"Those—killed."
"What are you talking about, Nell?"
"I am afraid! I am afraid!"
And her pallid lips began to quiver.
Silence ensued. Stas did not believe that the slain could rise from the dead, but as it was night and their bodies lay not far away, he became depressed in spirit; a chill passed over his back.
"What are you saying, Nell?" he repeated. "Then Dinah taught you to fear ghosts—The dead do not—"
And he did not finish, for at that moment something awe-inspiring occurred. Amid the stillness of the night, in the depths of the ravine, from the direction in which the corpses lay suddenly resounded a kind of inhuman, frightful laughter in which quivered despair, and joy, and cruelty, and suffering, and pain, and sobbing, and derision; the heart-rending and spasmodic laughter of the insane or condemned.
Nell screamed, and with her whole strength embraced Stas with her arms.
Stas' hair stood on end. Saba started up suddenly and began to growl.
But Kali, sitting at some distance, quietly raised his head and said almost gleefully:
"Those are hyenas gloating over Gebhr and the lion—"