You were looking, so I take it, at some form
of man more remote probably than the earliest human remains. Did not
something inside you say ‘This is of absorbing significance’?”

He shook his head. “No: I only wanted to get away,” said he. “It was not, as I have told
you, the terror of what according to Chanton’s story, might await us if
we were captured; it was sheer horror at the creature itself. I quaked
at it.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The snowstorm and the gale increased in violence that night, and I
slept uneasily, plucked again and again from slumber by the fierce
battling of the wind that shook my windows as if with an imperious
demand for admittance. It came in billowy gusts, with strange noises
intermingled with it as for a moment it abated, with flutings and
moanings that rose to shrieks as the fury of it returned. These noises,
no doubt, mingled themselves with my drowsed and sleepy consciousness,
and once I tore myself out of nightmare, imagining that the creatures
of the Horror-horn had gained footing on my balcony and were rattling
at the window-bolts. But before morning the gale had died away, and I
awoke to see the snow falling dense and fast in a windless air. For
three days it continued, without intermission, and with its cessation
there came a frost such as I have never felt before. Fifty degrees were
registered one night, and more the next, and what the cold must have
been on the cliffs of the Ungeheuerhorn I cannot imagine. Sufficient,
so I thought, to have made an end altogether of its secret inhabitants:
my cousin, on that day twenty years ago, had missed an opportunity for
study which would probably never fall again either to him or another. I received one morning a letter from a friend saying that he had
arrived at the neighbouring winter resort of St. Luigi, and proposing
that I should come over for a morning’s skating and lunch afterwards. The place was not more than a couple of miles off, if one took the path
over the low, pine-clad foot-hills above which lay the steep woods
below the first rocky slopes of the Ungeheuerhorn; and accordingly,
with a knapsack containing skates on my back, I went on skis over the
wooded slopes and down by an easy descent again on to St. Luigi. The
day was overcast, clouds entirely obscured the higher peaks though the
sun was visible, pale and unluminous, through the mists. But as the
morning went on, it gained the upper hand, and I slid down into St.
Luigi beneath a sparkling firmament. We skated and lunched, and then,
since it looked as if thick weather was coming up again, I set out
early about three o’clock for my return journey. Hardly had I got into the woods when the clouds gathered thick above,
and streamers and skeins of them began to descend among the pines
through which my path threaded its way. In ten minutes more their
opacity had so increased that I could hardly see a couple of yards in
front of me. Very soon I became aware that I must have got off the
path, for snow-cowled shrubs lay directly in my way, and, casting
back to find it again, I got altogether confused as to direction. But, though progress was difficult, I knew I had only to keep on
the ascent, and presently I should come to the brow of these low
foot-hills, and descend into the open valley where Alhubel stood. So
on I went, stumbling and sliding over obstacles, and unable, owing to
the thickness of the snow, to take off my skis, for I should have sunk
over the knees at each step. Still the ascent continued, and looking at
my watch I saw that I had already been near an hour on my way from St.
Luigi, a period more than sufficient to complete my whole journey. But
still I stuck to my idea that though I had certainly strayed far from
my proper route a few minutes more must surely see me over the top of
the upward way, and I should find the ground declining into the next
valley. About now, too, I noticed that the mists were growing suffused
with rose-colour, and, though the inference was that it must be close
on sunset, there was consolation in the fact that they were there and
might lift at any moment and disclose to me my whereabouts. But the
fact that night would soon be on me made it needful to bar my mind
against that despair of loneliness which so eats out the heart of a man
who is lost in woods or on mountain-side, that, though still there is
plenty of vigour in his limbs, his nervous force is sapped, and he can
do no more than lie down and abandon himself to whatever fate may await
him.... And then I heard that which made the thought of loneliness seem
bliss indeed, for there was a worse fate than loneliness. What I heard
resembled the howl of a wolf, and it came from not far in front of me
where the ridge--was it a ridge?--still rose higher in vestment of
pines. From behind me came a sudden puff of wind, which shook the frozen snow
from the drooping pine-branches, and swept away the mists as a broom
sweeps the dust from the floor. Radiant above me were the unclouded
skies, already charged with the red of the sunset, and in front I
saw that I had come to the very edge of the wood through which I had
wandered so long. But it was no valley into which I had penetrated,
for there right ahead of me rose the steep slope of boulders and rocks
soaring upwards to the foot of the Ungeheuerhorn. What, then, was that
cry of a wolf which had made my heart stand still? I saw. Not twenty yards from me was a fallen tree, and leaning against the
trunk of it was one of the denizens of the Horror-Horn, and it was a
woman. She was enveloped in a thick growth of hair grey and tufted,
and from her head it streamed down over her shoulders and her bosom,
from which hung withered and pendulous breasts. And looking on her
face I comprehended not with my mind alone, but with a shudder of my
spirit, what Ingram had felt. Never had nightmare fashioned so terrible
a countenance; the beauty of sun and stars and of the beasts of the
field and the kindly race of men could not atone for so hellish an
incarnation of the spirit of life. A fathomless bestiality modelled the
slavering mouth and the narrow eyes; I looked into the abyss itself
and knew that out of that abyss on the edge of which I leaned the
generations of men had climbed. What if that ledge crumbled in front of
me and pitched me headlong into its nethermost depths?... In one hand she held by the horns a chamois that kicked and struggled. A blow from its hindleg caught her withered thigh, and with a grunt
of anger she seized the leg in her other hand, and, as a man may pull
from its sheath a stem of meadow-grass, she plucked it off the body,
leaving the torn skin hanging round the gaping wound. Then putting the
red, bleeding member to her mouth she sucked at it as a child sucks a
stick of sweetmeat. Through flesh and gristle her short, brown teeth
penetrated, and she licked her lips with a sound of purring.