me hear your story." He glanced from one to the other, smiling.
"You tell it, Mr. Hubbard," Sangree interrupted abruptly, and went off alittle way to wash the dishes, yet not so far as to be out of earshot.And while he splashed with the hot water, and scraped the tin plateswith sand and moss, my voice, unbroken by a single question from Dr.Silence, ran on for the next half-hour with the best account I couldgive of what had happened.
My listener lay on the other side of the fire, his face half hidden by abig sombrero; sometimes he glanced up questioningly when a point neededelaboration, but he uttered no single word till I had reached the end,and his manner all through the recital was grave and attentive.Overhead, the wash of the wind in the pine branches filled in thepauses; the darkness settled down over the sea, and the stars came outin thousands, and by the time I finished the moon had risen to flood thescene with silver. Yet, by his face and eyes, I knew quite well that thedoctor was listening to something he had expected to hear, even if hehad not actually anticipated all the details.
"You did well to send for me," he said very low, with a significantglance at me when I finished; "very well,"--and for one swift second hiseye took in Sangree,--"for what we have to deal with here is nothingmore than a werewolf--rare enough, I am glad to say, but often very sad,and sometimes very terrible."
I jumped as though I had been shot, but the next second was heartilyashamed of my want of control; for this brief remark, confirming as itdid my own worst suspicions, did more to convince me of the gravity ofthe adventure than any number of questions or explanations. It seemed todraw close the circle about us, shutting a door somewhere that locked usin with the animal and the horror, and turning the key. Whatever it washad now to be faced and dealt with.
"No one has been actually injured so far?" he asked aloud, but in amatter-of-fact tone that lent reality to grim possibilities.
"Good heavens, no!" cried the Canadian, throwing down his dishclothsand coming forward into the circle of firelight. "Surely there can be noquestion of this poor starved beast injuring anybody, can there?"
His hair straggled untidily over his forehead, and there was a gleam inhis eyes that was not all reflection from the fire. His words made meturn sharply. We all laughed a little short, forced laugh.
"I trust not, indeed," Dr. Silence said quietly. "But what makes youthink the creature is starved?" He asked the question with his eyesstraight on the other's face. The prompt question explained to me why Ihad started, and I waited with just a tremor of excitement for thereply.
Sangree hesitated a moment, as though the question took him by surprise.But he met the doctor's gaze unflinchingly across the fire, and withcomplete honesty.
"Really," he faltered, with a little shrug of the shoulders, "I canhardly tell you. The phrase seemed to come out of its own accord. I havefelt from the beginning that it was in pain and--starved, though why Ifelt this never occurred to me till you asked."
"You really know very little about it, then?" said the other, with asudden gentleness in his voice.
"No more than that," Sangree replied, looking at him with a puzzledexpression that was unmistakably genuine. "In fact, nothing at all,really," he added, by way of further explanation.
"I am glad of that," I heard the doctor murmur under his breath, but solow that I only just caught the words, and Sangree missed themaltogether, as evidently he was meant to do.
"And now," he cried, getting on his feet and shaking himself with acharacteristic gesture, as though to shake out the horror and themystery, "let us leave the problem till to-morrow and enjoy this windand sea and stars. I've been living lately in the atmosphere of manypeople, and feel that I want to wash and be clean. I propose a swim andthen bed. Who'll second me?" And two minutes later we were all divingfrom the boat into cool, deep water, that reflected a thousand moons asthe waves broke away from us in countless ripples.
We slept in blankets under the open sky, Sangree and I taking theoutside places, and were up before sunrise to catch the dawn wind.Helped by this early start we were half-way home by noon, and then thewind shifted to a few points behind us so that we fairly ran. In and outamong a thousand islands, down narrow channels where we lost the wind,out into open spaces where we had to take in a reef, racing along undera hot and cloudless sky, we flew through the very heart of thebewildering and lonely scenery.
"A real wilderness," cried Dr. Silence from his seat in the bows wherehe held the jib sheet. His hat was off, his hair tumbled in the wind,and his lean brown face gave him the touch of an Oriental. Presently hechanged places with Sangree, and came down to talk with me by thetiller.
"A wonderful region, all this world of islands," he said, waving hishand to the scenery rushing past us, "but doesn't it strike you there'ssomething lacking?"
"It's--hard," I answered, after a moment's reflection. "It has asuperficial, glittering prettiness, without--" I hesitated to find theword I wanted.
John Silence nodded his head with approval.
"Exactly," he said. "The picturesqueness of stage scenery that is notreal, not alive. It's like a landscape by a clever painter, yet withouttrue imagination. Soulless--that's the word you wanted."
"Something like that," I answered, watching the gusts of wind on thesails. "Not dead so much, as without soul. That's it."
"Of course," he went on, in a voice calculated, it seemed to me, not toreach our companion in the bows, "to live long in a place likethis--long and alone--might bring about a strange result in some men."
I suddenly realised he was talking with a purpose and pricked up myears.
"There's no life here. These islands are mere dead rocks pushed up frombelow the sea--not living land; and there's nothing really alive onthem. Even the sea, this tideless, brackish sea, neither salt water norfresh, is dead. It's all a pretty image of life without the real heartand soul of life. To a man with too strong desires who came here andlived close to nature, strange things might happen."
"Let her out a bit," I shouted to Sangree, who was coming aft. "Thewind's gusty and we've got hardly any ballast."
He went back to the bows, and Dr. Silence continued--
"Here, I mean, a long sojourn would lead to deterioration, todegeneration. The place is utterly unsoftened by human influences, byany humanising associations of history, good or bad. This landscape hasnever awakened into life; it's still dreaming in its primitive sleep."
"In time," I put in, "you mean a man living here might become brutal?"
"The passions would run wild, selfishness become supreme, the instinctscoarsen and turn savage probably."
"But--"
"In other places just as wild, parts of Italy for instance, where thereare other moderating influences, it could not happen. The charactermight grow wild, savage too in a sense, but with a human wildness onecould understand and deal with. But here, in a hard place like this, itmight be otherwise." He spoke slowly, weighing his words carefully.
I looked at him with many questions in my eyes, and a precautionary cryto Sangree to stay in the fore part of the boat, out of earshot.
"First of all there would come callousness to pain, and indifference tothe rights of others. Then the soul would turn savage, not frompassionate human causes, or with enthusiasm, but by deadening down intoa kind of cold, primitive, emotionless savagery--by turning, like thelandscape, soulless."
"And a man with strong desires, you say, might change?"
"Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn savage, his instincts anddesires turn animal. And if"--he lowered his voice and turned for amoment towards the bows, and then continued in his most weightymanner--"owing to delicate health or other predisposing causes, hisDouble--you know what I mean, of course--his etheric Body of Desire, orastral body, as some term it--that part in which the emotions, passionsand desires reside--if this, I say, were for some constitutional reasonloosely joined to his physical organism, there might well take place anoccasional projection--"
Sangree came aft with a sudden rush, his fa
ce aflame, but whether withwind or sun, or with what he had heard, I cannot say. In my surprise Ilet the tiller slip and the cutter gave a great plunge as she camesharply into the wind and flung us all together in a heap on the bottom.Sangree said nothing, but while he scrambled up and made the jib sheetfast my companion found a moment to add to his unfinished sentence thewords, too low for any ear but mine--
"Entirely unknown to himself, however."
We righted the boat and laughed, and then Sangree produced the map andexplained exactly where we were. Far away on the horizon, across an openstretch of water, lay a blue cluster of islands with our crescent-shapedhome among
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