Imagine your shell strongly,” whispered the doctor
sharply, “and follow me closely.”

He rose at once and moved swiftly down the slope towards the smoke,
and I followed, afraid to remain alone. I heard the soft crunching of
our steps on the pine needles. Over his shoulder I watched the thin
blue spiral, without once taking my eyes off it. I hardly know how
to describe the peculiar sense of vague horror inspired in me by the
sight of that streak of smoke pencilling its way upwards among the
dark trees. And the sensation of increasing heat as we approached was
phenomenal. It was like walking towards a glowing yet invisible fire. As we drew nearer his pace slackened. Then he stopped and pointed, and
I saw a small circle of burnt grass upon the ground. The tussocks were
blackened and smouldering, and from the centre rose this line of smoke,
pale, blue, steady. Then I noticed a movement of the atmosphere beside
us, as if the warm air were rising and the cooler air rushing in to
take its place: a little centre of wind in the stillness. Overhead the
boughs stirred and trembled where the smoke disappeared. Otherwise, not
a tree sighed, not a sound made itself heard. The wood was still as a
graveyard. A horrible idea came to me that the course of nature was
about to change without warning, _had_ changed a little already, that
the sky would drop, or the surface of the earth crash inwards like a
broken bubble. Something, certainly, reached up to the citadel of my
reason, causing its throne to shake. John Silence moved forward again. I could not see his face, but his
attitude was plainly one of resolution, of muscles and mind ready for
vigorous action. We were within ten feet of the blackened circle when
the smoke of a sudden ceased to rise, and vanished. The tail of the
column disappeared in the air above, and at the same instant it seemed
to me that the sensation of heat passed from my face, and the motion
of the wind was gone. The calm spirit of the fresh October day resumed
command. Side by side we advanced and examined the place. The grass was
smouldering, the ground still hot. The circle of burned earth was a
foot to a foot and a half in diameter. It looked like an ordinary
picnic fire-place. I bent down cautiously to look, but in a second
I sprang back with an involuntary cry of alarm, for, as the doctor
stamped on the ashes to prevent them spreading, a sound of hissing rose
from the spot as though he had kicked a living creature. This hissing
was faintly audible in the air. It moved past us, away towards the
thicker portion of the wood in the direction of our field, and in a
second Dr. Silence had left the fire and started in pursuit. And then began the most extraordinary hunt of invisibility I can ever
conceive. He went fast even at the beginning, and, of course, it was perfectly
obvious that he was following something. To judge by the poise of his
head he kept his eyes steadily at a certain level--just above the
height of a man--and the consequence was he stumbled a good deal over
the roughness of the ground. The hissing sound had stopped. There was
no sound of any kind, and what he saw to follow was utterly beyond me. I only know, that in mortal dread of being left behind, and with a
biting curiosity to see whatever there was to be seen, I followed as
quickly as I could, and even then barely succeeded in keeping up with
him. And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the Colonel’s stories ran
through my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was only
held in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure before me. For John Silence at work inspired me with a kind of awe. He looked
so diminutive among these giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that
his purpose and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he was
dignified. The fancy that we were playing some queer, exaggerated game
together met the fact that we were two men dancing upon the brink of
some possible tragedy, and the mingling of the two emotions in my mind
was both grotesque and terrifying. He never turned in his mad chase, but pushed rapidly on, while I panted
after him like a figure in some unreasoning nightmare. And, as I ran,
it came upon me that he had been aware all the time, in his quiet,
internal way, of many things that he had kept for his own secret
consideration; he had been watching, waiting, planning from the very
moment we entered the shade of the wood. By some inner, concentrated
process of mind, dynamic if not actually magical, he had been in direct
contact with the source of the whole adventure, the very essence of the
real mystery. And now the forces were moving to a climax. Something
was about to happen, something important, something possibly dreadful. Every nerve, every sense, every significant gesture of the plunging
figure before me proclaimed the fact just as surely as the skies, the
winds, and the face of the earth tell the birds the time to migrate and
warn the animals that danger lurks and they must move. In a few moments we reached the foot of the mound and entered the
tangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field. Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. There
were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless tree
trunks closing up to make a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silence
never seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, jumping, dodging,
ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail. Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up
again, I saw him ahead of me, still forcing a way like a dog after
its quarry. And sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed--human
pointing it was, psychic pointing,--and each time he stopped to point I
heard that faint high hissing in the air beyond us. The instinct of an
infallible dowser possessed him, and he made no mistakes. At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and found that we stood
at the edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his
account the night before. It was long and narrow, filled with dark
brown water, in which the trees were dimly reflected. Not a ripple
stirred its surface. “Watch!” he cried out, as I came up. “It’s going to cross. It’s bound
to betray itself. The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the
direction.”

And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of a water-spider,
shot swiftly across the shiny surface; there was a ghost of steam in
the air above; and immediately I became aware of an odour of burning. Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that made me think of
lightning. I began to shake all over. “Quick!” he cried with excitement, “to the trail again! We must run
round. It’s going to the house!”

The alarm in his voice quite terrified me. Without a false step I
dashed round the slippery banks and dived again at his heels into the
sea of bushes and tree trunks.