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 in the distance—­he called aloud in tones of anguished terror that at the same time held something strangely like the frenzied exultation of delight—­

“Oh! oh!  My feet of fire!  My burning feet of fire!  Oh! oh!  This height and fiery speed!”

And then the distance quickly buried it, and the deep silence of very early morning descended upon the forest as before.

It had all come about with such rapidity that, but for the evidence of the empty bed beside him, Simpson could almost have believed it to have been the memory of a nightmare carried over from sleep.  He still felt the warm pressure of that vanished body against his side; there lay the twisted blankets in a heap; the very tent yet trembled with the vehemence of the impetuous departure.  The strange words rang in his ears, as though he still heard them in the distance—­wild language of a suddenly stricken mind.  Moreover, it was not only the senses of sight and hearing that reported uncommon things to his brain, for even while the man cried and ran, he had become aware that a strange perfume, faint yet pungent, pervaded the interior of the tent.  And it was at this point, it seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that his nostrils were taking this distressing odor down into his throat, that he found his courage, sprang quickly to his feet—­and went out.