When I left the office a small crowd of workers had gathered on the bank of a short canal which ran from the millpond into large dark orifices beneath the brick building, in which the rushing water turned underground wheels to power the saw. A line of wooden floats connected by a heavy chain closed the mouth of the canal against any influx of debris which might jam the wheels. Bobbing against this guardline were the bodies of numerous small animals. I walked into the knots of loitering millhands for a closer look at the animals—grey squirrels, chipmunks, and several large hares, forest dwellers which generally avoid the water. The squirrel which I examined bore no marks of disease or violence; it had apparently drowned, since the chest cavity was heavy with water. I remember that Varnum had spoken of similar occurrences during the past weeks, and a curious fear touched me for an instant. Had these animals actually sought out a water death, like the lemmings which I had seen literally choking the Trondheim Fjord in Norway the previous year? Or had something driven them before it, something so repugnant to even their coarse animal mentality that they preferred the water they abhorred to its presence?
I returned to the inn that afternoon puzzled both by the sight of the animals at the mill and by the fear of the townspeople at the mere mention of going north beyond the lumber camps. If necessary, I could go it alone—the previous autumn I had sighted from the air what I believed to be the remains of the chief Massaquoit campsite. But the location was thirty-five miles north of Dunstable, through an alien forest, and the going would not be easy.
I had not long been at the inn when a servant called with the message that Mr. Varnum would be pleased to entertain me at dinner that evening. Any company would have been preferable to the loneliness of the town after dark, so I accompanied the man in a wagon to the Varnum house, mystified at the sudden largesse of a person who seemed to resent my presence as one whom he could not awe with his authority.
My host met me at the door of his manse-like stone house. As he conducted me to his drawing room he smiled knowingly. “I hear you weren’t too successful at the feed store and mill today.”
“No,” I said, “all the men I asked seemed too busy for the project. Or perhaps they were a bit afraid at the prospect of going beyond the camps.”
“Craven, superstitious bumpkins, the lot of them! Since those animals began showing up at the mill, they’ve been acting like old women.” Varnum dismissed the subject with a contemptuous wave of the hand. He poured me what he called “a hearty old colonial drink,” aptly named The Dog’s Noses: a bumper of warm ale to which he added a jigger of gin. The taste was wretched, but I stomached it in deference to his attempt at hospitality.
“By the way—you saw the millpond today?” he asked.
“Yes, the animals have begun to appear again,” I said. “Forest creatures, which seldom go near the water. Puzzling, and a bit eerie.”
“Why, Mr. Grail-of-the-British-Museum,” said Varnum in mock surprise, “are you becoming a little unsure about the trip to find your sorcerer? Don’t tell me that a few waterlogged animals are giving a man of science cold feet!”
“My dear Varnum,” I replied, considerably nettled, “let me assure you that I have seen things far more eerie than a few squirrels bobbing in a millpond. Whatever the phenomenon, sir, it is all grist for the mill of science, and we will find it out.”
Varnum grunted and motioned me to the dining room where dinner was laid out by his decrepit house-keeper. The menu was a boiled New England dinner, more bland than the tasteless food which gluts Britannia. While eating I remarked on the gallery of portraits, mostly in American Primitive style, which covered the walls of the room. Varnum bore a striking resemblance to the first portrait, although the family features appeared in all of them—small, heavily lidded eyes, insipidity of the brow, large nose, and the surprise of a markedly narrow and thin-lipped mouth set between heavy and sensual jowls.
“You’ve noticed the resemblance between Prester and myself,” Varnum said, pausing in ravenous devoural of the steaming food. He shook his fork at the portrait. “A real rake—for one of the old guard he was a high-stepper. You should read his diaries. By Nick, I’ll show them to you, after supper.” He flicked a fragment of cabbage off his vest. “The folks used to tell me that I was the reincarnation of Prester. But it must go only skin deep—I have no time for women. Too much to be done—the mill, the town council, and now this damned business beyond the camps to be settled.”
I was amazed at his lack of interest in the subject of the ladies, myself having been without an amour since the pretty but petulant botanist at Harvard who had been a most charming companion until I became completely unnerved by the continual presence of beef-eating plants in her flat. Varnum’s sangfroid, I decided, was simply another aspect of the consuming ambition which drove the man to his displays of arrogance.
We rose from the wreckage of the dinner and re-entered the drawing room for cigars and a look at the diaries of Prester Varnum. My host excused himself to go and fetch them, indicating the liquor cabinet to me before he left. I surveyed the dismal array of American firewater, fit for no civilized gullet, my spirit sagging, until I saw a tenth of Cointreau forgotten in the corner. The sugary crystals on the bottle’s neck formed an unbroken seal—Varnum was obviously not an enthusiast of the delightful liqueur. I wrenched the cap off and poured myself a finger as he returned with several calf-bound octavos.
Varnum at first persisted in showing me the sections chronicling the romantic peccadilloes of his ancestor. These were of little interest, merely egomaniacal neighings of no great literary or historical merit. Far more to my use was the matter concerning the extinction of the Massaquoit tribe, of whose annihilation Prester was the root cause. The cramped and miniscule script coldbloodedly narrated the tragedy of this race.
In the spring of 1657 Prester Varnum, accompanied by his Mohegan guide, Mamtunc, had passed from the hamlet of Dunstable Northward along the Penaubsket seeking the extent of the pine resources in that area. During the journey they had surprised a woman of the Massaquoits. Putting aside his stern Calvinism for the nonce, Prester had enjoyed her despite Mamtunc’s warning about reprisals against Dunstable by her tribe. The woman later escaped and fled in shame back to her people.
Not long after, Prester had fallen ill with a fever in the forest, and was brought back to the settlement in a travois by the Mohegan. When they arrived the town was in the grip of the second outbreak of plague since its foundation nine years before. Worse, a friendly savage had informed the inhabitants that because a colonist had molested a wife of Pauquatoag, the Massaquoit shaman, the tribe was preparing for war.
During that black summer Dunstable buried its dead and readied itself for the Massaquoit onslaught. Smallpox claimed over a third of the villagers, including Mamtunc. But Prester Varnum recovered and was strong again by the time it was discovered that the Massaquoits had perished to a man, infected by the unknown white plague through the wife of Pauquatoag. The courier who brought the news also spoke of the curse which the sorcerer had levied upon the defiler of his wife—that the line of descent which produced such a man would end most horribly and in the same manner as the extinction of the Massaquoits. However, Prester discounted this a superstition and, indeed, came to a peaceful death in his sleep at seventy-two, leaving many children to mourn him both in Dunstable and the nearby Indian camps.
I closed the diaries of Prester Varnum and exhaled slowly. The narration of the needless extinction of the Massaquoits had depressed me considerably. But the flare of a match as my host lit his cold cigar, and then mine, brought me back among the living.