While she was occupied in this way, I realised that it had become time to arouse my companion, and having done this, and communicated what had occurred, I sank into a sleep of exhaustion, from which the strangeness and excitement of my surroundings were powerless to hinder me.
XV
The Plan of Attack
I was awakened by my companion from a deep sleep, out of which I was aroused with difficulty, and found that it was high noon, and the order had already been passed that we who were on the left hand of the outlying spur of the forest, around which we had rested, should cross to the other side, from which the next stage of the advance would be taken.
This we did, forming a second line behind those who were already in that position, and halting there while final instructions were given to us, to the effect that we were now approaching the most hazardous part of the journey, and that speed and silence, with readiness to obey any orders we might receive with instant alacrity, were essential.
We were directed to avoid separate intercourse, and to concentrate our minds upon the path we were taking, while holding them at the disposal of our Leaders, and under no circumstances to allow any emotion to control us, unless it were the ordered feeling of the expedition, and were operated in unison.
Although these orders were not directly applicable to myself, I was conscious of an increasing willingness to adapt myself to the methods and controls of my new companions, and was not insensible to the relief of mind which arose from the knowledge that the will of every member of the expedition could be brought to operate in this way.
It is true that all my habits were alien from a method of warfare which moved against unknown hostilities, such as were certainly capable of physical violence, without weapons or any evident means of self-defence, trusting, apparently, only to a mental attitude for its protection, and leaving me to wonder how any aggressive action could be even attempted. But I had already realised that the Amphibians had powers of intellect which, though different from my own, were very far from contemptible.
I was inclined to wonder whether my own complacency might not be the result of some subtle exercise of their willpower upon my own mind, which was probably so, though not in the way in which I supposed it, their influence not being the result of any mental violence or assault, but resulting from my gradual recognition of the assured serenity with which they possessed their souls against any pressure of surrounding circumstance, a serenity which had no root in obtuseness or indifference, but, with their leaders at least, was consistent with an unsleeping vigilance and forethought, and a chivalrous willingness to sacrifice themselves at the call of their companion’s peril.
We were now told to advance out of the forest in double file, all emerging at the same spot, on the right front, which was immediately before me, so that I watched the whole of the front line as it crawled to this spot and moved out into the sunlight.
Last of this line came the Five, an order passing ahead of them that I should be in readiness to follow. I was conscious of a strong reluctance to leave my zebra’d companion, of whose vitality I had taken so freely, and to whom I was drawn in consequence in a strange inhuman intimacy. But they answered my thought instantly that this was not intended. We were to move out together, immediately behind them. Being in the rearward line, we had been able to see little beneath the low and level branches till the moment came for us to go forward. Then the first sight that met me was a round blue-black body, from which two humorous twinkling eyes surveyed me satirically. For a moment I thought that I had encountered the most amazing reincarnation of this amazing world; at the next I recognised that there were two other similar creatures a short distance away, and that I was not encountering a reproduction of the one I had seen collapse so thoroughly, but only others of the same species.
Beyond these creatures, I had a moment’s glimpse of a different landscape from that which I had watched from the other side of the spur. Here the ground rose, the upward slopes growing steeper, toward a bare and desolate mountain grandeur. The next moment I saw the last of the Five leap lightly downward into a deep and narrow trench which cut through the ground before us, and I followed more awkwardly, my companion gaining my side as I did so.
I am conscious in this narration of the paucity of proper names—of the use of no arbitrary sounds to distinguish the kinds or even the individuals of the strange beings amongst which I was moving, but the fact is that, unless I am to invent them, I have none to offer. It is the evident difference between mental intercourse and oral or written speech that such signs are imperatively needed in the latter, while in the former they would be worse than useless. The thought that brings the picture of the individual or place itself has no use for a sign by which to describe it. But of these I felt the lack even before I attempted to write down my experiences. It is the inevitable result of the constant use of a spoken language that we acquire the habit of substituting words for realities, even in the processes of our own thought. I found in the minds of my companions no names for each other, nor any vaguest desire for such a method of differentiation, but I accustomed myself to this omission with
