Black shadows filled the eye-sockets, and gave to the face an
uncertain, cavernous look, as though it saw and pondered.
How long the apparition stayed, the three men could not tell; for even
after it vanished, and the torch fell hissing in the river, they stood
below the wall, dumb and sick, knowing only that they had seen the head
of Wutzler.
Heywood was the first to make a sound--a broken, hypnotic sound, without
emphasis or inflection, as though his lips were frozen, or the words
torn from him by ventriloquy.
"We must get the women--out of here."
Afterward, when he was no longer with them, his two friends recalled
that he never spoke again that night, but came and went in a kind of
silent rage, ordering coolies by dumb-show, and carrying armful after
armful of supplies to the water gate. He would neither pause nor answer.
The word passed, or a listless, tacit understanding, that every one must
hold himself ready to go aboard so soon after daylight as the hostile
boats should leave the river. "If," said Gilly to Rudolph, while they
stood thinking under the stars, "if his boat is still there, now that
he--after what we saw.
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