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His hands and face were the colour of mulberry stain by long exposure to the sun, while his eyes looked forth like two watch-fires outside a wolf-haunted camp. His long pigtail was tangled with the binding tendrils of the forest, and damp with the dew of an open couch.
And now came shouts and cries with a prodigious confusion and running to and fro about the dying watch-fires. Trumpets blared shrill, hoarse voices roared commands that passed unheeded in the growing din and tumult that swelled to a wild clamour of frenzied shouting: "Fly! fly! Pertolepe is upon us! 'tis the Red Pertolepe!"
The red light of innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chimera, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight, the swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides, striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides' arrows!
"Quite operatic, and better than old Drury," I heard Mr Moynham say; but we were all too depressed and uncomfortable from our constrained attitudes to feel inclined to appreciate the picturesque, the brigands having taken us off the horses, and flung us down on the ground, having this time bound even Bob and myself; indeed, they treated us with even less attention than they would have bestowed on anything eatable, judging by the care they evinced in their cuisine, although they did not offer us anything either to eat or drink, much to Mr Moynham's great chagrin especially, nor did they give us the slightest covering to protect us from the night air when the waning watch-fires told us that bedtime save the mark had arrived.
Behind that wall we halted and called one to the other to find out who had escaped and who had fallen in the onslaught Hector made. Only when he had driven us behind our wall did Hector turn back his chariot and draw off his men." "But Hector has not gone through the gates of the City. Look now, Achilles! His chariots remain on the plain. Lo now, his watch-fires!
Then they rode slowly back, despondent at what they had seen,—the haughty dignity of the Inca and the strength and discipline of his army. That night there were gloomy forebodings throughout the camp, which were increased as its occupants saw the watch-fires of the Peruvian army, glittering on the hill-sides, as one said, "as thick as the stars in heaven."
When the darkness began to fall, Bertragh Castle came in sight far below a gray crag jutting up from the plain, scarped and embattled, the sea behind it and the watch-fires of men twinkling from its keep. All about lay farms and steads, and the lowing of byred cattle rose on the evening air when the snow ceased. "Be careful not to drink or eat in that hall," warned Cathbarr blackly.
There were no lights where the tents stood, so he judged that even the accustomed natives had found the added heat of Mahommed Gunga's watch-fires intolerable and had raked them out; but from where he imagined that the village must be came the dum-tu-dum-tu-dum of tom-toms, like fever blood pulsating in the veins of devils of the night. The punka-wallah slept.
Elsewhere, miles and miles along the foot of the Mountains, Austrian-Saxon watch-fires flame through the ambrosial night; and it is an impressive sight for Dumoulin, still more for the poor Schoolmaster at Pilgramshayn and others, less concerned than Dumoulin.
The natives in the village were equally distrustful. They didn't herd the cattle up from the meadows where they had been pastured, but they lighted watch-fires along the edge of the mound as soon as it became dark. It was three hours after nightfall when something on the indicator-board for the robot sentries went off like a startled rattlesnake.
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