rist to silence me, and turned me forcibly toward the window again.

"Listen!" he said.

I turned and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting
for the witch scene in _Macbeth_. Thunderclouds hung low over the
moor, but through them ran a sort of chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of
lurid light to stretch across the drear, from east to west--a sort of
lane walled by darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a
troubled sea--a hushed and distant chorus; and sometimes in upon it
broke the drums of heaven. In the west lightning flickered, though but
faintly, intermittently.

Then came the _call_.

Out of the blackness of the moor it came, wild and distant--"_Help!
help!_"

"Smith!" I whispered--"what is it? What...."

"Mr. Smith!" came the agonized cry ... "Nayland Smith, help! for God's
sake...."

"Quick, Smith!" I cried, "quick, man! It's Van Roon--he's been dragged
out ... they are murdering him...."

Nayland Smith held me in a vice-like grip, silent, unmoved!

Louder and more agonized came the cry for aid, and I felt more than
ever certain that it was poor Van Roon who uttered it.

"Mr. Smith! Dr. Petrie! for God's sake come ... or ... it will be ...
too ... late...."

"Smith!" I said, turning furiously upon my friend, "if you are going
to remain here whilst murder is done, _I_ am not!"

My blood boiled now with hot resentment. It was incredible, inhuman,
that we should remain there inert whilst a fellow-man, and our host to
boot, was being done to death out there in the darkness. I exerted all
my strength to break away; but although my efforts told upon him, as
his loud breathing revealed, Nayland Smith clung to me tenaciously.
Had my hands been free, in my fury I could have struck him; for the
pitiable cries, growing fainter now, told their own tale. Then Smith
spoke--shortly and angrily--breathing hard between the words.

"Be quiet, you fool!" he snapped. "It's little less than an insult,
Petrie, to think me capable of refusing help where help is needed!"

Like, a cold douche his words acted; in that instant I knew myself a
fool.

"You remember the Call of Siva?" he said, thrusting me away
irritably,"--two years ago--and what it meant to those who obeyed it?"

"You might have told me...."

"_Told_ you! You would have been through the window before I had
uttered two words!"

I realized the truth of his assertion, and the justness of his anger.

"Forgive me, old man," I said, ve