ridge on which the moon still shone. She seemed to
linger there that I might see to defend myself. Soon I came in sight of
her, and climbed the faster.

Crossing the shadow of a rock, I heard the creatures panting at my
heels. But just as the foremost threw himself upon me with a snarl of
greedy hate, we rushed into the moon together. She flashed out an angry
light, and he fell from me a bodiless blotch. Strength came to me, and
I turned on the rest. But one by one as they darted into the light, they
dropped with a howl; and I saw or fancied a strange smile on the round
face above me.

I climbed to the top of the ridge: far away shone the moon, sinking to
a low horizon. The air was pure and strong. I descended a little way,
found it warmer, and sat down to wait the dawn.

The moon went below, and the world again was dark.

CHAPTER XI. THE EVIL WOOD

I fell fast asleep, and when I woke the sun was rising. I went to the
top again, and looked back: the hollow I had crossed in the moonlight
lay without sign of life. Could it be that the calm expanse before me
swarmed with creatures of devouring greed?

I turned and looked over the land through which my way must lie. It
seemed a wide desert, with a patch of a different colour in the
distance that might be a forest. Sign of presence, human or animal, was
none--smoke or dust or shadow of cultivation. Not a cloud floated in
the clear heaven; no thinnest haze curtained any segment of its circling
rim.

I descended, and set out for the imaginable forest: something alive
might be there; on this side of it could not well be anything!

When I reached the plain, I found it, as far as my sight could go, of
rock, here flat and channeled, there humped and pinnacled--evidently the
wide bed of a vanished river, scored by innumerable water-runs, without
a trace of moisture in them. Some of the channels bore a dry moss, and
some of the rocks a few lichens almost as hard as themselves. The air,
once "filled with pleasant noise of waters," was silent as death.
It took me the whole day to reach the patch,--which I found indeed a
forest--but not a rudiment of brook or runnel had I crossed! Yet through
the glowing noon I seemed haunted by an aural mirage, hearing so plainly
the voice of many waters that I could hardly believe the opposing
testimony of my eyes.

The sun was approaching the horizon when I left the river-bed, and
entered the forest. Sunk below the tree-tops, and s