The sun set; the shadows of night began to fall, but the plateau was silent.  Not a human form was to be seen anywhere, not even on the river.  Stars came out like lamps set in celestial windows, and sprinkled their rays on the crimson curtains of the evening.

The glaciers on Mount Hood began to kindle as with silver fires.  The east seemed like a lifting gate of light.  The great moon was rising.

Hark!  At the first ray of the moon there are heard low, mysterious sounds everywhere.  The forests are full of them—­calls, like the coyote’s bark, or bird-calls, or secret signals.  They are human voices.  They answer each other.  There are thousands of voices calling and answering.

The full moon now hangs low over the forests, golden as the morning sun in the mists of the calm sea.  There is a piercing cry and a roll of war-drums, and suddenly the edges of the forest are full of leaping and dancing forms.  The plateau is alive as with an army.  Pipes play, shells rattle, and drums roll, and the fantastic forms with grotesque motions pass and repass each other.

Up the Columbia comes a fleet of canoes like a cloud passing over the silvery ripples.  The river is all alive with human forms, and airy paddles and the prows of tilting boats.

The plateau swarms.  It is covered with waving blankets and dancing plumes.  All is gayety and mirth.

There is another roll of drums, and then silence.

The circling blankets and plumes become motionless.  The chief of the Cascades is coming, and with him is Benjamin and his young bride, and Gretchen.

The royal party mount the platform, and in honor of the event the torch-dance begins.  A single torch flashes upon the air; another is lighted from it, another and another.  A hundred are lighted—­a thousand.  They begin to dance and to whirl; the plateau is a dazzling scene of circling fire.  Gretchen recalled the old fetes amid the vineyards of the Rhine in her childhood.

Hither and thither the circles move—­round and round.  There is poetry in this fire-motion; and the great army of fire-dancers become excited under it, and prepared for the frenzy of the Spirit-dance that is to follow.

The torches go out.  The moon turns the smoke into wannish clouds of white and yellow, which slowly rise, break, and disappear.

There is another roll of drums.  Wild cries are heard in the forests.  The “biters” are beginning their hunt.

Who are the biters?  They are Indians in hides of bears and wolves, who run on their hands and feet, uttering terrible cries, and are followed by women, who, to make the scene more fearful, pretend to hold them back, and restrain them from violence.  The Spirit-dance is held to be a sacred frenzy, and before it begins the biters are charged to hunt the woods for any who have not joined the army of dancers, and, if such are found, to bite them and tear their flesh with their teeth.  They also guard the dance like sentinels, and fly at one who attempts to leave it before it is done.