It was less a moan than a high-keyed, quivery scream this time, a scream of fear and pain that made the listeners’ hair lift on their heads and sent horrid cold shivers down their spines. No face in the cabin held much color when the last intolerable note passed sobbing away into the silence. Six boys stared stiffly at the window. A long moment went by. Charley Nagel sniffed then and Bull turned to him angrily.
“What’s your trouble?” he demanded. “What you scared of? Gosh, the lot of you look like you were dying!”
“You do, too,” whimpered Charley. “I—I want to go home!” he ended in a wail.
“Oh, shut up! Whatever it is, it’s just a—just a noise, ain’t it? Come on, Pete! Let’s have a look.” He took an unenthusiastic step toward the window. Pete hung back, however. “What you afraid of?” jeered Bull, finding courage in brow-beating the others. “Well, I’m going to, anyway.”
Shamed into it, Pete followed to the end of the little shack, and after a hesitant moment all save Charley did likewise. At the window Bull peered out. Before him the path of light led off into the forest. Right and left lay only gloom and the dimly seen trunks of trees. “Told you there wasn’t anything,” he growled. “Some sort of owl or something, I guess. Gee, you fellows—”
“What’s that?” stammered Pete, leaning across his shoulder. “Look!”
Bull looked and saw. At the end of the trail of radiance was an object that wiped away his courage and assurance as a wet sponge effaces markings on a slate. White and ghastly it was, wavering, uncertain; now tall and thin, now short and broad; but never still, its spectral bulk swaying from light to shadow, from darkness to radiance with unearthly motions.
“Gosh!” gasped Bull faintly.
Those behind pushed and shoved, holding an unwilling Bull at his post of observation, but they couldn’t keep Pete any longer. With a grunt of terror he hurled himself away and, seizing the nearest cap from the banquet board, he pulled the door wide and fairly hurtled through it. And as he went his voice broke startlingly on the air.