"Look there! Look there!"
Following his pointing finger, we looked up. The uncanny darkness was accounted for:—a great semi-circular piece seemed to have been bitten out of the sun!
"The eclipse!" cried Arthur. "I'd forgotten all about it. This is the twenty-ninth of July. The newspapers were full of it, but I'd forgotten all about it!"
"A total eclipse, isn't it?" asked Dick, quickly.
"Yes, total."
"Then it will be a great deal darker presently. We'd better get out of this, and cross the flume while we can see."
In fact, it was already so dark that the small birds, thinking it was night, were busily going to bed; the night-hawks had come out, the curious whir of their wings sounding above our heads; and then—a sound which made us all start—there came the long-drawn howl of a wolf!
"Run!" shouted Dick. "They'll be after us directly!"
Undoubtedly, the wolves, too, were deceived into the belief that night was approaching, for even as Dick spoke we heard in three or four different directions the hunting-cry of the packs. Wasting no time, as will be imagined, away we went, scrambled up on the gang-plank of the flume, and there stopped to listen.
"I hope those men"—Dick began; when, from the direction of the draw above there arose a fearful clamor of howling. There was a shot! Another and another, in quick succession! And then, piercing through and rising above all other sounds, there went up a cry so dreadful that it turned us sick to hear it. What had happened?