United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Every one of them carried a pole over his shoulder, and the horrified watchers knew well enough that from the end of each pole fluttered the scalp of some Englishman. They learned from the Canadians that night that Fort Sandusky had been burned and its garrison murdered. A little later the Indians offered to exchange some prisoners with the English.
The twelve were all very tired, apparently, and went right to bed; a procedure which was straightway seconded by the four watchers on the earth. Which brings us in the most ordinary manner to the events of the next day. After breakfast all but Somat left the place and disappeared in various directions; and Rolla noted that the robes were, evidently, worn only at meal time.
There was no particular secrecy about the shipment, and detectives followed it. But when, at dark, the big gates of the dock were closed and locked and all seemed over for the day, the watchers assumed that nothing would be done until the next day, and went away.
Friends were forbidden access to me, the trusted were shut away, the foe compassed me about, the evil watchers were fierce and bold. At every instant, fresh affliction. At every breath, new anguish. Both kin and stranger on the attack; indeed, one-time lovers, faithless and unpitying, were worse than foes as they rose up to harass me.
They had just reached her, and were in the act of making fast, when a volley of musketry was fired from the bushes not more than five yards away, and three of the crew were instantly killed, and one wounded. The watchers on the war-vessels, lying in the river, sprang to their guns, and threw several rounds of shell into the cover that sheltered the enemy, soon driving them away.
For a moment the strange creature crouched where the stub had been, and when he saw that it was gone he stood erect, and a quavering, pitiful cry echoed softly through the chasm. And as he stood there motionless the watchers saw that the mad hunter was an old man, tall and thin, but as straight as a sapling, and that his head and breast were hidden in shaggy beard and hair.
Together they stretched their arms over the water's edge and in unison the five chanted a rhythmic incantation. This chant they repeated again and again, swaying their arms gently from side to side, and in a few minutes the watchers behind them noticed that the lake had begun to recede from the shore. Before long the highest point of the dome appeared above the water.
"Anybody want to try a run for it?" It was Ford who thought of the two negroes. "Tell them, Roy," he said to Brissac. "Perhaps they would rather risk the rifles." Brissac crept back to the central compartment, and the two watchers marked the progress of the inching pole, with its dynamite head and the ominous black thread of communication trailing like a grotesque horn behind it.
He was not over a hundred feet from the man who had caught the rustler and he was walking his horse now. The watchers on the edge of the plateau could see that he had taken in the situation and was stealing upon the captor, who sat in his saddle, his back to the advancing rider. Drawing a little closer, the third man stealthily dropped from his pony and crept forward.
"Wait," he said; and the four of them clung to the hand-rails, swaying and bending to the bounding lurches of the flying car. Mile after mile reels from beneath the relentless wheels, and still the speed increases. Station Donerail is passed, and now the pace is so furious that the watchers on the railed platform can not make out the signals in the volleying wake of dust.
Word Of The Day