A sight met his gaze, transfixing him with terror, seeming to turn him to stone. Reared above the undergrowth, an awful head, covered with dust, and bristling with brambles—a black face with lolling, swollen tongue, and huge eyeballs protruding from their sockets rolling their vivid whites in most hideous fashion—yes, and there, round the neck, a strand of cord, while from the throat of this horrifying apparition there proceeded the most hollow, half-strangled moan that ever curdled mortal blood. For a moment the appalled keeper stood with livid countenance, and his knees knocking together—then with a wild hoarse cry, and dropping his gun—he turned and fled away down the ride of the wood as fast as his legs could carry him.
“Come, Haviland, we’ll go now,” chuckled the ghost, dropping down into the undergrowth again. But Haviland made no reply, being powerless alike for speech or movement. He lay there gasping, choking back with superhuman effort the scarcely repressible roars of laughter that he dared not let out.
“Come quick. We be off,” urged the Zulu boy. “Praps he come back.”
“Not he,” gurgled Haviland faintly. “Oh Cetchy, that’s about the most deadly thing I ever saw in my life. Oh, it’ll be the death of me.” Then recovering himself with a mighty effort:
“Come along, Cetchy. You’re right, by Jingo! We’ll have to put our best leg forward as it is. Oh, but we mustn’t think about this or it’ll kill me again.”
Cautiously and in silence, and ever keeping a bright look-out lest mayhap their dupe should recover from his scare and return, they made their way out of the haunted wood, then across country at a hard swinging trot, and the far-away roofs of Saint Kirwin’s seemed painfully remote.
“I say, Cetchy,” said Haviland as they sat beneath a hedge for a brief but necessary breather. “Supposing the chap had let off his gun at you? Eh? We never thought of that.”
“He not shoot—he too much funk.”
“So he was. I dare say, too, he thought it wasn’t any good firing at a ghost. No, I mustn’t start laughing again. Come along.”
And indeed they needed to make the most of their time, for the bell was already ringing during the last five minutes of their run. However, they got through by a narrow shave.