Story : Fear

 

FEAR

Guy de Maupassant

AFTER dinner we gathered on deck. The Mediterranean lay without a ripple, its surface shot with the silver radiance of the full moon. The great ship glided along, sending up to the star strewn sky a snaky column of black smoke. In our wake foamed and whirled a white streak of water, ploughed up by the swift passage of the vessel, churned by the screw, and emitting such brilliant flashes of brightness that it seemed like liquid moonlight, all bubbling and boiling.

Six or seven of us stood there in silent admiration, our eyes turned towards the distant shores of Africa, whither we were bound. The captain, who had joined us and was smoking a cigar, resumed a conversation begun at the dinner table.

‘Yes, I knew what fear was that day. My ship lay for six hours spiked on a rock with the seas breaking over her. Luckily towards evening we were sighted and picked up by an English collier.’

A man, who had not yet spoken, now broke silence. He was tall, of tanned complexion and grave aspect, the type of man whom one instinctively assumes to have travelled through vast tracts of unexplored countries amid ever-threatening dangers; whose steady eyes retain in their depths something of the strange lands through which he has wandered, and who is courageous through and through.

You say, captain, that you knew what fear was. I do not believe it. You are mistaken both as to the term you used and as the sensation you experienced. A brave man has never any fear in the presence of imminent danger. He may be excited, agitated, and anxious, but as for fear, that is quite another thing.’

The captain laughed. Stuff and nonsense! I tell you I was in a blue funk.’ The bronze-faced man replied in deliberate tones:

Allow me to explain. Fear and the bravest of men can experience fear-is a dreadful thing; it is an appalling sensation, as if one’s soul were disintegrating; it is a torturing pang, convulsing mind and heart; a horror, of which the mere remembrance evokes a shudder of anguish. But a brave man is not subject to it at the prospect of a hostile attack, or when confronted with certain death or any familiar form of danger. It comes upon him in certain abnormal conditions, when certain mysterious influences are at work, in the face of perils, which he does not understand. True fear has in it something of the memory of fantastic terrors of long ago. Now a man who believes in ghosts, and thinks he sees a spectre in the night, is bound to experience fear in all its devastating horror.

‘About ten years ago I myself had this feeling in broad day light, and last winter it came upon me again, one December night. Yet I have often run risks and had death hanging over me, and I have seen a lot of fighting. I have been left for dead by brigands. I have been sentenced to be hanged as a rebel in America, and flung into the sea from the deck of a ship off the coast of China. Each time I gave myself up for lost, and accepted the situation without emotion, even without regret.

‘But fear is a very different thing. I felt a first hint of it in Africa. Yet the North is its real home; the sun disperses it like a fog. This is an interesting point. With Orientals, life is of no account; they are fatalists, one and all. The clear eastern nights foster none of those sinister forebodings, which haunt the minds of those who dwell in cold countries. In the East, there is such a thing as panic, but fear is unknown.

‘Well, this is what happened to me over there in Africa. I was crossing the vast sandhills south of Ouargla, one of the strangest tracts of country in the world. You all know what the smooth level sands of a sea beach are like, running on and on interminably. Now picture in your minds the ocean itself turned to sand in the middle of a hurricane. Imagine a tempest without sound and with billows of yellow sand that never move. To the height of mountains they rise, these irregular waves of all shapes and sizes, surging like the ungovernable waters of ocean, but vaster, and streaked like watered silk. And the pitiless rays of the devastating southern sun beat straight down upon that raging sea, lying there without sound or motion. A journey across these billows of golden dust is one continual Ascent and descent, without a moment of respite or a vestige of shade. The horses pant and sink in up to their knees, and flounder down the slopes of these extraordinary hills.

Our party consisted of my friend and myself, with an escort of eight spahis, four camels and their drivers. Overcome with heat and fatigue, parched with thirst as the burning desert itself, we rode in silence. Suddenly one of our men uttered a cry; every one halted; and we remained rooted to the spot, surprised by a phenomenon, which, though familiar to travellers in those God-forsaken parts, has never been explained. From some where near at hand, but in a direction difficult to determine, came the roll of a drum, the mysterious drum of the sand hills. Its beating was distinct, now loud, now soft, now dying away, now resuming its weird tattoo.

‘The Arabs looked at one another in horror, and one of them said in his own tongue:

‘ "Death is upon us."

‘And as he spoke, my comrade, my friend, who was almost like a brother to me, fell headlong from his horse, struck down by sunstroke.

‘For two hours, while I laboured in vain to save his life, that phantom drum filled my ears with its monotonous, intermittent, and baffling throbbing. And I felt fear, real fear, ghastly fear, glide into my bones, as I gazed at the body of the man I loved, there in that sun-baked hollow, between four sand hills, six hundred miles from the nearest French settlement, with that rapid, mysterious drumming echoing in our ears.

That day I knew what fear was. I realized it even more profoundly on another occasion.’

The captain interrupted him:

‘Excuse me, sir, but what was that drum?’

’I don’t know,’ the traveller replied, ’nobody knows. Military officers, who have often been startled at this singular sound, are generally of opinion that it is caused by sand scudding before the wind and brushing against tufts of dry grass, the echo being intensified and multiplied to prodigious volume by the valley formation of that desert region. It has been observed that the phenomenon always occurs near small plants burnt up by the sun and as hard as parchment. According to this theory, the drum was simply a sort of sound mirage, nothing more. But I did not learn this till later.

 

’I come to my second experience.

‘It was last winter in a forest in the north-east of France. The sky was so overcast that night fell two hours before its time. My guide was a peasant, who walked beside me along 1 narrow path beneath over-arching fir-trees, through which the wind howled. Through the tree-tops I saw the clouds scurrying past in wild confusion, as if fleeing in dismay and terror. Now and then, struck by a furious blast, the whole forest groaned as if in pain and swayed in one direction. In spite of my rapid pace and my thick clothes, I was perishing with cold. We were to sup and sleep at the house of a forest-guard, who lived not far away. I had come for some shooting.

‘Now and then my guide looked up and muttered:

‘ " Miserable weather!"

‘Then he talked about the people to whose house we were going. The master of the house had killed a poacher two years before, and ever since he had seemed depressed as if haunted by the memory. His two married sons lived with him.

‘The darkness was intense. I could see nothing before me or around me, and the boughs of the trees, clashing together, filled the night with a ceaseless uproar. At last I saw a light, and my companion was soon knocking at a door. Shrill cries of women answered us. Then a man, speaking in a strangled voice, asked:

‘ "Who goes there?"

‘My guide gave his name and we entered. It was a scene I shall never forget. A white-haired, wild-eyed old man stood waiting for us in the middle of the kitchen with a loaded gun in his hand, while two stout lads, armed with axes, guarded the door. I could make out two women kneeling in the dark comers of the room with their faces hidden against the wall.

‘We explained our business. The old man replaced his weapon against the wall, and ordered my room to be made ready. As the women did not stir, he said to me abruptly:

‘ “You see, sir, two years ago to-night I killed a man. Last year he appeared and called me. I expect him again this evening.”

‘And he added in a tone which made me smile:

‘ “So we are rather uneasy.”

‘I did what I could to soothe him and felt glad that I had come that evening, just in the nick of time to witness this exhibition of superstitious terror. I told stories and almost succeeded in calming them all down.

‘By the fire lay an old dog, asleep with his head on his paws. He was nearly blind, and with his moustached muzzle he was the sort of dog that reminds one of some acquaintance.

‘Outside the tempest beat fiercely on the little house, and through a small square opening, a sort of peep-hole near the door, I suddenly saw, by the glare of vivid lightning, a confused mass of trees, tossed about by the wind.

’I realized that, in spite of my efforts, these people were under the sway of some deep-seated terror. Whenever I stopped talking, every ear was straining into the distance. Tired of the spectacle of these foolish fears, I was about to retire to bed when the old forest-guard suddenly jumped up from his chair, seized his gun again, and gasped in frenzied tones:

‘ “There he is. There he is. I can hear him.”

‘The two women fell on their knees again and hid their faces; the sons picked up their axes. I was preparing to attempt to calm them when the sleeping dog suddenly raised his head and stretched his neck and, looking into the fire with his dim eyes, uttered one of those melancholy howls, which startle the benighted traveller. All eyes turned towards him. He stood there perfectly rigid, as if he had seen a ghost. And again he howled at something invisible, something unknown, and, to judge from his bristling coat, something that frightened him.

’Livid with terror, the forest-guard cried out:

‘ “He scents him. He scents him. He was with me when I killed him.’

‘The two distracted women began to mingle their howls with those of the dog. In spite of myself, a cold shudder ran down my spine. The dog’s clairvoyance, in that place, at that hour of the night, in the midst of those terror-stricken people, was an uncanny thing to see.

‘For a whole hour that dog went on howling without stirring from the spot. He howled as if in the agony of a nightmare, and fear, appalling fear, came upon me. Fear of what? I have no idea. All I can say is that it was fear.

‘We remained there pale and motionless, awaiting some dreadful sequel, with ears intent and beating hearts, convulsed by the slightest sound. Then the dog began to roam about the room, sniffing walls, and whining incessantly. The brute was driving us mad. At last the peasant, my guide, seized him in A sort of paroxysm of angry terror and, throwing open a door, flung him out into a small courtyard.

‘Immediately the dog was still, and we remained plunged in a silence, which was even more nerve-wracking. Suddenly we all gave a simultaneous bound. Something was gliding along the outer wall on the side nearest the forest. It brushed against the door and seemed to fumble there with hesitating touch. Then followed two minutes of a silence that maddened us. Then the thing returned, brushing against the wall as before, and scratch ing on it lightly, like a child scratching with its fingernail. Suddenly a head appeared at the peephole, a white face with gleaming eyes, like those of a wild beast. And from its mouth came a vague sound like a plaintive moan.

‘There was a noise of a tremendous explosion in the kitchen. The old forest-guard had fired his gun. At the same time the two sons rushed to block up the peep-hole with the big table, which they reinforced with the dresser.

‘And solemnly I assure you that at that unexpected report of the gun, such an agonizing pang shot through me, heart and soul and body, that I was ready to faint, ready to die of fear.

‘We stayed there till dawn, unable to stir or utter a word in the grip of a horror I cannot describe.

‘No one ventured to move the barricade till we saw, through a chink in the pent-roof, a slender ray of daylight.

‘At the foot of the wall, close against the door, lay the old dog with a bullet in his throat. He had got out of the court yard by digging a hole under the fence.’

The man with the bronzed face ceased speaking. Then he added:

‘That night I was in no danger whatever. But I would rather go through again all the worst perils I have encountered than that single moment when the gun was fired at that hairy face at the window.’

With affection,

Ruben