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 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.