Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes | Page 5

strange environment, can account for a
great deal. I pushed on quickly. The conviction that I had strayed from
the route grew, nevertheless, for occasionally there was a great
commotion of seagulls about me, as though I had disturbed them in
their sleeping-places. The air filled with their plaintive cries, and I
heard the rushing of multitudinous wings, sometimes very close to my
head, but always invisible owing to the mist. And once, above the
swishing of the wet wind through the gorse-bushes, I was sure I caught
the faint thunder of the sea and the distant crashing of waves rolling up
some steep-throated gully in the cliffs. I went cautiously after this, and
altered my course a little away from the direction of the sound.
Yet, increasingly all the time, it came to me how the cries of the
sea-birds sounded like laughter, and how the everlasting wind blew and
drove about me with a purpose, and how the low bushes persistently
took the shape of stooping people, moving stealthily past me, and how
the mist more and more resembled huge protean figures escorting me
across the desolate hills, silently, with immense footsteps. For the
inanimate world now touched my awakened poetic sense in a manner
hitherto unguided, and became fraught with the pregnant messages of a
dimly concealed life. I readily understood, for the first time, how easily
a superstitious peasantry might people their world, and how even an
educated mind might favour an atmosphere of legend. I stumbled along,
looking anxiously for the lights of the cottage.
Suddenly, as a shape of writhing mist whirled past, I received so direct
a stroke of wind that it was palpably a blow in the face. Something
swept by with a shrill cry into the darkness. It was impossible to
prevent jumping to one side and raising an arm by way of protection,
and I was only just quick enough to catch a glimpse of the sea-gull as it

raced past, with suddenly altered flight, beating its powerful wings over
my head. Its white body looked enormous as the mist swallowed it. At
the same moment a gust tore my hat from my head and flung the flap of
my coat across my eyes. But I was well-trained by this time, and made
a quick dash after the retreating black object, only to find on overtaking
it that I held a prickly branch of gorse. The wind combed my hair
viciously. Then, out of a corner of my eye, I saw my hat still rolling,
and grabbed swiftly at it; but just as I closed on it, the real hat passed in
front of me, turning over in the wind like a ball, and I instantly released
my first capture to chase it. Before it was within reach, another one shot
between my feet so that I stepped on it. The grass seemed covered with
moving hats, yet each one, when I seized it, turned into a piece of wood,
or a tiny gorse-bush, or a black rabbit hole, till my hands were scored
with prickles and running blood. In the darkness, I reflected, all objects
looked alike, as though by general conspiracy. I straightened up and
took a long breath, mopping the blood with my handkerchief. Then
something tapped at my feet, and on looking down, there was the hat
within easy reach, and I stooped down and put it on my head again. Of
course, there were a dozen ways of explaining my confusion and
stupidity, and I walked along wondering which to select. My eyesight,
for one thing--and under such conditions why seek further? It was
nothing, after all, and the dizziness was a momentary effect caused by
the effort and stooping.
But for all that, I shouted aloud, on the chance that a wandering
shepherd might hear me; and of course no answer came, for it was like
calling in a padded room, and the mist suffocated my voice and killed
its resonance.
It was really very discouraging: I was cold and wet and hungry; my
legs and clothes torn by the gorse, my hands scratched and bleeding;
the wind brought water to my eyes by its constant buffeting, and my
skin was numb from contact with the chill mist. Fortunately I had
matches, and after some difficulty, by crouching under a wall, I caught
a swift glimpse of my watch, and saw that it was but little after eight
o'clock. Supper I knew was at nine, and I was surely over half-way by
this time. But here again was another instance of the way everything

seemed in a conspiracy against me to appear otherwise than ordinary,
for in the gleam of the match my watch-glass showed as the face of a
little old gray man, uncommonly like