Well, he did talk in his sleep--and it disturbed me very much indeed. The anger and violence of his words remain with me to this day, and it was clear in a minute that he was living over again some portion of the scene upon the lake. I listened, horror-struck, for a moment or two, and then understood that I was face to face with one of two alternatives: I must continue an unwilling eavesdropper, or I must waken him. The former was impossible for me, yet I shrank from the latter with the greatest repugnance; and in my dilemma I saw the only way out of the difficulty and at once accepted it.
Cold though it was, I crawled stealthily out of my warm sleeping-bag and left the tent, intending to keep the old fire alight under the stars and spend the remaining hours till daylight in the open.
As soon as I was out I noticed at once another figure moving silently along the shore. It was Hank Milligan, and it was plain enough what he was doing: he was examining the holes that had been cut in the upper ribs of the canoe. He looked half ashamed when I came up with him, and mumbled something about not being able to sleep for the cold. But, there, standing together beside the over-turned canoe, we both saw that the holes were far too small for a man's hand and arm and could not possibly have been cut by two men hanging on for their lives in deep water. Those holes had been made afterwards.
Hank said nothing to me and I said nothing to Hank, and presently he moved off to collect logs for the fire, which needed replenishing, for it was a piercingly cold night and there were many degrees of frost.
Three days later Hank and Silver Fizz followed with stumbling footsteps the old Indian trail that leads from Beaver Creek to the southwards. A hammock was slung between them, and it weighed heavily. Yet neither of the men complained; and, indeed, speech between them was almost nothing. Their thoughts, however, were exceedingly busy, and the terrible secret of the woods which formed their burden weighed far more heavily than the uncouth, shifting mass that lay in the swinging hammock and tugged so severely at their shoulders.
They had found "it" in four feet of water not more than a couple of yards from the lee shore of the island. And in the back of the head was a long, terrible wound which no man could possibly have inflicted upon himself.
_Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh._
John Silence
by Algernon Blackwood
"Not since the days of Poe have we read anything in his peculiar genre fit to be compared with this remarkable book. . . . He brings to his work an extraordinary knowledge of strange and unusual forms of spiritualistic phenomena, and steeps his pages in an atmosphere of real terror and expectancy."--_Observer_.
"When one says that Mr. Blackwood's work approaches genius, the phrase is used in no light connection. This very remarkable book is a considerable and lasting addition to the literature of our time."--_Morning Post_.
"These are the most haunting and original ghost stories since 'Uncle Silas' appeared."--_Morning Leader_.
"In the field which he has chosen, Mr. Blackwood stands without rival among contemporary writers."--_Manchester Guardian_.
"As original, as powerful, and as artistically written as that little masterpiece of Lytton's, 'The Haunters and the Haunted.' He bears favourable comparison with Le Fanu. . . . A volume which has an extraordinary power of fascination."--_Birmingham Daily Post_.
"The story is absolutely arresting in its imaginative power."--_Daily Telegraph_.
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The Lost Valley
by Algernon Blackwood
"In one of the stories, 'The Wendigo,' the author gives us, perhaps, one of the most successful excursions into the grimly weird; quietly but surely he makes his reader come under the influence of the eerie, until the pages are half-reluctantly turned under the spell of a fearful fascination. Mr. Blackwood writes like a real artist."--_Daily Telegraph_.
"The book of a remarkably gifted writer."--_Daily News_.
"The stories are unforgettable. Through them all, too, runs the charm of an accomplished style. . . . Mr. Blackwood has indeed done well."--_Pall Mall Gazette_.
"Whether concerned with beauty or terror, fact or fancy, there is an individuality in Mr. Blackwood's work which cannot be ignored, and there is also power which proceeds, we think, not so much from the fertility of a comprehensive imagination, but from the amazing conviction of the author's power of expression, and a literary quality rarely met with in contemporary stories of mystery and imagination."--_Globe_.
"In his method of touching the well-springs of fear, of pity, and of horror, Mr. Blackwood often exhibits powers which can only properly be called masterly. In its way his work bids fair to become classical . . . an art superior to that of Bulwer-Lytton, at least as fine as Le Fanu's, and hardly, if at all, inferior to that exhibited by the supreme living masters of the short story, Mr. Kipling and Mr. James."--_Birmingham Daily Post_.
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The Listener
by Algernon Blackwood
"These stories are literature . . . good stories, well imagined, carefully modelled, properly proportioned. . . . 'The Insanity of Jones' is perhaps the most remarkable _tour de force_ in this remarkable book. . . . If Mr. Blackwood keeps at his present level one or two very celebrated authors will have to look to their laurels."--_Daily Chronicle_.
"Even Edgar Allan Poe never suggested more skilfully an atmosphere of horror than does Mr. Blackwood in his titular story, or again in his description of 'The Willows.'"--F.G. BETTANY in the _Sunday Times_.
"Saying that Mr. Blackwood's latest stories reveal strong dramatic instinct is a dull way of expressing the series of thrills which their perusal causes. Without doubt Mr. Blackwood is designed to fill a high place as an author who is able to arouse the attention of his reader on the first page, and to hold it until the last has been turned. . . . A distinctive genius."--_Pall Mall Gazette_.
"Full of imagination, and well told."--_Daily News_.
"Mr. Blackwood is clearly a master of the art of the genuine sensation story."--_Liverpool Courier_.
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