“Ahoy-oy!” came from a distance in a curiously stifled way.
“Give it up till the fog clears off. Stand still.”
There was no reply, and once more the terrible silence seemed to cling round me. The gloom increased, and I sank on my knees, not daring to stand now, but listening, if I may say so, with all my might.
What had happened? What was going to happen? Were we to stay there all night in the darkness, shivering with cold and damp? Only a little while ago I had been tired and hot; now I did not feel the fatigue, but was shivering with cold, and my hands and face were wet.
I wanted to call out to Uncle Bob again, but the sensation came over me—the strange, wild fancy that something had happened to him, and I dared not speak for fear of finding that it was true.
All at once as I knelt there, listening intently for the slightest sound, I fancied I heard some one breathing. Then the sound stopped. Then it came nearer, and the dense mist parted, and a figure was upon me, crawling close by me without seeing me; and crying “Uncle Bob!” I started forward and caught at him as I thought. My hands seized moist wool for a moment, and then it was jerked out of my hands, as, with a frightened Baa! Its wearer bounded away.
“What’s that?” came from my left and below me, in the same old suffocated tone.
“A sheep,” I cried, trembling with the start the creature had given me.
“Did you see which way it went?”
“Yes—beyond me.”