He spoke truth. In the corner lay a man’s bones, the skull, the body’s frame, the limbs, all close together, but separate.
“There are two skulls!” ejaculated Marlowe.
“No; one is but the stone you threw.” Vytal was not mistaken, for the stone had rolled among the white streaks, snapping some and crushing others to a powder that shone like phosphorus in the sunlight.
The two men turned away from the ghastly sight in silence, to survey the room. An old musket stood against the wall, its barrel poked through the narrow chink, peering out at the forest. A rusty pike lay near by, its long, wooden staff stretched out from the white finger-bones of its dead possessor.
The cabin was devoid of furniture save for a rough-hewn table and an upturned stool, about the legs of which the long sinews of a plant, having entered stealthily from without through numerous knot-holes, had twined themselves tenaciously.
But there were few weeds growing within the hovel, for the earth, like adamant, offered no fertility even to the rankest vegetation.
Suddenly the sunlight left the room, and a chilling miasma seemed to fill it. Marlowe shuddered. “Let us leave this grave. Its gloom gets into my brain. One man outlived his mates and dwelt alone in this vast country, daring to fight single-handed against Destiny—and this is the result—a few porous sticks bleached by the frivolous sunbeams, a delusive glow suggesting the divine spark—and oblivion!” So saying, the poet, wrapping his cloak closer about him, withdrew to the open air, where the governor, also dolefully affected, awaited him.
Vytal came out slowly. “He is accustomed to scenes of death,” said the governor to Marlowe. “Death, with all its grim carnality, has grown familiar in the years of war.”
“Yes, but the gloom of the story is in his heart, beside which the shadows of the room are as nothing. He feels these things down deep, but is ever silent.”