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Page 9
He hardly knew what to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering
what it all meant. D�fago, of course, had been crying in his sleep. Some
dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in his life would he forget
that pitiful sound of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful
wilderness of woods listened....
His own mind busied itself for a long time with the recent events, of
which _this_ took its mysterious place as one, and though his reason
successfully argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of
uneasiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated--peculiar
beyond ordinary.
IV
But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions. His
thoughts soon wandered again; he lay there, warm as toast, exceedingly
weary; the night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of memory and
alarm. Half an hour later he was oblivious of everything in the outer
world about him.
Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, concealing all approaches,
smothering the warning of his nerves.
As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with
a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail
accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when you
wake up you'll understand."
And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
overlooked.
So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering.
Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. D�fago had
huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.
Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in
the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and
the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier
camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
very troubling.
And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profound
stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
guide: "_D�-fa-go!_"
The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice," he
calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
power...."
And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone.
And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
heard dying in the distance--he called aloud in tones of anguished
terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied
exultation of delight--
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