do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I
had bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other
details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its
train, followed a wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was
accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale,
motor-cars, policemen, 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 idolater! 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--the 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