It was a homing instinct that took him to the boat, for the boat was associated in his mind with safety and peace and quiet dreams. But, as he remembered only just in time, it was also associated with Bikkoo. Therefore to enter it, to touch it, would be the craziest folly. Bikkoo was dead: a friend had become a demon, and hostile. For the dead are lonely and resentful. They lust after the lost delight of living, and seek, in envy of our felicity, to draw us after them into the everlasting night. They cannot forgive us for being alive when they are dead. They hold us, indeed, guilty of their death, and we ourselves, though it be against all reason, feel twinges of doubt and remorse. We did not contrive it, but could we not perhaps have prevented it, and aren’t we in some obscure fashion profiting by it? Ogo was innocent enough. Even in the terror of being hunted he could grieve that his friend was lost to him. But his conscience was guilty: the belief was deep-rooted that the dead had a grudge against him, and against all living souls. So Bikkoo’s boat, by means of which he could perhaps have put the river between himself and his pursuers, must not be touched. But, though they were close at his heels, he was already hidden by trees from even the foremost of his enemies; and now with new hope he gave himself to the task of running. He ran on and on: at first with the mounting speed of frenzy, but later, his fears subsiding, at a swift unvarying pace. Running became a habit, effortless and unnoticed; and morning had already half spent itself before he lay down to rest. He was deep in the forest. His surroundings were strange to him. There was no sound of following feet.
Noon came and passed. Dusk fell. With darkness all his old terrors came creeping upon him. That he had eaten nothing since daybreak, the meat having been abandoned with the boat, was no great matter; for it often happened that he went for days without food and suffered no harm. By now he had forgotten his pursuers, remembering only the wild beasts of the forest, and the still wilder demons. He remembered Bikkoo and began chattering prayers at him. ‘Very good friends, Bikkoo. Don’t be angry with me. Don’t hate me. Don’t follow me. Go away. Very good friends.’ He hoped that Bikkoo might be cajoled into good humour by this repetition of his own favourite phrase. For a long while he dared not abandon his body to sleep, lest, while it lay empty, the soul being away on its wanderings, it should be entered and possessed by the homeless spirit of the dead man; for there is no end to the malice and cunning of demons. But at length for very weariness he crawled into the deep obscurity of the undergrowth and made himself a nest for the night. By great good luck he had come upon a stream, whose voice, cool and clear like the voice of a small warbling bird, reached him still where he lay curled up on a bed of bracken. He slept lightly, easily, with ears awake, and rising at the first beginning of day resumed his eager aimless journeying. He drank deep of the stream and felt fresh and strong, but hunger sent him searching for food until he found a nest of mice. That was good eating indeed, and a handful of fungus went well with it. He made a good meal.