black cloud, rifted here and there by bars of vivid yellow as electric bolts tore it asunder.  Moonlight tipped its heavy edges with a pale spectral gleam; and as it swiftly rose higher and higher into the sky, blotting out the stars, it seemed to dominate the entire expanse, hovering over us menacingly, and assuming the shape of some gigantic monster, with leering face and cruel mouth, bending forward as if to smite us with huge uplifted hand.  Perchance our tensioned nerves may have exaggerated the resemblance, but nothing more horribly real have my eyes ever beheld.

For a moment I cowered, like a nerveless craven, behind the logs, gazing up at that awful apparition, that mocking devil’s-face, as a man fronts death in some terrible and unexpected form.  It seemed as if the breath of the creature must be pestilence, and that it would smite us gasping to earth, or draw us helplessly struggling within its merciless clutch.  A prayer trembled on my lips, but remained unuttered, for I could only stare upward at the mighty, crawling thing now overshadowing us, my arms uplifted in impotent effort to avert the crushing blow.

I could hear the girl sob where she had sunk upon the platform, and caught one glimpse of De Croix, his face yellow in the weird glare as he stared in speechless terror out over the water, his hands clutching the palisades.  It was Captain Wells, who had been standing near us, who first found voice.

“’Tis the Death-Shadow of the Miamis!” he cried, in choked accents, striding toward us along the narrow plank, and pointing eastward.  “I knew it must come, for our doom is sealed.”

What centuries of Indian superstition rested behind the fateful utterance, I know not; but facing that horrible spectre as we did, his words held me in speechless awe.  In the blood of us all such terrors linger to unman the bravest; and for the moment such fright and panic swept me as I have never known before or since.  I, who have laughed at death even in the hour of torture, sank in deadly agony before that mystery of light and shadow, as if it indeed foreshadowed the wrath of the Great Spirit.

The sobs of Mademoiselle recalled me somewhat to myself, and led me to forget my own terror that I might help to relieve hers.

“I beg you, fear not,” I urged, though my voice trembled and my lips were dry.  “Come, Mademoiselle,” and I found her hand and clasped it, feeling the touch a positive relief to my unstrung nerves, “look up and see! the cloud is even now breaking asunder, and has already lost much of its form of terror.  Mind not the words of Captain Wells; he has been raised among the Indians, and drunk in their superstitions.  De Croix, arouse yourself, and help me to bring courage to this girl.”

He drew back from his grip on the palisades, as if, by sheer power of will, he forced his fascinated eyes from the cloud-bank, shivering like a man with an ague fit.