CHAPTER XI. THE EVIL WOOD
I fell fast asleep, and when I woke the sun was rising. I went to thetop again, and looked back: the hollow I had crossed in the moonlightlay without sign of life. Could it be that the calm expanse before meswarmed with creatures of devouring greed?
I turned and looked over the land through which my way must lie. Itseemed a wide desert, with a patch of a different colour in thedistance that might be a forest. Sign of presence, human or animal, wasnone--smoke or dust or shadow of cultivation. Not a cloud floated inthe clear heaven; no thinnest haze curtained any segment of its circlingrim.
I descended, and set out for the imaginable forest: something alivemight be there; on this side of it could not well be anything!
When I reached the plain, I found it, as far as my sight could go, ofrock, here flat and channeled, there humped and pinnacled--evidently thewide bed of a vanished river, scored by innumerable water-runs, withouta trace of moisture in them. Some of the channels bore a dry moss, andsome of the rocks a few lichens almost as hard as themselves. The air,once "filled with pleasant noise of waters," was silent as death.It took me the whole day to reach the patch,--which I found indeed aforest--but not a rudiment of brook or runnel had I crossed! Yet throughthe glowing noon I seemed haunted by an aural mirage, hearing so plainlythe voice of many waters that I could hardly believe the opposingtestimony of my eyes.
The sun was approaching the horizon when I left the river-bed, andentered the forest. Sunk below the tree-tops, and sending his raysbetween their pillar-like boles, he revealed a world of blessed shadowswaiting to receive me. I had expected a pine-wood, but here were treesof many sorts, some with strong resemblances to trees I knew, otherswith marvellous differences from any I had ever seen. I threw myselfbeneath the boughs of what seemed a eucalyptus in blossom: its flowershad a hard calyx much resembling a skull, the top of which rose like alid to let the froth-like bloom-brain overfoam its cup. From beneaththe shadow of its falchion-leaves my eyes went wandering into deep afterdeep of the forest.
Soon, however, its doors and windows began to close, shutting up aisleand corridor and roomier glade. The night was about me, and instantand sharp the cold. Again what a night I found it! How shall I make myreader share with me its wild ghostiness?
The tree under which I lay rose high before it branched, but the boughsof it bent so low that they seemed ready to shut me in as I leanedagainst the smooth stem, and let my eyes wander through the brieftwilight of the vanishing forest. Presently, to my listless rovinggaze, the varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume orimitate--say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light windbegan to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and alltheir branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individualmotion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Amongits leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break froma wizard's leash: greyhounds would not have strained so savagely! Iwatched them with an interest that grew as the wind gathered force, andtheir motions life.
Another mass of foliage, larger and more compact, presented my fancywith a group of horses' heads and forequarters projecting caparisonedfrom their stalls. Their necks kept moving up and down, with animpatience that augmented as the growing wind broke their verticalrhythm with a wilder swaying from side to side. What heads they were!how gaunt, how strange!--several of them bare skulls--one with the skintight on its bones! One had lost the under jaw and hung low, lookingunutterably weary--but now and then hove high as if to ease the bit.Above them, at the end of a branch, floated erect the form of a woman,waving her arms in imperious gesture. The definiteness of these andother leaf masses first surprised and then discomposed me: what if theyshould overpower my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight becamedarkness; the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in the night; I fellasleep.
It was still dark when I began to be aware of a far-off, confused,rushing noise, mingled with faint cries. It grew and grew until a tumultas of gathering multitudes filled the wood. On all sides at oncethe sounds drew nearer; the spot where I lay seemed the centre of acommotion that extended throughout the forest. I scarce moved hand orfoot lest I should betray my presence to hostile things.
The moon at length approached the forest, and came slowly into it: withher first gleam the noises increased to a deafening uproar, and I beganto see dim shapes about me. As she ascended and grew brighter, thenoises became yet louder, and the shapes clearer. A furious battle wasraging around me. Wild cries and roars of rage, shock of onset, struggleprolonged, all mingled with words articulate, surged in my ears. Cursesand credos, snarls and sneers, laughter and mockery, sacred names andhowls of hate, came huddling in chaotic interpenetration. Skeletons andphantoms fought in maddest confusion. Swords swept through the phantoms:they only shivered. Maces crashed on the skeletons, shattering themhideously: not one fell or ceased to fight, so long as a single jointheld two bones together. Bones of men and horses lay scattered andheaped; grinding and crunching them under foot fought the skeletons.Everywhere charged the bone-gaunt white steeds; everywhere on foot oron wind-blown misty battle-horses, raged and ravened and raved theindestructible spectres; weapons and hoofs clashed and crushed; whileskeleton jaws and phantom-throats swelled the deafening tumult with thewar-cry of every opinion, bad or good, that had bred strife, injustice,cruelty in any world. The holiest words went with the most hating blow.Lie-distorted truths flew hurtling in the wind of javelins and bones.Every moment some one would turn against his comrades, and fight morewildly than before, THE TRUTH! THE TRUTH! still his cry. One I noted whowheeled ever in a circle, and smote on all sides. Wearied out, a pairwould sit for a minute side by side, then rise and renew the fiercecombat. None stooped to comfort the fallen, or stepped wide to sparehim.
The moon shone till the sun rose, and all the night long I had glimpsesof a woman moving at her will above the strife-tormented multitude, nowon this front now on that, one outstretched arm urging the fight, theother pressed against her side. "Ye are men: slay one another!" sheshouted. I saw her dead eyes and her dark spot, and recalled what I hadseen the night before.
Such was the battle of the dead, which I saw and heard as I lay underthe tree.
Just before sunrise, a breeze went through the forest, and a voicecried, "Let the dead bury their dead!" At the word the contendingthousands dropped noiseless, and when the sun looked in, he saw never abone, but here and there a withered branch.
I rose and resumed my journey, through as quiet a wood as ever grew outof the quiet earth. For the wind of the morning had ceased when the sunappeared, and the trees were silent. Not a bird sang, not a squirrel,mouse, or weasel showed itself, not a belated moth flew athwart my path.But as I went I kept watch over myself, nor dared let my eyes rest onany forest-shape. All the time I seemed to hear faint sounds of mattockand spade and hurtling bones: any moment my eyes might open on things Iwould not see! Daylight prudence muttered that perhaps, to appear, tenthousand phantoms awaited only my consenting fancy.
In the middle of the afternoon I came out of the wood--to find beforeme a second net of dry water-courses. I thought at first that I hadwandered from my attempted line, and reversed my direction; but I soonsaw it was not so, and concluded presently that I had come to anotherbranch of the same river-bed. I began at once to cross it, and was inthe bottom of a wide channel when the sun set.
I sat down to await the moon, and growing sleepy, stretched myself onthe moss. The moment my head was down, I heard the sounds of rushingstreams--all sorts of sweet watery noises. The veiled melody of themolten music sang me into a dreamless sleep, and when I woke the sunwas already up, and the wrinkled country widely visible. Covered withshadows it lay striped and mottled like the skin of some wild animal. Asthe sun rose the shadows diminished, and it seemed as if the rocks werere-absorbing the darkness that had oozed out of them during the night.
Hitherto I had loved my Arab mare and my books more, I fear, than liveman or woman; now at length my so
ul was athirst for a human presence,and I longed even after those inhabitants of this alien world whom theraven had so vaguely described as nearest my sort. With heavy yet hopingheart, and mind haunted by a doubt whether I was going in any directionat all, I kept wearily travelling "north-west and by south."