"What—Oh! There it is!"
I myself saw that something vague and shadowy was moving indistinctly toward us down one of the long lanes of water.
Suddenly out of the swamp came a piercing wail. It was so utterly unhuman that to every one of us it brought, I believe, a nameless terror. Certainly I can answer for myself. It was as if some creature from another world had suddenly found a voice and were crying out to us. Then the wail was repeated, and then, as if revealed by some preparation of phosphorus, I indistinctly saw, in the dark of the swamp, an uncouth face, black as midnight, on which were painted white rings and patches.
For the third time the cry came out to us; then a voice shrieked in a queer, wailing minor:—
"White man, I come 'peak. Long time past white man go up water. Him t'ief from king spirit. Him go Dead Land.
"White man, I come 'peak. We no sell slave. White man go him country so him not go Dead Land. White man, I go."
The dim, mysterious face drew away little by little and disappeared. A single soft splash came from the great marsh, then a yell so wild and weird that to this very day the memory of it sometimes sets me to shivering, as if I myself were only a heathen savage and not a white man and a Christian.
Three times we heard the wild yell; then far off in the fastnesses of the swamp, we heard an unholy chanting. It was high and shrill and piercing, and it brought to us across the dark water suggestions of a thousand terrors.
I felt Bud O'Hara's hand on mine, and it was as cold as death.