A crowd of Seminoles rode into camp and, dismounting, led their horses away.  Carl watched them gather about the steaming sof-ka kettles on the fires, handing the spoon from mouth to mouth.  One, a tall, broad young warrior in tunic and trousers and a broad sombrero—­disappeared in a wigwam on the fringe of camp.

A great wave of dizziness and burning nausea swept over Carl.  Again he was conscious of the taut, over-strung ligament droning, droning in his head.  The camp ahead became a meaningless blur of sinister scarlet fire, of bloodred wigwams and dusky figures that seemed to dance and lure and mock.  The wild wind that bent the grasses, the horrible persistent hoot of the owl in the cypress tree, the night noises of the black swamp to the west, all mocked and urged and whispered of things unspeakable.

The camp fell quiet.  A black moonless sky brooded above the dying camp fires.  Not until this wild world of swamp and Indian seemed asleep did the man in the grass stir.

Silently then he crept forward upon hands and knees until he had passed the first of the Indian wigwams.  Here he dropped for a silent interval of caution into shadow and lay there scarcely breathing.  On toward the door of Diane’s shelter he crept and once more lay inert and quiet.

Thunder rumbled disquietingly off to the east, The wind was rising over the Glades with a violent rustle of grass and leaves.  Now that his arm was nerved at last to its terrible task, it behooved him to hurry, ere the rain and thunder stirred the camp.

Noiselessly he crawled forward again.  As he did so a ragged dart of lightning glinted evilly in his eyes.  With a leap something bounded from the shadows behind him and bore him to the ground.

In the thick pall of darkness, he fought with infernal desperation.  The rain came fiercely in great gusts of tearing wind.  There was the strength of a madman to-night in Carl’s powerful arms.  Relentlessly he bore his assailant to the ground and raised his knife.  The lightning flared brilliantly again.  With a great, choking cry of unutterable horror, Carl fell back and flung his knife away.

“Oh, God!” he cried, shaking.  “Philip!” He flung himself face downward on the ground in an agony of abasement.

With a roar of wind and rain the hurricane beat gustily upon the wigwams.  Neither man seemed aware of it.  Philip, his face white, had risen.  Now he stood, tall, rigid, towering above the man upon the ground, who lay motionless save for the shuddering gusts of self-revulsion which swept his tortured body.

It was Philip at last who spoke.  Bending he touched the other’s shoulder.

“Come,” he said.  “Diane must not know.”

“No,” said Carl dully.  “No—­she must not know.  I—­I am not myself, Philip, as God is my witness—­” He choked, unable to voice the horror in his heart.  A man may not raise the knife of death to his one friend and speak of it with comfort.