The hands like the hands of an ape would be strong. Andrews, moving as softly as he was able, took three steps backward and was swallowed in the mist. He waited listening with a racing heart; the sound of its beats he felt would drown any noise there might be. He could no longer see Carlyon and therefore he was certain that Carlyon could not see him. The anxiety that pecked at his nerve was the uncertainty whether or not Carlyon had recognised his tread. He waited, afraid to run, because in doing so he would be forced to turn his back.
No sound came, except a gentle, reiterated drip from a bough behind his right ear. He tried to persuade himself that Carlyon had heard nothing, and yet he could not banish the image of the tightly clenched hands. His mind changed tack and protested that even if Carlyon had heard and recognised his tread there was no cause for fear. Carlyon had, after all, no reason for supposing that he, Andrews, had been the cause of a certain disastrous fight. Carlyon was his friend. “My friend, my friend, my friend,” he repeated, trying to soothe the panic of his heart.
Minutes must have passed before a sound broke the stillness. It was not a sound which Andrews had expected to hear. It was that of a low whistle, no louder than a man unconsciously might give in amazement. Andrews had counted six louder heart beats when the whistle was repeated. Then there was silence. Andrews very cautiously withdrew himself to the side of the road and a little further into the mist. His movements sounded terribly loud to his own ears. He bent forward and listened. A vague orange glow showed where the tunnel of mist came to an abrupt end. A few yards beyond stood the invisible Carlyon. Andrews did not believe that he had shifted so much as a foot.
Andrews leant a little further forward. He thought that he could hear a gentle whisper. He shivered. There was something uncanny in the thought of Carlyon with sad, apelike face standing very still with back turned and tense clenched hands, whistling and whispering to himself. For a moment Andrews wondered whether his friend (he found it impossible even in flight and fear to think of Carlyon other than as a friend) had been driven mad by the events of the last few days. He wanted to advance out of his tunnel and take Carlyon’s arm. He thought, as he had often thought before, how different everything would have been if Carlyon had been his father. Last night in the dark of the wood and far from Carlyon he had feared him. Now in more imminent danger he was torn between his fear, precipitate, unreasoning fear, and a friendship that was almost a grudging, soured love.
Andrews believed afterwards that in another moment he would have stepped out and greeted Carlyon, but as he stared into the orange glow, fear was given an opportunity to assert itself over friendship. A shadow for an instant striped vertically the glow and vanished again without a sound. Someone had entered the mist. Andrews cowered back against the hedge and listened. There was complete stillness. Andrews felt certain that somewhere within a few feet Carlyon also was listening, striving perhaps to catch those heartbeats which sounded so betrayingly loud. Then a stone was kicked and rumbled slowly a little way down the hill. A second shadow broke the glow and disappeared.
It was probably this second, more careless shadow, that Andrews next heard feeling along the hedge, with the noise of a small breeze through stubble. Progress was slow in a pathetic effort to be silent, pathetic with the pathos of a hippopotamus treading cautiously on dry twigs. The pathos, however, did not appeal to Andrews, who realised very clearly that in a few minutes he would inevitably be discovered. He could not fly without betraying himself, and his only hope was to step soundlessly into the middle of the road. But where was the first shadow, Carlyon? It needed a courage he was not accustomed to exercise to remove his back from the friendly firmness of the hedge and place himself defenceless in the road. He feared that if he moved he would come in contact with Carlyon. Only the slow pressure of necessity symbolised by the cautious crackling in the hedge creeping closer to him at every moment forced him at last to move.
The two paces which he took into the road seemed soundless even to himself, but he was not comforted. He felt completely exposed. Although he could see nothing, he felt, standing there ridiculously with slack, impotent arms that anyone could see him. He thought he could hear them coming towards him and had a wild longing to cry out to them, “Stop, stop, stop, please stop.” There was a game which he had played at school, where one boy, too often himself, stood with back turned counting ten, while the other boys advanced to touch his back. Andrews had perhaps forgotten, but he had never lost, the strain of waiting, hurriedly counting, for a hand to fall upon his back. So now he began to count in haste, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” as though there might be some remission for him at ten. He did not know why he counted and there was no remission.
He had a knife he remembered, in one pocket, but he could not remember which, and
