Henry gazed at the moon, a silver globe in the heavens, and he distinctly saw the man upon its surface, who returned his looks with benevolence, while the countless stars about it quivered and glittered and shed a propitious light. Then he gazed at his comrades, resting against the trunks of the trees, and unreal in the silver mist. They were yet so still that the wild animals might well take them to be lifeless, and the power to sit there so long without stirring a muscle was one acquired only by warriors and scouts.
A faint whining cry came out of the silver dark, a sound that had traveled a great distance on waves of air, and every one of the five understood it, on the instant. It was one of the most ominous sounds of the forest, a sound full of ferocity and menace, the howl of the wolf, but they knew it came from human lips, that, in truth, it was a signal ordered by the leader of the besieging band. Presently the reply, a similar cry, came from another point of the compass, traveling like the first on waves of air, until it died away in a savage undernote.
“They’ve probably set their lines all the way around our hollow, and they’re sure now they’ll hold us fast,” said Henry, with grim irony.
“That’s ’bout it, I take it,” said Shif’less Sol, “an’ it ’pears to me that this is the time for us to laugh, purvidin’ it won’t be in any way breakin’ uv our agreement to keep the day till its very last minute.”
He looked questioningly at Paul.
“To laugh is not against our compact,” replied the lad, “since it has such good cause. When a net is cast for us, and those who cast it are so confident we’re in it, we’ve a right to laugh as long as we’re outside it.”
“Then,” said Shif’less Sol with conviction, “ez thar’s so much to laugh at, an’ we’ve all agreed to laugh, we’ll laugh.”
The five accordingly laughed, but the laughs were soundless. Their eyes twinkled, their lips twitched, but the canebrake, save for the ceaseless rustle of the singing wind, was as silent as ever. No one five feet away would have known that anybody was laughing.
“Thar, I feel better,” said Shif’less Sol, when his face quit moving, “but though they’re a long distance off I kin see with my mind’s eyes Braxton Wyatt an’ his band stalkin’ us in our home in the rock, an’ claspin’ us in a grip that can’t be shook off.”
“Shettin’ down on us,” said Silent Tom.