The buffaloes stopped about a hundred feet away, still in unbroken phalanx, and stared at us with red eyes. I was filled with fear; I will not deny it, I felt it in every fiber. I had heard always that these beasts, however huge, were harmless, their first rush over, but they were looking at us now with eyes of human intelligence and even more than human rage; a steady, tenacious anger that threatened us, and seemed to demand our lives as the price of our attempt upon theirs. I felt cold to the bone, and the angry gaze of the besieging beasts held my own eyes until I turned them away, with an effort, and looked at Redfield. Then I saw that he was as white and afraid as I knew myself to be. I told him that we were besieged, and he rejoined that the attitude, the look of our besiegers, betokened persistency. While we talked, the buffaloes began to move and we hoped that we had been mistaken in our belief, and that they would abandon us, but the hope was idle. They formed a complete circle around us, a ring of sentinels, each motionless after he had assumed his proper position, the red eyes shining out of the massive, lowered heads, and fixed on us. Redfield laughed, but it was not the laugh of mirth. He asked me what we had to fear from the buffalo, which was not a beast of prey; they would turn away presently and begin to crop the grass again, but his tone did not express a belief in his own words. The night had not darkened, but the curious grayness which was the prevailing quality of the atmosphere in the valley had deepened, and the forms of the beasts on guard became less distinct. Yet it seemed only to increase the penetrating gaze of their eyes, which flamed at us like a circle of watch fires. The sentinels were noiseless as well as motionless. The wind whimpered gently through the leaves of the trees, but there was nothing else to be heard in the valley, and saving ourselves and the buffaloes, nothing of human or animal life to be seen. Redfield said to me that he wished our guards would move, that while they stayed in such fixed attitudes he felt as if we were watched by so many human beings. His voice was at a higher pitch than usual, and I felt a strange pleasure in noticing it, for I knew then that he had been affected as I by our peculiar position. He burst suddenly into a laugh, and when I asked him where he found amusement, he reminded me that both of us yet carried our rifles, though we seemed to have forgotten the use for which they were made. He added that the sentinels were within easy range, and since our object was now self-preservation and not sport, we could sit on the boughs in perfect safety and shoot as many of them as we chose, unless they retired.