The sheriff’s men dragged tirelessly, widening out their field of search until it covered most of the lagoon, but they found neither Nealman nor Florey. Some of the work was done in the flow-tide, when the waves breaking on the rocky barrier made the lagoon itself choppy and rough. They came in tired and discouraged, ready to give up.
In the meantime Van Hope had heard from Lacone—but his message was not very encouraging either. It would likely be forty hours, he said, before he could arrive at Kastle Krags. Of course Van Hope and his friends agreed that there was nothing to do but wait for him.
The sun reached high noon and then began his long, downward drift to the West. The shadows slowly lengthened almost imperceptibly at first, but with gradually increasing speed. The heat of the day climbed, reached its zenith; the diamond-back slept heavily in the shade, a deadly slumber that was evil to look upon; and the water-moccasin hung lifelessly in his thickets—and then, so slowly as to pass belief, the little winds from the West sprang up, bringing relief. It would soon be night at Kastle Krags. The afternoon was almost gone.
Not one of those northern men mentioned the fact. They were Anglo-Saxons, and that meant there were certain iron-clad restraints on their speech. Because of this inherent reserve they had to bottle up their thoughts, harbor them in silence, with the risk of a violent nerve explosion in the end. Insanity is not common among the Latin peoples. They find easy expression in words for all the thoughts that plague them, thus escaping that strain and tension that works such havoc on the nervous system. Slatterly and Weldon, native Floridans, had learned a certain sociability and ease of expression under that tropical sun, impossible to these cold, northern men; and consequently the day passed easier for them. Likely they talked over freely the mystery of Kastle Krags, relieved themselves of their secret dreads, and awaited the falling of the night with healthy, unburdened minds. They were naturally more superstitious than the Northerners. They had listened to Congo myths in the arms of colored mammies in infancy. But superstition, while a retarding force to civilization, is sometimes a mighty consolation to the spirit. The tribes of Darkest Africa, seeing many things that in their barbarism they can not understand, find it wiser to turn to superstition than to go mad. Thus they escape that bitter, nerve-wracking struggle of trying to adjust some inexplicable mystery with their every-day laws of matter and space and time. They likely find it happier to believe in witchcraft than to fight hopelessly with fear in silence.
A little freedom, a little easy expression of secret thoughts might have redeemed those long, silent hours just before nightfall. But no man told another what he was really thinking, and every man had to win his battle for himself. The result was inevitable: a growing tension and suspense in the very air.
It was a strange atmosphere that gathered over Kastle Krags in those early evening hours. Some way it gave no image of reality. It was vaguely hard to talk—the mind moved along certain channels and could not be turned aside. We couldn’t disregard the fact that the night was falling. The hours of darkness were even now upon us. And no man could keep from thinking of their possibilities.
I noticed a certain irritability on the part of all the guests. Their nerves were on edge, their tempers—almost forgotten in their years of social intercourse—excitable and uncertain. They were all pre-occupied, busy with their own thoughts—and a man started when another spoke to him.
It couldn’t be truly said that they had been conquered by fear. These were self-reliant, masterful men, trained from the ground up to be strong in the face of danger. Yet the mystery of Kastle Krags was getting to them. They couldn’t forget that for two nights running some power that dwelt on that eerie shore had claimed one of the occupants of the manor house—and that a third night was even now encroaching over the forest. Any legend however strange concerning the old house could not wake laughter now. It was true that from time to time one of the guests laughed at another’s sallies, but always the sound rang shockingly loud over the verandas and was some way disquieting to every one that heard it. Nor did we hear any happy, carefree laughter such as had filled the halls that first night. Rather these were nervous, excited sounds, conveying no image of mirth, and jarring unpleasantly on us all.
The hot spell of the previous night was fortunately broken, yet some of us chose to sit on the verandas. Through rifts in the trees we could watch the darkness creeping over the sea and the lagoon. There was no pleasure here—but it was some way better than staying in our rooms and letting the night creep upon us unawares. It seemed better to face it and watch it, staring away into it with rather bright, wide-open eyes....
The trees blurred on the lawns. The trunks faded until they seemed like the trunks of ghost-trees, haunting that ancient shore. It was no longer possible to distinguish twig from twig where the branches overlapped.