Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely in shallow

flurries over the more open spaces, he found no difficulty in following

the tracks for the first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line

wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in

length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely

impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps

they became. One of these measured, and though he knew that “stretch”

of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to

understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme

points. But what perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision

had gone utterly awry, was that Defago’s stride increased in the same

manner, and finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as

if the great beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these

astonishing intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found

that he could not compass even half the stretch by taking a running

jump.

And the sight of these huge tracks, running side by side, silent

evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or madness had urged to

impossible results, was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret

depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever

looked upon. He began to follow them mechanically, absent-mindedly

almost, ever peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being

followed by something with a gigantic tread … . And soon it came

about that he no longer quite realized what it was they signified -these impressions left upon the snow by something nameless and untamed,

always accompanied by the footmarks of the little French Canadian, his

guide, his comrade, the man who had shared his tent a few hours before,

chatting, laughing, even singing by his side … .

V

For a man of his years and inexperience, only a canny Scot,

perhaps, grounded in common sense and established in logic, could have

preserved even that measure of balance that his youth somehow or other

did manage to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two

things, he presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have

sent him headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead

of only making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle-stock, while

his heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its

way to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this

change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some

undecipherable manner — appalling.

It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and for a long

time he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the blown leaves that

produced odd effects of light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting

like finely-grounded rice about the edges, cast shadows and high

lights? Or was it actually the fact that the great marks had become

faintly coloured? For round about the deep, plunging holes of the

animal there now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more

like an effect of light than of anything that dyed the substance of the

snow itself. Every mark had it, and had it increasingly — this

indistinct fiery tinge that painted a new touch of ghastliness into the

picture.

But when, wholly unable to explain or credit it, he turned his

attention to the other tracks to discover if they, too, bore similar

witness, he noticed that these had meanwhile undergone a change that

was infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible suggestion.

For, in the last hundred yards or so, he saw that they had grown

gradually into the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the

change had come about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where the

change first began. The result, however, was beyond question. Smaller,

neater, more cleanly modelled, they formed now an exact and careful

duplicate of the larger tracks beside them. The feet that produced them

had, therefore, also changed. And something in his mind reared up with

loathing and with terror as he saw it.

Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm

and indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant

stopped dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of

the trail ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for

a hundred yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication

of their continuance.