It was, perhaps, a presentiment: a kind of horror seized him. The thing was undoubtedly there, quite near him, in the brush, and the sound of these voices made his flesh creep and his hair stand on end.
“Those who are lying dead,” replied Nyaor-fall with expressive pantomime, “those who are lying dead on the ground, these beasts find them and eat them.”
And when he said “eat them,” he made as if to bite his black arm with his magnificent white teeth.
Jean understood and shuddered. Afterwards, whenever he heard at night these dismal concerts, he remembered the explanation which Nyaor’s mimicry had made so clear, and he, who in broad daylight was seldom afraid, shuddered and felt chilled to the bone by one of those vague and gloomy forebodings that assail the superstitious mountaineer.
The noise grows fainter and dies away in the distance; it breaks out again, somewhat muffled, at another point of the horizon, then it ceases and all is still again.
The white vapours that hang above the sleeping waters grow denser with the approach of morning. One is penetrated and chilled to the bone by the glacial dampness of the swamps. It is a curious sensation, to experience cold in this country. The dew falls. Little by little the moon glides down the western sky, is obscured, extinguished. The heart is wrung by the solitude.
At last, low on the horizon, appear the thatched roofs of the village of Dialamban, where at dawn the spahis are to pitch their camp.
XXV
The land surrounding the camp of Dialamban is desolate—never-ending swamps of stagnant water, alternating with plains of arid sand, yielding a growth of stunted mimosas.