he more conscious
of a sinister and malign influence. I know how easily one's nerves can
lend atmosphere to something that is in itself innocent and harmless
enough, but it must be remembered that (at this time), in spite of
what had happened yesterday, neither Trenchard's nerves nor mine were
strained. My sensation must, I think, have closely resembled the
feelings of a diver who, for the first time, descends below the water.
I had never felt anything like this before and there was quite
definitely about my eyes, my nose, my mouth, a feeling of suffocation.
I can only say that it was exactly as though I were breathing in an
atmosphere that was strange to me. This may have been partly the
effect of the sun that was beating down very strongly upon us, but it
was also, curiously enough, the result of some dimness that obscured
the direct path of one's vision. On every side of our rough forest
road there were black cavernous spaces set here and there like caves
between sheets of burning sunlight. Into these caves one's gaze simply
could not penetrate, and the light and darkness shifted about one with
exactly the effect of stirring, swaying water. Although the way was
quite clear and the road broad I felt as though at any moment our
advance would be stopped by an impenetrable barrier, a barrier of
bristled thickets, of an iron wall, of a sudden, fathomless precipice.
Of course to both Trenchard and myself there were, during this drive,
thoughts of his dream. We both recognized, although at this time we
did not speak of it, that this was the very place that had now grown
so vivid to us. "Ah, this is how it looks in sunlight!" I would think
to myself, having seen it always in the early morning and cold. Behind
me the long white house, the hunters, the dogs.... No, they were not
here in the burning suffocating sunlight, but they would come--they
would come!

The monotony of the place emphasised its vastness. It was not, I
suppose, a great Forest, but to-day it seemed as though we were
winding further and further, through labyrinth after labyrinth of
clouding obscurity, winding towards some destination from which we
could never again escape. "Pum--pum--pum," whispered the cannon;
"Whirr--whirr--whirr," the shadowy trembling background echoed. Then
with a sudden lifting of the curtain Vulatch was revealed to us.
Ruined towns and villages were, by this time, no new sight to me, but
this place was different from anything that I h