Prisoners of Chance

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.

Appearing to my affrighted eyes the gigantic form of two men strangely merged into one, there uprose on that summit a figure so odd, weird, and grimly fantastic, it was small wonder I gazed, never thinking it could be other than the Evil One. It was unclothed from head to heel, and, gleaming ghastly white beneath the moonbeams, it brought no Indian suggestion to mind. High above the head, causing the latter to appear hideously deformed, arose something the nature of which I could not rightly judge. It reminded me of a vast mat of hair sticking directly upward, ever waving back and forth to the breath of the night wind. Nor did this horrid figure remain one moment still. There upon the very edge of the precipice, it would leap high into the air, flinging aloft long gaunt arms, even appearing to float bodily forth into the space above us, to disappear instantly, like some phantom of imagination, amid the shrouding gloom of those rock shadows--flitting swiftly, and as upon wings, along the crest; now showing directly in our front, looming like a threatening giant, mocking with wild, furious gestures; then dancing far to right or left, a vague shade in the sheen, a mere nothing in the shadow, yet ever returning, the same weird, unnatural, spectral figure, wildly gyrating upon the air, leering down upon our speechless misery.

My eyes, wide-opened by terror, followed these movements, marking this ghastly shape. I listened vainly for the slightest sound to connect it with aught human. The mantle of the night's solemn silence, the dread stillness of wilderness solitudes, rested everywhere. I heard the mournful sighing of the wind amid jagged rocks and among the swaying branches of the cedars; the dull roar of the little river, even the stentorian breathing of the Puritan lying asleep behind us, but that was all. That hideous apparition dancing so madly along the cliff summit emitted no sound of foot or voice--yet there it hung, foreboding evil, gesticulating in mockery; a being too hideous for earth, ever playing the mad antics of a fiend.