With the binoculars he stared at a point N. N. W., where he had thought to see the incredible apparition; but now nothing appeared.
“Hallucinations, so soon?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Come, come, buck up! This won't do at all!”
And again he searched the place with his powerful lenses.
“My God! but I do see them--and they're real--they're moving, too!” he exclaimed. “No hallucination, no mirage! They're there! But--but what--What can this mean? Who can they be?”
Tiny and clear against the dazzling background of the afternoon sky he had perceived a long line of human figures trekking to southeast over the distant hill-top, almost directly toward the point where his exhausted troop now lay inert and panting.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE MEETING OF THE BANDS
Convinced though Stern now was of the reality of the amazing sight he had just witnessed through his binoculars, yet for a long moment he remained silent and staring, utterly at a loss for any rational explanation of the remarkable apparition.
Exhausted in body and confused in mind, he could hit upon no answer to the riddle.
Might these be some detached and belated members of the Horde? No; for their figures and their gait, as he now for the third time studied them through the glass, were unmistakably human.
But if not Anthropoids, then what? Enemies? Potential friends? Some new and strange race, until now undiscovered?