he
found his breathing among the tents too straitened. The night was well
adapted to heighten the feelings, which had been created by the events
of the day.

The wind had risen with the moon, and it was occasionally sweeping over
the plain, in a manner that made it not difficult for the sentinel
to imagine strange and unearthly sounds were mingling in the blasts.
Yielding to the extraordinary impulses of which he was the subject, he
cast a glance around, to see that all were slumbering in security, and
then he strayed towards the swell of land already mentioned. Here the
squatter found himself at a point that commanded a view to the east and
to the west. Light fleecy clouds were driving before the moon, which
was cold and watery though there were moments, when its placid rays were
shed from clear blue fields, seeming to soften objects to its own mild
loveliness.

For the first time, in a life of so much wild adventure, Ishmael felt a
keen sense of solitude. The naked prairies began to assume the forms of
illimitable and dreary wastes and the rushing of the wind sounded like
the whisperings of the dead. It was not long before he thought a shriek
was borne past him on a blast. It did not sound like a call from earth
but it swept frightfully through the upper air mingled with the hoarse
accompaniment of the wind. The teeth of the squatter were compressed,
and his huge hand grasped the rifle, as if it would crush the metal.
Then came a lull, a fresher blast, and a cry of horror that seemed to
have been uttered at the very portals of his ears. A sort of echo
burst involuntarily from his own lips, as men shout under unnatural
excitement, and throwing his rifle across his shoulder he proceeded
towards the rock with the strides of a giant.

It was not often that the blood of Ishmael moved at the rate with which
the fluid circulates in the veins of ordinary men; but now he felt it
ready to gush from every pore in his body. The animal was aroused, in
his most latent energies. Ever as he advanced he heard those shrieks,
which sometimes seemed ringing among the clouds, and sometimes passed
so nigh, as to appear to brush the earth. At length there came a cry, in
which there could be no delusion, or to which the imagination could lend
no horror. It appeared to fill each cranny of the air, as the visible
horizon is often charged to fulness by one dazzling flash of the
electric fluid. The name of God was distinctly audible, but it