It seemed to me a mad venture, but, without daring almost to madness, it was not likely that we could rescue our guns from the enemy’s hands, though how we were going to reconnoitre that night, or gain any information as to the movements of the enemy, I could not see. Still I was on duty; my superior officer was leading, and I felt no other inclination than to blindly obey.
Whenever I recall that expedition now, I begin somehow to think about blind men and their feelings; for we might almost as well have been thus. Our eyes were not of the slightest use to us, the stars being blotted out as it were by the thick mist into which we had plunged, and through which we slowly groped our way.
“Keep tight hold of my hand,” said Brace, in a whisper.
“We shall never find the village,” I said.
“We must find it, Gil,” he said, as he gripped my hand hard. And on we went, with my companion feeling his way step by step, still using his sword as guide, and for the peaceful object of guarding us from such enemies as trees, against which we might run, and ditches into which we might fall.
The heat was terrible—a hot, steamy, misty heat, which helped to saturate us—as we slowly struggled on, pausing every now and then to listen, knowing, as we did, that almost at any minute now we might hear a voice challenging us out of the darkness, and see the flash of a musket or rifle as it sent a leaden messenger in our direction.
But all was still as death for a time, and then I stopped short with a horrible feeling of dread; for from a short distance in front there suddenly rang out the terrible cry as of one in mortal peril. Some one was being killed I was sure; and to hear that sound in the pitchy darkness, overwrought as I was by exertion and nervous excitement, robbed me for the moment of the power to move or speak.
“What is it?” said Brace at last, as he tugged at my hand to get me forward.
“That—that horrible cry!” I whispered.
“Bah!” he replied. “You ought by this time to know a jackal.”