighted valley fear walked beneath the vague, symmetrical palms and the shimmering umbrella-trees and lurked in the recesses of the fantastic rocks. Fear walked on the water of the oily, sluggish river that flowed with the sheen of molten gold through raw, eroded banks where the lips of the rocks protruded like the ragged edge of an ulcer.
“I lay inert, paralyzed, and presently heard a faint, shuddering sigh; presently a moan, deep, hopeless, almost expiring.
“ ‘Are you awake, Vinckers?’ I managed to whisper, and my tongue could hardly articulate the words.
“ ‘Yes—are you, MacFarlane?’
“ ‘Ou aye, ou aye—what is it—oh, what is it, man?’
“ ‘Have you had the nightmare?’ I asked.
“ ‘Yes—without the dream—only the fear—what is it?’
“ ‘Ou, lads, we maun leave this place as soon as ’tis light——’
“ ‘Hush!—ah, hush!’ whispered Vinckers. ‘I am burning up—come over here, Leyden—I am afraid to move—I was never afraid before—never in my life—ah—what was that!’
“ ‘Ah, tush, man!’ MacFarlane’s rough voice choked. ‘D’ye want to drive the heart of a man from his body? Tomba, lass, Tomba!’ There was no reply.
“ ‘Tomba!’ said I, sharply. ‘Tomba—Tomba!’
“ ‘Hush!—ah, hush!’ whispered Vinckers.
“ ‘Why shall I hush?’ said I, and my voice was shaking. ‘Waken her, MacFarlane.’
“The Scotchman thrust out his great arm slowly, and in the faint yellow light I saw him snatch it quickly away; heard the choking rattle in his throat; felt my own heart flickering like a candle burned low.
“ ‘Ou—ou—ou——’
“ ‘Hush—hush—s’h’hh!’ whispered Vinckers.
“And then, Doctor”—Leyden’s voice had sunk until one scarce caught the bitter mockery—“I did the bravest act of my life. I slid out of my hammock.” Leyden laughed in a way that sent a chill through me.
“Can you understand, Doctor? Do you know what fear is? Did you ever awake suddenly from a dreamless sleep with a devitalizing fear crushing the very blood out of your heart? No dream—no recollection—only the fear sometimes hung like a black mantle over the nearest object, no matter how familiar. Purely reasonless—the organ acting on the cell; an inversion of effect on cause. In our own case, if one presumed that our diet, or water, or the fever, or any other extrinsic cause had deranged the organ—perhaps the liver—and thus