me, quickly and silently; he was makingstraight for the Canadian's tent where the sides still boomed and shookas the creature of sinister life raced and tore about impatientlywithin. A little distance from the door he paused and held up a hand tostop me. We were, perhaps, a dozen feet away.
"Before I release it, you shall see for yourself," he said, "that thereality of the werewolf is beyond all question. The matter of which itis composed is, of course, exceedingly attenuated, but you are partiallyclairvoyant--and even if it is not dense enough for normal sight youwill see something."
He added a little more I could not catch. The fact was that thecuriously strong vibrating atmosphere surrounding his person somewhatconfused my senses. It was the result, of course, of his intenseconcentration of mind and forces, and pervaded the entire Camp and allthe persons in it. And as I watched the canvas shake and heard it boomand flap I heartily welcomed it. For it was also protective.
At the back of Sangree's tent stood a thin group of pine trees, but infront and at the sides the ground was comparatively clear. The flap waswide open and any ordinary animal would have been out and away withoutthe least trouble. Dr. Silence led me up to within a few feet, evidentlycareful not to advance beyond a certain limit, and then stooped down andsignalled to me to do the same. And looking over his shoulder I saw theinterior lit faintly by the spectral light reflected from the fog, andthe dim blot upon the balsam boughs and blankets signifying Sangree;while over him, and round him, and up and down him, flew the dark massof "something" on four legs, with pointed muzzle and sharp ears plainlyvisible against the tent sides, and the occasional gleam of fiery eyesand white fangs.
I held my breath and kept utterly still, inwardly and outwardly, forfear, I suppose, that the creature would become conscious of mypresence; but the distress I felt went far deeper than the mere sense ofpersonal safety, or the fact of watching something so incredibly activeand real. I became keenly aware of the dreadful psychic calamity itinvolved. The realisation that Sangree lay confined in that narrow spacewith this species of monstrous projection of himself--that he waswrapped there in the cataleptic sleep, all unconscious that this thingwas masquerading with his own life and energies--added a distressingtouch of horror to the scene. In all the cases of John Silence--and theywere many and often terrible--no other psychic affliction has ever,before or since, impressed me so convincingly with the patheticimpermanence of the human personality, with its fluid nature, and withthe alarming possibilities of its transformations.
"Come," he whispered, after we had watched for some minutes the franticefforts to escape from the circle of thought and will that held itprisoner, "come a little farther away while I release it."
We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like a scene in someimpossible play, or in some ghastly and oppressive nightmare from whichI should presently awake to find the blankets all heaped up upon mychest.
By some method undoubtedly mental, but which, in my confusion andexcitement, I failed to understand, the doctor accomplished his purpose,and the next minute I heard him say sharply under his breath, "It's out!Now watch!"
At this very moment a sudden gust from the sea blew aside the mist, sothat a lane opened to the sky, and the moon, ghastly and unnatural asthe effect of stage limelight, dropped down in a momentary gleam uponthe door of Sangree's tent, and I perceived that something had movedforward from the interior darkness and stood clearly defined upon thethreshold. And, at the same moment, the tent ceased its shuddering andheld still.
There, in the doorway, stood an animal, with neck and muzzle thrustforward, its head poking into the night, its whole body poised in thatattitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom, therunning leap of attack. It seemed to be about the size of a calf, leanerthan a mastiff, yet more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that I sawthe fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its upper lip slowly lifted,and I saw the whiteness of its teeth.
Surely no human being ever stared as hard as I did in those next fewminutes. Yet, the harder I stared the clearer appeared the amazing andmonstrous apparition. For, after all, it was Sangree--and yet it was notSangree. It was the head and face of an animal, and yet it was the faceof Sangree: the face of a wild dog, a wolf, and yet his face. The eyeswere sharper, narrower, more fiery, yet they were his eyes--his eyes runwild; the teeth were longer, whiter, more pointed--yet they were histeeth, his teeth grown cruel; the expression was flaming, terrible,exultant--yet it was his expression carried to the border ofsavagery--his expression as I had already surprised it more than once,only dominant now, fully released from human constraint, with the madyearning of a hungry and importunate soul. It was the soul of Sangree,the long suppressed, deeply loving Sangree, expressed in its single andintense desire--pure utterly and utterly wonderful.
Yet, at the same time, came the feeling that it was all an illusion. Isuddenly remembered the extraordinary changes the human face can undergoin circular insanity, when it changes from melancholia to elation; and Irecalled the effect of hascheesh, which shows the human countenance inthe form of the bird or animal to which in character it mostapproximates; and for a moment I attributed this mingling of Sangree'sface with a wolf to some kind of similar delusion of the senses. I wasmad, deluded, dreaming! The excitement of the day, and this dim light ofstars and bewildering mist combined to trick me. I had been amazinglyimposed upon by some false wizardry of the senses. It was all absurd andfantastic; it would pass.
And then, sounding across this sea of mental confusion like a bellthrough a fog, came the voice of John Silence bringing me back to aconsciousness of the reality of it all--
"Sangree--in his Double!"
And when I looked again more calmly, I plainly saw that it was indeedthe face of the Canadian, but his face turned animal, yet mingled withthe brute expression a curiously pathetic look like the soul seensometimes in the yearning eyes of a dog,--the face of an animal shotwith vivid streaks of the human.
The doctor called to him softly under his breath--
"Sangree! Sangree, you poor afflicted creature! Do you know me? Can youunderstand what it is you're doing in your 'Body of Desire'?"
For the first time since its appearance the creature moved. Its earstwitched and it shifted the weight of its body on to the hind legs.Then, lifting its head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long jawsand gave vent to a dismal and prolonged howling.
But, when I heard that howling rise to heaven, the breath caught andstrangled in my throat and it seemed that my heart missed a beat; for,though the sound was entirely animal, it was at the same time entirelyhuman. But, more than that, it was the cry I had so often heard in theWestern States of America where the Indians still fight and hunt andstruggle--it was the cry of the Redskin!
"The Indian blood!" whispered John Silence, when I caught his arm forsupport; "the ancestral cry."
And that poignant, beseeching cry, that broken human voice, minglingwith the savage howl of the brute beast, pierced straight to my veryheart and touched there something that no music, no voice, passionate ortender, of man, woman or child has ever stirred before or since for onesecond into life. It echoed away among the fog and the trees and lostitself somewhere out over the hidden sea. And some part ofmyself--something that was far more than the mere act of intenselistening--went out with it, and for several minutes I lostconsciousness of my surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the painof another stricken fellow-creature.
Again the voice of John Silence recalled me to myself.
"Hark!" he said aloud. "Hark!"
His tone galvanised me afresh. We stood listening side by side.
Far across the island, faintly sounding through the trees and brushwood,came a similar, answering cry. Shrill, yet wonderfully musical, shakingthe heart with a singular wild sweetness that defies description, weheard it rise and fall upon the night air.
"It's across the lagoon," Dr. Silence cried, but this time in full tonesthat paid no tribute to caution. "It's Joan! She's answering him!"
&nb
sp; Again the wonderful cry rose and fell, and that same instant the animallowered its head, and, muzzle to earth, set off on a swift easy canterthat took it off into the mist and out of our sight like a thing of windand vision.
The doctor made a quick dash to the door of Sangree's tent, and,following close at his heels, I peered in and caught a momentary glimpseof the small, shrunken body lying upon the branches but half covered bythe blankets--the cage from which most of the life, and not a little ofthe actual corporeal substance, had escaped into that other form of lifeand energy, the body of passion and desire.
By another of those swift, incalculable processes which at this stage ofmy apprenticeship I failed often to grasp, Dr. Silence reclosed thecircle about the tent and body.
"Now it cannot return till I permit it," he said, and the next secondwas off at full speed into the woods, with
Three More John Silence Stories Page 21
