He made no immediate response to that dire intelligence. We all stood listening, waiting; but a silence pervaded the forest as deep as though it had never, since the day of creation, been broken by the faintest pulsation of sound.
Then, after some moments, Rhodes asked: "Sure, Bill, that we are being followed?"
"Yes! I tell you that I know that we are!"
"Well," said he, turning slowly, "I don't see that we can do anything about it, save keep a sharp lookout; and so on we go."
Whereupon he and the others started. I had turned to follow when that sound, low and mysterious as before, stopped me in my tracks. And in that very instant came another—a sharp interjection from Rhodes, instantaneously followed by a scream, the short, piercing scream of a woman.
I should have explained that we were in a dense growth of fem, a growth some ten or twelve feet in height—a meet place indeed for an ambuscade. Overhead, too, the branches met and intertangled—affording an excellent place for a bald-headed cat or some other arboreal monster to lie in wait and drop or spring upon any human or brute passing below.
Now, as I whirled to that exclamation and scream—the danger there behind forgotten in what was so imminent before—it was to find, to my indescribable fear and horror, that my companions, every single one of them, had vanished.
And that horror and fear which chilled my heart were enhanced by the fact that before me, where Rhodes and the Dromans must be, there was no agitation amongst the ferns, not the slightest movement amongst them. I was alone, alone in that fearful place of dense, concealing vegetation, of silence and mystery. But no; they were there, my companions, right there before me. The ferns hid them, that was all. But why were they so still? What had happened? That exclamation, that scream—the silence that had fallen!
It has taken some space to set this down, but it must not be imagined that the space itself during which I stood there was a long one. It was, in fact, very brief; it was no more, I suppose, than five or six seconds. Then I was moving forward through the crushed ferns, as swiftly as was consistent with caution and, of course, with the revolver gripped ready for instant action.
I had covered perhaps three yards, had reached the point where the way crushed through the fem-growth turned sharp to the left to pass between two great tree-trunks; then it was that I heard it—a low, rustling sound and close at hand.
Something was moving there—moving toward me!
Chapter 36
Gorgonic Horror
Almost that very instant I heard it, that low, rustling sound made by something moving through (as I thought) the fern growth, ceased. My companions! What had happened to them?
I began moving forward, every second that passed enhancing that horrible fear which chilled my heart. For each step took me nearer to, though not directly toward, that spot from which had come that mysterious sound.
Just as I was passing between those great tree-trunks, came a sound that fetched me up in my tracks, came a sudden low voice: "Oh, Bill!"
