not a tree
sighed, not a sound made itself heard. The wood was still as a
graveyard. A horrible idea came to me that the course of nature was
about to change without warning, had changed a little already, that the
sky would drop, or the surface of the earth crash inwards like a broken
bubble. Something, certainly, reached up to the citadel of my reason,
causing its throne to shake.

John Silence moved forward again. I could not see his face, but his
attitude was plainly one of resolution, of muscles and mind ready for
vigorous action. We were within ten feet of the blackened circle when
the smoke of a sudden ceased to rise, and vanished. The tail of the
column disappeared in the air above, and at the same instant it seemed
to me that the sensation of heat passed from my face, and the motion of
the wind was gone. The calm spirit of the fresh October day resumed
command.

Side by side we advanced and examined the place. The grass was
smouldering, the ground still hot. The circle of burned earth was a foot
to a foot and a half in diameter. It looked like an ordinary picnic
fireplace. I bent down cautiously to look, but in a second I sprang back
with an involuntary cry of alarm, for, as the doctor stamped on the
ashes to prevent them spreading, a sound of hissing rose from the spot
as though he had kicked a living creature. This hissing was faintly
audible in the air. It moved past us, away towards the thicker portion
of the wood in the direction of our field, and in a second Dr. Silence
had left the fire and started in pursuit.

And then began the most extraordinary hunt of invisibility I can ever
conceive.

He went fast even at the beginning, and, of course, it was perfectly
obvious that he was following something. To judge by the poise of his
head he kept his eyes steadily at a certain level--just above the height
of a man--and the consequence was he stumbled a good deal over the
roughness of the ground. The hissing sound had stopped. There was no
sound of any kind, and what he saw to follow was utterly beyond me. I
only know, that in mortal dread of being left behind, and with a biting
curiosity to see whatever there was to be seen, I followed as quickly as
I could, and even then barely succeeded in keeping up with him.

And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the Colonel's stories ran
through my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was only
held in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figu