"He is dead," I said, for I had laid my hand against his heart, and it was
still, and his flesh was clammy cold, and when we found him he was lying
face down in the mud.

"He escaped as we did, and wandered till he fell in here and was too weak
to rise. Let us go on;" and we joined hands, for the comfort of the living
touch, and went on our way more heavily than before.

We kept anxious look-out for lights or any sign of humanity. And lights
indeed we saw at times that night, and cowered shivering in ditches and
mudholes as they flitted to and fro about the marshes. For these, we knew,
were no earthly lights, but ghost flares tempting us to
destruction--stealthy pale flames of greenish-blue which hovered like
ghostly butterflies, and danced on the darkness, and fluttered from place
to place as though blown by unfelt winds. And one time, after we had left
the dead man behind, one such came dancing straight towards us, and we
turned and ran for our lives till we fell into a hole. For Le Marchant
vowed it was the dead man's spirit, and that the others were the spirits of
those who had died in similar fashion. But for myself I was not sure, for I
had seen similar lights on our masts at sea in the West Indies, though
indeed there was nothing to prove that they also were not the spirits of
drowned mariners.




CHAPTER XXVI

HOW WE FOUND A FRIEND IN NEED