Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/286

 darkness in the forest would be too absolute for even the Sakai to force a way through the thickets during the earlier hours of the night. Also the fugitives were almost worn out by their prolonged exertions. Not daring to kindle a fire, lest its light should serve as a guide to their pursuers, they squatted in a drag- gled woebegone group, seeking warmth and comfort by close physical contact with one another. They were chilled by the rain and miserably cold; they had eaten nothing since the dawn, and they had but a few blackened yams and roots between them with which to assuage their hunger; their straggly mops of hair were drenched, and the skin diseases with which they were covered caused their bodies to itch distractingly. Bu all material discomforts were forgotten in the agony of terror which wrung their hearts.

Shortly after midnight they all awoke, suddenly and simultaneously. They had been sleeping in sitting attitudes, with their knees drawn up to their chins, and their heads nodding above them. They spoke no word, but they listened breathlessly. The yowling moan of a tiger was sounding about half a mile away to the south. The brute drew nearer and nearer, moaning and howling from time to time, and prolonging each complaining note with a wanton delight in its own unmusical song. It was the call of a full-fed tiger which cared not how rudely he dis- turbed the forest silence and warned the jungle of his presence. The Sakai, besel at once by material and superstitious fears, cowered miserably and drew nearer still to one another. Thus for more than half an