The Willows
stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting.
It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids
like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than
any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an
adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I
looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along
under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I
experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then
that the Swede was—what he was, and that he never made remarks that
suggested more than they said.
“The river’s still rising, though,” he added, as if following out some
thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. “This island
will be under water in two days if it goes on.”
“I wish the _wind_ would go down,” I said. “I don’t care a fig for the
river.”
The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten
minutes’ notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an
increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds
that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.
Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It
seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the
willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes,
like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the
island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the
sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through
space.
But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full
moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of
shouting willows with a light like the day.
We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the
noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had
already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of
the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we
lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was
enough to smoke and see each other’s faces by, and the sparks flew
about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled
and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling
away of further portions of the bank.
Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of
our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether
remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual
moment more than was necessary—almost as though we had agreed tacitly
to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter
nor the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention,
though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater
part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a
place.
The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the
wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the
same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some
foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede
brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time
finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left
alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the
bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long
day’s battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us
both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made
the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in
desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and
listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place
had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit
the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering
would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the
human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now
carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out
loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not
quite _safe_, to be overheard.
The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept
by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us
both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there
beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of
another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the
souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even
to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred
in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the
leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
“When this has burnt up,” I said firmly, “I shall turn in,” and my
companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding
shadows.
For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He
too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not
altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,
and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far
point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be
seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon
me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me
I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell
of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere “scenery”
could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,
something to alarm.
I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering
willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one
and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange
distress. But the _willows_ especially; for ever they went on
chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly
crying out, sometimes sighing—but what it was they made so much to-do
about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited.
And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild
yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from
another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all
discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving
busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their
myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will
as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own
keen sense of the _horrible_.
There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our
camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all
ready for an attack.
The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very
vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their “note” either of
welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because
the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first
pause—after supper usually—it comes and announces itself. And the note
of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were
interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of
unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the
frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night’s
lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and
inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no!
We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not
wanted. _The willows were against us_.
Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence,
found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if,
after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they
should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods
whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps,
booming overhead in the night—and then _settle down!_ As I looked it
was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a
little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind
that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their
aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more
closely together.
The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and
suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon
fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I
stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half
laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and
cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede’s remark about moving on
next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I
turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing
immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the
elements had covered his approach.
“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, “I thought
something must have happened to you.”
But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well,
that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I
understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of
the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.
“River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight,
“and the wind’s simply awful.”
He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship
that gave the real importance to his words.
“Lucky,” I cried back, “our tent’s in the hollow. I think it’ll hold
all right.” I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in
order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung
them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me
through the branches, nodding his head.
“Lucky if we get away without disaster!” he shouted, or words to that
effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the
thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was
disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay
unpleasantly upon me.
We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our
feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have
been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my
friend’s reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the
ordinary July weather, than this “diabolical wind.”
Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside
the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack
hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe
distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.
We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The
flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and
the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of
the wind against our taut little house were the last things I
remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and
delicious forgetfulness.
II.
Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress
through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the
canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve
o’clock—the threshold of a new day—and I had therefore slept a couple