bow.
Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint
creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a
punt-pole. I thought the river seemed to become suddenly deserted; it
grew quite abnormally quiet--and abnormally dark. But I was so deep in
reflection that it never occurred to me to move.

"Then the flotilla of swans came round the bend, with Apollo--you know
Apollo, the king-swan?--at their head. By this time it had grown
tremendously dark, but it never occurred to me to ask myself why. The
swans, gliding along so noiselessly, might have been phantoms. A hush,
a perfect hush, settled down. Sime, that hush was the prelude to a
strange thing--an unholy thing!"

Cairn rose excitedly and strode across to the table, kicking the skull
out of his way.

"It was the storm gathering," snapped Sime.

"It was something else gathering! Listen! It got yet darker, but for
some inexplicable reason, although I must have heard the thunder
muttering, I couldn't take my eyes off the swans. Then it
happened--the thing I came here to tell you about; I must tell
somebody--the thing that I am not going to forget in a hurry."

He began to knock out the ash from his pipe.

"Go on," directed Sime tersely.

"The big swan--Apollo--was within ten feet of me; he swam in open
water, clear of the others; no living thing touched him. Suddenly,
uttering a cry that chilled my very blood, a cry that I never heard
from a swan in my life, he rose in the air, his huge wings
extended--like a tortured phantom, Sime; I can never forget it--six
feet clear of the water. The uncanny wail became a stifled hiss, and
sending up a perfect fountain of water--I was deluged--the poor old
king-swan fell, beat the surface with his wings--and was still."

"Well?"

"The other swans glided off like ghosts. Several heavy raindrops
pattered on the leaves above. I admit I was scared. Apollo lay with
one wing right in the punt. I was standing up; I had jumped to my feet
when the thing occurred. I stooped and touched the wing. The bird was
quite dead! Sime, I pulled the swan's head out of the water, and--his
neck was broken; no fewer than three vertebrae fractured!"

A cloud of tobacco smoke was wafted towards the open window.

"It isn't one in a million who could wring the neck of a bird like
Apollo, Sime; but it was done before my eyes without the visible
agency of God or man! As I dropped him and took to the pole, the storm
bu