Can Such Things Be [4]
and sailed for a far countree. Nor did his misfortunes end with the voyage; for the ship was cast ashore on an island of the South Pacific, and it was six years afterward when the survivors were taken off by a venturesome trading schooner and brought back to San Francisco. Though poor in purse, Frayser was no less proud in spirit than he had been in the years that seemed ages and ages ago. He would accept no assistance from strangers, and it was while living with a fellow survivor near the town of St. Helena, awaiting news and remittances from home, that he had gone gun- ning and dreaming.
3
The apparition confronting the dreamer in the haunted wood--the thing so like, yet so unlike, his mother--was horrible! It stirred no love nor long- ings in his heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past--inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. He tried to turn and run from before it, but his legs were as lead; he was unable to lift his feet from the ground. His arms hung helpless at his sides; of his eyes only he retained control, and these he dared not remove from the lustreless orbs of the apparition, which he knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences in- festing that haunted wood--a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence--nothing to which to address an ap- peal for mercy. 'An appeal will not lie,' he thought, with an absurd reversion to professional slang, mak- ing the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might light up a tomb. For a time, which seemed so long that the world grew grey with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous cul- mination of its terrors, vanished out of his conscious- ness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding him with the mind- less malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity! The act released his physical energies with- out unfettering his will; his mind was still spell- bound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, re- sisted stoutly and well. For an instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelli- gence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator --such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a direct- ing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist. But what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream? The imagination creating the enemy is al- ready vanquished; the combat's result is the com- bat's cause. Despite his struggles--despite his strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, he felt the cold fingers close upon his throat. Borne backward to the earth, he saw above him the dead and drawn face within a hand's-breadth of his own, and then all was black. A sound as of the beat- ing of distant drums--a murmur of swarming voices, a sharp, far cry signing all to silence, and Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead.
4
A warm, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapour--a mere thickening of the atmos- phere, the ghost of a cloud--had been observed clinging to the western side of Mount St. Helena, away up along the barren altitudes near the sum- mit. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: 'Look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.' In a moment it was visibly larger and denser. While with one edge it clung to the mountain, with the other it reached farther and farther out into the air above the lower slopes. At the same time it ex- tended itself to north and south, joining small patches of mist that appeared to come out of the mountain-side on exactly the same level, with an in- telligent design to be absorbed. And
3
The apparition confronting the dreamer in the haunted wood--the thing so like, yet so unlike, his mother--was horrible! It stirred no love nor long- ings in his heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past--inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. He tried to turn and run from before it, but his legs were as lead; he was unable to lift his feet from the ground. His arms hung helpless at his sides; of his eyes only he retained control, and these he dared not remove from the lustreless orbs of the apparition, which he knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences in- festing that haunted wood--a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence--nothing to which to address an ap- peal for mercy. 'An appeal will not lie,' he thought, with an absurd reversion to professional slang, mak- ing the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might light up a tomb. For a time, which seemed so long that the world grew grey with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous cul- mination of its terrors, vanished out of his conscious- ness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding him with the mind- less malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity! The act released his physical energies with- out unfettering his will; his mind was still spell- bound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, re- sisted stoutly and well. For an instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelli- gence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator --such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a direct- ing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist. But what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream? The imagination creating the enemy is al- ready vanquished; the combat's result is the com- bat's cause. Despite his struggles--despite his strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, he felt the cold fingers close upon his throat. Borne backward to the earth, he saw above him the dead and drawn face within a hand's-breadth of his own, and then all was black. A sound as of the beat- ing of distant drums--a murmur of swarming voices, a sharp, far cry signing all to silence, and Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead.
4
A warm, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapour--a mere thickening of the atmos- phere, the ghost of a cloud--had been observed clinging to the western side of Mount St. Helena, away up along the barren altitudes near the sum- mit. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: 'Look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.' In a moment it was visibly larger and denser. While with one edge it clung to the mountain, with the other it reached farther and farther out into the air above the lower slopes. At the same time it ex- tended itself to north and south, joining small patches of mist that appeared to come out of the mountain-side on exactly the same level, with an in- telligent design to be absorbed. And