Then
dropping the leg by her side, she looked again at the body of the prey
now quivering in its death-convulsion, and with finger and thumb gouged
out one of its eyes. She snapped her teeth on it, and it cracked like a
soft-shelled nut. It must have been but a few seconds that I stood watching her, in
some indescribable catalepsy of terror, while through my brain there
pealed the panic-command of my mind to my stricken limbs “Begone,
begone, while there is time.” Then, recovering the power of my joints
and muscles, I tried to slip behind a tree and hide myself from this
apparition. But the woman--shall I say?--must have caught my stir of
movement, for she raised her eyes from her living feast and saw me. She
craned forward her neck, she dropped her prey, and half rising began to
move towards me. As she did this, she opened her mouth, and gave forth
a howl such as I had heard a moment before. It was answered by another,
but faintly and distantly. Sliding and slipping, with the toes of my skis tripping in the
obstacles below the snow, I plunged forward down the hill between
the pine-trunks. The low sun already sinking behind some rampart of
mountain in the west reddened the snow and the pines with its ultimate
rays. My knapsack with the skates in it swung to and fro on my back,
one ski-stick had already been twitched out of my hand by a fallen
branch of pine, but not a second’s pause could I allow myself to
recover it. I gave no glance behind, and I knew not at what pace my
pursuer was on my track, or indeed whether any pursued at all, for my
whole mind and energy, now working at full power again under the stress
of my panic, was devoted to getting away down the hill and out of the
wood as swiftly as my limbs could bear me. For a little while I heard
nothing but the hissing snow of my headlong passage, and the rustle of
the covered undergrowth beneath my feet, and then, from close at hand
behind me, once more the wolf-howl sounded and I heard the plunging of
footsteps other than my own. The strap of my knapsack had shifted, and as my skates swung to and fro
on my back it chafed and pressed on my throat, hindering free passage
of air, of which, God knew, my labouring lungs were in dire need, and
without pausing I slipped it free from my neck, and held it in the hand
from which my ski-stick had been jerked. I seemed to go a little more
easily for this adjustment, and now, not so far distant, I could see
below me the path from which I had strayed. If only I could reach that,
the smoother going would surely enable me to out-distance my pursuer,
who even on the rougher ground was but slowly overhauling me, and at
the sight of that riband stretching unimpeded downhill, a ray of hope
pierced the black panic of my soul. With that came the desire, keen
and insistent, to see who or what it was that was on my tracks, and
I spared a backward glance. It was she, the hag whom I had seen at
her gruesome meal; her long grey hair flew out behind her, her mouth
chattered and gibbered, her fingers made grabbing movements, as if
already they closed on me. But the path was now at hand, and the nearness of it I suppose made me
incautious. A hump of snow-covered bush lay in my path, and, thinking
I could jump over it, I tripped and fell, smothering myself in snow. I
heard a maniac noise, half scream, half laugh, from close behind, and
before I could recover myself the grabbing fingers were at my neck, as
if a steel vice had closed there. But my right hand in which I held my
knapsack of skates was free, and with a blind back-handed movement I
whirled it behind me at the full length of its strap, and knew that my
desperate blow had found its billet somewhere. Even before I could look
round I felt the grip on my neck relax, and something subsided into the
very bush which had entangled me. I recovered my feet and turned. There she lay, twitching and quivering. The heel of one of my skates
piercing the thin alpaca of the knapsack had hit her full on the
temple, from which the blood was pouring, but a hundred yards away I
could see another such figure coming downwards on my tracks, leaping
and bounding. At that panic rose again within me, and I sped off down
the white smooth path that led to the lights of the village already
beckoning. Never once did I pause in my headlong going: there was no
safety until I was back among the haunts of men. I flung myself against
the door of the hotel, and screamed for admittance, though I had but to
turn the handle and enter; and once more as when Ingram had told his
tale, there was the sound of the band, and the chatter of voices, and
there, too, was he himself, who looked up and then rose swiftly to his
feet as I made my clattering entrance. “I have seen them too,” I cried. “Look at my knapsack. Is there not
blood on it? It is the blood of one of them, a woman, a hag, who tore
off the leg of a chamois as I looked, and pursued me through the
accursed wood. I----”

Whether it was I who spun round, or the room which seemed to spin
round me, I knew not, but I heard myself falling, collapsed on the
floor, and the next time that I was conscious at all I was in bed. There was Ingram there, who told me that I was quite safe, and another
man, a stranger, who pricked my arm with the nozzle of a syringe, and
reassured me....

A day or two later I gave a coherent account of my adventure, and three
or four men, armed with guns, went over my traces. They found the bush
in which I had stumbled, with a pool of blood which had soaked into
the snow, and, still following my ski-tracks, they came on the body
of a chamois, from which had been torn one of its hindlegs and one
eye-socket was empty. That is all the corroboration of my story that I
can give the reader, and for myself I imagine that the creature which
pursued me was either not killed by my blow or that her fellows removed
her body.... Anyhow, it is open to the incredulous to prowl about
the caves of the Ungeheuerhorn, and see if anything occurs that may
convince them. Machaon




Machaon


I was returning at the close of the short winter day from my visit to
St. James’s Hospital, where my old servant Parkes, who had been in my
service for twenty years, was lying. I had sent him there three days
before, not for treatment, but for observation, and this afternoon I
had gone up to London, to hear the doctor’s report on the case. He told
me that Parkes was suffering from an internal tumour, the nature of
which could not be diagnosed for certain, but all the symptoms pointed
directly to its being cancerous. That, however, must not be regarded
as proved; it could only be proved by an exploratory operation to
reveal the nature and the extent of the growth, which must then, if
possible, be excised.