The Thing from—Outside
George Allan England
"They sat about their camp-fire, that little party of Americans retreating southward from Hudson Bay before the on-coming menace of the great cold. Sat there, stolid under the awe of the North, under the uneasiness that the day’s trek had laid upon their souls. The three men smoked. The two women huddled close to each other. Fireglow picked their faces from the gloom of night among the dwarf firs. A splashing murmur told of the Albany River’s haste to escape from the wilderness, and reach the Bay.
"'I don’t see what there was in a mere circular print on a rock-ledge to make our guides desert,' said Professor Thorburn. His voice was as dry as his whole personality. 'Most extra ordinary.'
"'They knew what it was, all right,' answered Jandron, geologist of the party. 'So do I.' He rubbed his cropped mustache. His eyes glinted grayly. 'I’ve seen prints like that before. That was on the Labrador. And I’ve seen things happen, where they were.'
"'Something surely happened to our guides, before they’d got a mile into the bush,' put in the Professor’s wife; while Vivian, her sister, gazed into the fire that revealed her as a beauty, not to be spoiled even by a tam and a rough-knit sweater. 'Men don’t shoot wildly, and scream like that, unless—'
"'They’re all three dead now, anyhow,' put in Jandron. 'So they’re out of harm’s way. While we—well, we’re two hundred and fifty wicked miles from the C.P.R. rails.'
"'Forget it, Jandy!' said Marr, the journalist. 'We’re just suffering from an attack of nerves, that’s all. Give me a fill of ’baccy. Thanks. We’ll all be better in the morning. Ho-hum! Now, speaking of spooks and such—'
"He launched into an account of how he had once exposed a fraudulent spiritualist, thus proving—to his own satisfaction—that nothing existed beyond the scope of mankind’s everyday life. But nobody gave him much heed. And silence fell upon the little night-encampment in the wilds; a silence that was ominous.
"Pale, cold stars watched down from spaces infinitely far beyond man’s trivial world." . . .
