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A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face.
"Queer place, the moor!" said he.
"But what is it?"
"The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud."
I looked round with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from afar behind us.
"You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?" said I. "What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?"
"Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something."
"No, no, that was a living voice."
"Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?"
"No, I never did."
"It's a very rare bird - practically extinct in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, from The Complete Sherlock Holmes, v.II, Doubleday & Co., Inc., N.Y., 1953, p. 828-829.
TIME: late 19th century
PLACE: the moors
CIRCUMSTANCE: the audiowitnessing of the call of the Hound of the Baskervilles
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