I do not remember serving at the call of duty.  The round moon crept slowly through the black sky, until its soft, silvery beams rested, brighter than daylight had been in that gorge, in glowing radiance along the surface of the smooth, gleaming wall opposite, yet merely succeeded in rendering more weird and uncanny the sombre desolation.  The night wind arose, causing the shadows of clinging pines to sway back and forth like spectral figures, while a solemn silence, awesome in its intensity, brooded over all, broken only by the noise of tumbling water, with occasional rasping of boughs against the face of the cliff.  The fire died away into a few red embers, occasionally fanned into uncertain flame by breaths of air sucked up the gorge.  By the time my guard ended I was so thoroughly unstrung that each flitting glimpse of deeper shadow tempted me to fire.

It was at midnight, or as close to that hour as I was capable of judging, when I aroused De Noyan and crawled into his place on the bed of boughs.  I lay there watching him a brief space, as he walked over to the stream and plunged his face into the cool water.  The last I recall previous to dropping off into deep slumber was how large his shadow loomed, silhouetted in the bright moonshine against a huge black bowlder directly in my front.

I know not the hour, yet I noted, even in awakening, that the moon had already passed from out the narrow ribbon of sky above, although still fringing in silver beauty the sharp summit of the crest, when a quick, nervous pressure upon my arm awoke me with a start of alarm.  Lying at full length, his head uplifted, was De Noyan.

“Keep still, Benteen,” he whispered, his voice vibrant with excitement, “and look yonder.  In the name of all the fiends, what is that?”

CHAPTER XIX

DEMON, OR WHAT?

I have been free from superstitious terror as most men, yet there were few in those days who did not yield to the sway of the supernatural.  Occasionally, among those of higher education, there may have been leaders of thought who had shaken off these ghostly chains of the dark ages, seeking amid the laws of nature a solution for all the seeming mysteries in human life.  Yet it could scarcely be expected a plain wood-ranger should rise altogether above the popular spell which still made of the Devil a very potent personality.

Consequently, as my anxious eyes uplifted toward the spot where De Noyan pointed, it need be no occasion for wonder that my blood turned to ice in my veins, and I felt convinced I looked upon His Satanic Majesty.  The vast wall of rock, arising a sheer hundred feet directly opposite to where we lay, appeared densely black now in the shadow, but as my glance swept higher along its irregularity, the upper edge, jagged from outcropping stones, stood clearly revealed in the full silver sheen of the moon, each exposed line, carven as from marble, standing distinctly forth in delicate tracery against the background of the night sky.