Tales of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany

  The Watch-tower

  I sat one April in Provence on a small hill above an ancient townthat Goth and Vandal as yet have forborne to "bring up to date."

  On the hill was an old worn castle with a watch-tower, and a well withnarrow steps and water in it still.

  The watch-tower, staring South with neglected windows, faced a broadvalley full of the pleasant twilight and the hum of evening things: itsaw the fires of wanderers blink from the hills, beyond them the longforest black with pines, one star appearing, and darkness settlingslowly down on Var.

  Sitting there listening to the green frogs croaking, hearing farvoices clearly but all transmuted by evening, watching the windows inthe little town glimmering one by one, and seeing the gloaming dwindlesolemnly into night, a great many things fell from mind that seemimportant by day, and evening in their place planted strange fancies.

  Little winds had arisen and were whispering to and fro, it grew cold,and I was about to descend the hill, when I heard a voice behind mesaying, "Beware, beware."

  So much the voice appeared a part of the evening that I did not turnround at first; it was like voices that one hears in sleep and thinksto be of one's dream. And the word was monotonously repeated, inFrench.

  When I turned round I saw an old man with a horn. He had a white beardmarvellously long, and still went on saying slowly, "Beware, beware."He had clearly just come from the tower by which he stood, though Ihad heard no footfall. Had a man come stealthily upon me at such anhour and in so lonesome a place I had certainly felt surprised; but Isaw almost at once that he was a spirit, and he seemed with hisuncouth horn and his long white beard and that noiseless step of histo be so native to that time and place that I spoke to him as one doesto some fellow-traveller who asks you if you mind having the windowup.

  I asked him what there was to beware of.

  "Of what should a town beware," he said, "but the Saracens?"

  "Saracens?" I said.

  "Yes, Saracens, Saracens," he answered and brandished his horn.

  "And who are you?" I said.

  "I, I am the spirit of the tower," he said.

  When I asked him how he came by so human an aspect and was so unlikethe material tower beside him he told me that the lives of all thewatchers who had ever held the horn in the tower there had gone tomake the spirit of the tower. "It takes a hundred lives," he said."None hold the horn of late and men neglect the tower. When the wallsare in ill repair the Saracens come: it was ever so."

  "The Saracens don't come nowadays," I said.

  But he was gazing past me watching, and did not seem to heed me.

  "They will run down those hills," he said, pointing away to the South,"out of the woods about nightfall, and I shall blow my horn. Thepeople will all come up from the town to the tower again; but theloopholes are in very ill repair."

  "We never hear of the Saracens now," I said.

  "Hear of the Saracens!" the old spirit said. "Hear of the Saracens!They slip one evening out of that forest, in the long white robes thatthey wear, and I blow my horn. That is the first that anyone everhears of the Saracens."

  "I mean," I said, "that they never come at all. They cannot come andmen fear other things." For I thought the old spirit might rest if heknew that the Saracens can never come again. But he said, "There isnothing in the world to fear but the Saracens. Nothing else matters.How can men fear other things?"

  Then I explained, so that he might have rest, and told him how allEurope, and in particular France, had terrible engines of war, both onland and sea; and how the Saracens had not these terrible engineseither on sea or land, and so could by no means cross theMediterranean or escape destruction on shore even though they shouldcome there. I alluded to the European railways that could move armiesnight and day faster than horses could gallop. And when as well as Icould I had explained all, he answered, "In time all these things passaway and then there will still be the Saracens."

  And then I said, "There has not been a Saracen either in Franceor Spain for over four hundred years."

  And he said, "The Saracens! You do not know their cunning. That wasever the way of the Saracens. They do not come for a while, no notthey, for a long while, and then one day they come."

  And peering southwards, but not seeing clearly because of the risingmist, he silently moved to his tower and up its broken steps.