I turned to go back, and it
came behind and mocked me. It was everywhere and nowhere. It came
near, then faded into silence. The fog suffocated me; I found myself
pressing at it with my hands.
Yet on the whole I made progress. In time the voices grew clearer.
There were several of them, perhaps many. I heard shouting,--orders,
presumably,--and once a clink of metal,--an iron kettle it might have
been. But the sound was back of me, in front of me, at the sides of
me, above me. I could not hold it. It reverberated like the drumming
of a woodcock that comes to the ear from four quarters at once. And
all the time the fog pressed on my eyelids like a hand.
I had left my musket hidden under the canoe, for I could not have used
it in the dampness, so I had only my knife for guard. I carried it
open, and made an occasional notch upon a tree. Once I came to a
notched tree a second time. The old woodland madness was on me, and I
was stepping in circles. Yet the sounds were growing clearer. They
were approaching, though I could not tell from what quarter. I stood
still.
What followed was like a dream; like the dream that I had had the night
after the storm when I woke with sweat cold on me.
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