Latest / Occult & Supernatural Audiobooks: Forbidden Rituals, Esoteric Texts & Paranormal Tales / 🟡 Wendigo (Full Audiobook) | Algernon Blackwood

Transcript

🟡 Wendigo (Full Audiobook) | Algernon Blackwood · Occult & Supernatural Audiobooks: Forbidden Rituals, Esoteric Texts & Paranormal Tales

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: without finding so much as a fresh trail, for the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: moose were uncommonly shy. and the various Nimrods returned to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the bosoms of their respective families with the best excuses
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: came back without a trophy. But he brought instead the
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: memory of an experience which he declares was worth all
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: of Aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose, amongst
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: them the vagaries of the human mind, This particular story, however,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: found no mention in his book on collective hallucination, for
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the simple reason, so he confided once to a fellow colleague,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: that he himself played too intimate a part in it
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: his nephew, a divinity student destined for the Wee Kirk,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: then on his first visit to Canadian Backwoods. and the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: latter's guide, Defago. Joseph Defago was a French Canuck who
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: had strayed from his native province of Quebec years before
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and had got caught in rat portage when the Canadian
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Pacific Railway was a building. A man who, in addition
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to his unparalleled knowledge of woodcraft and bush lore, could
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: also sing the old voyageur songs and tell a capital
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: hunting yarn into the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: lonely natures. And he loved the wild solitudes with a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to an obsession.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: The life of the backwoods fascinated him, whence doubtless his
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries. On this particular expedition,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and swore by him.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: He also swore at him, just as a pal might.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and since he had a vocabulary of picturesque, if not
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: utterly meaningless, oaths, the conversation between the two stalwart and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: hardy woodsmen was often of a rather lively description. This
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: river of expletives, however, Hank agreed to damn a little,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: out of respect for his old hunting boss, Dr. Cathcart,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: whom of course he addressed, after the fashion of the country,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: as Doc, and also because he understood that young Simpson
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: was already a bit of a parson. He had, however,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: one objection to Defago, and one only, which was that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the French-Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank described as the output
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: of a cursed and dismal mind, meaning apparently that he
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered fits
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: him to utter speech. Defago, that is to say, was
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: imaginative and melancholy. and as a rule it was too
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: long a spell of civilization that induced the attacks, for
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them. This
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: then was the party of four that found themselves in
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: camp the last week in October of that shy moose year,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: way up in the wilderness north of Rat Portage, a
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an Indian,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: trips in previous years. and who acted as a cook.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: His duty was merely to stay in camp, catch fish,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few minutes' notice.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: former patrons, and except for his coarse black hair and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: dark skin, he looked in these city garments no more
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: like a real Redskin than a staged Negro looks like
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: a real African. For all that, however... Punk had in
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: him still the instincts of his dying race. His taciturn
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: silence and his endurance survived. Also his superstition. The party
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: week had passed without a single sign of recent moose
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: discovering itself. Defago had sung his song and plunged into
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: a story, but Hank, in bad humor, reminded him so
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: often that he kept mussing up the facts so, that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it was most all nothing but a petered-out lie, that
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the Frenchman had finally subsided into a sulky silence which
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: nothing seemed likely to break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: were fairly done after an exhausting day. Punk was washing
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: up the dishes, grunting to himself under the lean-to of branches,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant and
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a sky quite wintry, and there was so little wind
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: that ice was already forming stealthily along the shores of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the still lake behind them. The silence of the vast
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: listening forest stole forward and enveloped them. Hank broke in
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: suddenly with his nasal voice. I'm in favor of breaking
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: new ground tomorrow, Doc, he observed with energy, looking across
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: at his employer. We don't stand a dead dago's chance
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: around here. Agreed, said Cathcart, always a man of few words.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Think the idea's good. Sure, Pop, it's good, Hank resumed
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: with confidence. Suppose now you and I strike west, up
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Garden Lakeway for a change. None of us ain't touched
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: that quiet bit of land yet. I'm with you. And you, Defago,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: take Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across the lake,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: portage over into fifty island water, and take a good
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: squint down that thar southern shore. The moose yarded there
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: like hell last year, and for all we know, they
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: may be doing it again this year, just to spite us. Defago,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing by way
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: of reply. He was still offended, possibly, about his interrupted story.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: No one's been up that way this year, and I'll
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: lay my bottom dollar on that, Hank added with emphasis,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: as though he had a reason for knowing. He looked
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: over at his partner sharply. Better take the little silk
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: tent and stay away a couple of nights, he concluded.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: as though the matter were definitely settled, for Hank was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: recognized as general organizer of the hunt and in charge
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: of the party. It was obvious to anyone that Defago
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: did not jump at the plan, but his silence seemed
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to convey something more than ordinary disapproval, and across his
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: sensitive dark face there passed a curious expression like a
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: flash of firelight, not so quickly, however, that the three
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: men had not time to catch it. He funked for
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: some reason, I thought. Simpson said afterwards in the tent
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: he shared with his uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: although the look had interested him enough at the time
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: for him to make a mental note of it. The
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: expression had caused him a passing uneasiness he could not
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: quite account for at the moment. But Hank, of course,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: had been the first to notice it, and the odd
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: thing was that instead of becoming explosive or angry over
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the other's reluctance, he at once began to humor him
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a bit. But there ain't no special reason why no
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: one's been up there this year, he said with a
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: perceptible hush in his tone. Not the reason you mean, anyway.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Last year it was the fires that kept folks out,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and this year, I guess, I guess it just happened,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: so that's all. His manner was clearly meant to be encouraging.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Joseph Trafago raised his eyes a moment, then dropped them again.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: A breath of wind stole out over the forest and
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: stirred the embers into a passing blaze. Dr. Cathcart again
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: noticed the expression in the guide's face, and again he
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: did not like it. But this time the nature of
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the look betrayed itself. In those eyes, for an instant,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: he caught the gleam of a man scared in his
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: very soul. It disquieted him more than he cared to admit.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Bad Indians up that way? he asked with a laugh
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: to ease matters a little, while Simpson, too sleepy to
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: notice this subtle by-play, moved off to bed with a
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: prodigious yawn. Or anything wrong with the country, he added
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: when his nephew was out of hearing. Hank made his
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: eye with something less than his usual frankness. He's just scared,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: he replied good-humoredly. Scared stiff about some old fairy tale.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: That's all, ain't it, old pard? And he gave Defago
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: a friendly kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the fire. Defago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted reverie,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: A reverie, however, that had not prevented his seeing all
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: that went on about him.' Scared nothing,' he answered with
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a flush of defiance.' There' s nothing in the bush that
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: can scare Joseph Defago, and don't you forget it.' And
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the natural energy with which he spoke made it impossible
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: to know whether he told the whole truth or only
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: part of it. Hank turned towards the doctor. He was
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: just going to add something when he stopped abruptly and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: looked around. A sound close behind them in the darkness...
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: made all three start. It was old Punk, who had
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: moved up from his lean-to while they talked, and now
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: stood there just beyond the circle of firelight, listening. Another time, Doc,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Hank whispered with a wink, when the gallery ain't stepped
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: down into the stalls. And spring into his feet, he
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: slapped the Indian on the back and cried noisily, Come
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: up to the fire and warm your dirty red skin
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a bit. He dragged him towards the blaze and threw
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: more wood on. That was a mighty good feed you
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: give us an hour or two back, he continued heartily,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: as though to set the man's thoughts on another scent.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And it ain't Christian to let you stand out there
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: freezing your old soul to hell while we're getting all
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: good and toasted. Punk moved in and warmed his feet.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: 'smiling darkly at the other's volubility,' which he only half understood,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: but saying nothing.' And presently Dr. Cathcart, 'seeing that further
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: conversation was impossible,' followed his nephew's example and moved off
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to the tent,' leaving the three men smoking over the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: now blazing fire.' It' s not easy to undress in a
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: small tent' without waking one's companion.' And Cathcart, hardened and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: warm-blooded as he was' in spite of his fifty-odd years,'
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: did what Hank would have described as considerable of his
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: twilight in the open. He noticed during the process that
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Punk had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Hank and Defago were at it hammer and tongs, or
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: rather hammer and anvil, the little French-Canadian being the anvil.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: It was all very like the conventional stage picture of
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Western melodrama, the fire lighting up their faces with patches
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of alternate red and black, Defago in slouch hat and moccasins,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: in the part of the Badlands villain. Hank, open-faced and hatless,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: with that reckless fling of his soldiers, the honest and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: deceived hero. And old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the details. But at the same time, something deep within him,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: he hardly knew what, shrank a little, as though an
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: almost imperceptible breath of warning had touched the surface of
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: his soul and was gone again before he could seize it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Probably it was traceable to that scared expression he had
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: seen in the eyes of DeFago. Probably, for this hint
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped his usually so keen analysis. DeFago,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: he was vaguely aware, might cause trouble somehow. He was
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: not as steady a guide as Hank, for instance. Further
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: than that he could not get. He watched the men
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent where
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a mad African in a New York nigger saloon, but
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: it was the swearing of affection. The ridiculous oaths flew
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: freely now that the cause of their obstruction was asleep.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Presently he put his arm almost tenderly upon his comrade's shoulder,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and they moved off together into the shadows where their
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: tent stood faintly glimmering. Punk, too, a moment later followed
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: their example and disappeared between his odorous blankets in the
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: opposite direction. Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: sleep still fighting in his mind with an obscure curiosity
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: to know what it was that had scared Defago about
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the country up Fifty Island Waterway, wondering, too, why Punk's
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had to say.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: tell him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Deep silence fell about the little camp. planted there so
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: audaciously in the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: like a sheet of black glass beneath the stars. The
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: cold air pricked. In the drafts of night that poured
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: messages from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: there lay already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: White men, with their dull scent, might never have divined them,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The fragrance of the wood fire would have concealed from
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: them these almost electrical hints of moss and bark in
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and Defago,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: subtly in league with the soul of the woods as
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: they were, would probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: But an hour later, when all slept like the dead,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: old Punk crept from his blankets and went down to
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the shore of the lake like a shadow, silently, as
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: only Indian blood can move. he raised his head and
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: looked about him. The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: but like the animals, he possessed other senses that darkness
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: could not mute. He listened, then sniffed the air. Motionless
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: as a hemlock stem, he stood there. After five minutes again,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet once again.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: no outer sign ran through him as he tested the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: keen air. Then merging his figure into the surrounding blackness,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: in a way that only wild men and animals understand,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went stealthily
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: back to his lean-to and his bed. And soon after
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: among the far ridges of the country, beyond fifty island water,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: It came from the direction in which he had stared,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and it passed over the sleeping camp, with a faint
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and sighing murmur, through the tops of the big trees,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: that was almost too delicate to be audible. With it,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: down the desert paths of night, though too faint, too
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: high even for the Indian's hair-like nerves, there passed a
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: curious thin odor, strangely disquieting, an odor of something that
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: seemed unfamiliar, utterly unknown. The French-Canadian and the man of
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Indian blood each stirred uneasily in his sleep just about
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: this time, though neither of them woke. Then the ghost
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: of that unforgettably strange odor passed away and was lost
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: among the leagues of tenantless forest beyond. In the morning
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the camp was astir before the sun. There had been
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: a light fall of snow during the night and the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: air was sharp. Punk had done his duty betimes, for
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the odors of coffee and fried bacon reached every tent.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: All were in good spirits. Winds shifted, cried Hank vigorously,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: watching Simpson and his guide already loading the small canoe.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It's across the lake. Dead right for you fellows, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the snow will make bully trails. If there's any moose
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: mussing around up thar, they'll not get so much as
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: a tail-end scent of you, with the wind as it is.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Good luck, Monsieur Defargo. He added facetiously, giving the name
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: its French pronunciation for once. Bonne chance. Defago returned the
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: good wishes, apparently in the best of spirits, the silent
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: mood gone. Before eight o'clock, old Punk had the camp
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to himself. Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that led westwards, while the canoe that carried Defago and Simpson,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: with silk tent and grub for two days, was already
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: going due east. The wintry sharpness of the air was
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: tempered now by a sun that topped the wooded ridges
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: lake and forest below. Loons flew skimming through the sparkling
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: spray that the wind lifted. Divers shook their dripping heads
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to the sun and popped smartly out of sight again,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and as far as eye could reach rose the leagues
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of endless, crowding bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and grandeur,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. Simpson,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: who saw it all for the first time, as he
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: paddled hard in the bows of the dancing canoe, was
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: enchanted by its austere beauty. His heart drank in the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: sense of freedom in great spaces, just as his lungs
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind him in
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the stern seat, singing fragments of his native shanties, Defago
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: steered the craft of birchbark like a thing of life,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: answering cheerfully all his companions' questions. Both were gay and lighthearted.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: On such occasions, men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions. They
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: become human beings working together for a common end. Simpson
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the employer and Defago the employed, among these primitive forces,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: were simply two men, the guider and the guided. Superior knowledge,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: of course, assumed control, and the younger man fell without
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a second thought into the quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: of objecting when Defago dropped the mister and addressed him as, say, Simpson,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: or Simpson Boss, which was invariably the case before they
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: reached the farther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: miles against a headwind. He only laughed and liked it,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: then ceased to notice it at all. For this divinity
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: student was a young man of parts and character, though
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: as yet of course untraveled, and on this trip, the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: first time he had seen any country but his own
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and little Switzerland, the huge scale of things somewhat bewildered him.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It was one thing, he realized, to hear about primeval forests,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: but quite another to see them, while to dwell in
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: them and seek acquaintance with their wildlife was, again, an
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: initiation that no intelligent man could undergo without without a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: certain shifting of personal values, hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Simpson knew the first faint indication of this emotion when
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: he held the new. 303 rifle in his hands and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: looked along its pair of faultless gleaming barrels. The three
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: days' journey to their headquarters, by lake and portage, had
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: carried the process a stage farther. And now that he
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: was about to plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: where they were camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: regions as vast as Europe itself, the true nature of
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the situation, stole upon him with an effect of delight
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and awe that his imagination was fully capable of appreciating.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: It was himself and Defago against a multitude at least,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: against a titan. The bleak splendors of these remote and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: lonely forests rather overwhelmed him with the sense of his
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled backwoods, which
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: can only be described as merciless and terrible, rose out
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon, and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: own utter helplessness. Only Defago, as a symbol of a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: distant civilization where man was master, and a pitiless death
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: by exhaustion and starvation. It was thrilling to him, therefore,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: to watch Defago turn over the canoe upon the shore,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: pack the paddles carefully underneath, and then proceed to blaze
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the spruce stems for some distance on either side of
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: an almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown in, Say, Simpson,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: if anything happens to me, you'll find the canoe, all correct,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: by these marks. Then strike due west into the sun
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: to hit the home camp again, see? It was the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: most natural thing in the world to say, and he
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: said it without any noticeable inflection of the voice, only
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: it happened to express the youth's emotion at the time
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: with an utterance that was symbolic of the situation and
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of his own helplessness as a factor in it. He
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: was alone with Defago in a primitive world. That was all.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: The canoe, another symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: be left behind. Those small yellow patches, made on the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: trees by the axe, were the only indications of its
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: hiding place. Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them, each man
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: carried his own rifle. They followed the slender trail over
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: rocks and fallen trunks and across half-frozen swamps, skirting numerous
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: lakes that fairly gemmed the forest, their borders fringed with mist,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: and towards five o'clock found themselves suddenly on the edge
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: of the woods, looking out across a large sheet of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: water in front of them, dotted with pine-clad islands of
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: all describable shapes and sizes. Fifty-island water, announced Defago warily.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and the sun just going to dip his bald old
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: head into it, he added with unconscious poetry, and immediately
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: they set about pitching camp for the night. In a
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: very few minutes, under those skillful hands that never made
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a movement too much or a movement too little, the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: silk tent stood taut and cozy, the beds of balsam
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire burned with
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the minimum of smoke, while the young scotchman cleaned the
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Defago guessed
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: he would just as soon take a turn through the
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: bush for indications of moose. May come across a trunk
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: where they been and rubbed horns, he said as he
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: moved off, or feeding on the last of the maple leaves.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And he was gone. His small figure melted away like
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson noted with a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into herself.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts. The tree stood somewhat apart,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: well spaced, and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: spear-like and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: rock that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the ground, it might well have been a bit of
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: park in the old country. Almost one might have seen
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: it in the hand of man. A little to the right, however,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: began the great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: real character. Brule, as it was called, with the fires
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: of the previous year, had raged for weeks, and the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: blackened stumps now rose gaunt and ugly, bereft of branches,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: like gigantic matchheads stuck into the ground, savage and desolate
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and rain-soaked ashes still
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: hung faintly about it. The dusk rapidly deepened. The glades
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: grew dark The crackling of the fire and the wash
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and terrific outlines among the trees. In front, through the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: fifty island water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: tip to tip, and perhaps five miles across, where they
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: were camped. A sky of rose and saffron, more clear
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: than any atmosphere Simpson had ever known, still dropped its
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: pale streaming fires across the waves, where the islands, a
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: hundred surely, rather than fifty, floated like fairy barks of
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: some enchanted fleet, fringed with pines whose crests fingered most
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: delicately the skies. They almost seemed to move upwards as
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the light faded, about to weigh anchor and navigate the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: pathways of the heavens instead of the currents of their
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: native and desolate lake. And strips of colored cloud, like
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: flaunting pennons, signaled their departure to the stars. The beauty
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: to enjoy it and at the same time tend the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: frying pan and the fire. Yet ever at the back
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: of his thoughts lay that other aspect of the wilderness,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the indifference to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: which took no note of man, the sense of his
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: utter loneliness, now that even Defago had gone, came close
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: as he looked about him and listened for the sound
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: of his companion's returning footsteps. There was pleasure in the sensation,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: yet with it a perfectly comprehensible alarm, and instinctively the
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: thought stirred in him, What should I, could I do,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: if anything happened and he did not come back? They
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish, and
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: not covered thirty miles of hard-going, eating little on the way.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And when it was over, they smoked and told stories
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: round the blazing fire, laughing, stretching weary limbs, and discussing
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: plans for the morrow. Defaga was in excellent spirits. though
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: disappointed at having no signs of Moose to report. But
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: it was dark and he had not gone far. The brule, too,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: was bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: watching him, realized with renewed vividness their position, alone together
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: in the wilderness. Defago, he said presently, these woods, you know,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: are a bit too big to feel quite at home in,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to feel comfortable in, I mean, eh? He merely gave
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: expression to the mood of the moment He was hardly
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: prepared for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: guide took him up. You've hit it right, Simpson, boss,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: he replied, fixing his searching brown eyes on his face.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And that's the truth, sure. There's no end to him,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: no end at all. Then he added, in a lowered tone,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: as if to himself, There's lots found out that, and
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: gone plumb to pieces. But the man's gravity of manner
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: was not quite to the other's likings. It was a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: little too suggestive for this scenery and setting. He was
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: sorry he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: his uncle had told him that men were sometimes stricken
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: with a strange fever of the wilderness, when the seduction
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: of the uninhabited wastes caught them so fiercely that they
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their death. And
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: in sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: on to the other topics, on to Hank and the doctor,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: for instance, and the natural rivalry as to who should
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: get the first sight of moose. If they went due west,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: observed Defago carelessly, there's sixty miles between us now, with
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: old Punk at Halfway House eating himself full to busting
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: with fish and coffee. They laughed together over the picture.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Simpson realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Sixty miles was a mere step. Two hundred little more
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: than a step. Stories of lost hunters rose persistently before
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: his memory. The passion and mystery of homeless and wandering men,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: seduced by the beauty of great forests, swept his soul
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: in a way too vivid to be pleasant. He wondered
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: invited the unwelcome suggestion with such persistence. Sing us a song, Defago,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: if you're not too tired, he asked. One of those
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: old Voyageur songs you sang the other night. He handed
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: his tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: own pipe, while the Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: voice across the lake in one of those plaintive, almost
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: melancholy shanties, with which lumbermen and trappers lessen the burden
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of their labor. There was an appealing and romantic flavor
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the old
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: pioneer days, when Indians and wilderness were leagued together, battles frequent,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and the old country farther off than it is today,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: The sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: at their backs seemed to swallow it down with a
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: single gulp that permitted neither echo nor resonance. It was
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the third verse that Simpson noticed
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: something unusual, something that brought his thoughts back with a
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: rush from faraway scenes. A curious change had come into
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the man's voice. Even before he knew what it was,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: uneasiness caught him, and looking up quickly he saw that DeVago,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: though still singing, was peering about him into the bush,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: as though he heard or saw something. His voice grew fainter,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: dropped to a hush, then ceased altogether. The same instant,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: with a movement amazingly alert, he started to his feet
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and stood upright, sniffing the air. Like a dog-scenting game,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: he drew the air into his nostrils in short, sharp breaths,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: turning quickly as he did so, in all directions, and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: finally pointing down the lake shore, eastwards. it was a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: performance unpleasantly suggestive and at the same time singularly dramatic.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Simpson's heart flooded disagreeably as he watched it. Lord, man,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: how you made me jump! he exclaimed, on his feet
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: beside him the same instant and peering over his shoulder
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: into the sea of darkness. What's up? Are you frightened?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Even before the question was out of his mouth, he
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: knew it was foolish, for any man with a pair
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: of eyes in his head could see that the Canadian
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: had turned white down to his very gills. Not even
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: sunburn and the glare of the fire could hide that.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish in the knees.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: What's up? he repeated quickly. Do you smell moose? Or
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: anything queer, anything wrong? He lowered his voice instinctively. The
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: forest pressed round them, with its encircling wall. The nearer
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: tree stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight. Beyond that, blackness,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: and so far as he could tell, a silence of death.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Just behind them a passing puff of wind lifted a
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly down again,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: if a million invisible causes had combined just to produce
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: that single visible effect. Other life pulsed about them, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: was gone. Defago turned abruptly. the livid hue of his
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: face had turned to a dirty gray. I never said
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: I heard or smelt nothing, he said slowly and emphatically,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: of defiance. I was only taking a look around, so
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to speak. It's always a mistake to be too previous
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: with your questions. Then he added suddenly, with obvious effort,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: in his more natural voice, Have you got the matches,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Boss Simpsons? and proceeded to light the pipe he had
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: half filled just before he began to sing. Without speaking
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: another word, they sat down again by the fire, Defago
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: changing his side so that he could face the direction
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the wind came from, for even a tenderfoot could tell that.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Defago changed his position in order to hear and smell
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: all there was to be heard and smelt, and since
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: he now faced the lake with his back to the trees,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: it was evidently nothing in the forest, that had sent
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: so strange and sudden a warning to his marvelously trained nerves.'
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Guess now I don't feel like singing any,' he explained
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: presently of his own accord.' That song kind of brings
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: back memories that's troublesome to me.' I never oughter have
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: begun it.' It sets me on to imagining things, see?'
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Clearly the man was still fighting with some profoundly moving emotion.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: He wished to excuse himself in the eyes of the other.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: But the explanation, and that it was only part of
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the truth— was a lie, and he knew perfectly well
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that Simpson was not deceived by it. For nothing could
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: face while he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: no amount of blazing fire or chatting on ordinary subjects,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: could make that camp exactly as it had been before.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of the guide, had also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: more potently, to his companion. The guide's visible efforts to
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: dissemble the truth only made things worse. Moreover, to add
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: to the younger man's uneasiness was the difficulty, nay, the impossibility,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: he felt of asking questions, and also his complete ignorance
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: as to the cause. Indians, wild animals, forest fires— All
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: these he knew were wholly out of the question. His
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: imagination searched vigorously, but in vain. Yet somehow or other,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: after another long spell of smoking, talking, and roasting themselves
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: before the great fire, the shadow that had so suddenly
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: invaded their peaceful camp began to skirt. Perhaps Defago's efforts,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: or the return of his quiet, abnormal attitude, accomplished this.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Perhaps Simpson himself had exaggerated the fare out of all
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: proportion to the truth, or possibly the vigorous air of
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the wilderness brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the cause,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the feeling of immediate horror seemed to have passed away
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: as mysteriously as it had come, for nothing occurred to
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had permitted
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: down partly to a certain subconscious excitement, that this wild
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: and immense scenery generated in his blood, partly to the
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: spell of solitude and partly to over-fatigue. That pallor in
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the guide's face was, of course, uncommonly hard to explain,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: yet it might have been due in some way to
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: an effect of firelight or his own imagination. He gave
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: it the benefit of the doubt. He was Scotch. When
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: a somewhat unordinary emotion has disappeared, The mind always finds
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: a dozen ways of explaining away its causes. Simpson lit
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a last pipe and tried to laugh to himself. On
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: getting home to Scotland, it would make quite a good story.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: He did not realize that his laughter was a sign
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul. That,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: in fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: by which a man, seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: that he is not so. Defago, however, heard that low
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: laughter and looked up with surprise on his face. The
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: two men stood side by side, kicking the embers about
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: before going to bed. It was ten o'clock, a late
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: hour for Huntress to be still awake.' What' s tickling you?'
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.' I was
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: thinking of our little toy woods at home just at
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: that moment,' stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: his mind, and startled by the question. and comparing them
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: to all this, and he swept his arms round him
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: to indicate the bush. A pause followed in which neither
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: of them said anything. All the same, I wouldn't laugh
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: about it if I was you, Defigo added, looking over
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. There's places in there nobody
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: won't never see into. Nobody knows what lives in there either.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Too big, too far off. The suggestion in the guide's
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: manner was immense and horrible. Defago nodded. The expression on
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: his face was dark. He, too, felt uneasy. The young
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: man understood that in a hinterland of this size there
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: might well be depths of woods that would never in
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the life of the world be known or trodden. The
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: thought was not exactly the sort he welcomed. In a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for bed.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: need doing. Evidently there was something he wanted to say,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: yet found it difficult to get at.' Say you, Boss Simpson,'
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: he began suddenly, as the last shower of sparks went
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: up into the air,' you don't smell nothing, do you?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Nothing particular, I mean?' The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: down his back. Nothing but burning wood, he replied firmly,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: kicking again at the embers. The sound of his own
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: foot made him start. And all the evening you ain't
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: smelt nothing? persisted the guide, peering at him through the gloom.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Nothing extraordinary and different to anything else you ever smelt before? No, no, man,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: nothing at all. He replied aggressively, half angrily. Defigo's face cleared.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: That's good, he exclaimed with evident relief. That's good to hear.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Have you? asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: the question. The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: shook his head. I guess not. he said, though without
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: overwhelming conviction. It must have been just that song of
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: mine that did it. It's the song they sing in
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: lumber camps and godforsaken places like that, when they're scared
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the windigo is somewhere around, doing a bit of swift traveling.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And what's the windigo, pray? Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: He knew that he was close upon the man's terror
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and the cause of it. Yet a rushing, passionate curiosity
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: overcame his better judgment and his fear. DeFaco turned swiftly
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yet all he said, or whispered rather, for the voice
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: sank very low, was,' It' s nothing,' Nothing but what those
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: lousy fellers believe when they've been hitting the bottle too long.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: A sort of great animal that lives up yonder. He
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: jerked his head northwards. Quick as lightning in its tracks,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: and bigger than anything else in the bush, and ain't
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: supposed to be very good to look at, that's all.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: A backward superstition, began Simpson, moving hastily toward the tent,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: in order to shake off the hand of the guide
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: that clutched his arm. Come, come hurry up for God's
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: sake and get the lantern going. It's time we were
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: in bed and asleep if we're going to be up
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: with the sun tomorrow. The guide was close on his heels.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: I'm coming, he answered out of the darkness. I'm coming.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: And after a slight delay, he appeared with the lantern
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: and hung it from a nail in the front pole
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: of the tent. The shadows of a hundred trees shifted
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: their place as quickly as he did so. And when
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: The two men lay down, without undressings. upon their beds
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: of soft balsam boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside all was warm
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and cozy, but outside the world of crowding trees pressed
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: close about them, marshalling their million shadows, and smothering the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: little tent that stood there like a wee white shell
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: facing the ocean of tremendous forest. Between the two lonely
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: figures within, however, there pressed another shadow that was not
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a shadow from the night, It was the shadow cast
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: by the strange fear, never wholly exercised, that had leaped
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: suddenly upon Defago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: as he lay there, watching the darkness through the open
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: flap of the tent, ready to plunge into the fragrant
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound stillness
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: of a primeval forest when no wind stirs, and when
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the night has weight and substance that enters into the
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: soul to bind a veil about it. THEN SLEEP TOOK HIM.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: PART THREE Thus it seemed to him, at least. Yet
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: it was true that the lap of the water, just
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening pulses,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: when he realized that he was lying with his eyes
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: open and that another sound had recently introduced itself, with
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: cunning softness, between the splash and murmur of the little waves.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: and long before he understood what this sound was, it
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: had stirred in him the centers of pity and alarm.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: He listened intently, though at first in vain, for the
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: running blood beat all its drums too noisily in his ears.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Did it come, he wondered, from the lake or from
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: the woods? Then suddenly, with a rush and a flutter
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: of the heart, he knew that it was close beside
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: him in the tent, and when he turned over for
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: a better hearing, it focused itself. unmistakably not two feet away.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: It was a sound of weeping. Defago, upon his bed
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: of branches, was sobbing in the darkness as though his
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed against his mouth
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: to stifle it. And his first feeling, before he could
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: think or reflect, was the rush of a poignant and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: searching tenderness. This intimate human sound, heard amid the desolation
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous. so pitifully
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: incongruous and so vain. Tears in this vast and cruel wilderness,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: in mid-Atlantic. Then, of course, with fuller realization and the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: memory of what had gone before, came the descent of
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the terror upon him, and his blood ran cold. Defago,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: he whispered quickly, what's the matter? He tried to make
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: his voice very gentle. Are you in pain? Unhappy? Unhappy?
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: There was no reply, but the sounds ceased abruptly. He
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: stretched his hand out and touched him. The body did
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: not stir. Are you awake? For it occurred to him
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: that the man was crying in his sleep. Are you cold?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: He noticed that his feet, which were uncovered, projected beyond
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra fold
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: of his own blankets over them. The guide had slipped
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: down in his bed, and the branches seemed to have
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: dragged with him. He was afraid to pull the body
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: back again, for fear of waking him. One or two
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: tentative questions he ventured softly, but though he waited for
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: several minutes, there came no reply, nor any sign of movement.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Presently he heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: his hand again gently on his breast, felt the steady
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: rise and fall beneath. Let me know if anything's wrong,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: he whispered, or if I can do anything. Wake me
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: at once if you feel queer. He hardly knew what
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: to say. He lay down again, thinking and wondering what
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: it all meant. Defago, of course, had been crying in
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: his sleep. Some dream or other had afflicted him. Yet
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: never in his life would he forget that pitiful sound
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: of sobbing, and the feeling that the whole awful wilderness
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: of woods listened. His own mind busied itself for a
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: long time with the recent events of which this took
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: its mysterious place as one. and though his reason successfully
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: argued away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of uneasiness remained,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: resisting ejection, very deep-seated, peculiar beyond ordinary. End of Section
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: 1 Section 2 of The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood This
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Amy Graymore.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Part 4 But sleep in the long run proves greater
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: than all emotions. His thoughts soon wandered again. He lay there,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: warm as toast, exceedingly weary, the night soothed and comforted,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: blunting the edges of memory and alarm. Half an hour
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: later he was oblivious of everything in the outer world
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: about him. Yet sleep in this case was his great enemy,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: concealing all approaches, smothering the warning of his nerves. As
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: sometimes in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: with a conviction or dreadfulist reality, yet some inconsistent detail
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: events that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: mind somehow that the detail, which could explain them, had
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: been overlooked in the confusion, and that, therefore, they were
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: but partly true, the rest delusion. At the back of
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the sleeper's mind something remains awake, ready to let slip
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the judgment. All this is not quite real. When you
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: wake up you'll understand. And thus in a way it
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: was with Simpson. The events, not wholly inexplicable or incredible
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: in themselves, yet remained for the man who saw and
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: because the little piece that might have made the puzzle
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: clear lay concealed or overlooked. So far as he can recall,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: it was a violent movement, running downwards through the tent
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: towards the door, that first woke him and made him
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him, quivering.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of the dawn that revealed his outline against the canvas.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: This time the man was not crying. He was quaking
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: like a leaf. The trembling he felt plainly through the
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: blankets down the entire length of his own body. Defago
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: had huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: something that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: the little tent. Simpson thereupon called out in a loud
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: voice some question or other. In the first bewilderment of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: waking he does not remember exactly what, and the man
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: lay horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: At first, indeed, he was not sure where he was,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: whether in one of the earlier camps or at home
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: very troubling. And next, almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: the profound stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: a most uncommon sound. It came without warning. or audible approach,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: and it was unspeakably dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: possibly a human voice, hoarse yet plaintive, a soft, roaring voice,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: close outside the tent, overhead rather than upon the ground,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: of immense volume, while in some strange way most penetratingly
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: and seductively sweet. It rang out, too, in three separate
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: fashion a resemblance, far-fetched yet recognizable, to the name of
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the guide, Defago. The student admits he is unable to
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: describe it quite intelligently, for it was unlike any sound
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: blending of such contrary qualities. A sort of windy crying voice,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: he calls it, as of something lonely and untamed, wild
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and of abominable power. And even before it ceased, dropping
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: back into the great gulfs of silence, the guide beside
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: him had sprung to his feet with an answering, though unintelligible, cry.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: He blundered against the tentpole with violence, shaking the whole structure,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: spreading his arms out frantically for more room, and kicking
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: his legs impetuously free of the clinging blankets. For a second,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: perhaps two, he stood upright by the door, his outline
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: dark against the pallor of the dawn. Then, with a furious,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: stop him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: of canvas and was gone. And as he went, so
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be heard dying
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: in the distance, he called aloud in tones of anguished
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: terror that at the same time held something strangely, like
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: the frenzied exaltation of delight. Oh, oh, my feet of fire,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: my burning feet of fire, oh, oh, this height and
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: fiery speed! And then the distance quickly buried it, and
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: the deep silence of very early morning descended upon the
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: forest as before. It had all come about with such
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: rapidity that, but for the evidence of the empty bed
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: he still felt the warm pressure of that vanished body
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: against his side. There lay the twisted blankets in a heap.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: The very tent yet trembled with the vehemence of the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: impetuous departure. The strange words rang in his ears, as
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: though he still heard them in the distance, wild language
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: of a suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it was not only
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the senses of sight and hearing that reported uncommon things
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: to his brain, for even while the man cried and ran,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: he had become aware, that a strange perfume, faint yet pungent,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: pervaded the interior of the tent, and it was at
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: this point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: that his nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: his throat, that he found his courage, sprang quickly to
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: his feet, and went out. The gray light of dawn
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: that dropped, cold and glimmering, between the trees, revealed the
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: scene tolerably well. There stood the tent behind him, soaked
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: with dew, the dark ashes of the fire still warm,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the lake white beneath a coating of mist, the islands
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: rising darkly out of it like objects packed in wool,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: and patches of snow beyond among the clearer spaces of
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the bush, everything cold, still, waiting for the sun. But
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: nowhere a sign of the vanished guide. still doubtless flying
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: at frantic speed through the frozen woods. There was not
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: even the sound of disappearing footsteps, nor the echoes of
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the dying voice. He had gone, utterly. There was nothing,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: nothing but the sense of his recent presence, so strongly
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: left behind about the camp, and this penetrating, all-pervading odor.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: And even this was now rapidly disappearing in its turn.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: In spite of his exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: to detect its nature and define it, but the ascertaining
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: of an elusive scent, not recognized subconsciously and at once,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: is a very subtle operation of the mind. And he failed.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: It was gone before he could properly seize or name it.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult, for it
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid, rather, not unlike
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the odor of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: not wholly unpleasing, with something almost sweet in it that
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: reminded him of the scent of decaying garden leaves, earth,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and the myriad nameless perfumes that make up the odor
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: of a big forest. Yet the odor of lions is
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: the phrase with which he usually sums it all up.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Then it was wholly gone, and he found himself standing
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: by the ashes of the fire, in a state of
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: amazement and stupid terror that left him the helpless prey
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: its pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: in that instant down the bark of a tree, he
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: would most likely have collapsed without more ado and fainted.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: of a great outer horror, and his scattered powers had
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: not as yet had time to collect themselves. into a
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: definite attitude of fighting self-control. Nothing did happen, however. A
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: great kiss of wind ran softly through the awakening forest,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: and a few maple leaves here and there rustled tremblingly
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: to earth. The sky seemed to grow suddenly much lighter.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek and uncovered head,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: realized that he was shivering with the cold, and making
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: a great effort, realized next that he was alone in
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: the bush, and that he was called upon to take
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: immediate steps to find and succor his vanished companion. Make
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: an effort, accordingly he did, though an ill-calculated and futile one.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: With that wilderness of trees about him, the sheet of
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: water cutting him off behind, and the horror of that
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: wild cry in his blood, he did what any other
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: inexperienced man would have done in similar bewilderment. He ran about,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: without any sense of direction, like a frantic child, and
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: called loudly, without ceasing, the name of the guide. Defago! Defago! Defago!
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: he yelled, and the trees gave him back the name
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: as often as he shouted, only a little softened. Defago! Defago! Defago!
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: He followed the trail that lay a short distance across
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: the patches of snow, and then lost it again, where
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the trees grew too thickly for snow to lie. He
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: shouted till he was hoarse, until the sound of his
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: own voice in all that unanswering and listening world began
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: to frighten him. His confusion increased in direct ratio to
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: the violence of his efforts. His distress became formidably acute,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: till at length his exertions defeated their own object, and
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: from sheer exhaustion he headed back to the camp again.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: It remains a wonder that he ever found his way.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: It was with great difficulty, and only after numberless false
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: clues— that he at last saw the white tent between
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the trees, and so reached safety. Exhaustion then applied its
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: own remedy, and he grew calmer. He made the fire
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and breakfasted. Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: in judgment into him again, and he realized that he
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: had been behaving like a boy. He now made another
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and more successful attempt to face the situation collectively. And
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: a nature naturally plucky, Coming to his assistance, he decided
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: that he must first make as thorough a search as possible,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: failing success in which he must find his way into
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: the home camp as best he could and bring help.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: And this was what he did. Taking food, matches, and
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: rifle with him, and a small axe to blaze the
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: trees against his return journey, he set forth. It was
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: eight o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: tops of the trees and in a sky without clouds.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Pinned to a stake by the fire, he left a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: note in case Defago returned while he was away. This time,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: according to a careful plan, he took a new direction,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: intending to make a wide sweep that must sooner or
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: later cut into the indications of the guide's trail. Before
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: he had gone a quarter of a mile, he came
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: across the tracks of a large animal in the snow,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: and beside it the light and smaller tracks of what
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: were beyond question human feet, the feet of Defago. The
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: relief he at once experienced was natural, though brief, for
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: explanation of the whole matter. These big marks had surely
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: been left by a bull moose. That wind against it
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: had blundered upon the camp and uttered its singular cry
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was apparent. Defago,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the point
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: wind hours before, his excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: to his then the impossible explanation, at which he grasped, faded,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: as common sense showed him mercilessly that none of this
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: was true. No guide, much less a guide like Defago,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: could have acted in so irrational a way, going on
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: off even without his rifle. The whole affair demanded a
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: far more complicated elucidation. When he remembered the details of
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: it all, the cry of terror, the amazing language, the
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: grey face of horror when his nostrils first caught the
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: new odour, that muffled sobbing in the darkness— and, for
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: this too, now came back to him dimly, the man's
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: original aversion for this particular bit of country. Besides, now
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: of a bull moose at all. Hank had explained to
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: him the outline of a bull's hoofs, of a cow's
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: or calf's too, for that matter. He had drawn them
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: wholly different. They were big, round, ample, and with no
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: pointed outline as of sharp hoofs. He wondered for a
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: moment whether bear tracks were like that. There was no
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: other animal he could think of, for caribou did not
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: come so far south at this season, and even if
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: they did would leave hoof marks. They were ominous signs,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: these mysterious writings left in the snow by the unknown
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: creature that had lured a human being away from safety,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: and when he coupled them in his imagination— With that
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: haunting sound that broke the stillness of the dawn, a
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: momentary dizziness shook his mind, distressing him again beyond belief.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: He felt the threatening aspect of it all, and stooping
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: down to examine the marks more closely, he caught a
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odor that made
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: him instantly straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Then his memory played him another evil trick. He suddenly
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: recalled those uncovered feet projecting beyond the edge of the tent,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: and the body's appearance of having been dragged toward the opening,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the man's shrinking from something by the door when he
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: woke later. The details now beat against his trembling mind
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: with concerted attack. They seemed to gather in those deep
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: spaces of the silent forest about him, where the host
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: of trees stood waiting, listening, watching to see what he
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: would do. The woods were closing round him, With the
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: persistence of true pluck, however, Simpson went forward, following the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: tracks as best he could, smothering these ugly emotions that
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: sought to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: he went, ever fearful of being unable to find the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: way back, and calling aloud at intervals of a few
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: seconds the name of the guide. The dull tapping of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: the axe upon the massive trunks and the unnatural accents
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of his own voice became at length sounds that he
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: even dreaded to make, dreaded to hear, for they drew
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: attention without ceasing to his presence and exact whereabouts. And
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: if it were really the case that something was hunting
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: himself down in the same way that he was hunting
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: down another, with a strong effort, he crushed the thought
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: out the instant it rose. It was the beginning, he realized.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: of a bewilderment utterly diabolical in kind that would speedily
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: destroy him. Although the snow was not continuous, lying merely
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: in shallow flurries over the more open spaces, he found
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: no difficulty in following the tracks for the first few miles.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: They went straight as a ruled line wherever the trees permitted.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: The stride soon began to increase in length, till it
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely impossible to for any
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps they became.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: One of these he measured, and though he knew that
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: stretch of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: at a complete loss to understand why he found no
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: signs on the snow between the extreme points. But what
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: perplexed him even more, making him feel his vision had
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: gone utterly awry, was that Defago's stride increased in the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: same manner. and finally covered the same incredible distances. It
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: looked as if the great beast had lifted him with it,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: and carried him across these astonishing intervals. Simpson, who was
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: much longer in the limb, found that he could not
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: compass even half the stretch by taking a running jump.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: And the sight of these huge tracks, burning side by side,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: silent evidence of a dreadful journey in which terror or
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: madness had urged to impossible results, was profoundly moving. It
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: shocked him in the secret depths of his soul. It
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: was the most horrible thing his eyes had ever looked upon.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: He began to follow them mechanically, absentmindedly almost, ever peering
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: followed by something with a gigantic tread. And soon it
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: came about that he no longer quite realized what it
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: was they signified, these impressions left upon the snow by
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: something nameless and untamed. always accompanied by the footmarks of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: the little French-Canadian, his guide, his comrade, the man who
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: had shared his tent a few hours before, chatting, laughing,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: even singing by his side. For a man of his
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: years and inexperience, only a canny Scott, perhaps, grounded in
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: common sense and established in logic, could have preserved even
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: that measure of balance. that this youth somehow or other
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: did manage to preserve through the whole adventure. Otherwise, two
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: things he presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: sent him headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: instead of only making his hands close more tightly upon
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: the rifle-stock, while his heart, trained for the weak kirk,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: sent a wordless prayer winging its way to heaven. Both tracks,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: he saw, had undergone a change, and this change, so
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: in some undecipherable manner appalling. It was in the bigger
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: tracks he first noticed this, and for a long time
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: he could not quite believe his eyes. Was it the
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: blown leaves that produced odd effects of light and shade,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: or that the dry snow, drifting like finely ground rice
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: about the edges, cast shadows and highlights? Or was it
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: actually the fact that the great marks had become faintly
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: colored for round about the deep, plunging holes of the animal,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: there now appeared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: like an effect of light than of anything that dyed
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: the substance of the snow itself. Every mark had it,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: and had it increasingly, this indistinct, fiery tinge that painted
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: a new touch of ghastliness into the picture. But when,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: wholly unable to explain or to credit it, he turned
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: his attention to the other tracks to discover if they
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: too bore similar witness. He noticed that these had meanwhile
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: undergone a change that was infinitely worse, and charged with
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: far more horrible suggestion. For in the last hundred yards
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: or so, he saw that they had grown gradually into
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: the semblance of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: come about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see where
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: the change first began. The result, however, was beyond question. SMALLER, NEATER,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: MORE CLEANLY MODELED, THEY FORMED NOW AN EXACT AND CAREFUL
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: DUPLICATE OF THE LARGER TRACKS BESIDE THEM. THE FEET THAT
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: PRODUCED THEM HAD, THEREFORE, ALSO CHANGED, AND SOMETHING IN HIS
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: MIND REARED UP WITH LOATHING AND WITH TERROR AS HE
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: SAW IT. SIMPSON FOR THE FIRST TIME HESITATED, THEN ASHAMED
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: OF HIS ALARM AND INDECISION, TOOK A FEW HURRIED STEPS AHEAD.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: THE NEXT INSTANT STOPPED DEAD IN HIS TRACKS. Immediately in
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: front of him, all signs of the trail ceased. Both
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards and more, he searched in vain for
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: the least indication of their continuance. There was nothing. The
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: trees were very thick just there, big trees all of them, spruce, cedar, hemlock.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: There was no underbrush. He stood looking about him, all distraught,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: bereft of any power of judgment, Then he set to
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: work to search again and again and yet again, but
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: always with the same result. Nothing. The feet that printed
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: the surface of the snow thus far had now apparently
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: left the ground. And it was in that moment of
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: distress and confusion that the whip of terror laid its
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: most nicely calculated lash about his heart. It dropped with
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving him.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: He had been secretly dreading all the time that it
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: would come. And come it did. For overhead, muted by
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: great height and distance, strangely thinned and wailing, he heard
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: the crying voice of Defago, the guide. The sound dropped
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: effect of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: his feet. He stood motionless an instant, listening, as it were,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: with his whole body, then staggered back against the nearest
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: tree for support, disorganized hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: in that moment, it seemed the most shattering and dislocating
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: experience he had ever known, so that his heart emptied
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden draft.' Oh, oh,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: this fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: feet of fire!' ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: this voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: then silence through all the listening wilderness of trees. And Simpson,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself running wildly
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and boulders,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: the caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion, with
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: which experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half deranged,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: in his eyes and heart and soul, for the panic
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: of the wilderness had called to him in that far
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: voice the power of untamed distance, the enticement of the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: pains of someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: and travail of a soul in the final loneliness. A
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: vision of Defago, eternally hunted, driven and pursued across the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: skyey vastness of those ancient forests, fled like a flame
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: across the dark ruin of his thoughts. It seemed ages
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: before he could find anything in the chaos of his
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: a moment and think. The cry was not repeated. His
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: own hoarse calling brought no response. The inscrutable forces of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the wild had summoned their victim beyond recall and held
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: him fast. Yet he searched and called, it seems, for
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: hours afterwards, for it was late in the afternoon when
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: at length he decided to abandon a useless pursuit and
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island Water.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: Even then he went with reluctance, that crying voice still
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: echoing in his ears. With difficulty he found his rifle
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: and the homeward trail. The concentration necessary to follow the
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: badly blazed trees and a biting hunger that gnawed helped
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he admits, the temporary
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: aberration he had suffered might have been prolonged to the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast shifted back again
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: and he regained something that approached his normal equilibrium. But
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: for all that, the journey through the gathering dusk was
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: miserably haunted. He heard innumerable following footsteps, voices that laughed
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: and whispered, and saw figures crouching behind trees and boulders,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: making signs to one another for a concerted attack, the
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: moment he had passed. The creeping murmur of the wind
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: made him start and listen. He went stealthily, trying to
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: hide where possible, and making as little sound as he could.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: The shadows of the woods, hitherto protective of covering merely,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: had now become menacing, challenging, and the pageantry in his
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: frightened mind masked a host of possibilities that were all
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: the more ominous for being obscure. The presentiment of a
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: nameless doom lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had happened.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: It was really admirable how he emerged victor in the end.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Men of riper powers and experience might have come through
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: the ordeal with less success— He had himself tolerably well
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: in hand, all things considered, and his plan of action
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the question, and
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: traveling an unknown trail in the darkness, equally impracticable, he
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: set up the whole of that night, rifle in hand,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: before a fire he never for a single moment allowed
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: to die down. The severity of the haunted vigil marked
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: his soul for life, but it was successfully accomplished. and
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: with the very first signs of dawn he set forth
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: upon the long return journey to the home camp to
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: get help. As before, he left a written note to
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: explain his absence, and to indicate where he had left
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: a plentiful cache of food and matches, though he had
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: no expectation that any human hands would find them. How
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Simpson found his way alone, by the lake and forest,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: might well make a story in itself, for to hear
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: him tell it is to know the passionate loneliness of
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: soul that a man can feel when the wilderness holds
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: him in the hollow of its illimitable hand and laughs.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: It is also to admire his indomitable pluck. He claims
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible trail
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: mechanically and without thinking. And this doubtless is the truth.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: is instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: animals and primitive men, may have helped as well, for
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: through all that tangled region he succeeded in reaching the
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: exact spot where Defago had hidden the canoe nearly three
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: days before, with the remark, Strike due west across the
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: lake into the sun to find the camp. There was
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: not much sun left to guide him, but he used
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: his compass to the best of his ability, embarking in
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the frail craft for the last twelve miles of his journey,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: with a sensation of immense relief that the forest was
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: at last behind him, and fortunately the water was calm.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: He took his line across the center of the lake,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: instead of coasting round the shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: the other hunters were back. The light of their fires
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: furnished a steering point without which he might have searched
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: all night long for the actual position of the camp.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: It was close upon midnight all the same when his
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: canoe grated on the sandy cove, and Hank, Punk, and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: his uncle were disturbed in their sleep by his cries,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Section 3 of The Wendigo This is LibriVox Recording All
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Wendigo by Algernon
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Blackwood Section 6 Part 6 The sudden entrance of his
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry and horror that
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: had haunted him without interruption now for two days and
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: two nights had the immediate effect of giving to the
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: affair an entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp,' Hello,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: my boy, and what's up now?' and the grasp of
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: that dry and vigorous hand introduced another standard of judgment.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: A revulsion of feeling washed through him. He realized that
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: he had let himself go rather badly. He even felt
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: reclaimed him. And this doubtless explains why he found it
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: so hard to tell that group round the fire everything.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: He told enough, however, for the immediate decision to be
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: arrived at that a relief party must start at the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: earliest possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: it capably, must first have food, and above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: observing the lad's condition more shrewdly than his patient knew,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: gave him a very slight injection of morphine. For six
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: hours he slept like the dead. From the description carefully
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: written out afterwards, by this student of divinity, it appears
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: that the account he gave to the astonished group omitted sundry, vital,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: and important details. He declares that, with his uncle's wholesome
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face, he simply had
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: not the courage to mention them. Thus all the search
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: party gathered, it would seem, was that Defago had suffered
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: in the night an acute and inexplicable attack of mania,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: had imagined himself called by someone or something, and had
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: plunged into the bush after it, without food or rifle,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: where he must die a horrible and lingering death by
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: cold and starvation unless he could be found and rescued
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: in time. In time, moreover, meant at once. In the
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: course of the following day, however, they were off by seven,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: leaving Punk in charge, with instructions to have food and
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: fire always ready. Simpson found it possible to tell his
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: uncle a good deal more of the story's true inwardness,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: without divining that it was drawn out of him, as
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, by a very subtle form of cross-examination.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: By the time they reached the beginning of the trail,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: where the canoe was laid up against the return journey,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: he had mentioned how Defago spoke vaguely of something he
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: called a Wendigo, how he cried in his sleep, how
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: he imagined an unusual scent about the camp, and had
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: betrayed other symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: bewildering effect of that extraordinary odor upon himself, pungent and
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: acrid like the odor of lions. And by the time
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: they were within an easy hour of fifty island water,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: he had let slip the further fact, a foolish avowal
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: of his own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards. he
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: had heard the vanished guide call for help. He omitted
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: the singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: himself to repeat the preposterous language. Also, while describing how
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: the man's footsteps in the snow had gradually assumed an
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging tracks— He left
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: out the fact that they were measured a wholly incredible distance.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: It seems a question nicely balanced between individual pride and honesty,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: telling that body in bed had been partly dragged out
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: of the tent, with the net result that Dr. Kaskart,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: a droid psychologist that he fancied himself to be, had
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: assured him clearly enough exactly where his mind, influenced by loneliness, bewilderment,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: and terror, had yielded to the strain and invited delusion.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: While praising his conduct, he managed at the same time
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: to point out where, when, and how his mind had
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: gone astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: he was, by judicious praise, yet more foolish than he was,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: by minimizing the value of the evidence. Like many another materialist,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: that is, he lied cleverly on the basis of insufficient knowledge,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: because the knowledge supplied seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: The spell of these terrible solitudes, he said, cannot leave
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: any mind untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: higher imaginative qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: it worked upon mine when I was your age. The
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: animal that haunted your little camp was undoubtedly a moose,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: for the belling of a moose may have, sometimes, a
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: big tracks was obviously a defect of vision in your
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: own eyes produced by excitement. The size and stretch of
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: the tracks we shall prove when we come to them.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement.'
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: In excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable.' And let me add,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances.' For the rest,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: I am bound to say, you have acted with a
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: splendid courage,' for the terror of feeling oneself lost in
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: this wildness is nothing short of awful.' And had I
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: been in your place, I don't for a moment believe'
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: I could have behaved with one quarter of your wisdom
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and decision.' The only thing I find it uncommonly difficult
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: to explain— is that damned odor. It made me feel sick,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: I assure you, declared his nephew, positively dizzy. His uncle's
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: attitude of calm omniscience, merely because he knew more psychological formulae,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: made him slightly defiant. It was so easy to be
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: wise in the explanation of an experience one has not
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: personally witnessed. A kind of desolate and terrible odor is
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: the only way I can describe it, he concluded. glancing
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: at the features of the quiet, unemotional man beside him.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: I can only marvel, was the reply, that under the
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: circumstances it did not seem to you even worse. The
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: dry words Simpson knew hovered between the truth and his
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: uncle's interpretation of the truth. And so at last they
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: came to the little camp and found the tent still standing,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: pinned to a stake beside it, untouched. The cache, poorly
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: contrived by inexperienced hands, however, had been discovered and opened
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: by muskrats, mink, and squirrel. The matches lay scattered about
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: the opening, but the food had been taken to the
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: last crumb.' Well, fellers, he ain't here,' exclaimed Hank loudly
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: after his fashion.' And that's as certain as the coal
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: supply down below. But whar he's got to by this
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: time is about as uncertain as the trade in crowns
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: and other place.' The presence of a divinity student was
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: no barrier to his language at such a time, though
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: for the reader's sake it may be severely edited. I propose,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: he added, that we start out at once and hunt
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: for him like hell. The gloom of Defago's probable fate
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: oppressed the whole party with a sense of dreadful gravity
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the moment they saw the familiar signs of recent occupancy,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches still
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: to bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: as if his world were somehow at stake, went about
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: explaining particulars in a hushed tone. He was much calmer now,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: though over-wearied with the strain of his many journeys. His
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: uncle's method of explaining, explaining away, rather, the details still
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: fresh in his haunted memory, helped, too, to put ice
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: upon his emotions. And that's the direction he ran off in.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: he said to his two companions, pointing in the direction
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: where the guide had vanished that morning in the grey dawn.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: Straight down there he ran like a deer in between
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: the birch and the hemlock. Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: And it was about two miles down there in a
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: straight line, continued the other, speaking with something of the
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: former terror in his voice, that I followed his trail
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: to the place where it stopped, dead, AND WHERE YOU
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: HEARD HIM CALLING AND CAUGHT THE STENCH AND ALL THAT
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: REST OF THE WICKED ENTERTAINMENT, CRIED HANK WITH A VOLUBILITY
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: THAT BETRAYED HIS KEEN DISTRESS. AND WHERE YOUR EXCITEMENT OVERCAME
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: YOU TO THE POINT OF PRODUCING ILLUSIONS, ADDED DR. CATHCART
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: UNDER HIS BREATH, YET NOT SO LOW THAT HIS NEPHEW
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: DID NOT HEAR IT. IT WAS EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: FOR THEY HAD TRAVELED QUICKLY, AND THERE WAS STILL A
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: GOOD TWO HOURS OF DAYLIGHT LEFT. Dr. Cathcart and Hank
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: lost no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: too exhausted to accompany them. They would follow the blazed
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: marks on the trees, and where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: the best thing he could do was to keep a
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: good fire going and rest. But after something like three
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: hours' search, the darkness already down. The two men returned
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had covered
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: to the spot where Simpson had turned back, they had
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: not discovered the smallest indication of a human being, or,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: for that matter, of an animal. There were no fresh
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: tracks of any kind. The snow lay undisturbed. It was
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: difficult to know what was best to do, though in
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: reality there was nothing more they could do. They might
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: stay and search for weeks without much chance of success.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: The fresh snow destroyed their only hope, and they gathered
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: round the fire for supper, a gloomy and despondent party.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: The facts indeed were sad enough, for Defago had a
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family's
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: sole means of support. Now that the whole truth and
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: all its ugliness was out, it seemed useless to deal
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: in further disguise or pretense. They talked openly of the
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: facts and probabilities. It was not the first time, even
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: in the experience of Dr. Cathcart, that a man had
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: yielded to the singular seduction of the solitudes and gone
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: out of his mind. Defago, moreover, was predisposed to something
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: of the sort, for he already had a touch of
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: melancholia in his blood and his fibre was weakened by
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: bouts of drinking that often lasted for weeks at a time.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: Something on this trip, one might never know precisely what,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: had sufficed to push him over the line That was all.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: And he had gone, gone off into the great wilderness
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: of trees and lakes, to die by starvation and exhaustion.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: The chances against his finding camp again were overwhelming. The
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: delirium that was upon him would also doubtless have increased,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: and it was quite likely he might do violence to himself,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while they talked, indeed,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: the end had probably come. On the suggestion of Hank,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: his old pal, however, they proposed to wait a little
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: longer and devote the whole of the following day, from
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: dawn to darkness, to the most systematic search they could devise.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: They would divide the territory between them. They discussed their
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: plan in great detail. All that men could do, they
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: would do, and meanwhile they talked about the particular form
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: in which the singular panic of the wilderness had made
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: its attack upon the mind of the unfortunate guide. Hank,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: though familiar with the legend in its general outline, obviously
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: did not welcome the turn the conversation had taken. He
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: contributed little, though that little was illuminating, for he admitted
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: that a story ran over all this section of the
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: country to the effect that several Indians had seen the
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: Wendigo along the shores of Fifty Island Water in the
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: fall of last year and that this was the true
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: reason of Defago's disinclination to hunt here. Hank doubtless felt
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: that he had, in a sense, helped his old pal
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: to death by over-persuading him. When an Indian goes crazy,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: he explained, talking to himself more than to the others,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: it seemed it's always put down that he's seen the
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: wind ago, and poor old Defago was superstitious down to
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: he very heels. And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more sympathetic,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: told over again the full story of his astonishing tale.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: He left out no details this time. He mentioned his
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: own sensations and gripping fears. He only admitted the strange
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: language used. But Defago surely had already told you all
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: these dreadful details of the Wendigo legend, my dear fellow.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: insisted the doctor. I mean, he had talked about it,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: and thus put into your mind the ideas which your
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: own excitement afterwards developed. Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts. Defago,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: he declared, had barely mentioned the beast. He, Simpson, knew
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: nothing of the story, and as far as he remembered,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: had never even read about it. Even the word was unfamiliar.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: Of course he was telling the truth. and Dr. Cathcart
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: was reluctantly compelled to admit the singular character of the
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: whole affair. He did not do this in words so
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: much as in manner, however. He kept his back against
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: a good stout tree. He poked the fire into a
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: blaze the moment it showed signs of dying down. He
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: was quicker than any of them to notice the least
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: sound in the night about them. A fish jumping in
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: the lake, a twig snapping in the bush— the dropping
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: of occasional fragments of frozen snow from the branches overhead
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: where the heat loosened them. His voice, too, changed a
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: little in quality, becoming a shade less confident, lower also
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered close about
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: that little camp, and though all three would have been
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: glad to speak of other matters, the only thing they
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: seemed able to discuss was this, the source of their fear.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: They tried other subjects in vain. There was nothing to
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: say about them. Hank was the most honest of the group.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: He said next to nothing. He never once, however, turned
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: his back to the darkness. His face was always to
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: the forest, and when wood was needed, he didn't go
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: farther than was necessary to get it. A wall of
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: was sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: things pretty tight besides. No sound but their voices and
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: the soft roar of the flames made itself heard. Only
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: from time to time, something soft as the flutter of
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: a pine moth's wings went past them through the air.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: No one seemed anxious to go to bed. The hours
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: slipped towards midnight. The legend is picturesque enough, observed the doctor,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: after one of the longer pauses. speaking to break it
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: rather than because he had anything to say. For the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: Wendigo is simply the call of the wild personified, which
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: some natures hear to their own destruction. That's about it,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: Hank said presently, and there's no misunderstanding when you hear it.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: It calls you by name, right Nuff? Another pause followed,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: then Dr. Cathcart came back to the forbidden subject with
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: a rush that made the others jump. The allegory is significant.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: he remarked, looking about him into the darkness. For the voice,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: they say, resembles all the minor sounds of the bush, wind,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: falling water, cries of the animals, and so forth. And
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: once the victim hears that, he's off for good, of course.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: His most vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: feet and the eyes. The feet, you see, for the
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of beauty.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: The poor beggar goes out at such a dreadful speed
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: that he bleeds beneath the eyes, and his feet burn. Dr. Cathcart,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: as he spoke, continued to peer uneasily into the surrounding gloom.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: His voice sank to a hushed tone. The Wendigo, he added,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: is said to burn his feet, owing to the friction
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: apparently caused by its tremendous velocity, till they drop off
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: in new one's form exactly like its own. Simpson listened
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: in horrified amazement, but it was the pallor on Hank's
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: face that fascinated him most. he would willingly have stopped
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: his ears and closed his eyes had he dared.' It
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: don't always keep to the ground, neither,' came in Hank's slow,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: heavy drawl,' for it goes so high that he thinks
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: the stars have set him all afire.' And it'll take
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: great thumping jumps sometimes,' and run along the tops of
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: the trees, carrying its partner with it,' and then dropping him,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: just as a fish-hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: before eating.' And its food, of all the muck in
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: the whole bush, is moss.' and he laughed a short,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: unnatural laugh. It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo, he added,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. Moss-eater,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: he repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: he could invent. But Simpson now understood the true purpose
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: of all this talk. What these two men, each strong
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: and experienced in his own way, dreaded more than anything else,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: was silence. They were talking against time, They were also
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic, against the
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: admission reflection might bring that they were in an enemy's country,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: against anything in fact, rather than allow their inmost thoughts
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the awful
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: He had reached the stage where he was immune, but
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: these two, the scoffing analytical doctor and the honest, dogged backwoodsman,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: each sat trembling in the depths of his being. Thus
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: the hours passed, and thus, with lowered voices and a
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: kind of taut inner resistance of spirit, this little group
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: of humanity sat in the jaws of the wilderness and
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting legend. It was
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: an unequal contest, all things considered, for the wilderness had
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: already the advantage of first attack, and of a hostage.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: the fate of their comrade hung over them with a
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: steadily increasing weight of oppression that finally became insupportable. It
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: that no one seemed able to break, who first let
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: loose all this pent-up emotion in very unexpected fashion, by
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: springing suddenly to his feet and letting out the most
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night. He could not contain
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: himself any longer, it seemed. To make it carry even
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: beyond an ordinary cry, he interrupted its rhythm by shaking
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: the palm of his hand before his mouth. That's for Defago,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: he said, looking down at the other two with a queer,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: defiant laugh. For it's my belief, the sandwiched oaths may
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: be omitted, that my old partner's not far from us
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: at this very minute. It was a vehemence and a
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: recklessness about his performance that made Simpson, too, start to
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: his feet in amazement. and betrayed even the doctor into
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: letting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: was ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness, a loosening
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: of all his faculties, as it were. Then a momentary
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: anger blazed into his eyes, and he too, though with
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon his feet and
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: faced the excited guide, for this was unpermissible, foolish, dangerous,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: and he meant to stop it in the bud. What
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: might have happened in the next minute or two, one
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: may speculate about, yet never definitely know, for in the
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: instant of profound silence that followed Hank's roaring voice, and
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: as though in answer to it, something went past through
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: the darkness of the sky overhead at terrific speed, something
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: of necessity very large, for it displaced much air, while
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: down between the trees there fell a faint and windy
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: cry of a human voice,' calling in tones of indescribable
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: anguish and appeal.' Oh, oh, this fiery height!' Oh, oh,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: my feet of fire, my burning feet of fire!'' White
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: to the very edge of his shirt,' Hank looked stupidly
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: about him like a child.' Dr. Cathcart uttered some kind
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: of unintelligible cry,' turning as he did so with an
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: instinctive movement of blind terror' towards the protection of the tent,'
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: then halting in the act as though frozen.' SIMPSON ALONE
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: OF THE THREE RETAINED HIS PRESENCE OF MIND A LITTLE.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: HIS OWN HORROR WAS TOO DEEP TO ALLOW ANY IMMEDIATE REACTION.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: HE HAD HEARD THAT CRY BEFORE. TURNING TO HIS STRICKEN COMPANIONS,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: HE SAID ALMOST CALMLY,' THAT' S EXACTLY THE CRY I HEARD,
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: THE VERY WORDS HE USED.' THEN LIFTING HIS FACE TO
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: THE SKY, HE CRIED ALOUD,' DEFAGO! DEFAGO! COME DOWN HERE
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: TO US! COME DOWN!' And before there was time for
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: anybody to take definite action one way or another, there
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: came the sound of something dropping heavily between the trees,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: striking the branches on the way down, and landing with
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: a dreadful thud upon the frozen earth below. The crash
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: and thunder of it was really terrific.' That' s him! So
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: help me God!' came from Hank, in a whispering cry half-choked,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: his hand going automatically toward the hunting-knife in his belt,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: and he's coming, he's coming, he added with an irrational
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: laugh of horror, as the sounds of heavy footsteps crunching
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: over the snow became distinctly audible, approaching through the blackness
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: towards the circle of light. And while the steps, with
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: their stumbling motion, moved nearer and nearer upon them, the
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: three men stood round that fire, motionless and dumb. Dr.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: Cathcart had the appearance of a man suddenly withered. Even
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: his eyes did not move. Hank, suffering shockingly, seemed on
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: the verge again of violent action, yet did nothing. He, too,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: was hewn of stone. Little stricken children, they seemed. The
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: picture was hideous, and meanwhile, their owner still invisible, the
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: footsteps came closer, crunching the frozen snow. It was endless,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: too prolonged to be quite real, this measured and pitiless approach.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: It was accursed. Then at length the darkness, having thus
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: laboriously conceived, brought forth a figure. It drew forward into
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: the zone of uncertain light, where fire and shadows mingled,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: not ten feet away, then halted, staring at them fixedly.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: The same instant it started forward again, with spasmodic motion
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: closer to them, full into the glare of the fire,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: they perceived then that it was a man, and apparently
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: that this man was Defago. Something like a skin of
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: horror almost perceptibly drew down in that moment over every face,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: and three pairs of eyes shone through it as though
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: they saw across the frontiers of normal vision into the unknown.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: Defago advanced, his tread faltering and uncertain. He made his
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: way straight up to them as a group first, then
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: turned sharply and peered close into the face of Simpson.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: The sound of a voice issued from his lips.' Here
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: I am, Boss Simpson,' I heard someone calling me. It
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: was a faint, dried-up voice, made wheezy and breathless as
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: by immense exertion. I'm having a regular hellfire kind of
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: a trip, I am. And he laughed, thrusting his head
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: forward into the other's face. But that laugh started the
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: machinery of the group of waxwork figures with the wax-white skins.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream of oaths so
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: far-fetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at all.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: He only realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: was welcome, uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and leisurely,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: advanced behind him, heavily stumbling. Simpson seems hazy as to
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: what was actually said and done in those next few seconds,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage, peering
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: senses at first. He merely stood still. He said nothing.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: He had not the trained will of the older men
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: that forced them into action, in defiance of all emotional stress.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: destroyed their reality. It was dreamlike, perverted. Yet through the
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: tone of authority, hard and forced. saying several things about
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: food and warmth, blankets, whiskey, and the rest, and further,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: that whiffs of that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: assailed his nostrils during all that followed. It was no
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: less a person than himself, however, less experienced and adroit
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: than the others though he was, who gave instinctive utterance
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: to the sentence that brought a measure of relief into
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: the ghastly situation by expressing the doubt and thought in
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: each one's heart.' It is you, isn't it, Defago?' He
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: asked under his breath, horror breaking his speech. And at
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: other had time to move his lips.' Of course it is,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: of course it is, only can't you see he's nearly
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: dead with exhaustion, cold and terror? Isn't that enough to
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: change a man beyond all recognition?' It was said in
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: order to convince himself as much as to convince the others.'
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: The overemphasis alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: and acted, he held the handkerchief to his nose. That
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: odor pervaded the whole camp. For the Defago who sat
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets, drinking hot
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: whiskey and holding food in wasted hands, was no more
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: like the guide they had last seen alive than the
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: picture of a man of sixty is like a derogotype
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: of his early youth in the costume of another generation.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that parody, masquerading
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: there in the firelight as Defago. From the ruins of
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: that the face was more animal than human, the features
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: drawn about into wrong proportions, the skin loose and hanging,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: as though he had been subjected to extraordinary pressures and tensions.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: It made him think vaguely of those bladder faces blown
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: up by the hawker's, on Ludgate Hill, that change their
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: expression as they swell and as they collapse amid a
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: faint and wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: voice suggested some such abominable resemblance. But Cathcart, long afterwards,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: seeking to describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: looked a face and body that had been an air
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: so rarefied that the weight of atmosphere being removed the
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: entire structure threatened to fly asunder and become incoherent. It
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: was Hank, though, all distraught and shaking with a tearing
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: volume of emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: brought things to a head without much ado. He went
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: off to a little distance from the fire, apparently so
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: that the light should not dazzle him too much, and
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: shading his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: in a loud voice that held anger and affection dreadfully mingled,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: You ain't Defago. You ain't Defago at all. I don't
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: give a damn, but that ain't you, my old pal
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: of twenty years. He glared upon the huddled figure as
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: though he would destroy him with his eyes. And if
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: it is, I'll swab the floor of hell with a
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: water-cotton wool and a toothpick. So help me the good God,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: he added with a violent fling of horror and disgust.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: It was impossible to silence him. He stood there, shouting
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: like one possessed. Horrible to see, horrible to hear. because
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: it was the truth. He repeated himself in fifty different ways,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: each more outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: At one time it looked as if he meant to
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: fling himself upon the intruder, for his hand continually jerked
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: towards the long hunting-knife in his belt. But in the
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke. He collapsed
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: on the ground. and Cathcart, somehow or other, persuaded him
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: at last to go into the tent and lie quiet.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: The remainder of the affair, indeed, was witnessed by him
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face peeping
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: through the crack of the tent door-flap. Then Dr. Cathcart,
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: closely followed by his nephew, who so far had kept
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: his courage better than all of them, went up with
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: a determined air and stood opposite to the figure of Defago,
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: huddled over the fire. He looked him squarely in the
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: face and spoke. At first his voice was firm. Defago,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: tell us what's happened. Just a little, so that we
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: can know how best to help you. He asked in
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: a tone of authority almost of command. And at that
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: point it was command. At once afterwards, however, it changed
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: in quality. For the figure turned up to him, a
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: face so piteous, so terrible, and so little like humanity,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: that the doctor shrank back from him, as from something
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: spiritually unclean. Simpson, watching close behind him, says he got
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: the impression of a mask that was on the verge
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover something
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. Out with it, man,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: out with it! Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: with entreaty. None of us can stay in this much longer,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: It was the cry of instinct over reason. And then Defago,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: smiling whitely, answered in that thin and fading voice that
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another character.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: I seen that great Wendigo thing, he whispered, sniffing the
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: air about him exactly like an animal. I been with it, too.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: Cathcart would have continued the impossible cross-examination, cannot be known,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: yelling at the top of his voice from behind the
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes. Such a
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: howling was never heard.' His feet! Oh, God, his feet!
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: Look at his great changed feet!' Defago, shuffling where he sat,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: had moved in such a way that for the first
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: time his legs were in full light and his feet
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: were visible. Yet Simpson had no time himself to see
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: properly what Hank had seen, and Hank has never seen
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: fit to tell. That same instant, with a leap like
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: that of a friend, frightened tiger, Cathcart was upon him,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: bundling the folds of blanket about his legs with such
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: speed that the young student caught little more than a
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: passing glimpse of something dark and oddly amassed, where moccasined
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: feet ought to have been, and saw even that but
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: with uncertain vision. Then, before the doctor had time to
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: do more, Or Simpson, time to even think a question,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: much less ask it. Defaga was standing upright in front
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: of them, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: shapeless and twisted visage, an expression so dark and so
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: malicious that it was, in the true sense, monstrous. Now
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: you've seen it, too, he wheezed. You've seen my fiery
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: burning feet. And now, that is, unless you can save
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: me and prevent, it's about time for her. His piteous
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: trees overhead shook their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: its flame as before a blast, and something swept with
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: a terrific, rushing noise about the little camp and seemed
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: to surround it entirely in a single moment of time.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: Defago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: had brought him was gone. Gone before anyone could move
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: muscle to prevent him. Gone with an amazing blundering swiftness
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: that left no time to act. The darkness positively swallowed him,
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: and less than a dozen seconds later, above the roar
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: a cry that seemed to drop down upon them from
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: a great height of sky and distance. Oh, oh, this
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: fiery height! Oh, oh, my feet of fire, my burning
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: feet of fire! Then died away into untold space and silence. Dr. Cathcart,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the others, was
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: he tried to dash headlong into the bush. But I
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: want to know, you, shrieked the guide. I want to see.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: That ain't him at all, but some... devil that shunted
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: into his place. Somehow or other, he admits he never
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: quite knew how he accomplished it. He managed to keep
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: him in the tent and pacify him. The doctor apparently
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: had reached the stage where reaction had set in and
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: allowed his own innate force to conquer. Certainly he managed
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: Hank admirably. It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: who gave him most cause for anxiety. for the cumulative
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: strain had now produced a condition of lacrimose hysteria which
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: made it necessary to isolate him upon a bed of
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: possible under the circumstances. And there he lay, as the
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: watches of that haunted night passed over the lonely camp,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: crying startled sentences and fragments of sentences into the folds
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: of his blanket. A quantity of gibberish about speed and
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: height and fire 'mingled oddly with biblical memories of the classroom.'
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: People with broken faces all on fire' are coming at
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: a most awful, awful pace towards the camp.'' He would
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: moan one minute,' and the next would sit up and
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: stare into the woods,' intently listening, and whisper,' How terrible
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: in the wilderness are the feet of them that!'' Until
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: his uncle came across' to change the direction of his
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: thoughts and comfort him.' The hysteria, fortunately proved but temporary,'
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: Sleep cured him, just as it cured Hank. Till the
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: first signs of daylight came, soon after five o'clock, Dr.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: Cathcart kept his vigil. His face was the color of chalk,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: and there were strange flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: terror of the soul battled with his will all through
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: those silent hours. These were some of the outer signs.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast, and
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: woke the others. and by seven they were well on
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: their way back to the home camp. Three perplexed and
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: afflicted men, but each in his own way, having reduced
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: his inner turmoil to a condition of more or less
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: systematized order again. They talked little, and then only of
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: the most wholesome and common things, for their minds were
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: charged with painful thoughts that clamored for explanations though no
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: one dared refer to them. Hank, being nearest to primitive conditions,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: was the first to find himself, for he was also
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: less complex. In Dr. Cathcart, civilization championed his forces against
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: an attack, singular enough. To this day, perhaps, he is
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: not quite sure of certain things. Anyhow, he took longer
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: to find himself. Simpson, the student of divinity, it was,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: who arranged his conclusions probably with the best though not
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: essentially primitive, something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life still monstrous
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, STILL OPPRESSED THE
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: HEARTS OF MEN, WHEN THE FORCES OF NATURE WERE STILL UNTAMED,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: THE POWERS THAT MAY HAVE HAUNTED A PRIMEVAL UNIVERSE NOT
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: YET WITHDRAWN. TO THIS DAY HE THINKS OF WHAT HE
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: TERMED YEARS LATER IN A SERMON, SAVAGE INFORMITABLE POTENCIES LURKING
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: BEHIND THE SOULS OF MEN, NOT EVIL PERHAPS IN THEMSELVES,
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: YET INSTINCTIVELY HOSTILE TO HUMANITY, AS IT EXISTS. HENCE HIS
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: UNCLE NEVER DISCUSSED THE MATTER IN DETAIL, for the barrier
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: between the two types of mind made it difficult. Only once,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: years later, something led them to the frontier of the subject,
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: of a single detail of the subject, rather.' Can' t you
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: even tell me what they were like?' he asked, and
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: the reply, though conceived in wisdom, was not encouraging.' It
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: is far better you should not try to know or
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: to find out.'' Well, that odor,' persisted the nephew.' What
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: do you make of that?' Dr. Cathcart looked at him
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: and raised his eyebrows. Odors, he replied, are not so
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: easy as sounds and sights of telepathic communication. I make
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: as much, or as little, probably, as you do yourself.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: He was not quite so glib as usual with his explanations.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: That was all. At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: the party came to the end of the long portage
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: and dragged themselves into a camp that at first glimpse
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: seemed empty. Fire there was none, and no punk came
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of all three
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: was too overspent to recognize either surprise or annoyance, but
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: the cry of spontaneous affection that burst from the lips
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: of Hank as he rushed ahead of them towards the
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: fireplace came probably as a warning that the end of
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: the amazing affair was not quite yet. And both Cathcart
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: and his nephew confessed afterwards that when they saw him
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: kneel down in his excitement and embrace something that reclined,
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: gently moving, beside the extinguished ashes, they felt in their
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: very bones that this something would prove to be Defago.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: The true Defago returned. And so indeed it was. It
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: is soon told, exhausted to the point of emaciation, The French-Canadian,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: what was left of him, that is, fumbled among the ashes,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: trying to make a fire. His body crouched there, the
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: weak fingers obeying feebly the instinctive habit of a lifetime
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: with twigs and matches. But there was no longer any
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had fled
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: beyond recall, and with it, too, had fled memory. Not
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: only recent events, but all previous life was a blank.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: This time it was the real man. though incredibly and
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: horribly shrunken. On his face was no expression of any
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: kind whatever, fear, welcome, or recognition. He did not seem
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: to know who it was that embraced him, or who
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: it was that fed, warmed, and spoke to him the
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: words of comfort and relief. Forlorn and broken beyond all
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: reach of human aid, the little man did meekly as
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: he was bidden. The something that had constituted him individual
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: had vanished for ever. In some ways it was more
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: terribly moving than anything they had yet seen. That idiot
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: smiled as he drew wads of coarse moss from his
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: swollen cheeks, and told them that he was a damned moss-eater.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: The continued vomiting of even the simplest food, and worst
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: of all, the piteous and childish voice of complaint, in
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: which he told them that his feet pained him, burned
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: like fire, which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart examined
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: eyes they were faint indications of recent bleeding. The details
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: had been, or of how he had covered the great
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: distance from one camp to the other, including an immense
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: detour of the lake on foot since he had no canoe,
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely, and
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: before the end of the winter, whose beginning witnessed this
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: strange occurrence, Defago, bereft of mind, memory, and soul, had
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: gone with it. He lingered only a few weeks. And
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: no further light upon it. He was cleaning fish by
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: the lakeshore about five o'clock in the evening, an hour,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: that is, before the search party returned, when he saw
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: In advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: of a certain singular odor. That same instant old Punk
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: started for home. He covered the entire journey of three
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: it all meant. Defago had seen the Wendigo. End of
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: Section 3 An End of the Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood