Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it was the pallor on Hank’s face that fascinated him most.  He would willingly have stopped his ears and closed his eyes, had he dared.

“It don’t always keep to the ground neither,” came in Hank’s slow, heavy drawl, “for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all a-fire.  An’ it’ll take great thumpin’ jumps sometimes, an’ run along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an’ then droppin’ him jest as a fish hawk’ll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin’.  An’ its food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is—­moss!” And he laughed a short, unnatural laugh.  “It’s a moss-eater, is the Wendigo,” he added, looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions.  “Moss-eater,” he repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he could invent.

But Simpson now understood the true purpose of all this talk.  What these two men, each strong and “experienced” in his own way, dreaded more than anything else was—­silence.  They were talking against time.  They were also talking against darkness, against the invasion of panic, against the admission reflection might bring that they were in an enemy’s country—­against anything, in fact, rather than allow their inmost thoughts to assume control.  He himself, already initiated by the awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect.  He had reached the stage where he was immune.  But these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat trembling in the depths of his being.

Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered voices and a kind of taut inner resistance of spirit, this little group of humanity sat in the jaws of the wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and haunting legend.  It was an unequal contest, all things considered, for the wilderness had already the advantage of first attack—­and of a hostage.  The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing weight of oppression that finally became insupportable.

It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preceding ones that no one seemed able to break, who first let loose all this pent-up emotion in very unexpected fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the night.  He could not contain himself any longer, it seemed.  To make it carry even beyond an ordinary cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of his hand before his mouth.

“That’s for Defago,” he said, looking down at the other two with a queer, defiant laugh, “for it’s my belief”—­the sandwiched oaths may be omitted—­“that my ole partner’s not far from us at this very minute.”

There was a vehemence and recklessness about his performance that made Simpson, too, start to his feet in amazement, and betrayed even the doctor into letting the pipe slip from between his lips.  Hank’s face was ghastly, but Cathcart’s showed a sudden weakness—­a loosening of all his faculties, as it were.  Then a momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and he too, though with deliberation born of habitual self-control, got upon his feet and faced the excited guide.  For this was unpermissible, foolish, dangerous, and he meant to stop it in the bud.