The House in the Water
CHAPTER I
The Sound in the Night
UPON the moonlit stillness came suddenly a far-off, muffled, crashing sound. Just once it came, then once again the stillness of the wilderness night, the stillness of vast, untraversed solitude. The Boy lifted his eyes and glanced across the thin reek of the camp-fire at Jabe Smith, who sat smoking contemplatively. Answering the glance, the woodsman muttered “old tree fallin’,” and resumed his passive contemplation of the sticks glowing keenly in the fire. The Boy, upon whom, as soon as he entered the wilderness, the taciturnity of the woodsfolk descended as a garment, said nothing, but scanned his companion’s gaunt face with a gravely incredulous smile.
So wide-spread and supreme was the silence that 2 five seconds after that single strange sound had died out it seemed, somehow, impossible to believe it had ever been. The light gurgle of the shallow and shrunken brook which ran past the open front of the travellers’ “lean-to” served only to measure the stillness. Both Jabe and the Boy, since eating their dinner, had gradually forgotten to talk. As the moon rose over the low, fir-crested hills they had sunk into reverie, watching the camp-fire die down.
At last, with a sort of crisp whisper a stick, burnt through the middle, fell apart, and a flicker of red flame leaped up. The woodsman knocked out his pipe, rose slowly to his feet, stretched his gaunt length, and murmured, “Reckon we might as well turn in.”
“That’s all right for you, Jabe,” answered the Boy, rising also, tightening his belt, and reaching for his rifle, “but I’m going off to see what I can see. Night’s the time to see things in the woods.”
Jabe grunted non-committally, and began spreading his blanket in the lean-to. “Don’t forgit to come back for breakfast, that’s all,” he muttered. He regarded the Boy as a phenomenally brilliant hunter and trapper spoiled by sentimental notions.