Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/73

 darkness of the forest about us, and as I glanced from side to side I felt sure that again an evil presence, a gruesome, nameless terror, was keeping pace with us on either hand. I spoke about it to the others. They too, felt the same fear. The night was dreadfully still, but again we noticed a faint whispering sound; but now it seemed all around us.

Suddenly the whispering seemed to grow louder and more menacing. I saw the Doctor start to run; already he appeared a long way ahead. All at once his torch disappeared from view for the trail had taken a bend. At that moment I, too, started to run—wildly. I had felt something soft and clammy grasp my throat, while I thought I felt innumerable little feelers gripping my face and body. With a scream I fought them off with my torch, and realized a moment later that my nerve was going and that the little feelers had only been a creeper and the branches of some trees. A moment later I was running close behind the Doctor. Suddenly I turned round.

"My God!” I cried. "Where's Tom!"

We started down the trail, the hair literally rising on our heads. There was nothing but black darkness behind us and from the darkness came a hum as of angry bees. Suddenly—there was a distant shout.

"Ger-ald—Ger-ald. Come back—my torch has gone out," and then—then came a prolonged scream of agony and terror—"help—Gerald—hel—" followed by a choking cry of mortal terror—then silence.

Throwing off our packs we raced along the trail at top speed. When we reached the spot where he had been we found his rifle and his pack, evidently thrown off in the desperation of a fight for life. And—that was all. Tom had completely vanished. We searched the ground with our torches and called and called and fired our rifles—but all to no purpose. No sound broke the stillness of the night. Even the whispering had ceased.

We returned to the trail and fetching our packs we brought them back to the place where Tom had disappeared. Then we gave way to utter despair.

How long we sat I don't know, but it must have been some considerable time, for the first thing that roused us was the dying splutter of my torch, which had been stuck into the ground at our feet. This effectually brought us back to a sense of our position and to the danger of thus sitting still. I lit another torch and turned to the Doctor.

"What are we to do now?" I asked.

"I'm sure I don't know," he answered. "Camp here I suppose and light a large fire. We'll have to wait for daylight before we can do anything."

As soon as we had a good fire going we put out our torches, and making ourselves as comfortable as the swampy condition of the ground would allow, we lit our pipes and settled down to wait for morning.

An hour passed: then softly, ever so softly, a faint, almost imperceptible murmur began to come from the tree tops.

"Sounds like a breeze," I said tilting my head a trifle to listen.

"Yes, it does," assented the Doctor, "but unfortunately we know it's no such thing. Throw some more wood on the fire."

"What do you thing it is?" I asked, as in strained attention we listened to the increasing murmur.

"God knows," answered the Doctor, with a shrug.

"Do you think a rifle is any good against it?" I went on.

"No, I do not," he replied shortly.

"Why?"

"To tell you the truth, I don't know," he said.

"I've been thinking over the events of the last few hours," I went on, "and there are one or two things that strike me as especially curious."

"For instance," suggested the Doctor.

"Well—for one thing," I said, "We're in a far northern latitude, yet because this country is many thousands of feet below the upper plain, the temperature has increased to such an extent that all the conditions of life down here are tropical."

"Yes, yes," interrupted the Doctor, impatiently, "I know all that. We've discussed it many times."

"But this is my point," I said. "These are not the tropics. This is an entirely abnormal condition, therefore, life as we know it, may have undergone a complete change, or at least a modification."

The Doctor nodded. "Go on."

"In that case the animal and vegetable life may have characteristics entirely unknown to us, and quite foreign to those with which we are accustomed to deal."

The Doctor was lost in thought.

"I see what you mean, but don't generalize. Come down to something definite."

"That I can't do," I answered, "but I have a suspicion that this thing which is menacing us is more or less impalpable, but is armed with innumerable feelers, which I actually felt round my throat and on my face and all over my body a while ago."

The Doctor abruptly sat up.

"By God, that's true!" he cried. "I remember feeling them too, but I thought I was imagining things, and decided they were only creepers and branches of trees, after all."

"That's not all," I went on. "The thing can only see at night; light apparently blinds it."

"In that case," said the Doctor, "our best hope lies in our knives and hatchets and in having plenty of light. Throw on some more wood, Gerald."

The next morning we were up at the first hint of daylight, and after a hurried breakfast, determined to prosecute a thorough search for our missing companion, in the faint hope that we might at least gain some clue as to the manner of his death. Plunging into the undergrowth we soon struck a small stream, and advancing in single file along the bank, found that it narrowed down to a mere brook, and finally lost itself in a great green morass of sponge like mosses, into which we sank up to our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of enormous and most venomous mosquitoes. This swamp seemed to extend without end in front and on either side of us.

"It's no use," said the Doctor. "We'll have to give it up and go back and make our way to the lake as quickly as possible."

All day we traveled along the narrow trail, making a slow, but steady speed. For a forest land it was the most wonderful that the imagination of man could conceive. The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and at last through this tunnel of verdure, in a golden twilight, we caught sight of the lake, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the light from above filtering through the foliage.

LEAR as crystal, motionless as a sheet of glass, green as the edge of an iceberg, it stretched before us. In the center was a small conical island, entirely denuded of trees, while at our feet, where the trail ended, lay a small raft imbedded in the mud.

"There's our boat," I said.

"Well, we still have about an hour of daylight," said the Doctor. "That treeless island looks the most beautiful place in the world to me at this moment.." [sic]

Whether it was the sound of our voices or something else, I don't know, but at that instant the whispering began in the tree tops and from moment to mo-