I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had
altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I
dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead.
Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness
of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes
where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway
among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast
terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me,
as sure as ever man did....

It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again,
and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished
strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself,
for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And
altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense
kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a
sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst
effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from
which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the
whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild
yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.

But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain
beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among
the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my
terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.

For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the
landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view,
but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the