Then they lay down again, Hampton smoking, Murphy either sleeping or pretending to sleep.

And slowly the shadows of another black night swept down and shut them in.
It must have been two hours later when they ventured forth.

Silence and loneliness brooded everywhere, not so much as a breath of air stirring the leaves.

The unspeakable, unsolvable mystery of it all rested like a weight on the spirits of both men.

It, was a disquieting thought that bands of savages, eager to discover and slay, were stealing among the shadows of those trackless plains, and that they must literally feel their uncertain way through the cordon, every sound an alarm, every advancing step a fresh peril.