n, brass bands, and a dozen
other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The
effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I
suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of
living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must
seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily
lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a
minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend
opposite.

"You damned old pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You
imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolator! You----"

I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to
smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of
course, heard it too--that strange cry overhead in the darkness--and
that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front
of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go!
We can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on--down
the river."

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
terror--the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
last.

"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical
outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. "Sheer
madness! The river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle.
Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for
fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!"

He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of
those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and
the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last
had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.

"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered, with the
awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.

"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the
night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself
together a bit, and remember your own advice about _not thinking
fear_!"

He said no more, and I saw th