Where a tree had
fallen within the last century or so, these creepers ramped upwards in
luxuriance, their stems thick as the body of a man, drinking the shaft
of light that pierced downwards, drinking it with eagerness ere the
boughs above met again and starved them. Where no tree had fallen the
creepers were thin and weak; from year to year they lived on feebly,
biding their time, but still they lived, knowing that some day it would
come. And always it was coming to those expectant parasites, since from
minute to minute, somewhere in the vast depths, miles and miles away
perhaps, a great crash echoed in the stillness, the crash of a tree
that, sown when the Saxons ruled in England, or perhaps before Cleopatra
bewitched Anthony, came to its end at last.
On the second day of their march in the forest Alan chanced to see such
a tree fall, and the sight was one that he never could forget. As it
happened, owing to the vast spread of its branches which had killed out
all rivals beneath, for in its day it had been a very successful tree
embued with an excellent constitution by its parent, it stood somewhat
alone, so that from several hundred yards away as these six human beings
crept towards it like ants towards a sapling in a cornfield, its mighty
girth and bulk set upon a little mound and the luxuriant greenness of
its far-reaching boughs made a kind of landmark.
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