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Updated: May 24, 2025
He wanted to imprison his nameless misery in words. At the end of an hour, nine more or less complete lines emerged from among the blots and scratchings. "I do not know what I desire When summer nights are dark and still, When the wind's many-voiced quire Sleeps among the muffled branches. I long and know not what I will: And not a sound of life or laughter stanches Time's black and silent flow.
It continued for two hours with short sighs, corrugations of small foreheads, the complaining cries and scratchings of slate pencils over slates, and other signs of minor anguish among the more youthful of the flock; and with more or less whisperings, movements of the lips, and unconscious soliloquy among the older pupils.
How I divined it I do not know, because this time I could hear no sound in the starry obscurity of the Western Catskills, save only those familiar forest sounds which never cease by night unseen stirrings of sleeping birds, the ruffle, of feathers, the sudden rustle of some furry thing alarmed, the scratchings and pickings in rotting windfalls, the whisper of some falling leaf severed by insects or relaxing its brief clasp of the mother stem in the precocity of a maturity premature.
Had he scratched his own particular name with the scratchings of beasts and things, stamped his cracked marrowbones with his own particular seal, trade-marked his weapons of stone with his own particular device, that particular man would we remember. But he did the best he could, and we remember him as best we may. Homer takes his place with Achilles and the Greek and Trojan heroes.
Slowly the centuries rolled on perhaps ten, perhaps twenty in a silence no longer even disturbed by the scratchings of the worms, long since dead. And a day came when, at the side of the entrance, the same blows were heard again. . . . And this time it was the robbers.
He had sent written orders that Tremlett should bring Pike, and leave him in his dressing-room beyond and all the while his mother had talked he had heard suppressed whines and scratchings.
Then, with nothing left to occupy her mind but the terrors of her situation, the woman found those stealthy scratchings and sniffings, and the strain of the silences that fell between, were more than she could endure. At first, she thought of getting a couple of blazing sticks, throwing open the shack door, and deliberately attacking her besieger.
The Trapper, whose curiosity was now thoroughly excited, applied his eye to the opening, and as he did so there suddenly issued from the box the most unearthly noises, accompanied by such scratchings and clawings as could only have proceeded from animals of their nature under such extraordinary treatment as they had experienced.
The next time I saw him repeat this action, I was induced to inquire into the cause of his terror. He asked whether I had not heard howlings and scratchings. On being answered in the negative, he suddenly threw himself on his knees, extending his arms in a defensive posture, and forcibly threw back his head and body.
Our course was directed towards Mungeesa Peak, the remarkable projecting spur, between which and a conical hill the path led. Whether on the elephants or on foot, the thorny jujubes, Acacias, etc. were most troublesome, and all our previous scratchings were nothing to this.
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