Cunningham waited for darkness. He was sure he had been watched back to the hotel. But after darkness was complete and before the moon rose he and Gray slipped secretly out of the house. They struck off down the valley, and when the monstrous ball of the full moon floated over the hills to the east, they made their way beneath thick trees, lest the moonlight show them to hidden watchers. They had gone perhaps a mile when Gray pointed suddenly upward.
Far, far up, where a tree-grown peak ended in a bald and rocky knob, fires were burning. Plainly visible in the clear night air, it could be seen that there were many fires and many people about them. Through the stillness, too, there came half-determinate sounds which might have been singing, or chanting, or some long-continued musical wailing.
The moon was shining down upon the valley, with its tidy New England farmhouses—upon Coulters, where uncomfortable rural police officers tried to convince themselves that they would be quite safe in dealing with the Strange People—upon Bendale, with its electric lights and once-a-week motion picture theater. And the same moonlight struck upon a ring of fires high up in the mountains where the Strangers moved and crouched. Old women gave voice to the shrill lament that was floating thinly through the air.
Gray glanced once at Cunningham’s face and if he had been about to speak, he refrained. Cunningham was making grimly for the hills.
The woods were dark. The two men crept through long tunnels of blackness, where little speckles of moonlight filtered through unexpectedly and painted the tree-trunks in leopard-spots. The valley had been calm, but as they climbed, the wind began to roar over their heads, rushing among the tree-branches with a growling sound. That noise masked the sound of their movements. Once they saw one of the Strangers cross a patch of clear moonlight before them. He was moving softly, listening as he half trotted, half walked.
“Sentry,” whispered Gray.
Cunningham said nothing. They went on, and heard voices murmuring before them in a foreign tongue. They halted and swung to the right. Perhaps two hundred yards on they tried again to continue up toward the heights. A crashing in the underbrush made them freeze. A Stranger trotted within five paces of them, peering about him cautiously. Only their immobility saved them from detection.
When he had gone they made for the spot from which he had come. It was breathless work because at any instant a liquid little glitter in the moonlight—a throwing-knife—might be the only herald of a silent and desperate attack.
But they made their way on and upward. It seemed as if they had passed through the ring of sentries. The trees grew thinner. The wind roared more loudly above their heads. And suddenly they saw the glow of many fires before them.
If they had gone carefully before, now they moved with infinite pains to make no noise. A single voice was chanting above the wind’s screaming. Gray listened and shook his head.