"All right!" said Stanton-Boyle. "Have it your own way! I know my use of the term "Bad Lands" may be called incorrect, because it usually means that bit in the States, you know - but that"s a detail. I tell you I"ve run up against things like this before. There was the case of Dolly Wishart, but no, I won"t say anything about that - you wouldn"t believe it."
The group around looked at him oddly. Suddenly there was a stir, and a man appeared in the doorway. He carried Ormerod"s overcoat.
"This may settle the matter," he said. "I heard him say he"d put something in the pocket. He said -"
Stanton-Boyle interrupted him excitedly. "Why, yes," he said. "I"d forgotten that. What I was telling you about - the spinning-wheel. It will be interesting to see it -" He stopped and fumbled in the pockets. In another moment he brought out something for all to see.
It was part of the handle of a patent separator - an object familiar enough to any who held even meager acquaintance with the life of farms, and upon it could still be discerned the branded letters G.P.H.
"George Philip Hackney," interpreted the unbelievers with many smiles.
H. R. WAKEFIELD.
GHOST HUNT.
Well, listeners, this is Tony Weldon speaking. Here we are on the third of our series of Ghost Hunts. Let"s hope it will be more successful than the other two. All our preparations have been made, and now it is up to the spooks. My colleague tonight is Professor Mignon of Paris. He is the most celebrated investigator of psychic phenomena in the world, and I am very proud to be his collaborator.
We are in a medium-size, three-story Georgian house not far from London. We have chosen it for this reason: it has a truly terrible history. Since it was built, there are records of no less than 30 suicides in or from it, and there may well have been more. There have been eight since 1893. Its builder and first occupant was a prosperous city merchant, and a very bad hat, it appears: glutton, wine bibber, and other undesirable things, including a very bad husband. His wife stood his cruelties and infidelities as long as she could and then hanged herself in the powder closet belonging to the biggest bedroom on the second floor, so initiating a horrible sequence.
I used the expression "suicides in and from it," because while some have shot themselves and some hanged themselves, no less than nine have done a very strange thing. They have risen from their beds during the night and flung themselves to death in the river which runs past the bottom of the garden some hundred yards away. The last one was actually seen to do so at dawn on an autumn morning. He was seen running headlong and heard to be shouting as though to companions running by his side. The owner tells me people simply will not live in the house and the agents will no longer keep it on their books. He will not live in it himself, for very good reasons, he declares. He will not tell us what those reasons are; he wishes us to have an absolutely open mind on the subject, as it were. And he declares that if the professor"s verdict is unfavorable, he will pull down the house and rebuild it. One can understand that, for it seems to merit the label, "Death Trap."
Well, that is sufficient introduction. I think I have convinced you it certainly merits investigation, but we cannot guarantee to deliver the goods or the ghosts, which have an awkward habit of taking a night off on these occasions.
And now to business - imagine me seated at a fine satinwood table, not quite in the middle of a big reception room on the ground floor. The rest of the furniture is shrouded in white protective covers. The walls are light oak panels. The electric light in the house has been switched off, so all the illumination I have is a not very powerful electric lamp. I shall remain here with a mike while the professor roams the house in search of what he may find. He will not have a mike, as it distracts him and he has a habit, so he says, of talking to himself while he conducts these investigations. He will return to me as soon as he has anything to report. Is that all clear? Well, then, here is the professor to say a few words to you before he sets forth on his tour of discovery. I may say he speaks English far better than I do. Professor Mignon - Ladies and gentlemen, this is Professor Mignon. This house is without doubt, how shall I say, impregnated with evil. It affects one profoundly. It is bad, bad, bad! It is soaked in evil and reeking from its wicked past. It must be pulled down, I a.s.sure you. I do not think it affects my friend, Mr. Weldon, in the same way, but he is not psychic, not mediumistic, as I am. Now shall we see ghosts, spirits? Ah, that I cannot say! But they are here and they are evil; that is sure. I can feel their presence. There is, maybe, danger. I shall soon know. And now I shall start off with just one electric torch to show me the way. Presently I will come back and tell you what I have seen, or if not seen, felt and perhaps suffered. But remember, though we can summon spirits from the vasty deep, will they come when we call for them? We shall see.
Well, listeners, I"m sure if anyone can, it"s the professor. You must have found those few words far more impressive than anything I said. That was an expert speaking on what he knows. Personally, alone here in this big, silent room, they didn"t have a very rea.s.suring effect on me. In fact, he wasn"t quite correct when he said this place didn"t affect me at all. I don"t find it a very cheerful spot, by any means. You can be sure of that. I may not be psychic, but I"ve certainly got a sort of feeling it doesn"t want us here, resents us, and would like to see the back of us. Or else! I felt that way as soon as I entered the front door. One sort of had to wade through the hostility. I"m not kidding or trying to raise your hopes.
It"s very quiet here, listeners. I"m having a look around the room. This lamp casts some queer shadows. There is an odd one near the wall by the door, but I realize now it must be one cast by a big Adams bookcase. I know that"s what it is because I peeped under the dust cover when I first came in. It"s a very fine piece. It"s queer to think of you all listening to me. I shouldn"t really mind if I had some of you for company. The owner of the house told us we should probably hear rats and mice in the wainscoting. Well, I can certainly hear them now. Pretty hefty rats, from the sound of them - even you can almost hear them, I should think.
Well, what else is there to tell you about? Nothing very much, except that there"s a bat in the room. I think it must be a bat and not a bird. I haven"t actually seen it, only its shadow as it flew past the wall just now, and then it fanned past my face. I don"t know much about bats, but I thought they went to bed in the winter. This one must suffer from insomnia. Ah, there it is again - it actually touched me as it pa.s.sed.
Now I can hear the professor moving about in the room above. I don"t suppose you can - have a try. Now listen carefully - h.e.l.lo! Did you hear that? He must have knocked over a chair or something - a heavy chair, from the sound of it. I wonder if he"s having any luck. Ah, there"s that bat again - it seems to like me. Each time it just touches my face with its wings as it pa.s.ses. They"re smelly things, bats - I don"t think they wash often enough. This one smells kind of rotten.
I wonder what the professor knocked over - I can see a small stain forming on the ceiling. Perhaps a flower bowl or something. h.e.l.lo! Did you hear that sharp crack? I think you must have. The oak paneling stretching, I suppose, but it was almost ear-splitting in here. Something ran across my foot then - a rat, perhaps. I"ve always loathed rats. Most people do, of course.
That stain on the ceiling has grown quite a lot. I think I"ll just go to the door and shout to the professor to make sure he"s all right. You"ll hear me shout and his answer, I expect - Professor! - Professor! - Well, he didn"t answer. I believe he"s a little bit deaf. But he"s sure to be all right. I won"t try again just yet, as I know he likes to be undisturbed on these occasions. I"ll sit down again for a minute or two. I"m afraid this is rather dull for you, listeners. I"m not finding it so, but then of course - There, I heard him cough. Did you hear that cough, listeners - a sort of very throaty double cough? It seemed to come from - I wonder if he"s crept down and is having a little fun with me, because I tell you, listeners, this place is beginning to get on my nerves just a wee little bit, just a bit. I wouldn"t live in it for a pension, a very large pension - Get away, you brute! That bat - faugh! It stinks.
Now listen carefully - can you hear those rats? Having a game of Rugger, from the sound of them. I really shall be quite glad to get out of here. I can quite imagine people doing themselves in in this house. Saying to themselves, after all, it isn"t much of a life when you think of it - figure it out, is it? Just work and worry and getting old and seeing your friends die. Let"s end it all in the river!
I"m not being very cheerful, am I? It"s this darned house. Those other two places we investigated didn"t worry me a bit, but this - I wonder what the professor"s doing, besides coughing. I can"t quite make that cough out because - get away, you brute! That bat"ll be the death of me! Death of me! Death of me!
I"m glad I"ve got you to talk to, listeners, but I wish you could answer back. I"m beginning to dislike the sound of my own voice. After a time, if you"ve been talking in a room alone, you get fanciful. Have you ever noticed that? You sort of think you can hear someone talking back - There! - No, of course you couldn"t have heard it, because it wasn"t there, of course. Just in my head. Just subjective, that"s the word. That"s the word. Very odd. That was me laughing, of course. I"m saying "of course" a lot. Of course I am. Well, listeners, I"m afraid this is awfully dull for you. Not for me, though, not for me! No ghosts so far, unless the professor is having better luck - There! You must have heard that! What a crack that paneling makes! Well, you must have heard that, listeners - better than nothing! Ha, ha! Professor! Professor! Phew, what an echo!
Now, listeners, I"m going to stop talking for a moment. I don"t suppose you"ll mind. Let"s see if we can hear anything - Did you hear it? I"m not exactly sure what it was. Not sure. I wonder if you heard it? Not exactly, but the house shook a little and the windows rattled. I don"t think we"ll do that again. I"ll go on talking. I wonder how long one could endure the atmosphere of this place. It certainly is inclined to get one down.
Gosh, that stain has grown - the one on the ceiling. It"s actually started to drip. I mean form bubbles - they"ll start dropping soon. Colored bubbles, apparently. I wonder if the professor is okay? I mean he might have shut himself up in a powder closet or something, and the powder closets in this house aren"t particularly - well, you never know, do you?
Now I should have said that shadow had moved. No, I suppose I put the lamp down in a slightly different position. Shadows do make odd patterns, you must have noticed that. This one might be a body lying on its face with its arms stretched out. Cheerful, aren"t I? An aunt of mine ga.s.sed herself, as a matter of fact - well, I don"t know why I told you that. Not quite in the script.
Professor! Professor! Where is that old fuzzy-whiskers? I shall certainly advise the owner to have this place pulled down. Emphatically. Then where"ll you go! I must go upstairs in a minute or two and see what"s happened to the professor. Well, I was telling you about auntie - D"you know, listeners, I really believe I"d go completely crackers if I stayed here much longer - more or less, anyway, and quite soon, quite soon, quite soon. Absolutely stark, staring! It wears you down. That"s exactly it, it wears you down. I can quite understand - well, I won"t say all that again. I"m afraid this is all awfully dull for you, listeners. I should switch if off if I were you - I should! What"s on the other program? I mean it - switch off! There, what did I tell you - that stain"s started to drip drops, drip drops, drip drops, drip drops! I"ll go and catch one on my hand - Good G.o.d!
Professor! Professor! Professor! Now up those stairs! Which room would it be? Left or right? Left, right, left, right - left has it. In we go - Well, gentlemen, good evening! What have you done with the professor? I know he"s dead - see his blood on my hand? What have you done with him? Make way, please, gentlemen. What have you done with him? D"you want me to sing it - tra-la-la - Switch off, you fools!
Well, if this isn"t too darned funny - ha, ha, ha, ha! Hear me laughing, listeners - Switch off, you fools!
That can"t be him lying there - he hadn"t a red beard! Don"t crowd round me, gentlemen. Don"t crowd me, I tell you!
What do you want me to do? You want me to go to the river, don"t you? Ha, ha! Now? Will you come with me? Come on, then! To the river! To the river!
JOHN BUCHAN.
SKULE SKERRY.
It happened a good many years ago, when I was quite a young man. I wasn"t the cold scientist then that I fancy I am today. I took up birds in the first instance chiefly because they fired what imagination I had got. They fascinated me, for they seemed of all created things the nearest to pure spirit - those little beings with a normal temperature of 125. Think of it! The goldcrest, with a stomach no bigger than a bean, flies across the North Sea! The curlew sandpiper, that breeds so far north that only about three people have ever seen its nest, goes to Tasmania for its holidays.
So I always went bird hunting with a queer sense of expectation and a bit of a tremor, as if I were walking very near the boundaries of the things we are not allowed to know. I felt this especially in the migration season. The small atoms, coming G.o.d knows whence and going G.o.d knows whither, were sheer mystery. They belonged to a world built in different dimensions from ours. I don"t know what I expected, but I was always waiting for something, as much in a flutter as a girl at her first ball. You must realize that mood of mind to understand what follows.
One year I went to the Norland Islands for the spring migration. Plenty of people do the same, but I had the notion to do something a little different. I had a theory that migrants go north and south on a fairly narrow road. They have their corridors in the air as clearly defined as a highway, and keep an inherited memory of these corridors, like the stout conservatives they are.
I didn"t go to the Blue Banks or to Noop or to Hermaness or any of the obvious places where birds might be expected to make their first landfall. At that time I was pretty well-read in the sagas, and had taught myself Icelandic for the purpose.
Now it is written in the Saga of Earl Skuli, which is part of the Jarla Saga or Saga of the Earls, that Skuli, when he was carving out his earldom in the Scots Islands, had much to do with a place called the Isle of the Birds. It is mentioned repeatedly, and the saga man has a lot to say about the amazing mult.i.tude of birds there. It couldn"t have been an ordinary gullery, for the Northmen saw too many of these to think them worth mentioning.
I got it into my head that it must have been one of the alighting-places of the migrants, and was probably as busy a spot today as in the 11th century. The saga said it was near Halmarsness, and that was on the west side of the Island of Una, so to Una I decided to go. I fairly got that Isle of Birds on the brain. From the map it might be any one of a dozen skerries under the shadow of Halmarsness.
I remember that I spent a good many hours in the British Museum before I started, hunting up the scanty records of those parts. I found - I think it was in Adam of Bremen - that a succession of holy men had lived on the isle, and that a chapel had been built there and endowed by Earl Rognvald, which came to an end in the time of Malise of Strathearn. There was a bare mention of the place, but the chronicler had one curious note: Insula Avium, quae est ultima insula et proximo abysso.
I wondered what on earth he meant. The place was not ultimate in any geographical sense, neither the farthest north nor the farthest west of the Norlands. And what was the abyss? In monkish Latin the word generally means h.e.l.l - Bunyan"s Bottomless Pit - and sometimes the grave; but neither meaning seemed to have much to do with an ordinary sea skerry.
I arrived at Una about eight o"clock on a May evening, having been put across from Voss in a flitboat. It was a quiet evening; the sky without clouds but so pale as to be almost gray, the sea gray also, but with a certain iridescence in it, and the low lines of the land a combination of hard grays and umbers, cut into by the harder white of the lighthouse.
I can never find words to describe that curious quality of light that you get up in the North. Sometimes it is like looking at the world out of deep water. Farquharson used to call it "milky," and one saw what he meant. Generally it is a sort of essence of light, cold and pure and rarefied, as if it were reflected from snow. There is no color in it, and it makes thin shadows.
Some people find it horribly depressing - Farquharson said it reminded him of a churchyard in the early morning where all his friends were buried - but personally I found it tonic and comforting. But it made me feel very near the edge of the world.
There was no inn, so I put up at the post office, which was on a causeway between a fresh-water loch and a sea voe, so that from the doorstep you could catch brown trout on one side and sea trout on the other. Next morning I set off for Halmarsness, which lay five miles to the west over a flat moorland all puddled with tiny lochans. There seemed to be nearly as much water as land. Presently I came to a bigger loch under the lift of ground which was Halmarsness.
There was a gap in the ridge through which I looked straight out to the Atlantic, and there in the middle distance was what I knew instinctively to be my island. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile long, low for the most part, but rising in the north to a gra.s.sy knoll beyond the reach of any tides. In parts it narrowed to a few yards width, and the lower levels must often have been awash. But it was an island, not a reef, and I thought I could make out the remains of the monkish cell. I climbed Halmarsness, and there, with nesting skuas swooping angrily about my head, I got a better view.
It was certainly my island, for the rest of the archipelago was inconsiderable skerries, and I realized that it might well be a resting-place for migrants, for the mainland cliffs were too thronged with piratical skuas and other jealous fowl to be comfortable for weary travelers.
I sat for a long time on the headland looking down from the 300 feet of basalt to the island half a mile off - the last bit of solid earth between me and Greenland. The sea was calm for Norland waters but there was a snowy edging of surf to the skerries which told of a tide rip.
Two miles farther south I could see the entrance to the famous Roost of Una, where, when tide and wind collide, there is a wall like a house, so that a small steamer cannot pa.s.s it. The only signs of human habitation were about a small gray farm in the lowlands toward the Roost, but the place was full of the evidence of man - a herd of Norland ponies, each tagged with its owner"s name, grazing sheep of the piebald Norland breed, a broken barbed-wire fence that dropped over the edge of the cliff.
I was only an hour"s walk from a telegraph office and a village which got its newspapers not more than three days late. It was a fine spring noon, and in the empty bright land there was scarcely a shadow.
All the same, as I looked down at the island I did not wonder that it had been selected for attention by the saga man and had been reputed holy. For it had an air of concealing something, though it was as bare as a billiard table. It was an intruder, an irrelevance in the picture, planted there by some celestial caprice. I decided forthwith to make my camp on it, and the decision, inconsequently enough, seemed to me to be something of a venture.
That was the view taken by John Ronaldson, when I talked to him after dinner. John was the postmistress"s son, more fisherman than crofter; like all Norlanders, a skillful sailor and an adept at the dipping lug, and noted for his knowledge of the western coaSt. He had difficulty in understanding my plan, and when he identified my island he protested.
"Not Skule Skerry!" he cried. "What would take ye there, man? Ye"ll get a" the birds ye want on Halmarsness and a far better bield. Ye"ll be blawn away on the skerry, if the wind rises."
I explained to him my reasons as well as I could, and I answered his fears about a gale by pointing out that the island was sheltered by the cliffs from the prevailing winds, and could be scourged only from the south, southwest, or west, quarters from which the wind rarely blew in May.
"It"ll be cauld," he said, "and wat."
I pointed out that I had a tent and was accustomed to camping.
"Ye"ll starve."
I expounded my proposed methods of commissariat.
"It"ll be an ill job getting ye on and off."
But after cross-examination he admitted that ordinarily the tides were not difficult, and that I could get a rowboat to a beach below the farm I had seen - its name was Sgurravoe. Yet when I had said all this he still raised objections till I asked him flatly what was the matter with Skule Skerry.
"Naebody gangs there," he said gruffly.
"Why should they?" I asked. "I"m only going to watch the birds."
But the fact that it was never visited seemed to stick in his throat and he grumbled out something that surprised me. "It has an ill name," he said.
But when I pressed him he admitted that there was no record of shipwreck or disaster to account for the ill name. He repeated the words "Skule Skerry" as if they displeased him.
"Folk dinna gang near it. It has aye had an ill name. My grandfather used to say that the place wasna canny."
Now your Norlander has nothing of a Celt in him, and is as different from the Hebridean as a Northumbrian from a Cornishman. They are a fine, upstanding, hardheaded race, almost pure Scandinavian in blood, but they have as little poetry in them as a Manchester radical. I should have put them down as utterly free from superst.i.tion and, in all my many visits to the islands, I have never yet come across a folk tale - hardly even a historical legend.
Yet here was John Ronaldson, with his weather-beaten face and stiff chin and shrewd blue eyes, declaring that an innocent-looking island "wasna canny," and showing the most remarkable disinclination to go near it.
Of course, all this only made me keener. Besides, it was called Skule Skerry, and the name could only come from Earl Skuli, so it was linked up authentically with the oddments of information I had collected in the British Museum - the Jarla Saga and Adam of Bremen and all the rest of it.
John finally agreed to take me over next morning in his boat, and I spent the rest of the day in collecting my kit. I had a small E.P. tent, and a Wolseley valise and half a dozen rugs, and since I had brought a big box of tinned stuffs from the stores, all I needed was flour and meal and some simple groceries. I learned that there was a well on the island, and that I could count on sufficient driftwood for my fire, but to make certain I took a sack of coals and another of peats.
So I set off next day in John"s boat, ran with the wind through the Roost of Una when the tide was right, tacked up the coast, and came to the skerry early in the afternoon.
You could see that John hated the place. We ran into a cove on the east side and he splashed ash.o.r.e as if he expected to have his landing opposed, looking all the time sharply about him. When he carried my stuff to a hollow under the knoll which gave a certain amount of shelter, his head was always twisting round.
To me the place seemed to be the last word in forgotten peace. The swell lipped gently on the reefs and the little pebbled beaches, and only the babble of gulls from Halmarsness broke the stillness.
John was clearly anxious to get away, but he did his duty by me. He helped me to get the tent up, found a convenient place for my boxes, pointed out the well and filled my water bucket, and made a zareba of stones to protect my camp on the Atlantic side. We had brought a small dinghy along with us, and this was to be left with me, so that when I wanted I could row across to the beach at Sgurravoe. As his last service he fixed an old pail between two boulders on the summit of the knoll, and filled it with oily waste, so that it could be turned into a beacon.
"Ye"ll maybe want to come off," he said, "and the boat will maybe no be there. Kindle your flare, and they"ll see it at Sgurravoe and get the word to me, and I"ll come for ye though the Muckle Black Silkie himsel" was hunkerin" wi" the skerry." Then he looked up and sniffed the air. "I dinna like the set of the sky," he declared. "It"s a bad weatherhead. There"ll be mair wund than I like in the next four and twenty hours."
So saying, he hoisted his sail and presently was a speck in the water toward the Roost. There was no need for him to hurry, for the tide was now wrong, and before he could pa.s.s the Roost he would have three hours to wait on this side of the Mull. But the man, usually so deliberate and imperturbable, had been in a fever to be gone.
His departure left me in a curious mood of happy loneliness and pleasurable expectation. I was left solitary with the seas and the birds. I laughed to think that I had found a streak of superst.i.tion in the granite John. He and his Muckle Black Silkie! I knew the old legend of the North which tells how the Finns, the ghouls that live in the deeps of the ocean, can on occasion don a seal"s skin and come to land to play havoc with mortals.
But diablerie and this isle of mine were worlds apart. I looked at it as the sun dropped, drowsing in the opal-colored tides, under a sky in which pale clouds made streamers like a spectral aurora borealis and I thought that I had stumbled upon one of those places where Nature seems to invite one to her secrets. As the light died the sky was flecked as with the roots and branches of some great nebular tree. That would be the weatherhead of which John Ronaldson had spoken.
I got my fire going, cooked my supper, and made everything snug for the night. I had been right in my guess about the migrants. It must have been about ten o"clock when they began to arrive - after my fire had died out and I was smoking my last pipe before getting into my sleeping-bag.
A host of fieldfares settled gently on the south part of the skerry. A faint light lingered till after midnight, but it was not easy to distinguish the little creatures, for they were aware of my presence and did not alight within a dozen yards of me. But I made out bramblings and buntings and what I thought was the Greenland wheatear; also jacksnipe and sanderling; and I believed from their cries that the curlew sandpiper and the whimbrel were there. I went to sleep in a state of high excitement, promising myself a fruitful time on the morrow.
I slept badly, as one often does one"s first night in the open. Several times I woke with a start under the impression that I was in a boat rowing swiftly with the tide. And every time I woke I heard the flutter of myriad birds, as if a velvet curtain were being slowly switched along an oak floor. At last I fell into deeper sleep, and when I opened my eyes it was full day.
The first thing that struck me was that it had got suddenly colder. The sky was stormily red in the east, and ma.s.ses of woolly clouds were banking in the north. I lighted my fire with numbed fingers and hastily made tea.
I could see the nimbus of seafowl over Halmarsness, but there was only one bird left on my skerry. I was certain from its forked tail that it was a Sabine"s gull, but before I got my gla.s.s out it was disappearing into the haze toward the north. The sight cheered and excited me, and I cooked my breakfast in pretty good spirits.
That was literally the last bird that came near me, barring the ordinary shearwaters and gulls and cormorants that nested round about Halmarsness. (There was not one single nest of any sort on the island. I had heard of that happening before in places which were regular halting-grounds for migrants.) The travelers must have had an inkling of the coming weather and were waiting somewhere well to the south.
About nine o"clock it began to blow. Great G.o.d, how it blew! You must go to the Norlands if you want to know what wind can be. It is like being on a mountaintop, for there is no high ground to act as a windbreak. There was no rain, but the surf broke in showers and every foot of the skerry was drenched with it. In a trice Halmarsness was hidden, and I seemed to be in the center of a maelstrom, choked with scud and buffeted on every side by swirling waters.
Down came my tent at once. I wrestled with the crazy canvas and got a black eye from the pole, but I managed to drag the rums into the shelter of the zareba which John had built and tumble some of the bigger boulders on it. There it lay, flapping like a sick albatross. The water got into my food boxes and soaked my fuel, as well as every inch of my clothing.
I had looked forward to a peaceful day of watching and meditation, when I could write up my notes; and instead I spent a morning like a Rugger scrum. I might have enjoyed it, if I hadn"t been so wet and cold, and could have got a better lunch than some clammy mouthfuls out of a tin.
One talks glibly about being "blown off" a place, generally an idle exaggeration - but that day I came very near the reality. There were times when I had to hang on for dear life to one of the bigger stones to avoid being trundled into the yeasty seas.
About two o"clock the volume of the storm began to decline, and then for the first time I thought about the boat. With a horrid sinking of the heart I scrambled to the cove where we had beached it. It had been drawn up high and dry, and its painter secured to a substantial boulder. But now there was not a sign of it except a ragged rope end round the stone. The tide had mounted to its level, and tide and wind had smashed the rotten painter. By this time what was left of it would be tossing in the Roost.
This was a pretty state of affairs. John was due to visit me next day, but I had a cold 24 hours ahead of me. There was of course the flare he had left me, but I was not inclined to use this. It looked like throwing up the sponge and confessing that my expedition had been a farce. I felt miserable, but obstinate, and, since the weather was clearly mending, I determined to put the best face on the business, so I went back to the wreckage of my camp, and tried to tidy up.
There was still far too much wind to do anything with the tent, but the worst of the spindrift had ceased and I was able to put out my bedding and some of my provender to dry. I got a dry jersey out of my pack and as I was wearing fisherman"s boots and oilskins I managed to get some slight return of comfort. Also at last I succeeded in lighting a pipe. I found a corner under the knoll which gave me a modic.u.m of shelter, and I settled myself to pa.s.s the time with tobacco and my own thoughts.
About three o"clock the wind died away completely. That I did not like, for a dead lull in the Norlands is often the precursor of a new gale. Indeed, I never remembered a time when some wind did not blow, and I had heard that when such a thing happened people came out of their houses to ask what the matter was. But now we had the deadest sort of calm.
The sea was still wild and broken, the tides raced by like a millstream, and a brume was gathering which shut out Halmarsness - shut out every prospect except a narrow circuit of gray water. The cessation of the racket of the gale made the place seem uncannily quiet. The present tumult of the sea, in comparison with the noise of the morning, seemed no more than a mutter and an echo.
As I sat there I became conscious of an odd sensation. I seemed to be more alone, more cut off not only from my fellows but from the habitable earth than I had ever been before. It was like being in a small boat in mid-Atlantic - but worse, if you understand me, for that would have been loneliness in the midst of a waste which was nevertheless surrounded and traversed by the works of man, whereas now I felt that I was clean outside of man"s ken. I had come somehow to the edge of that world where life is and was very close to the world which has only death in it.
At first I do not think there was much fear in the sensation; chiefly strangeness, but the kind of strangeness which awes without exciting. I tried to shake off the mood and got up to stretch myself. There was not much room for exercise, and as I moved with stiff legs along the reefs I slipped into the water, so that I got my arms wet. It was cold beyond belief - the very quintessence of deathly Arctic ice, so cold that it seemed to sear and bleach the skin.