BECKWITH'S CASE
The facts were as follows. Mr. Stephen Mortimer Beckwith was a young man living at Wishford in the Amesbury district of Wiltshire. He was a clerk in the Wilts and Dorset Bank at Salisbury, was married and had one child. His age at the time of the experience here related was twenty-eight. His health was excellent.
On the 30th November, 1887, at about ten o'clock at night, he was returning home from Amesbury where he had been spending the evening at a friend's house. The weather was mild, with a rain-bearing wind blowing in squalls from the south-west. It was three-quarter moon that night, and although the sky was frequently overcast it was at no time dark. Mr. Beckwith, who was riding a bicycle and accompanied by his fox-terrier Strap, states that he had no difficulty in seeing and avoiding the stones cast down at intervals by the road-menders; that flocks of sheep in the hollows were very visible, and that, passing Wilsford House, he saw a barn owl quite plainly and remarked its heavy, uneven flight.
A mile beyond Wilsford House, Strap, the dog, broke through the quick-set hedge upon his right-hand side and ran yelping up the down, which rises sharply just there. Mr. Beckwith, who imagined that he was after a hare, whistled him in, presently calling him sharply, "Strap, Strap, come out of it." The dog took no notice, but ran directly to a clump of gorse and bramble half-way up the down, and stood there in the attitude of a pointer, with uplifted paw, watching the gorse intently, and whining. Mr. Beckwith was by this time dismounted, observing the dog. He watched him for some minutes from the road. The moon was bright, the sky at the moment free from cloud.
He himself could see nothing in the gorse, though the dog was undoubtedly in a high state of excitement. It made frequent rushes forward, but stopped short of the object that it saw and trembled. It did not bark outright but rather whimpered—"a curious, shuddering, crying noise," says Mr. Beckwith. Interested by the animal's persistent and singular behaviour, he now sought a gap in the hedge, went through on to the down, and approached the clumped bushes. Strap was so much occupied that he barely noticed his master's coming; it seemed as if he dared not take his eyes for one second from what he saw in there.
Beckwith, standing behind the dog, looked into the gorse. From the distance at which he still stood he could see nothing at all. His belief then was that there was either a tramp in a drunken sleep, possibly two tramps, or a hare caught in a wire, or possibly even a fox. Having no stick with him he did not care, at first, to go any nearer, and contented himself with urging on his terrier. This was not very courageous of him, as he admits, and was quite unsuccessful. No verbal excitations would draw Strap nearer to the furze-bush. Finally the dog threw up his head, showed his master the white arcs of his eyes and fairly howled at the moon. At this dismal sound Mr. Beckwith owned himself alarmed. It was, as he describes it—though he is an Englishman—"uncanny." The time, he owns, the aspect of the night, loneliness of the spot (midway up the steep slope of a chalk down), the mysterious shroud of darkness upon shadowed and distant objects and flood of white light upon the foreground—all these circumstances worked upon his imagination.
He was indeed for retreat; but here Strap was of a different mind. Nothing would excite him to advance, but nothing either could induce him to retire. Whatever he saw in the furze-bush Strap must continue to observe. In the face of this Beckwith summoned up his courage, took it in both hands and went much nearer to the furze-bushes, much nearer, that is, than Strap the terrier could bring himself to go. Then, he tells us, he did see a pair of bright eyes far in the thicket, which seemed to be fixed upon his, and by degrees also a pale and troubled face. Here, then, was neither fox nor drunken tramp, but some human creature, man, woman, or child, fully aware of him and of the dog.
Beckwith, who now had surer command of his feelings, spoke aloud asking, "What are you doing there? What's the matter?" He had no reply. He went one pace nearer, being still on his guard, and spoke again. "I won't hurt you," he said. "Tell me what the matter is." The eyes remained unwinkingly fixed upon his own. No movement of the features could be discerned. The face, as he could now make it out, was very small—"about as big as a big wax doll's," he says, "of a longish oval, very pale." He adds, "I could see its neck now, no thicker than my wrist; and where its clothes began. I couldn't see any arms, for a good reason. I found out afterward that they had been bound behind its back. I should have said immediately, 'That's a girl in there,' if it had not been for one or two plain considerations. It had not the size of what we call a girl, nor the face of what we mean by a child. It was, in fact, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. Strap had known that from the beginning, and now I was of Strap's opinion myself."
Advancing with care, a step at a time, Beckwith presently found himself within touching distance of the creature. He was now standing with furze half-way up his calves, right above it, stooping to look closely at it; and as he stooped and moved, now this way, now that, to get a clearer view, so the crouching thing's eyes gazed up to meet his, and followed them about, as if safety lay only in that never-shifting, fixed regard. He had noticed, and states in his narrative, that Strap had seemed quite unable, in the same way, to take his eyes off the creature for a single second.