Famous Modern Ghost Stories | Page 8

might be serious, and we had consequently laid in an
extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the officer's prophecy held true, and the wind,
blowing down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a
westerly gale.
It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two from the
horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I wandered about in desultory
examination of our hotel. The island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere
sandy bank standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far end,
pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove
off the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex upstream.
I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing down
with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep it bodily
away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams on either side. The ground seemed to
shake with the shock and rush while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the
wind poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually moved.
Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me: it was like
looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to
show itself to the sun.
The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I
made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the
river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked
with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from
behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then
disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of
monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of
gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to
vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.
Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre suggestion; and
as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion began stir somewhere in the depths of
me. Midway in my delight of the wild beauty, there crept unbidden and unexplained, a
curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.
A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous: many of the little
islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the morning; this
resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my
uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor
had it directly to do with the power of the driving wind--this shouting hurricane that
might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much
chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the
flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of
pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with the wind. Indeed,
so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its

source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with
my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements
about me. The huge-grown river had something to do with it too--a vague, unpleasant
idea that we had somehow trifled with these great elemental forces in whose power we
lay helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at
play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly
to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing
there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to
suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting,
listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly
with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast
numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and
mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
Great revelations of nature, of