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Page 13
The trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce,
cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him,
all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to
search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result:
_nothing_. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had
now, apparently, left the ground!
And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of
terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped
with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come--and
come it did.
Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and
wailing, he heard the crying voice of D�fago, the guide.
The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect
of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
draught.
"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all
the listening wilderness of trees.
And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the
Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of D�fago, eternally
hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...
It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
moment, and think ...
The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response;
the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond
recall--and held him fast.
* * * * *
Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours afterwards, for it was
late in the afternoon when at length he decided to abandon a useless
pursuit and return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water. Even
then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still echoing in his
ears. With difficulty he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The
concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting
hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he
admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been
prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast
shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his normal
equilibrium.
But for all that the journey through the gathering dusk was miserably
haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps; voices that laughed
and whispered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
making signs to one another for a concerted attack the moment he had
passed. The creeping murmur of the wind made him start and listen. He
went stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making as little
sound as he could. The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective or
covering merely, had now become menacing, challenging; and the pageantry
in his frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all the
more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.
It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper
powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less
success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered,
and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the
question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally
impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of
the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully
accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon
the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left
a written note to explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
a plentiful _cache_ of food and matches--though he had no expectation
that any human hands would find them!
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