Then re-entering her lurking-place, and finding Kateline crouched in her corner and munching a potato, Berbel shook her roughly and hissed out:—"Fool! have you got no ears? Is there anything that you fear? You are good for nothing but eating, drinking, and mumbling. Oh, you idiot!"
She snatched away the potato in a rage, and then seated herself by the side of the hot spring, which was sending up its gray fumes to the roof. Half an hour after, the darkness having become intense and the cold excessive, she made a fire of brushwood, which shed its pale gleams upon the blocks of red sandstone and lit up the farthest corner of the cave, where Kateline was now asleep, huddled in the straw, with her chin upon her knees. Without, the noisy tumult had ceased. Then withdrawing the brushwood curtain from the mouth of the cave, she peered out into the darkness, and returned to crouch down, by the spring. With her large lips compressed, her eyes closed, and the great round wrinkles playing upon her cheeks, she drew round her knees an old woollen covering, and appeared to fall asleep. Throughout the cavern there was no sound, except that of the congealed vapor, which fell back at long intervals into the spring with a strange splashing noise.
This silence lasted for about two hours; midnight was approaching, when all of a sudden a distant sound of footsteps, mingled with discordant cries, was heard outside the cave. Berbel listened, and at once perceived that they were human cries. Then she rose, trembling, and, armed with her thistle-wand, proceeded to the entrance of the cave; whence, through the screen of brushwood, she saw, at fifty paces distant, Yégof advancing toward her in the moonlight. He was alone, but gesticulating and waving his sceptre, as if myriads of invisible beings were about him.
"Hark, ye red men!" he was shrieking, with, beard sticking up on end, his hair streaming about his head, and his dog-skin upon his arm. "Hark, ye red men! Roog! Bled! Adelrik! hark! Will ye not hear me at last? Do you not see they are coming? Behold them cleaving the sky like vultures. Hark to me. Let this miserable race be annihilated! Ha, ha! it is you, Minau! it is you, Rochart ... ha! ha!" And addressing the dead upon the Donon, he called upon them defiantly, as if they were standing before him; and then fell back a step at a time, striking the air, uttering imprecations, encouraging his phantoms, and casting about him as if in close fight. The sight of this terrible struggle against beings who were invisible caused Berbel to shudder with fright, and to fancy her hair stiffening upon her head. She sought to hide herself; but just at the moment a strange noise from behind drew her attention, and her terror may be imagined when she saw the hot spring bubbling with more than usual activity and sending out clouds of steam, which rose and broke away in separate masses toward the entrance of the cavern; and while these clouds like phantoms were slowly advancing in close order, Yégof appeared upon the scene, shouting hoarsely:—
"You come at last! you heard me then!"
Thus saying, he removed with an impatient effort all obstructions from the mouth of the cave: the cold air rushed down the vault and the steaming vapors rose far into the sky, writhing and glancing above the cliff, as if the slain of that day and those of the ages gone by had recommenced beyond the earth a battle that would never end.
Yégof, with face which appeared shrunken in the pale moonlight, his sceptre held high, his great beard flowing down his breast, and his eyes flaming, saluted each phantom with a wave of the hand, addressing it by name:
"Hail, Bled! Roog, hail! and you, my brave men, all hail! The hour you have been expecting for ages is at hand: the eagles are whetting their beaks and the soil is thirsting for blood. Remember Blutfeld!"
