We had gone about an eighth of a mile. The disposition of our little party was as it had been the day before; Rhodes and Ondonarkus, that is, were in the lead, followed by Drorathusa, then came Nandradelphis and Silvisiris, whilst Zenvothunbro and myself formed the rear-guard. Had my own wishes in the matter been followed, Rhodes and I would have been together. The formation assumed was, as I believe I have mentioned, the one that Drorathusa herself desired. The idea, of course, was to have the front and rear protected each by one of the mysterious weapons of the mysterious stranger-men, which weapons, undoubtedly, were far more formidable in the imagination of Drorathusa and her companions than they were in reality. Certainly our revolvers were in every way excellent weapons, but I could not help wishing that they had a heavier bullet. As has been said, we had proceeded about a furlong. The dense and tangled undergrowth had forced us away from the stream, to a distance of perhaps three hundred feet. At the moment a sound had fetched me up and my exclamation had brought the party to a sudden halt. "What is it, Bill?" Rhodes asked. "We are being _followed_!" He made no immediate response to that dire intelligence. We all stood listening, waiting; but a silence pervaded the forest as deep as though it had never, since the day of creation, been broken by the faintest pulsation of sound. Then, after some moments, Rhodes asked: "Are you sure, Bill, that we are being followed?" "Yes! I tell you that I know that we are!" "Well," said he, turning slowly, "I don't see that we can do anything about it, save keep a sharp lookout; and so on we go." Whereupon he and the others started. I had turned to follow when that sound, low and mysterious as before, stopped me in my tracks. And in that very instant came another--a sharp interjection from Rhodes, instantaneously followed by a scream, the short, piercing scream of a woman. I should have explained that we were in a dense growth of fern, a growth some ten or twelve feet in height; it was a meet place indeed for an ambuscade. Overhead, too, the branches met and intertangled, affording an excellent place for a snake-cat or some other arboreal monster to lie in wait and drop or spring upon any human or brute passing below. Now, as I whirled to that exclamation and scream--the danger there behind forgotten in what was so imminent before--it was to find, to my indescribable fear and horror, that my companions, every single one of them, had vanished.