Although the journey was harder now, a painful lifting of one foot after the other, Dreeme’s weariness seemed to fall from him. He was like an eager hunter hot on the scent with the quarry almost in view. Any moment, he thought to himself, I may turn a corner and see a ring of dim lanterns about a huge stone and know that I am at the end of my journey and that I have seen what no other stranger in this valley has ever seen. The thought exhilarated him. So, too, did the memory that he had passed other mysterious figures in Briony Wood, for it meant that he was not late, that Deborah would be unharmed when he reached Dagon. How she was to be taken away from the group of fanatics who gathered in the swamp he did not know, but he trusted partially to the skill of the silent Walden Slater and partially to the inspiration of the moment. There would be a way, for he would make one. He was pleased to think that there was no fear in his heart now, that his brain had cleared, and that his nerves were steady. He had lost his madness in Briony Wood, and that was good. There was nothing but a clear flame of determination in him.
Walden Slater’s mouth was close to his ear.
“We’re not quite in the swamp yet,” he said. “There’s a road. We’ve got to find it.”
He turned and started to walk rapidly at right angles to their previous direction and Dreeme followed him.
There seemed to be nothing but swampy land, and in certain sunken places the slimy water rose to their knees. The drizzling rain continued to spit about them.
“We should have followed the lantern,” said Dreeme in a low voice.
“We’ll find the road all right,” replied Slater.
They trudged for some minutes through the water and mud and then Walden Slater emitted a low ejaculation of satisfaction. At the same moment Dreeme stumbled upward from the sucking mud to a firm elevation. Turning again in the direction which they had previously followed the two men followed this elevation which appeared to extend in a long narrow ribbon into the darkness before them. It was the road all right, and it ended at Dagon. Some distance ahead of them they could see the bobbing lantern, and looking back Dreeme observed another lantern coming down from the higher ground upon which stood Briony Wood. There were farmers before him and behind them, and the only way in which they might hope to avoid them would mean taking off into the swamp on either side of the narrow road. Walden Slater, as though in answer to an unasked question from Dreeme, said:
“The muck is up to your waist on either side. Don’t step off the road.”
The trees had thinned out, although a few grotesquely-twisted forms loomed up about them. The eery glow in the sky swept across the long desolate expanse, but it was not bright enough for the young doctor to make out anything with any degree of accuracy. All that he could see were great motionless shapeless shadows, bulks that squatted on the marshy ground like prehistoric beasts. In the daytime they would probably dwindle into nothing more menacing than bushes. But now there was something sinister about them. They sat on huge haunches and watched the two men travel along the narrow lifted road that ran through the flooded land. Dreeme could almost imagine great sleepy eyelids beneath which peered motionless eyes. He was neither frightened nor moved by his thoughts. Instead of excitement the slow blood of determination ran through his cold veins. He lifted his hand and brushed the wet matted hair from his forehead and rubbed his straining eyes. He could feel how set his face was, how the lines had deepened in his cheeks, how tight his jaw was set. He could not make out Walden Slater’s face in the deceiving rainy light, but he imagined that it was set like his own, reflecting a determination that would be ruthless and unescapable when the time for action came.
III
This was Nigger Swamp at last. The dark road ran like a pencil line across the level expanse that waved in the rainy wind its monotonous host of thin reeds. These reeds clacked together with a tiny rippling sound that was half-drowned in the sturdier bluster of the lessening gale. Rain still fell in a dispiriting manner, cold, large-dropped, maddening in its relentless evenness. Dreeme felt the rain no longer, for, soaked to the skin and numbed to the bone, the surface of his body had lost all sensation. Even his feet were senseless now. He followed the lurching beat of Walden Slater’s boots like a man in a trance. Yet his faculties were alert. Though he experienced no physical sensation he realized that his brain was clearing and capable of swift action. It was like a live intelligence
