Page:The land of fetish.pdf/182

 was in a hurry to return to a good bed and something fit to eat.

"You have walked perhaps in the forest at night mon ami, and you know the feeling of awe which the darkness, the silence, and the sombre trees, with their long arms reaching towards you, awakes within one. The night was dark, dark as a pit; not a sound was to be heard but the rustling of our feet on the dead leaves, and the grey trunks of the trees stood up all round in the forest like spectres. I was very tired—I had been walking nearly all day, and we did not get along very quickly; so that about nine o'clock we were still in the forest, and neither the Krooboys nor myself were sure that we were in the right path—we had passed several forks, and had taken the road that seemed to lead towards the sea, but you know how these paths twist and wind about.

"Suddenly, in the midst of the dead silence, a chorus of howls and screams, the most horrible, the most blood-curdling, rose up in the depths of the forest, and died away in a long, low, melancholy wail. I was startled—not frightened—for I am not more superstitious than most men; but the cries had been so sudden, and were so strange, that we all stopped still. All was as silent as the tomb, and we were so quiet that I could hear the breathing of the