Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
welcome--uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling. Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
tone of authority--hard and forced--saying several things about food and
warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
assailed his nostrils during all that followed. It was no less a person than himself, however--less experienced and
adroit than the others though he was--who gave instinctive utterance to
the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart. "It _is_--YOU, isn't it, Défago?" he asked under his breath, horror
breaking his speech. And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
time to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only--can't
you see--he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't _that_
enough to change a man beyond all recognition?" It was said in order to
convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp. For the "Défago" who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
parody, masquerading there in the firelight as Défago. From the ruins of
the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
become--_incoherent_.... It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
anger and affection dreadfully mingled:

"You ain't Défaygo! You ain't Défaygo at all! I don't give a--damn, but
that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddled
figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'll
swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
me the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust. It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_because it was the
truth_. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
looked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder," for his hand
continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt. But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
peeping through the crack of the tent door flap. Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
stood opposite to the figure of Défago huddled over the fire. He looked
him squarely in the face and spoke. At first his voice was firm. "Défago, tell us what's happened--just a little, so that we can know
how best to help you?" he asked in a tone of authority, almost of
command. And at that point, it _was_ command. At once afterwards,
however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned up to him a face
so piteous, so terrible and so little like humanity, that the doctor
shrank back from him as from something spiritually unclean. Simpson,
watching close behind him, says he got the impression of a mask that was
on the verge of dropping off, and that underneath they would discover
something black and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. "Out with
it, man, out with it!" Cathcart cried, terror running neck and neck with
entreaty. "None of us can stand this much longer ...!" It was the cry of
instinct over reason. And then "Défago," smiling _whitely_, answered in that thin and fading
voice that already seemed passing over into a sound of quite another
character--

"I seen that great Wendigo thing," he whispered, sniffing the air about
him exactly like an animal. "I been with it too--"

Whether the poor devil would have said more, or whether Dr. Cathcart
would have continued the impossible cross examination cannot be known,
for at that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling at the top of his
voice from behind the canvas that concealed all but his terrified eyes. Such a howling was never heard. "His feet! Oh, Gawd, his feet! Look at his great changed--feet!" Défago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such a way that for the
first time his legs were in full light and his feet were visible. Yet
Simpson had no time, himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
Hank has never seen fit to tell.