CHAPTER XIX
I STAKE AGAIN
They were indistinguishable except as vocal sounds deadened by the impeding fog; but human voices they certainly were. Throwing off her robe she abruptly sat up, seeking, her features tensed with the strain. She beckoned to me. I scuttled over, as anxious as she. The voices might be far, they might be near; but it was an eerie situation, as if we were neighboring with warlocks.
“I’ve been hearing them some little while,” she whispered.
“The Captain Adams men may be trailing us?”
“I hope not! Oh, I hope not,” she gasped, in sheer agony. “If we might only know in time.”
Suddenly the fog was shot with gold, as the sun flashed in. In obedience to the command a slow and stately movement began, by all the troops of mist. The myriad elements drifted in unison, marching and countermarching and rearranging, until presently, while we crouched intent to fathom the secrets of their late camp, a wondrously beautiful phenomenon offered.
The great army rose for flight, lifting like a 273 blanket. Gradually the earth appeared in glimpses beneath their floating array, so that whereas our plot of higher ground was still invested, stooping low and scanning we could see beyond us by the extent of a narrow thinning belt capped with the heavier white.
“There!” she whispered, pointing. “Look! There they are!”
Feet, legs, moving of themselves, cut off at the knees by the fog layer, distant not more than short rifle range: that was what had been revealed. A peculiar, absurd spectacle of a score or two of amputated limbs now resurrected and blindly in quest of bodies.