He had no sort of conception or guess what this thing might be, but intuitively he knew that unless he got clear at once something awful would take place. He had no weapon, his thick staff he had dropped when stepping into the tangle. Underfoot, below the horrible stems, lay a rabble of sharp-edged stones, splinters from the heights above. In a frenzy, he thrust his hand recklessly between the stems and snatched up a triangular rock. The action was as instantaneous as the strike of a rattlesnake. Without a second’s pause, he crashed the sharp stone down on the thing gripping his arm, heedless of injury to his person.
The thing reared its bruised, blunted end as though in menace, yet it still held its grip tightly. He rained mad blows upon it, shredding his coat sleeve to ribbons and severely cutting his arm. Suddenly it fell to the ground cut in two. Kicking and struggling with the strength of frenzy, he tore his legs free from the strands which had wound around them. With one wild leap, he had cleared the mass and was speeding up the steep slope which confined the pool on its lower side. As he reached the top, no more than fifty feet above the water, he turned and stared backward.
It seemed to him that the whole clump was nearer to him and further from the water than its original position had been, and its general outline appeared more compact and raised higher above the ground. Even as he stared, a single length, slightly ahead, deliberately raised its tip a foot in the air with a swaying sideways motion, as though something sightless was seeking some object.
That was the finishing touch for Angus. With a hoarse yell of terror, he swung round and tore madly down the dangerous slope of Ben Cruaich.
These two strange narratives, distortedly condensed, were engulfed by one of the great news services and through the medium of the Press thrust upon the ever avid public. Millions read the paragraphs, and promptly forgot them. Batson was one of these millions, yet his imaginative subconscious self would not admit of a complete sloughing of such items, and they lay dormant until occasion was propitious for their resurrection.
Such an occasion arose but a few days later. It happened in Windsor Park. Batson was a mildly inveterate cyclist; that is to say, he owned a cheap machine and on Sundays took it religiously abroad. He found a certain modest enjoyment in the outing; moreover, it gave him the sense and satisfaction of a duty fulfilled; his duty in contributing his quota toward the national prejudice in favor of physical exertion when divorced from the slightest chance of pecuniary remuneration.
The day was a scorcher and the shade of the park after a two hours run a fitting reward. Therefore by noon he was sprawled on his back under an aged oak. A small weed-grown pond lay a few feet in front of him. He was away from the crowd which chattered and bustled at least a quarter of a mile distant, for he had taken an unusual step, both for Batson and for a law-abiding Briton. Having with secrecy and caution sealed the fence of a large covert, he slid his machine over and carefully hid it under a bush, and then pushed his way through the wood until he came upon this secluded pond with its deep grassed shady banks and inviting peace. This entirely met his heart's desires; it was great to lie there, alone, and forget the grind of life.
He awoke slowly, unwillingly. He must have slept some hours, for the light had greatly altered and the shadows were long. Batson moved and yawned drowsily. He felt strangely heavy and disinclined to arise. He would have liked to lie there indefinitely. But the chains of habit were pulling; he had always made a point of negotiating the London traffic before lighting-up time, and now he would have to put the pace up a notch to accomplish this. He rose to a sitting position; he certainly felt very queer, weak and washed out.
It puzzled him: he had felt as usual when he lay down—sleepy and pleasantly tired, that was all. Something irritating and clinging attracted his attention to his wrists. His right hand lay yet in the long grass, buried almost to the elbow. His gaze fell on his left hand which vested now upon his knee. It was streaked with long meandering lines of red. He held it up and examined it closely: some little brown threadlike stalks, thin and leafless, hung from his wrist. They seemed to be attached in some mysterious manner to his flesh and each point of attachment was the source of one of those meandering red lines whose other end he now perceived slowly dropped red blotches upon his trousers leg. Those streaks were blood—his own blood! Dumbfounded, he gazed at his upheld, dripping hand and the hanging scraps of withered-looking rubbish. What the deuce did it mean? What had happened? He drew his hand closer; why, from the lower ends of the withered grasslike stems little red drops were forming, exuding from this stuff; and even as he gazed two completed globules: detached themselves and fell heavily, with an audible splash, upon his clothes.
"Good lord!" exclaimed Batson, "they're drinking my blood!"
But they were so thin and insignificant-looking that he felt nothing beyond amazement and indignation.
"Some blasted foreign stuff these nobs have been raising," he muttered angrily, as yet too astonished to realize fully the extraordinary nature of such vegetation.
Then he became aware that his wrists were hurting him, a dull aching, akin to a rheumatic pain, possessed them, and there was a prickly tingling at his ankles—he was wearing low cycling shoes—and his attention was drawn to them.
The tall grass was here laid flat where he had moved in his slumber, and he could see that his feet and ankles were nearly hidden by a covering of these curious brown fibers, and for many feet around in and out of the grass he saw the ground was a mass of the stuff. He was certain that no such growth bad been there when he first lay down. He stooped, forgetting for a moment the clinging things around his wrist, and became aware that the slender threads were connected to dark reddish-brown tuberlike things about the size and somewhat the shape of a small hen’s egg, though irregular in outline and rough of surface; and they were moving! Moving with a motion which suggested that their filaments were cables upon which they hauled.
A sudden gust of revulsion and fear swept over him; he lifted one foot with its clinging tangle and brought it down viciously upon several of these tubers gathered closely together. The comparison of treading upon a monstrous and very soft slug flashed over him as from each side of his canvas shoe there shot a spirt of heavy red liquid which stained the dust-soiled cream of his shoe with ugly dark red blotches. There could be no doubt but it was blood, his blood!
Then, as with the men whose narratives he now suddenly and oddly recollected with a dawning comprehension of the association, a quick unreasoning fear fell upon Batson.
"Here, I've had enough of this blasted stuff! It's alive!" he exclaimed disjointedly, and tore the clinging threads from his wrist and experienced a disgust on finding that they felt in his grasp as though he had clutched a handful of soft slimy worms.
The stuff came away easily, and where it had been attached the blood welled out in heavy drops. Shuffling one foot against the other, he rapidly scraped his feet free and then, white and scared-looking, he made off at a pace that was
