e out another knight vaguely; he was coming
very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for
us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and
step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the
first knight--and started slightly when he discovered him. He
stood a moment--no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move
on; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, good
Sir Mar--" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder--and just
uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a dead
man, you see--killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something
awful about it.
These early birds came scattering along after each other, about
one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour.
They brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule,
they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and
found the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue spark
when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible
to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow,
he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected.
We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous
regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and
this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy
there in the dark and lonesomeness.
We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We elected
to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned,
we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case
we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem
to have any spears along. Well, it was a curious trip. Everywhere
dead men were lying outside the second fence--not plainly visible,
but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic
statues--dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire.
One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current
was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out.
Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment
we guessed what it was. It was a surprise in force coming! whispered
Clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence
in the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stood
by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful
work upon that swarming host. One could make out but little of
detail;
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