Collected Short Stories. Patrick O’Brian

gaunt bones hung up in chains.

      It was a wood in as natural a state as it could be, for no one had cut it, planted or touched it: it was too far, too isolated by the rocks and precipices for the charcoal burners even. But to him it looked unnatural, a wan Golgotha of a wood.

      There were ancient trees that had died where they stood, and some had fallen, bringing down others: there were ancient trees that still lived, enormous slow eruptions that had been glorious but that now were three parts dead, massive limbs that towered up beyond the screen of leaves, dead and naked in the sea of green. There were very few young trees, and even those few were grey: everything was grey now, beneath the barrier of the leaves.

      At the bottom of the slope, far down, a cataract in the stream sent up a continuous noise that made the silence stronger. He sat there, wondering if he would ever hear the trees, and he sat comfortably on his moss-buried rock, quite relaxed, leaning his head back against the broad stone, slowly drawing in fresh strength (it had been a cruel journey). His mind wandered at large; but it did not wander far, not so far that it did not return with an instant spasm when there was a sound behind him.

      It was to his left, in the higher wood behind him. With his neck rigid he kept his head still; a movement is seen when stillness is not. And the sound was crossing behind him.

      There are sounds made in spite of an intention to make no sound: they are not like common noises. There are small sounds made by large things, and they are different: a blackbird scuffling in dead leaves may make more noise, but it is not the same.

      Now it was directly behind him: it must be nearly by the hollies, he said, with all his senses sharpened to the last degree, but strained backwards and his useless eyes unseeing. His mouth was half open, and his nostrils flared; he breathed, but very faintly.

      The noise stopped. He grew more rigid, and his right hand, poised above his knee, slowly clenched to. From the first second he had known that something was in presence: now it knew; and this was the crisis now.

      Then from the centre to the right, faster, and more quietly now: it was on his right side and his eyes, forced to the corner (but his head quite rigid still) pierced with all their force. The sound, now stronger, and his head jerked round; and there fleeting among the trees, the glimpse of a tall grey form, far bigger than the dog he feared.

      Breathing normally again, and easy now against his rock, he closed his mouth: the tension died all over his body.

      Cold: it was growing cold, and he gathered in his warmth, sitting closer, buttoned up his coat. With the creeping shadows the naked trunks stood barer still, with a light of their own under the darkening canopy.

      Now he was leaning forwards, waiting actively: it was nearly time. He caught it at once, the low far whistle away on the right hand: he was half up, and across his field of view the tall grey wolf ran back through the trees, headed, fast but unhurried, almost noiseless.

      The whistle again, and he answered; a clear, true whistle. A distant voice, well known, carried across on the silent air. ‘Aa-oo, aa-oo,’ and ‘Aa-oo, aa-oo,’ he answered.

      Leaning on the silence he waited, and the words came clear, calling over the distance, ‘Come back again, man: come back at the dark of the moon.’

The Tunnel at the Frontier

      LOOKING UP he saw the sea at the end of the tunnel, the line of the horizon sharp, dividing the round mouth. On the sea, brilliant light, and a boat with a man in it, doing something with a net over the edge. Outside the tunnel the world was blazing with a white glare, but inside he could hardly see: there was a dull, sweating concrete path, and the walls curved, arching overhead.

      What the devil was the sea doing at the end of that tunnel? The sea? From that he asked himself What tunnel? and he paused, walked slower, coming up from the abstraction into which he had sunk. The tunnel must have been familiar, or he would not have wondered about the sea. Did he usually walk along it the other way?

      He recalled getting off the train, with a crowd of other people, their noise as they hurried through the tunnel with their feet echoing and flapping. They had hurried intently past him, although at first he had gone fast, imitating them. Now they had all gone and alone he went slowly: lagging still in his ear was the sound of the last people, their resonant feet before they left the tunnel to him.

      It was like waking up from a strong dream, one so strong that for minutes you lie on the borders of the dream and reality and wonder which is which. But it did not clear: there at the end of the tunnel was the sea, stretched tight, the flood of sunlit air, and all enclosed by the mouth of the tube, a round patch of another world, infinitely remote, and unreal – not so much distance (though the tunnel was still long before him) as on another plane.

      Slowly he went now, very slowly, his feet going of themselves. His mind was still heavy, turning slowly. It had been warm in the train: and everybody had got out.

      There were books under his arm; it was cramped with carrying them. He had been reading a book in the train, wedged in the blind corner by the corridor: people were standing all the way; he had not been able to see out. He must have been reading a long time before he went off into this meditation. The book had been about a man – he moved his hand to look at the book’s title, but it was much too dark in the tunnel. It had been about a man who had loved a woman and had married her, and they had lived very happily, part of one another for years and years, and she had died. She had been killed in the war: or had she died? Was he confusing it again?