Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/260

 cold fingers about his heart. It was accompanied by an uneasy feeling in the small of his back, as though a spearthrust in that particular part of his person was momentarily to be expected, and a clammy dampness broke out upon his forehead, while the skin behind his ears felt unwontedly cold. Danger that he could see and face had never had any power to awe him, but his isolation and the invisibility of his enemies combined to produce in him some curious phenomena. Perhaps even Kûlop of the Harelip needed no man to tell him that he was experiencing fear.

He built up his fire, and sat near the blaze, trying to still the involuntary chattering of his teeth. If he could get at grips with his foes, fear, he knew, would leave him; but this eerie, uncanny sensation of being watched and hounded by crafty enemies whom he could not see was sawing his nerves to rags. From time to time he glanced uneasily over his shoulder, and at last wedged his body in between the barrier roots of a big tree, so that he might be secure from assault from behind. As he sat thus, leaning slightly backward, he chanced to glance up, and in a treetop. some fifty yards away, he saw the crouching form of a Sâkai outlined blackly against the moonlit sky, amidst a network of boughs and branches.

In an instant he was on his feet, and again the sórak rang out, as he flung himself at the underwood, striving to tear his way through it to the foot of the tree in which his enemy had been perched. But the jungle was thick and the shadows were heavy; he