In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

Professor Dick’s Academy: A Strange Adventure

“Bodily rest is sleep – is soothing sleep,
Spirit rest is silence deep,
O daily discord! cease, for mercy cease,
Break not this happy peace.”

The caravan lay high up on a lonely moorland, amid the solitary grandeur of the Grampian mountains – a thousand good feet and over above the level of the sea.

The scenery around us was desolate in the extreme, for no vestige of human life, no house, no hut, not even a patch of cultivated land, was anywhere to be seen around us. Above was the blue sky, with here and there a fleecy cloud, and yonder an eagle soaring. Around us, as a horizon, the eternal hills, many of them flecked and patched with the snows, that never melt. Far beneath, at one side, was a stream; though not visible, we could hear its drowsy chafing roar, as it tumbled onwards, forming many a foaming cataract, to seek for outlet in some distant lake. On the other side was a good Scotch mile of heathery moor, blazing purple and crimson in the sunshine.

Here and there, on grassy banks, great snakes glittered and basked in the noontide heat, while agile lizards crept over the stones or stood panting on the heath-stems, to stalk the flies.

It was strangely silent up here. We could listen to the lambkins, bleating miles away, and the strange wild cry of mountain plover and ptarmigans, while the song of insects flitting from alpine flower to alpine flower was pleasant music to the ear.

On the right I could see the dark tops of pine-trees. But they were far away. Never mind, I would walk towards them. I so love forests and woodlands.

No, I would have no companion save my trusty friend Bob. A word was sufficient to deter Maggie May from accompanying me in my ramble. That word was “Snakes!” Frank was not so easily shaken off; but when I told him I was probably going to write verses, he refrained from forcing his company on me. So Bob and I set out on our rambles alone. Verses? Well, verses come sometimes when least expected. Better than wooing the muse, is being quiet and letting the muse woo you.

But a sweet spirit of melancholy was over me to-day. I wished for silence, I longed for solitude. A breeze was murmuring and sighing through the weird black trees of the forest when I entered it, and I sat me down on a stone to listen to its wail. Nature seemed whispering some sad tale to my ears alone. This to me was spirit rest.

It was indeed a strange forest. The trees were all dark firs, though not tall and not close together. But I had never seen such trees before. Gnarled and bent and fantastic, taking shapes and casting shadows that positively looked uncanny. I had not walked an hour among them till I fancied myself in some enchanted wood, and almost wished myself out of it and away. I stooped down more than once to smooth and talk to the great Newfoundland, to reassure myself; and once, when passing an ugly brown pool of water, I started almost with fright as some water-birds sprang whirring into the air in front of me.

Still I had as yet no thoughts of retracing my footsteps.

When, at last, I climbed a rocky mound and saw the sun going right away down behind a hill, like a ball of blood, I made up my mind to get homewards at once.

But in which direction did the caravan lie? My answer to this was a very hazy one. However, standing on this mound would not help me, so I set out to retrace my steps.

For fully half an hour I walked in what I considered the right direction, but I did not come to the pond again, and the trees seemed different – more close together, and more weird-looking and uncanny, if that were possible.

I got tired at last and sat down.

I had been pensive when I started, I was now perplexed. No wonder, for night was coming on. Stars were glinting out in the east, a big brown owl flew close over me, with a most melancholy shriek of “tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo,” that made my blood feel cold.

I was lost!

Yes, but what had I to fear? I thought I had been lost before, lost in Afric wilds, on prairie lands, and in Greenland mists: was I going to be baffled by a Highland forest and moorland?

“Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!”

A sweet spirit of melancholy is very nice, but one may have too much of it.

“Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!”

Bother the bird. His wings too are flapping on the night air, and rustling as they say evil spirits do.

The trees grow more uncanny-looking every minute, and after going on and on for fully twenty minutes more, these ghostly ill-omened pines positively seem to advance to meet me, and wave their gnarled arms in the starlit air as I pass.

“Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo-oo.”

Horrible!

“Bob, my boy, bark, speak, and scare that awful bird.”

“Wowff – wowff – wowff!”

Listen! Hark!

At no great distance we can hear the sharp “Yap! yap! woo-oo” of a shepherd’s collie. No mistaking it. It cannot be a fox, and there are no wolves about.

I take my bearings by a star that shines over the place from which the barking appeared to come, and Bob and I make straight in that direction. To our great joy and relief, we presently emerge from among the black-branched uncanny trees, and on the moor, at no great distance, see a light streaming from the open door of a hut.

A creature very like a wolf, with hair all on end, comes grumbling and yelping in a most threatening way to meet us.

“Let me settle him,” says Bob.

“No, Bob,” I reply. “He is watching his master’s house. He is right.”

But one glance at Bob is enough for the collie. He disappears – goes bounding away over the hill, evidently to seek his master, for when we enter the one-roomed hut we find it deserted.

There is a bright fire on a low hearth, however, and the smoke finds its way up a real chimney, and not through a hole in the roof, as is the case so often in Highland shepherd huts. There is a pot hanging over the fire, simmering away slowly, and raising its lid a little every now and then to emit a whiff of steam, so savoury that Master Bob begins to lick his lips, and seems to wonder that I do not at once proceed to have supper.

I shake my head, as he looks up in my face inquiringly.

“No, no, Bob,” I say; “that pot does not belong to me.”

“Nonsense,” says Bob; at least he thinks it. “Nonsense, master, all the world belongs to you if you could only believe it. You’re king of the universe, in my mind at all events.”

We sit and look at the pot. There is an old-fashioned wag-at-the-wall clock, tick-ticking away, but no other sound. After a time the clock clears its throat, and slowly rasps out the hour of nine, then goes quietly on tick-ticking again.

A whole hour passes. The clock clears its throat once more and gives ten wheezy knocks.

Bob suggests supper more emphatically. I am getting very weary.

Those we left behind us must think we are indeed lost, or swallowed up in a quagmire. The thought makes me very uneasy, and I begin almost to wish my adventure in the weird forest may be all a dream, that presently the peat-fire, pot and soup and all may vanish, and I may wake in bed.

But while thus musing I am startled very much indeed, and so too is Bob, at hearing a cracked and dismal world-old voice close beside me say with a long-drawn sigh:

“Heigho! I wonder what o’clock it is!”

There is no one in the room, not a soul to be seen.

Next moment, from another direction, but whether above or beneath I cannot be sure, issues a low, half-demoniacal laugh of self-satisfaction.

“Ha! ha! ha!”

The great dog starts up. His hair is on end all along his spine. He growls low and glances fearfully round him as if he expected to see a spectre.

Again the mournful old-world voice and the long-drawn sigh.