The trees in this forest were huge and of a variety of cedar, but did not grow closely together; also there was practically no undergrowth, perhaps for the reason that their dense, spreading tops shut out the light.  As I saw afterwards both trunks and boughs were clothed with long grey moss, which even at midday gave the place a very ghostly appearance.  The darkness beneath those trees was intense, literally we could not see an inch before our faces.  Yet rather than stand still we struggled on, Hans leading the way, for his instincts were quicker than ours.  The steep rise of the ground beneath our feet told us that we were going uphill, as we wished to do, and from time to time I consulted a pocket compass I carried by the light of a match, knowing from previous observations that the top of the Holy Mount lay due north.

Thus for hour after hour we crept up and on, occasionally butting into the trunk of a tree or stumbling over a fallen bough, but meeting with no other adventures or obstacles of a physical kind.  Of moral, or rather mental, obstacles there were many, since to all of us the atmosphere of this forest was as that of a haunted house.  It may have been the embracing darkness, or the sough of the night wind amongst the boughs and mosses, or the sense of the imminent dangers that we had passed and that still awaited us.  Or it may have been unknown horrors connected with this place of which some spiritual essence still survived, for without doubt localities preserve such influences, which can be felt by the sensitive among living things, especially in favouring conditions of fear and gloom.  At any rate I never experienced more subtle and yet more penetrating terrors than I did upon that night, and afterwards Ragnall confessed to me that my case was his own.  Black as it was I thought that I saw apparitions, among them glaring eyes and that of the elephant Jana standing in front of me with his trunk raised against the bole of a cedar.  I could have sworn that I saw him, nor was I reassured when Hans whispered to me below his breath, for here we did not seem to dare to raise our voices: 

“Look, Baas.  Is it Jana glowing like hot iron who stands yonder?”

“Don’t be a fool,” I answered.  “How can Jana be here and, if he were here, how could we see him in the night?” But as I said the words I remembered Harut had told us that Jana had been met with on the Holy Mount “in the spirit or in the flesh.”  However this may be, next instant he was gone and we beheld him or his shadow no more.  Also we thought that from time to time we heard voices speaking all around us, now here, now there and now in the tree tops above our heads, though what they said we could not catch or understand.