the willows
themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of
the forces that are against us."

I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and
idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I
realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It
was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination
of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust
his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak
in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his
apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed
unimaginative, stolid!

"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as
though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so
forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question
wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our
chance of escape. Above all, don't _think_, for what you think happens!"

"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and
the strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one thing
more first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all
about us, those sand-funnels?"

"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not,
simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I
am glad. Don't try to. _They_ have put it into my mind; try your hardest
to prevent their putting it into yours."

He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not
press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me
as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our
pipes busily in silence.

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is
when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small
thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I
chanced to look down at my sand-shoe--the sort we used for the
canoe--and something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled
to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man
had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical
operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the
modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of
roast beef and ale, motor-cars, policeme