We mustn't leave them here."
"Why not?"
"If they're found, they'll suspect--they'll know ..." He stopped,
stammering, and again his voice trailed away into a mumble, as though
beyond his control.
Godfrey looked at him for a moment, and I could guess at the surprise
and suspicion in his eyes. I myself was ill at ease, for there was
something in Swain's face--a sort of vacant horror and dumb
shrinking--that filled me with a vague repulsion. And then to see his
jaw working, as he tried to form articulate words and could not, sent
a shiver over my scalp.
"Very well," Godfrey agreed, at last. "We'll take the ladders, since
you think it so important. You take that one, Lester, and I'll take
this."
I stooped to raise the ladder to my shoulder, when suddenly, cutting
the darkness like a knife, came a scream so piercing, so vibrant with
fear, that I stood there crouching, every muscle rigid. Again the
scream came, more poignant, more terrible, wrung from a woman's throat
by the last extremity of horror; and then a silence sickening and
awful. What was happening in that silence?
I stood erect, gaping, suffocated, rising as from a long submersion.
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