"It _is_--YOU, isn't it, Defago?" he asked under his breath, horror
breaking his speech.
And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud answer before the other had
time to move his lips. "Of course it is! Of course it is! Only--can't
you see--he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and terror! Isn't _that_
enough to change a man beyond all recognition?" It was said in order to
convince himself as much as to convince the others. The overemphasis
alone proved that. And continually, while he spoke and acted, he held a
handkerchief to his nose. That odor pervaded the whole camp.
For the "Defago" who sat huddled by the big fire, wrapped in blankets,
drinking hot whisky and holding food in wasted hands, was no more like
the guide they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of sixty is
like a daguerreotype of his early youth in the costume of another
generation. Nothing really can describe that ghastly caricature, that
parody, masquerading there in the firelight as Defago. From the ruins of
the dark and awful memories he still retains, Simpson declares that the
face was more animal than human, the features drawn about into wrong
proportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
wailing imitation of a voice.
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