ODTAA: A novel

by John Masefield

From all these things, he came suddenly to focus on the thing which mattered. His horse was staring intently, rigidly and silently at something which Hi could not see. This was why he had been called upon to rise. The sleeping partner in his horse had called him up to face the enemy. A wave of fear passed from the horse into the master; Hi sat up to stare as the horse stared; he rose to his knees and stared.

He could see nothing but the film of the grass against the black of the forest, yet somewhere in that space was something at which the horse was staring with all his nature. In that dimness and indistinctness before the darkness something was abroad, not stirring, but staring at them. What was it? Was it a snake waiting to strike, or a puma, or a ghost out of the grave? There was nothing to show, nothing to see; but both knew that there was something, deadly unspeakable. Hi felt the hair rise on his brow: he heard the sweat drip from himself and his horse.

How long this lasted he never knew, but at last, from that indistinctness in front, there came the faintest of sounds, that marked the ending of the tension. Something dark seemed on the instant to merge back into the darkness behind it. There was no noise of step or tread, no motion in the grass, nothing that one could swear to seeing, only the suggestion of a scent, like the ghost of the flavour of musk, and then the knowledge that the thing was no longer there. He believed that his horse sighed with relief, as he himself did.

He could see nothing, but the horse saw. Hi saw the horse’s eyes follow the thing slowly round. What thing was it that could move so slowly? What thing of precaution was moving, pausing and deliberating? When it deliberated, its will hardened against them, the horse knew it, and Hi knew it from the horse. The fear came again, that the thing might strike, had almost made up its mind to strike: it had some kind of a mind.

Yet again the tension snapped suddenly, with a sigh of relief from horse and man: the evil seemed to withdraw, so that the horse felt free to change his position. Then the night, which for some minutes had seemed to hold her breath, began again to speak with her myriad voices out of the darkness of her cruelty. The whisper and the droning of the forest sharpened into the rustlings of snakes, the wails of victims, the cry of the bats after the moths, and the moan of the million insects seeking blood.

For some two hours Hi stayed by his horse, waiting and watching, till at last he felt free to lie down to rest. The insects took toll of him, but he contrived some shelter, and being young, as well as weary, he slept again. He may perhaps have slept for as much as an hour.

He was wakened suddenly by that inner messenger who told him that the danger, whatever it was, had returned. He heard the horse wheel round with a little cry to face in a new direction. Hi faced it, but again could see nothing but a blackness of trees, now like steel at the tops from the false dawn. Hi stood beside the horse, with an arm on his neck, staring. There was tenseness and silence, with fear passing from beast to man and back again. What was there, Hi could not see, but the horse saw. All that Hi thought that he could distinguish was a blotch of blackness which wavered against the blackness that was steadfast. It seemed to him to be some snake swollen to the size of an upright at Stonehenge. When the waiting became unbearable he challenged.

“I see you,” he said. “What do you want?”

There came no answer, nor any sound from the thing; the only result of the challenge seemed to be that the tenseness became more tense and the silence more still. Staring forward more intently, Hi felt that the blotch of blackness was not there, but that something was there, but what thing? Ah, what thing could it be that was slow, silent as the coming of a fever, and deadlier than pestilence? It was there making up its mind for half an hour.

Then, as before, in one instant it was not: it was gone. Hi looked up at the heaven suddenly, to find that the steel of the tree-tops was now burnished with colour. Some birds in those tree-tops right over where the danger had been now woke all together with ejaculations and the clapping of wings, which spread from tree to tree, till all the forest was awake. High, shrill cacklings and screamings, full of good spirits and energy rang aloud all over the wood. With a clattering of the quills of wing-feathers, some big birds shook themselves loose from sleep. After a time, flocks of little birds passed overhead with thin, sweet cries. The false dawn, which had made the sky warm with colour, died away into dimness; then, almost at once, the darkness thinned and dispersed: colour surged into mid-heaven in flames of scarlet, which made the tree-tops glow. Within a few minutes it was dawn. Hi was cold, miserable, swollen and itching from bites, but safe from the powers of darkness; the night was gone; he had never understood what night was, now he knew.