accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind
somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in
the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest
delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind something remains awake,
ready to let slip the judgment. "All this is not _quite_ real; when you
wake up you'll understand."

And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The events, not wholly
inexplicable or incredible in themselves, yet remain for the man who saw
and heard them a sequence of separate facts of cold horror, because the
little piece that might have made the puzzle clear lay concealed or
overlooked.

So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement, running downwards
through the tent towards the door, that first woke him and made him
aware that his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him--quivering.
Hours must have passed, for it was the pale gleam of the dawn that
revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Défago had
huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.

Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in
the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and
the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier
camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was