We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like
nothing, but never gaining an inch on it--and all of a sudden it was
gone again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he
says, gasping like a fish:

"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de
ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de
danger we's in."

"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I--gimme the glass!"

He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.

"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business--maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to
starboard!--Port your hellum! Hard down! There--ease up--steady, as you
go."

We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out
after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and
when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:

"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the