, with their dark background, and
the heavy silence of the underwood, and nothing more.

"I went as if dazed through the wood, yet unconsciously obeying the
tacit order of my determination, down a steep fully clad with pine
trees, the needles very soft under my feet, till I suddenly came out
of the stifling wood on to golden sands and blue water, and a great
restful wash of air and sunlight.

"I fired my gun as a signal, and wandering on, as if only half awake,
I came out upon another point, and saw the boat lying close below me,
whereupon I fired again, and was taken on board.

"My sensation was one of strange languor and fatigue; certainly no
fright, and very little wonder; rather as if I had been stunned or
charmed by opiates into a kind of waking slumber. I have never felt
anything like it before or since.

"But by morning I was shivering in an ague caught in that
pestilential fever-swamp, and then the fever fiend himself came and
took up his abode with me, and I am now only just convalescent, and
can sun myself on the deck, and read and write a little; but the
illness and the unconsciousness have done as such things often
do--interposed a sort of blank between me and my past life--have
deadened it, as one deadens sound by wool, so that memories no longer
strike on my mind sharp and clear, but swim along hazy and undefined;
and especially is it the case with later memories.

"What was the sight, my dear Carr, that I saw on that hill-top? Was
it nothing but the uneasiness of mind and memory disturbed and
disorganized by the seething of the foul poison-wine, throwing up
pictures and ideas out of their due course, and without subordination
to the master-will? Was it merely the story of those fisher-folk,
half apprehended, and yet evoked and subtly clad with form and shape
by the strange workshop of imagination?

"To all of these I am quite content to say 'Yes.' The sight does not
trouble me, or, indeed, anything but interest me. I am not
superstitious; I am not nervous in the least. Only I can not help
feeling as if, catching, in my weakened state, the hideous leprosy of
the place, I had received into my mind, then less able than usual to
resist, the stamp and impress of some other mind forced to linger
near that spot, and unable to avoid brooding over some haunting
remorseful thought or image of a deed, ever dismally recalling how
he stood in grim silence watching the tears and prayers of the
two soft-faced sm