Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/606

 168 uncertainty of his fate, but above all that unheard-of act of favor and mercy which was almost superhuman, and which simply terrified him,—all these rent the old knight to the last degree. At times thought became torpid and dead in him, so that he lost power of seeing what was happening to him; but again fever roused him, and there rose in the man at once a certain dull feeling of despair, of loss, of ruin,—a feeling that all was now quenched, ended, gone, that a limit of some sort had been reached, that around him was naught but night and nothingness, and, as it were, a kind of ghastly pit filled with terror, to which he must go in every case.

"Go! go!" whispered suddenly some voice at his ear.

He looked around, and saw Death, in the form of a skeleton sitting on a skeleton horse, pushing along at his side there, and rattling his bones.

"Art thou here?" asked the Knight of the Cross.

"I am. Go on! go on!"

And at that moment Siegfried saw that he had a companion on the other side also; stirrup to stirrup with him was riding some kind of thing with a body like that of a man, but with a face that was not human, for the thing had a beast's head with ears standing erect, long, pointed, and covered with black hair.

"Who art thou?" cried Siegfried.

But that thing, instead of an answer, showed its teeth, and growled deeply.

Siegfried closed his eyes, but immediately he heard a louder rattle of bones, and a voice speaking into his very ear.

"It is time! it is time! hurry! go on!"

And he answered, "I go." But that answer came from his breast as if some one else had given it.

Then, as if pushed by some irresistible force from outside, he dismounted, and removed from his horse the high saddle of a knight, and then the bridle. His companions dismounted also, but did not leave him for the twinkle of an eye; they led him from the middle of the road to the edge of the forest. There the black vampire bent down a limb and then helped him to fasten the reins of the bridle to it.

"Hurry!" whispered Death.

"Hurry!" whispered certain voices from the tree tops. Siegfried, as it were sunk in sleep, drew the second rein through the buckle, made a halter, and standing on the