Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of
awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their
serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened,
moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and
unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an
alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not
wanted or invited to remain--where we ran grave risks perhaps!
The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to
analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it
never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up
the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It
remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful
camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I
said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the
first place, I could never have explained to him what I meant, and in the
second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.
There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood
upright, "no stones and precious little firewood. I'm for moving on early
tomorrow--eh? This sand won't hold anything.
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