The story revolves around a canoe trip down the Danube. Along their way, the two protagonists--the narrator and his Swedish compatriot--stumble into a lonely place ruled by forces that manifest themselves through strange events and impressions. For example, they see what seems (but turns out not) to be a corpse floating down the river:
Blackwood uses hints and abstractions to present the menace, thereby leaving the reader's imagination free to run."Good heavens, it's a man's body!" he cried excitedly. "Look!"
A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.
"An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining in the sunlight.
"The Willows" first appeared in The Listener and Other Stories (1907). According to weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi, Blackwood drew his inspiration from two canoe trips that he had taken down the Danube.
