“The morning had been extraordinarily warm, with a little wind blowing
off the sea, which lay a few miles off sparkling beneath a blue haze,
and all morning in spite of our abominable climb I had had an extreme
sense of peace, so much so that several times I had probed my mind, so
to speak, to find if the horror still lingered there. But I could
scarcely get any response from it. Never since Christmas had I been so
free of fear, and it was with a great sense of repose, both physical and
spiritual, that I lay looking up into the blue sky, watching my
smoke-whorls curl slowly away into nothingness. But I was not allowed to
take my ease long, for Sandy came and begged that I would move. The
weather had changed, he said, the wind had shifted again, and he wanted
me to be off this high ground and on the path again as soon as possible,
because it looked to him as if a sea-mist would presently come up. “‘And yon’s a bad place to get down in the mist,’ he added, nodding
towards the crags we had come up. “I looked at the man in amazement, for to our right lay a gentle slope
down on to the river, and there was now no possible reason for again
tackling those hideous rocks up which we had climbed this morning. More
than ever I was sure he had some secret reason for not wishing to go the
obvious way. But about one thing he was certainly right, the mist was
coming up from the sea, and I felt in my pocket for the compass, and
found I had forgotten to bring it. “Then there followed a curious scene which lost us time that we could
really ill afford to waste, I insisting on going down by the way that
common-sense directed, he imploring me to take his word for it that the
crags were the better way. Eventually, I marched off to the easier
descent, and told him not to argue any more but follow. What annoyed me
about him was that he would only give the most senseless reasons for
preferring the crags. There were mossy places, he said, on the way I
wished to go, a thing patently false, since the summer had been one
spell of unbroken weather; or it was longer, also obviously untrue; or
there were so many vipers about. But seeing that none of these arguments
produced any effect, at last he desisted, and came after me in silence. “We were not yet half down when the mist was upon us, shooting up from
the valley like the broken water of a wave, and in three minutes we were
enveloped in a cloud of fog so thick that we could barely see a dozen
yards in front of us. It was therefore another cause for
self-congratulation that we were not now, as we should otherwise have
been, precariously clambering on the face of those crags up which we had
come with such difficulty in the morning, and as I rather prided myself
on my powers of generalship in the matter of direction, I continued
leading, feeling sure that before long we should strike the track by the
river. More than all, the absolute freedom from fear elated me; since
Christmas I had not known the instinctive joy of that; I felt like a
school-boy home for the holidays. But the mist grew thicker and thicker,
and whether it was that real rain-clouds had formed above it, or that it
was of an extraordinary density itself, I got wetter in the next hour
than I have ever been before or since. The wet seemed to penetrate the
skin, and chill the very bones. And still there was no sign of the track
for which I was making. Behind me, muttering to himself, followed the
stalker, but his arguments and protestations were dumb, and it seemed as
if he kept close to me, as if afraid. “Now there are many unpleasant companions in this world; I would not for
instance care to be on the hill with a drunkard or a maniac, but worse
than either, I think, is a frightened man, because his trouble is
infectious, and, insensibly, I began to be afraid of being frightened
too. From that it is but a short step to fear. Other perplexities too
beset us. At one time we seemed to be walking on flat ground, at another
I felt sure we were climbing again, whereas all the time we ought to
have been descending, unless we had missed the way very badly indeed. Also, for the month was October, it was beginning to get dark, and it
was with a sense of relief that I remembered that the full moon would
rise soon after sunset. But it had grown very much colder, and soon,
instead of rain, we found we were walking through a steady fall of snow. “Things were pretty bad, but then for the moment they seemed to mend,
for, far away to the left, I suddenly heard the brawling of the river. It should, it is true, have been straight in front of me and we were
perhaps a mile out of our way, but this was better than the blind
wandering of the last hour, and turning to the left, I walked towards
it. But before I had gone a hundred yards, I heard a sudden choked cry
behind me, and just saw Sandy’s form flying as if in terror of pursuit,
into the mists. I called to him but got no reply, and heard only the
spurned stones of his running. What had frightened him I had no idea,
but certainly with his disappearance, the infection of his fear
disappeared also, and I went on, I may almost say, with gaiety. On the
moment, however, I saw a sudden well-defined blackness in front of me,
and before I knew what I was doing I was half stumbling, half walking up
a very steep grass slope. “During the last few minutes the wind had got up, and the driving snow
was peculiarly uncomfortable, but there had been a certain consolation
in thinking that the wind would soon disperse these mists, and I had
nothing more than a moonlight walk home. But as I paused on this slope,
I became aware of two things, one, that the blackness in front of me was
very close, the other that, whatever it was, it sheltered me from the
snow. So I climbed on a dozen yards into its friendly shelter, for it
seemed to me to be friendly. “A wall some twelve feet high crowned the slope, and exactly where I
struck it there was a hole in it, or door rather, through which a little
light appeared. Wondering at this I pushed on, bending down, for the
passage was very low, and in a dozen yards came out on the other side. Just as I did this the sky suddenly grew lighter, the wind, I suppose,
having dispersed the mists, and the moon, though not yet visible through
the flying skirts of cloud, made sufficient illumination. “I was in a circular enclosure, and above me there projected from the
walls some four feet from the ground, broken stones which must have been
intended to support a floor. Then simultaneously two things occurred. “The whole of my nine months’ terror came back to me, for I saw that the
vision in the garden was fulfilled, and at the same moment I saw
stealing towards me a little figure as of a man, but only about three
foot six in height. That my eyes told me; my ears told me that he
stumbled on a stone; my nostrils told me that the air I breathed was of
an overpowering foulness, and my soul told me that it was sick unto
death.