Three More John Silence Stories

by Algernon Blackwood

about among the provision bags atnight, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and chipmunks scuttling overeverything.

  "My daughter is overtired, and that's the truth of it," explainedMaloney presently when he rejoined us and had examined in turn the otherpaw-marks. "She's been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you know,always means a great excitement to her. It's natural enough, if we takeno notice she'll be all right." He paused to borrow my tobacco pouch andfill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and spilled theprecious weed on the ground visibly belied the calm of his easylanguage. "You might take her out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard, like agood chap; she's hardly up to the long day in the cutter. Show her someof the other islands in your canoe, perhaps. Eh?"

  And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as suddenly, and assuspiciously, as it had come.

  But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then purposely ignoredthe subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a waythat again touched the note of sinister alarm--the note that kept onsounding and sounding until finally John Silence came with his greatvibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too,for a while.

  "I'm ashamed to ask it," she said abruptly, as she steered me home, hersleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, "and ashamed of mysilly tears too, because I really can't make out what caused them; but,Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go off for your longexpeditions--just yet. I beg it of you." She was so in earnest that sheforgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us rolldangerously. "I have tried hard not to ask this," she added, bringingthe canoe round again, "but I simply can't help myself."

  It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesitation was plain; forshe went on before I could reply, and her beseeching expression andintensity of manner impressed me very forcibly.

  "For another two weeks only--"

  "Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight," I said, seeing at once what she wasdriving at, but wondering if it was best to encourage her or not.

  "If I knew you were to be on the island till then," she said, her facealternately pale and blushing, and her voice trembling a little, "Ishould feel so much happier."

  I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish.

  "And safer," she added almost in a whisper; "especially--at night, Imean."

  "Safer, Joan?" I repeated, thinking I had never seen her eyes so softand tender. She nodded her head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face.

  It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my thoughts and judgment mayhave been, and somehow I understood that she spoke with good reason,though for the life of me I could not have put it into words.

  "Happier--and safer," she said gravely, the canoe giving a dangerouslurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my answer. Perhaps,after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and make light of it,easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its cause.

  "All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise," and the instant lookof relief in her face, and the smile that came back like sunlight to hereyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was capableof considerable sacrifice after all.

  "But, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of," I added sharply; andshe looked up in my face with the smile women use when they know we aretalking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so.

  "_You_ don't feel afraid, I know," she observed quietly.

  "Of course not; why should I?"

  "So, if you will just humour me this once I--I will never ask anythingfoolish of you again as long as I live," she said gratefully.

  "You have my promise," was all I could find to say.

  She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon lying a quarter of amile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or two later she pausedagain and stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across the thwarts.

  "You've not heard anything at night yourself, have you?" she asked.

  "I never hear anything at night," I replied shortly, "from the moment Ilie down till the moment I get up."

  "That dismal howling, for instance," she went on, determined to get itout, "far away at first and then getting closer, and stopping justoutside the Camp?"

  "Certainly not."

  "Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it."

  "Most likely you did," was my unsympathetic response.

  "And you don't think father has heard it either, then?"

  "No. He would have told me if he had."

  This seemed to relieve her mind a little. "I know mother hasn't," sheadded, as if speaking to herself, "for she hears nothing--ever."

  * * * * *

  It was two nights after this conversation that I woke out of deep sleepand heard sounds of screaming. The voice was really horrible, breakingthe peace and silence with its shrill clamour. In less than ten secondsI was half dressed and out of my tent. The screaming had stoppedabruptly, but I knew the general direction, and ran as fast as thedarkness would allow over to the women's quarters, and on getting closeI heard sounds of suppressed weeping. It was Joan's voice. And just as Icame up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling with alantern. Other voices became audible in the same moment behind me, andTimothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed, andcarrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being bangedagainst a tree. Dawn was just breaking, and a chill wind blew in fromthe sea. Heavy black clouds drove low overhead.

  The scene of confusion may be better imagined than described. Questionsin frightened voices filled the air against this background ofsuppressed weeping. Briefly--Joan's silk tent had been torn, and thegirl was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat reassured by ournoisy presence, however,--for she was plucky at heart,--she pulledherself together and tried to explain what had happened; and her brokenwords, told there on the edge of night and morning upon this wild islandridge, were oddly thrilling and distressingly convincing.

  "Something touched me and I woke," she said simply, but in a voicestill hushed and broken with the terror of it, "something pushingagainst the tent; I felt it through the canvas. There was the samesniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent give a little aswhen wind shakes it. I heard breathing--very loud, very heavybreathing--and then came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvasripped open close to my face."

  She had instantly dashed out through the open flap and screamed at thetop of her voice, thinking the creature had actually got into the tent.But nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not the faintestsound of an animal making off under cover of the darkness. The briefaccount seemed to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all as welistened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this day, the windblowing the women's hair, and Maloney craning his head forward tolisten, and his wife, open-mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pinetree.

  "Come over to the stockade and we'll get the fire going," I said;"that's the first thing," for we were all shaking with the cold in ourscanty garments. And at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a blanketand carrying his gun; he was still drunken with sleep.

  "The dog again," Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions;"been at Joan's tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It's time we didsomething." He went on mumbling confusedly to himself.

  Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly in the darkness. I sawhis eyes aflame in the glare of the flickering lanterns. He made amovement as though to start out and hunt--and kill. Then his glance fellon the girl crouching on the ground, her face hidden in her hands, andthere leaped into his features an expression of savage anger thattransformed them. He could have faced a dozen lions with a walking stickat that moment, and again I liked him for the strength of his anger, hisself-control, and his hopeless devotion.

  But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless chase.

  "Come and help me start the fire, Sangree," I said, anxious also torelieve the girl of our presence; and a few minutes later the ashes,still growing from the night'
s fire, had kindled the fresh wood, andthere was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up thesurrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards.

  "I heard nothing," he whispered; "what in the world do you think it is?It surely can't be only a dog!"

  "We'll find that out later," I said, as the others came up to thegrateful warmth; "the first thing is to make as big a fire as we can."

  Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on some warmer, and lessmiraculous, garments. And while they stood talking in low voicesMaloney and I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little enoughto see, but that little was unmistakable.