ns over yet. Suppose he began to shout? Though he could hardly
stand, there was still plenty of vigor in his voice. 'Go away--hide
yourself,' he said, in that profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced
back. We were within thirty yards from the nearest fire. A black figure
stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the
glow. It had horns--antelope horns, I think--on its head. Some sorcerer,
some witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiend-like enough. 'Do you know what
you are doing?' I whispered. 'Perfectly,' he answered, raising his voice
for that single word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail
through a speaking-trumpet. 'If he makes a row we are lost,' I thought
to myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from
the very natural aversion I had to beat that Shadow--this wandering and
tormented thing. 'You will be lost,' I said--'utterly lost.' One gets
sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right
thing, though indeed he could not have been more irretrievably lost than
he was at this very moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were
being laid--to endure--to endure--even to the end--even beyond.

"'I had immense plans,' he muttered irresolutely. 'Yes,' said I; 'but if
you try to shout I'll smash your head with--' There was not a stick or
a stone near. 'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I was
on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing,
with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. 'And now for
this stupid scoundrel--' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any
case,' I affirmed, steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of
him, you understand--and indeed it would have been very little use for
any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell
of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the
awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified
and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out
to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the
throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled
his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't
you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the
head--though I had a very lively sense of that danger too--but in this,
that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not a