Years before, I had discovered this strange cave, and had found that a projecting corner of rock gave standing-room near enough to the narrow mouth to allow a man to creep into it. To this shelter I determined to take my luggage for safe-keeping during the rain. As I wound my way down the zigzag path to the cave, a junco flew past me in the gloom and chirped inquiringly. A drop or two of rain fell. Thunder roared in the southwest as well as in the north. The mountains had lost the wonderful dark violet shade which they possessed before the light faded, and were now almost black, those nearest being darkest. As I reached the mouth of the cave, an uncomfortable thought intruded itself upon my mind,—was it possible that bears used the cave? I peered in. The place was empty now, at all events. Pushing in my oilskin coat, jersey, knapsack with lunch, lantern, and star-atlas, I slid in after them. At the deepest part of the depression in the ledge, the space between the rock below and the rock above is thirty inches. I could not sit up straight, but I could recline comfortably at various angles. Lighting my lantern, I unpacked my bag and furnished my lodgings. A watch, match-box, foot rule, thermometer, pencil, a mirror for signaling, compass, hunting-knife, bird whistles, supper, breakfast, and dry underclothing made the cave seem quite homelike. The dry clothing attracted me, for I was wet with perspiration, and my thermometer reminded me that I felt chilly. I listened. Was it raining? No. Taking my lantern, supper, and dry clothes, I wriggled to the entrance and regained the air. Happy thought: if any bear could get into that cave, it would be a very thin one. Unhappy thought: his thinness would betoken all the greater hunger.
There was a lull in the storm, for although everything above was black, the wind seemed to have died away and the thunder to be very distant. On the narrow ledge between the towering pinnacle and the black abyss below the Cow, I discarded my damp clothes and put on the dry ones. The change was comforting. I was glad when it was accomplished, for I had no inclination to fight a bear in the costume of Mulvaney at the taking of Lungtungpen.
Step by step I crept back up the cliff to the summit. There was wind enough on top, and my lantern had to be thrust into a crack in the rock on the lee side to keep it not only from blowing out, but from blowing away. The top of Chocorua is about the shape and size of a large, wide dining-table. On the south, other levels lead up to it gradually; but west, north, and east this highest rock is bounded by abrupt sides, from which a fall in the night would be a serious matter. Lying down on this dizzy platform, I ate my supper with savage relish, and took new account of the night and its pictures. Except when lightning illumined some part of the horizon, the only things visible to me were the long black ridge of Paugus, the hump of Passaconaway over Paugus, fragments of white ledges on the northern spurs of Chocorua, and lakes in the valley. Even Ossipee Lake, fifteen miles or more away, was plainly distinguishable as a white spot in the surrounding gloom. Lights shone from many of the cottages near Chocorua Lake, and from Birch intervale, Albany intervale, and Conway. They were the connecting link between me and the rest of mankind. In the sky there was absolute blackness, curiously broken once by the sudden appearance of the red planet for the space of a single minute. Sometimes a few drops of rain fell, but the second storm seemed to be reserving most of its strength for a region farther east. It was now nine o’clock, and the first storm had passed far over into Maine, its lightning playing with rapid flashes behind Mount Pequawket. At every flash the sky just behind the pyramidal peak assumed the color of dead gold, while the mountain was embossed upon it like an emblem on a shield. Occasionally the second storm produced lightning, and when it did so the effects were startling, so near was the heavenly fire. One flash was from side to side across a low cloud which hung near Chocorua on the east. It was very vivid, and so complex with its many delicate lines and loops of light that a fiery sentence appeared to have been written on the sky. Another bolt was broad and straight, and went down into the forest like an arrow. It was so near and so brilliant that for almost a minute I could see nothing. The thunder which followed it began in the zenith, and rolled away, booming and crashing, in three directions, lasting so long that I wished I had timed it, to see for how many seconds its terrific echoes refused to subside. As many of its rumblings and mutterings resounded from the ravines and hillsides below me, the effect of this great peal was unlike any I had ever before heard.
While I was listening to the sighing of the wind-tossed forest in the hollows eastward of the mountain, another sound reached my ears, and made me concentrate my senses in an effort to determine its nature. At the moment I heard it, I was somewhat below the peak, leaning against a wall of rock facing the south. The sound seemed to come from above. It resembled that made by a thin stick or shingle when whirled rapidly in the air. At the same time there was a creaking, and sounds almost like wailing and groaning. A moment later, a slender column of white cloud, a hundred feet or more in height, but proportioned like a human figure, glided past the mountain over the black abyss below the eastern cliffs. It is needless to say that I was interested in these phenomena. I was much more than interested; and the fact that I was absolutely alone, in the dark, miles away from home, with a storm howling around me, was brought clearly to my mind. The legend of Chocorua, the Indian for whom this mountain was named, of his curse upon the whites, and of his melancholy death near these eastern cliffs, rose, for some illogical reason, into my memory.
THE PEAK FROM THE SOUTHEAST
The sounds in the air continued, and at one time made me wonder whether electric waves passing through the low-hanging clouds above me could produce them. There being no light accompanying the sounds, I dismissed this hypothesis as unsatisfactory. Once I thought that something was scratching and grinding down the side of a sloping ledge. Since rain began falling thick and fast at the same moment, I seized my lantern and retreated to the cave. When I gained the dizzy rock at the mouth of the cave, the heavens again spoke, and mist-forms swept past in front of me. The next moment I was at the bottom of the cave, wondering whether a temperature of 60°, which my thermometer recorded, justified wholly the goose-flesh that crept over me.
My lantern cast a clear, steady light into all parts of the cave. Now and then a flash of lightning showed where the entrance faced the east, and where one or two other cracks were open between the Cow and its rocky foundation. I lay perfectly motionless, pondering upon the strange sounds I had heard. My eyes rested upon several stones lying in the narrow space beyond my feet where the two rocks neared each other. Something moved there. A body had passed from the shelter of one stone to that of another. I held my breath, and watched. Again a brownish thing flashed past an opening, came nearer, darted forward into the light, vanished, reappeared, came clearly into view, shot back, and finally sped across a broad, well-lighted face of rock, and revealed itself as a large short-tailed mouse,—perhaps an Eastern Phenacomys as yet unknown to collectors. Although I did not move for a long time, he failed to reappear, and my only companion was a gauzy-winged fly which sat upon my knee and contemplated the flame of the lantern.
The rain continuing, I sang and whistled until after ten o’clock, when I crawled to the mouth of my cave and looked down into the depths beneath. A stone thrown far out, so as to clear the first few ledges, might fall eight hundred feet before it struck the rocks below. As I stared into the darkness, I found that much which had been invisible an hour earlier was now dimly outlined in black and white. The sky, too, showed gaps in its curtain, and the white lakes in the distant valleys were more silvery than before. The storm was over, the moon was at work eating the clouds, and soon, I hoped, the stars would keep their tryst. Lantern in hand, I crept up the rocks, and settled myself once more on the peak. All my friendly lights in the valley had gone out, and I was now alone in the sky.
Paugus, Passaconaway, and Whiteface were quite clearly outlined against each other and the sky. They seemed very near, however, so that it was easier for me to imagine myself on a lonely rock in the ocean, with huge waves about to overwhelm me, than to make those combing waves stand back three, eight, twelve miles and become spruce-covered mountains. Gradually other mountain outlines became discernible, and the cloud-curtain above showed folds and wrinkles, which in time wore out under the moon’s chafing and let through a glimpse of Mars or Vega, marvelously far away in that serene ether. Half an hour before midnight the pale disk of the moon appeared through the thin clouds, and at the witching hour she sailed out proudly into a little space of clear blue-black heaven. The wind came in fresher puffs, a snowy cloud-cap rested on the head of Paugus, and the air was so much colder that I was glad to put on both jersey and oilskin jacket. A dozen lakes and twenty-five mountain peaks were visible at half past twelve, and Mars had worked a place for his red eye, so that it could look down through the breaking clouds without interruption. Drowsiness now overtook me, and in order to keep awake I was forced to walk rapidly up and down the small area of the top, or to jump about over the ledges farther south. About one o’clock a light flashed brightly from a point near the Maine line; perhaps in Fryeburg. At first I thought it might be a fire which would gather strength and size; then, as it appeared to move and come nearer, it looked more like the headlight of a locomotive. My glass made it seem smaller, and the motion was so slow and irregular that I thought the gleam might be from a doctor’s buggy, as the man of sickness took his way through the night.