Somehow that seemed to me the darkest night I could remember, and the various sounds, all of which were really familiar, seemed strange.
Now there was the plaintive cry of one of the goat-suckers which hawked for moths and beetles round the great trees; then, after a silence so profound that it was painful, came the deep croak of the bullfrog rising and falling and coming from a hundred different directions at once. Then all at once their deep croaking was dominated by a loud barking bellow; and as I listened with my hands feeling cold and damp, I caught hold of Morgan.
“What’s that?” I whispered, excitedly.
“My arm,” he replied, coolly. “Don’t pinch, lad.”
“No, no; I mean the sound. What noise was that?”
“Oh! Why, you know. That was a ’gator.”
“Are you sure? It sounded like a man’s voice.”
“Not it. Who did you think could be there? Nobody likely to be out there but Indians, and they wouldn’t shout; they’d whisper so that we shouldn’t know they were near.”
I was silent again, and sat watching and listening as sound after sound struck my ear, making it seem that the wilds had never been so full before of strange noises, though the fact was that nothing was unusual except that I did not realise that I had never been in danger before, and sat up to listen.
All at once I jumped and uttered a cry, for something had touched me.