f the dawn that
revealed his outline against the canvas. This time the man was not
crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling he felt plainly
through the blankets down the entire length of his own body. Defago had
huddled down against him for protection, shrinking away from something
that apparently concealed itself near the door flaps of the little tent.

Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some question or other--in
the first bewilderment of waking he does not remember exactly what--and
the man made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true nightmare lay
horribly about him, making movement and speech both difficult. At first,
indeed, he was not sure where he was--whether in one of the earlier
camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense of confusion was
very troubling.

And next--almost simultaneous with his waking, it seemed--the profound
stillness of the dawn outside was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It
came without warning, or audible approach; and it was unspeakably
dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson declares, possibly a human voice;
hoarse yet plaintive--a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent,
overhead rather than upon the ground, of immense volume, while in some
strange way most penetratingly and seductively sweet. It rang out, too,
in three separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some odd
fashion a resemblance, farfetched yet recognizable, to the name of the
guide: "_De-fa-go!_"

The student admits he is unable to describe it quite intelligently, for
it was unlike any sound he had ever heard in his life, and combined a
blending of such contrary qualities. "A sort of windy, crying voice," he
calls it, "as of something lonely and untamed, wild and of abominable
power...."

And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the great gulfs of
silence, the guide beside him had sprung to his feet with an answering
though unintelligible cry. He blundered against the tent pole with
violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading his arms out
frantically for more room, and kicking his legs impetuously free of the
clinging blankets. For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn; then, with a
furious, rushing speed, before his companion could move a hand to stop
him, he shot with a plunge through the flaps of canvas--and was gone.
And as he went--so astonishingly fast that the voice could actually be
heard dying