I said, "Yes, it might be," and all together we began to march again. A sharp walk carried us from the hill path through the tangle of bushes into the woods wherefrom danger first had come to us. The night had set in by this time and a clear moon was showing in the sky. Rare and beautiful, I must say, that moonlight was, shimmering through the hazy blue vapour and coming down almost as a carpet of violet between the broad green leaves. No scene that I have witnessed upon the stage of a theatre was more pleasing to my eyes than that silent forest with its lawns of grass and its patches of wonderful, fantastic light, and its strange silence, and the loneliness of which it seemed to speak. So awesome was it that I do not wonder we went a considerable way in silence. We were afraid, perhaps, to tell each other what we thought. When Peter Bligh cried out at last, we started at the sound of his voice as though a stranger hailed us. "Yonder," cried he, in a voice grown deep and husky; "yonder, captain, what do you make of that? Is it living men or dead, or do my eyes deceive me?" I stopped short at his words and the others halted with me. We were in a deep glen by this time; and all the surrounding woodland was shut from our sight. Great trees spread their branches like a canopy above us; the grass was soft and downy to the feet; the bewitching violet light gave unnatural yet wonderful colours to the flowery bushes about us. No fairy glen could have showed a heart more wonderful; and yet, I say, we four stood on the borders of it, with white faces and blinking eyes, and thoughts which none would change even with his own brother. Why did he do it, you ask? Ah, I'll tell you why. There were three men sleeping in the glen, and the face of one was plainly to be seen. He lay upon his back, his hands clenched, his limbs stiff, his eyes wide open as though some fearsome apparition had come to him and was not to be passed by. Of the others, one had dropped face downward and lay huddled up at the tree's foot; but the third was in a natural attitude and I do believe that he was dead. For a long time we stood there watching them--for he whose eyes were to be seen uttered every now and then a dismal cry in his sleep, and the second began to talk like a man in a delirium. Spanish he spoke, and that is a tongue I do not understand. But the words told of agony if ever words did, and I turned away from the scene at last as a man who couldn't bear to hear them. "They're sleeping," said I, "and little good to wake them, if Miss Ruth speaks true. Come on, lads--the shore's our road and short's the time to get there." Peter Bligh reeled dizzily in his walk and began to talk incoherently--a thing I had never heard him do before in all his life.