Its
entry, as I say, was gentle, hardly noticeable, in fact, to most of us:
singularly undramatic it certainly was. But, then, in actual life this
is often the way the dreadful climaxes move upon us, leaving the heart
undisturbed almost to the last minute, and then overwhelming it with a
sudden rush of horror. For it was the custom at breakfast to listen
patiently while each in turn related the trivial adventures of the
night--how they slept, whether the wind shook their tent, whether the
spider on the ridge pole had moved, whether they had heard the toad, and
so forth--and on this particular morning Joan, in the middle of a little
pause, made a truly novel announcement:
"In the night I heard the howling of a dog," she said, and then flushed
up to the roots of her hair when we burst out laughing. For the idea of
there being a dog on this forsaken island that was only able to support
a snake and two toads was distinctly ludicrous, and I remember Maloney,
half-way through his burnt porridge, capping the announcement by
declaring that he had heard a "Baltic turtle" in the lagoon, and his
wife's expression of frantic alarm before the laughter undeceived her.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128