Defago, 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 others’ heels

with a conviction of dreadfullest 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 acts 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.

Defago 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, far-fetched yet

recognizable, to the name of the guide: “De-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 —

“Oh! oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire! Oh! oh! This

height and fiery speed!”

And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of

very early morning descended upon the forest as before.

It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence

of the empty bed beside him Simpson could almost have believed it to

have been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still

felt the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there

lay the twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the

vehemence of the impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his

ears, as though he still heard them in the distance — wild language of

a suddenly stricken mind.