“It's Madison Forest they're aiming at!” returned the engineer. “See there!”
He pointed to westward.
There, far off along the forest-lane of Fourteenth Street, a sudden gleam of light flashed out among the trees, vanished, reappeared, was joined by two, ten, a hundred others. And now the whole approach to Madison Forest, by several streets, began to sparkle with these feux-follets, weaving and flickering unsteadily toward the square.
Here, there, everywhere through the dense masses of foliage, the watchers could already see a dim and moving mass, fitfully illuminated by torches that now burned steady, now flared into red and smoky tourbillons of flame in the night-wind.
“Like monster glow-worms, crawling among the trees!” the girl exclaimed. “We could mow them down, from here, already! God grant we sha'n't have to fight!”
“S-h-h-h! Wait and see what's up!”
Now, from the other horde, coming from the north, sounds of warlike preparation were growing ever louder.
With quicker beats the insistent tom-toms throbbed their rhythmic melancholy rune, hollow and dissonant. Then all at once the drums ceased; and through the night air drifted a minor chant; a wail, that rose, fell, died, and came again, lagging as many strange voices joined it.
And from the square, below, a shrill, high-pitched, half-animal cry responded. Creeping shudders chilled the flesh along the engineer's backbone.
“What I need, now,” thought he, “is about a hundred pounds of high-grade dynamite, or a gallon of nitroglycerin. Better still, a dozen capsules of my own invention, my ‘Pulverite!’