* * * * *
PERNICKETTY'S FRIGHT.
_"Sssssst!"_
Dan Golby held up his hand to enjoin silence; in a breath we were as
quiet as mice. Then it came again, borne upon the night wind from away
somewhere in the darkness toward the mountains, across miles of
treeless plain--a low, dismal, sobbing sound, like the wail of a
strangling child! It was nothing but the howl of a wolf, and a wolf is
about the last thing a man who knows the cowardly beast would be
afraid of; but there was something so weird and unearthly in this "cry
between the silences"--something so banshee-like in its suggestion of
the grave--that, old mountaineers that we were, and long familiar with
it, we felt an instinctive dread--a dread which was not fear, but only
a sense of utter solitude and desolation. There is no sound known to
mortal ear that has in it so strange a power upon the imagination as
the night-howl of this wretched beast, heard across the dreary wastes
of the desert he disgraces.
Involuntarily we drew nearer together, and some one of the party
stirred the fire till it sent up a tall flame, widening the black
circle shutting us in on all sides. Again rose the faint far cry, and
was answered by one fainter and more far in the opposite quarter.
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