'Sir,' said I, with my most commanding manners, 'you are a coward.'

And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who hastened
to retire within their fortifications; and the famous door was

closed again, but not till I had overheard the sound of laughter.
FILIA BARBARA PATER BARBARIOR. Let me say it in the plural: the

Beasts of Gevaudan.
The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I ploughed distressfully

among stones and rubbish-heaps. All the other houses in the
village were both dark and silent; and though I knocked at here and

there a door, my knocking was unanswered. It was a bad business; I
gave up Fouzilhac with my curses. The rain had stopped, and the

wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my coat and trousers.
'Very well,' thought I, 'water or no water, I must camp.' But the

first thing was to return to Modestine. I am pretty sure I was
twenty minutes groping for my lady in the dark; and if it had not

been for the unkindly services of the bog, into which I once more
stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn. My

next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was
cold as well as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded district, I

should have been so long in finding one, is another of the
insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but I will take my

oath that I put near an hour to the discovery.
At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly

crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness right in
front. I call it a cave without exaggeration; to pass below that

arch of leaves was like entering a dungeon. I felt about until my
hand encountered a stout branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a

haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered my pack, laid
it along the wall on the margin of the road, and unbuckled the

straps. I knew well enough where the lantern was; but where were
the candles? I groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and,

while I was thus groping, suddenly I touched the spirit-lamp.
Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. The wind roared

unwearyingly among the trees; I could hear the boughs tossing and
the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of

my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably
sheltered. At the second match the wick caught flame. The light

was both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe,
and doubled the darkness of the surrounding night.

I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half
the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against

the morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took
off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof,

arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping-
bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in

like a bambino. I opened a tin of Bologna sausage and broke a cake
of chocolate, and that was all I had to eat. It may sound

offensive, but I ate them together, bite by bite, by way of bread
and meat. All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat

brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare and
hungry; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes in my

experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of
my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand,

and snuggled well down among the sheepskins.
I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating

faster than usual, as if with an agreeableexcitement to which my
mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that

subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come
separate. The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it

sounded for minutes together with a steady, even rush, not rising
nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great

crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big
drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own

bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert
of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the

trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside
and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a

different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and
hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body

and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort
was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one

of wonder at the foreign clamour in my ears.
Twice in the course of the dark hours - once when a stone galled me

underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine,
growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road - I was recalled for

a brief while to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and
the lace-like edge of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke

for the third time (Wednesday, September 25th), the world was
flooded with a blue light, the mother of the dawn. I saw the

leaves labouring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on
turning my head, there was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing

half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I
closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the experience of

the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had
been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me

would not have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold
in the opaque night; and I had felt no other convenience" target="_blank" title="n.不方便；打扰">inconvenience, except

when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of
Peyrat's PASTORS OF THE DESERT among the mixed contents of my

sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and
awakened with unusually lightsome and clear sensations.

With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters,
and, breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled

about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses,
left on Ithaca, and with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not

more pleasantlyastray. I have been after an adventure all my
life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and

heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random
woodside nook in Gevaudan - not knowing north from south, as

strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an
inland castaway - was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised.

I was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few
beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in front, it

broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy
dale. All around there were bare hilltops, some near, some far

away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much
higher than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden

specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the
sky was full of strings and shreds of vapour, flying, vanishing,

reappearing, and turning about an axis like tumblers, as the wind
hounded them through heaven. It was wild weather and famishing

cold. I ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and
smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to disable my

fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and had made my
pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the

threshold of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane,
before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over

some cloud mountains that lay ranged along the eastern sky.
The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. I

buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a pleasant frame of
mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic

once more in front of me. Nor only that, but there was the old
gentleman who had escorted me so far the night before, running out

of his house at sight of me, with hands upraised in horror.
'My poor boy!' he cried, 'what does this mean?'

I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like clappers
in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go; but when he heard

of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind.
'This time, at least,' said he, 'there shall be no mistake.'