The Mountain of Fears. Henry C. Rowland
will throw the hypnotized patient into paroxysms of fear——
“I never did a thing so difficult as to get on my feet and walk to the hammock of that poor girl. She was quite dead—and the wet frost of the fear which had killed her lay moist and chill on face and breast. I did not dare to light a match to look at her; there is a limit, Doctor, to the courage of every man. I was never really frightened before; I can never remember being really frightened since; and my profession is one of countless risks to life. This was something far, far worse—the reason stampeding with the will——
“Then the lethargy crept on again. I crawled back to my hammock and, still fighting the fear, fell asleep. The others slept before I—and I could hear them whining and whimpering like young puppies taken from the litter.
“I was the first to awaken when the light came. My fear was gone and I lay drenched in perspiration, yet comfortable, unwilling to rouse myself.
“ ‘Oh, the awfu’ nicht!’ moaned MacFarlane, and covered his face with his gnarled hands. Vinckers did not speak, but shouldered his kit.
“ ‘Let us go,’ he said, and we filed away from the place without looking back at the cannibal girl in the plaited hammock, her drawn face covered with the Scotchman’s only neckerchief.
“We wandered down the valley looking for a place to ford the stream and begin the ascent. We had no carriers, no goods, no especial hopes, but these things did not trouble us. We wandered along the banks of the dream-river and beneath the symmetrical trees, and filed between the fantastic rocks, which, from habit alone, we tapped with our little hammers; and still the sun had not looked over the edge of the eastern rampart of the valley, and we journeyed in the shadow of the Mountain of Fears. The Mountain of Fears—the Mountain of Fears—and nothing but peace on every hand! Nothing of harm—no danger of man or beast, nothing of heat, nothing of cold—a misty, dreamy peace; the dreads of the night supplanted by an apathetic shame which forbade discussion of these things. As for Tomba—why, she died of fever, poor girl—what else?
“We wandered down the valley and soon we came to a ford; there we crossed and toiled on up the slope of the mountain—up, up, up, panting, sweating, breathless, not clear as to purpose, but struggling to get up because—we did not know! As we climbed we tapped at the stones, because we were used to tapping and chipping with our little hammers, and when we halted for the night we were high up on a wooded plateau, and the air was fine and thin and sweet with healthy odors of moss and fern and clean flowers. We were on the hip of the Mountain of Fears.
“We crouched on the edge of the precipice and peered down into the valley as the sun slipped over the crest of the opposite hills and drew after it the curtain of mist which hid the greasy river and the unreal trees and the jumping rocks, which from above looked like Titan children frozen at play. The mist hid all of these things, but now we were above instead of beneath it. Before it grew denser it formed a thin, flat pale through which one might look and see these objects, symmetrical and bizarre, fantastic and uncouth, which lay beneath, as one looks down through the thin water-line of a clear but stagnant pool and sees the fairy-like structures of an alien element. ‘To-night,’ thought I, ‘we shall not slumber in that cistern.’ It seemed to me in that thin, bracing air, that we had wriggled to the surface like the larvæ of mosquitoes, and, after incessantly gyrating up and down, had crawled clear and grown our wings in the drier medium. But even while thinking these things the sun slipped down behind the opposite hills, the mist thickened, a cold draught sucked around the side of the mountain, and I heard Vinckers let out his breath with a shudder. I had noticed that each evening we grew depressed as soon as the sun was gone.
“ ‘What is the matter?’ I asked.
“ ‘Oh, God!’ he shuddered. ‘Don’t you see that it is all getting yellow again—a nasty, greenish yellow?’
“ ‘Ou aye,’ said MacFarlane, ‘but it has been yellow all day!’
“It had a yellowish tinge to me, Doctor, but I had tried to persuade myself that it was something in the spectrum of that equatorial sun and the vivid greens which filled the valley. There was no denying that as the sunrays left the air the yellows came out with frightful intensity, and to my imagination it seemed as if we were cursed with the curse of Midas—a curse because we had profaned the Malang-o-mor, except that it was not necessary to touch a thing to turn it into gold. Of course, at that time I knew nothing of such things as xanthopsia, and my mind rebelled at aught of a superstitious character. The result was that I became worried and confused—like a dog listening at the receiver of a telephone to a sourceless voice. With Vinckers and MacFarlane it was different; they were of the unimaginative type which goes at one leap from stubborn disbelief to frenzied superstition—and just because everything was turning yellow they would not raise their voices above a whisper.
“We had practically nothing wherewith to camp; in fact, we had come to wandering through that dream-country with only dream-needs—the needs of an opium-eater or any other slave of the lamp. Of course, we had some of the fruit—the stuff that grew on the Mountain of Fears—I have never seen it anywhere else. We made a shelter and crept in to sleep.
“I suppose that it was hot enough, but for a month we had dwelt in the steam-room of a Turkish bath. Being younger and stronger, I had given my poncho to Vinckers, who had felt the chill of the higher air. Perhaps it was this circumstance which brought me through the night with my reason, for the cold wakened me before that moment of low-ebbing vitality which comes between midnight and dawn. I awoke shivering, dew-damp with the terror of the night before, and as I lay there waiting I heard the other two twitching and muttering. I suppose that I should have awakened them.
“The moonlight, which should have been clear on the mountain, was yellow as in the valley below; the moon was still high, and we lay in the shadow, but as I waited it passed the zenith and began its swift descent, and soon the lower rim was cut by the edge of our leafy roof. For an hour no sound had come from the others, no stir; they had lain like dead men; and in my abject nervelessness I was afraid to investigate, but waited until the moon should sink lower and look directly into the place. MacFarlane was nearest me, and as the moon sank lower the yellow light crept up his body, which was motionless, as if carved in stone. It reached a hand lying palm downward on his thigh, and I saw that the back glistened with moisture. The sharp, golden moon-ray crept higher, and I watched breathlessly for his face, my own still in the shadow. His straggling beard turned golden; I saw his yellow teeth gleaming, the bristling lips drawn up and the breath hissing between in quick gasps. ‘He is having the nightmare,’ I thought, and might have found courage to awaken him, but at that moment the light shone full in his face, and I saw that his eyes were wide open, fixed, staring, brimming with an anguish of dread before which my soul shrank. He was staring straight in front of him at Vinckers, who was stretched out at his side, and as I watched, the moonlight fell on his face and showed his eyes also wide open and staring straight into those of MacFarlane.
“For perhaps five minutes—five hours it seemed to me—these two lay inert, stricken paralytic from dread, gazing each one into the crazed eyes of the other, motionless, soundless—while I, watching from the shadow, saw the water trickle down their yellow faces in little, golden drops. Then, with a consciousness of the danger of this thing, I tried to break the spell—and did!
“ ‘Vinckers!’ I croaked, and before the sound of my voice had died away Vinckers screamed—a rasping, throat-splitting scream, straight into MacFarlane’s face. MacFarlane gurgled and his eyes opened and shut rapidly. Vinckers screamed again—and at this something inside me which I was striving to hold in check, some irresistible impulse, seemed suddenly to tear away—and sweep my will before it—at least, this is a nice way of putting it, Doctor——”
Into Leyden’s voice there had crept again that biting mockery which was almost jaunty in tone.
“It is so,” he continued, “that one auto-analytic—a student of psychology—his own—might refer to these subjective symptoms. The brutal stranger watching this phenomenon would spell it in five letters—P-A-N-I-C—an elemental emotion which can be the source of much learned argumentation—and stamp the lives out of women