There was — nothing.

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 Defago, 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

some one hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and

travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Defago,

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 possiblities

that were all the more ominous for being obscure.