From the doorway of the cage across the glade, a young man was cautiously gazing. He had seen Migul make off; he saw, doubtless, Mary and me at the window of this other cage five hundred feet away. He came cautiously out from the doorway. He was a small, slim young man, bareheaded, with a pallid face. His black garments were edged with white, and he seemed unarmed. He hesitated, took a step or two forward, stopped and stood cautiously peering. In the silence I could have shouted a warning. But I did not dare. It would have meant Mary's and my death.
She clung to me. "George, shall we?" she asked.
Harl came slowly forward. Then suddenly from the room behind us there was a stab of light. It leaped knee-high past us, out through our door across the glade—a tiny pencil-point of light so brilliantly blue-white that it stabbed through the bright sunlight unfaded. It went over Harl's head, but instantly bent down and struck upon him. There it held the briefest of instants, then was gone.
Harl stood motionless for a second; then his legs bent and he fell. The sunlight shone full on his crumpled body. And as I stared in horror, I saw that he was not quite motionless. Writhing? I thought so: a death agony. Then I realized it was not that.
"Mary, don't—don't look!" I said.
There was no need to tell her. She huddled beside me, shuddering, with her face pressed against my shoulder.
The body of Harl lay in a crumpled heap. But the clothes were sagging down. The flesh inside them was melting.... I saw the white face suddenly leprous; putrescent.... All in this moment, within the clothes, the body swiftly, decomposed.
In the sunlight of the glade lay a sagging heap of black and white garments enveloping the skeleton of what a moment before had been a man!
(To be continued.)