sacrilegious. The Swede, of course,
heard it too--the strange cry overhead in the darkness--and that sudden
drop in the air as though something had come nearer.

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of
the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go! We
can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on--down the
river."

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject
terror--the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at
last.

"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical outburst,
but still realizing our position better than he did. "Sheer madness! The
river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle. Besides, we only go
deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for fifty miles but
willows, willows, willows!"

He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of
those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the
control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had
reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.

"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered with the awe
of genuine terror in his voice and face.

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine,
kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.

"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the
night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself
together a bit, and remember your own advice about not thinking fear!"

He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure,
too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the
darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping
among the bushes and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but
seemed to me to grow louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It
was shivery work!

We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where
some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when
my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was
the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I
heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.

"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my exper