Murri, who lived in life-long dread of ghosts, debil-debils, and evil spirits, was trembling with superstitious fear. He thought the cry had proceeded from the awful blackness round them—for the sky was overcast and the night was very dark—and cowering down he flung fresh wood on to the fire and made a cheerful blaze. Even Alec and George were glad of its bright companionship, for though they feared no invisible visitant it was eerie and wild on that lone mountain side, with the starless night sky above them, and a black stillness all around.
They sat talking for some little time before they lay down to sleep again, glad to hear each other's voices, and to feel the fellowship of living waking men in that dark, awe-inspiring silence. George encouraged Murri, and told him that there was nothing to fear, that there was nothing there, just beyond the fire light, as the superstitious black believed. Murri had crept quite near to him, and, casting many a terrified glance around him, had told him in a low whisper, and in tones of fear, that he knew there was nothing there; and then, with that simple poetry of thought that all savages seem in some degree to possess, he added that what had alarmed him was that the darkness itself had stirred, and was moving towards him.
"That is a grand idea and a terrible one, isn't it?" said George, turning to his brother. "To make a sort of personality of the very darkness. I believe superstition is catching, for I can myself almost believe that I see the blackness moving."
"Geordie, you are ill," said the matter-of-fact Alec. "I am sure you are, or you wouldn't talk such nonsense. Blackness moving! indeed, it is just a draught of it you want."
"Come a bit nearer the fire," said the boy, with a little uneasy laugh at himself. "I can't see you, and it is rather gruesome and grim to feel alone."
"I wish you could go to sleep, I am sure you are overdone," said Alec, quietly and kindly, looking earnestly in his brother's too bright eyes. "We will make a halt here to-morrow, and give you a thorough rest."
"Oh, no, not that; Alec, I can't bear to wait. We seem to have lost so much time already. Let us get on."
"What is the hurry?"
"It is just the gold and nothing else. Ever since we started it has been dazzling me and dancing before me. I can see nothing else, and think of nothing else."
"And I have been the same," said his brother, with little merriment. "When I have been silent and you have thought me tired, my mind has been busy making pictures of the gold and what it will procure us."