While he stood peering into the surrounding gloom he saw the inanimate forms.
In his delight the man repeated the dance he had given on the shore of the lake. He leaped up and down, keeping time to the swaying of the long, ashen bow grasped in his left hand, and passed back and forth over a space of a dozen square feet.
He continually glanced at the youths, who were unconscious of their danger, and held himself ready to open hostilities at the moment they showed signs of awaking. Strange that neither Wharton nor Larry thought of such a peril as that which now impended.
The grotesque dance lasted but a few minutes. That manner of expressing his exultation was soon satisfied, and he made ready for action.
Reaching over his left shoulder with his right hand, he drew a feathered arrow from the quiver. A careful examination by moonlight satisfied him that it was perfect and every way fitted for his purpose. He fitted the notch in the deer-string of the bow, and then advanced stealthily until within a few dozen yards of the sleepers, the implement so held all the time that he could have launched the missile at a moment's warning.
The elder of the youths lay nearest, and he aimed at him. Little fear that he could not drive the arrow deep into the chest of the sleeper, after which he probably intended to serve Wharton in the same manner.
But with the whimsicality of an insane man he changed his mind, evidently concluding that the tomahawk was the most fitting weapon to be used in dispatching them. With the same deliberation shown from the first, he relaxed the tension of the string and replaced the arrow in the quiver. Then he turned about and silently deposited the bow on the ground, so that it should not handicap him.
This was all that was necessary, and he drew his tomahawk and faced about just in time to make an unexpected and startling discovery.