The land upon the opposite side of the river was rolling and grass-
covered, but in so far as I could see, almost treeless. As I turned
my eyes from the sea back toward the opposite shore, I saw that which
caused me to halt in my tracks, cock my rifle and issue a cautious
warning to Orthis for silence, for there before us upon a knoll stood
a small horse-like animal.
It would have been a long shot, possibly five hundred yards, and I
should have preferred to have come closer but there was no chance to
do that now, for we were in the middle of the river in plain view of
the animal which stood there watching us intently. I had scarcely
raised my rifle, however, ere it wheeled and disappeared over the
edge of the knoll upon which it had been standing.
“What did it look like to you, Orthis?” I asked my companion.
“It was a good ways off,” he replied, “and I only just got my
binoculars on it as it disappeared, but I could have sworn that it
wore a harness of some sort. It was about the size of a small pony, I
should say, but it didn’t have a pony’s head.”
“It appeared tailless to me,” I remarked.
“I saw no tail,” said Orthis, “nor any ears or horns. It was a
devilish funny looking thing. I don’t understand it. There was
something about it—” he paused. “My God, sir, there was something
about it that looked human.”
“It gave me that same impression, too, Orthis, and I doubt if I
should have fired had I been able to cover it, for just at the
instant that I threw my rifle to my shoulder I felt that same strange
impression that you mention. There was something human about the
thing.”
As we talked, we had been moving on across the ford which we found an
excellent one, the water at no time coming to our waists while the
current was scarcely appreciable. Finally, we stepped out on the
opposite shore and a moment later, far to the left, we caught another
glimpse of the creature that we had previously seen. It stood upon a
distant knoll, evidently watching us.
Orthis and I raised our binoculars to our eyes almost simultaneously
and for a full minute we examined the thing as it stood there,
neither of us speaking, and then we dropped our glasses and looked at
each other.
“What do you make of it, sir?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know what to make of it, Orthis,” I
replied; “but I should swear that I was looking straight into a human
face, and yet the body was that of a quadruped.”
“There can be no doubt of it, sir,” he replied, “and this time one
could see the harness and the clothing quite plainly. It appears to
have some sort of a weapon hanging at its left side. Did you notice
it, sir?”
“Yes, I noticed it, but I don’t understand it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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