CHAPTER VI.

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      The thin crescent of the moon, like a silver sickle, disappeared almost as soon as the sun set. A few clouds rising in the west, soon extinguished the last gleams of twilight. Darkness gradually rose from below and covered all. The ring of mountains was blotted out in obscurity, and the castle soon disappeared beneath the pall of night.

      If the night promised to be very dark, there was nothing to indicate that it would be troubled by any atmospheric disturbance, rain or storm; and this was fortunate for Nic Deck and his companion, who were about to encamp in the open air.

      There was no clump of trees on this barren plateau of Orgall. Here and there were a few shrubs, which afforded no shelter against the nocturnal cold. There were rocks in plenty, some half-buried in the ground, others in such a state of equilibrium that the slightest push would have sent them rolling down into the fir-woods.

      The only plant that grew in profusion on the rocky soil was the thistle known as Russian thorn, whose seeds, says Elisée Reclus, were carried in their coats by the Muscovite horses—“a present of cheerful conquest which the Russians gave the Transylvanians.”

      A search was made for a more comfortable place in which to pass the night, and which would afford some shelter against the fall in temperature which is remarkable in these altitudes.

      “We have more than chances enough—to be miserable!” murmured Doctor Patak.

      “Are you not satisfied, then?” asked Nic Deck.

      “Certainly not! What a splendid place to catch a good cold or the rheumatism, which I do not know how I shall ever get cured of!”

      A very artless confession on the part of the old quarantine officer. How he regretted his comfortable little house at Werst, with its room so snug and its bed so well furnished with pillows and counterpane!

      Among the stones on the Orgall plateau one had to be selected whose position offered the best shelter against the south-west wind, which was beginning to freshen. This was what Nic Deck did, and soon the doctor joined him behind a large rock which was as flat as a table on its upper surface.

      This stone was one of those stone benches amid the scabiouses and saxifrages which are frequently met with at the turnings of the road in Wallachia. While the traveller sits on them he can quench his thirst with the water contained in a vase placed on them, and which is every day renewed by the country people. When Baron Rodolphe de Gortz lived at the castle, this bench bore a bowl which the family servants never left empty. But now it was dirty and worn and covered with green mosses, and the least shock would have reduced it to dust.

      At the end of the seat rose a granite shaft, the remains of an ancient cross, nothing being left of the arms, although a half-effaced groove showed where they had been.

      Doctor Patak, being a strong-minded man, was unable to admit that this cross could protect him against supernatural apparitions. But by an anomaly common to a good many of the incredulous, although he did not believe in God, he was not very far from believing in the devil. In his heart he believed the Chort was not far off; he it was that haunted the castle, and neither the closed gate, the raised drawbridge, the lofty wall, nor the deep ditch would keep him from coming out, if the fancy took him, to come and twist both their necks.

      And when the doctor saw that he had to spend a whole night under these conditions, he shuddered with terror. No! It was too much to require of a human creature, and it would be more than the most energetic of characters could bear.

      And then an idea came to him tardily—an idea he had not thought of before he left Werst. It was Thursday evening, and on that day the people of the district, the country people, were careful not to go out after sundown. Thursday they knew to be a day of evil deeds. Their legends told them that if they ventured abroad on that day, they ran the risk of meeting with some evil spirit. And so no one moved about on the roads and by-ways after nightfall.

      And here was Doctor Patak not only away from home, but close to a haunted castle, two or three miles from the village. And here he would have to stop until the dawn came—if it ever came again! In truth, this was simply tempting the devil!

      Deep in these thoughts, the doctor saw the forester carefully take out of his bag a piece of cold meat, after having a good drink from his flask. The best thing, it occurred to him, was to do likewise, and he did so. A leg of a goose, a thick slice of bread, the whole well moistened with rakiou, was the least he could take to revive his strength. But if that calmed his hunger, it did not calm his fears.

      “Now let us sleep,” said Nic Deck, as soon as he had put his bag at the foot of the stone.

      “Sleep, forester?”

      “Good-night, doctor.”

      “Good-night—that is easy to wish, but I am afraid it will not end well.”

      Nic Deck, being in no humour for conversation, made no reply. Accustomed by his vocation to sleep amid the woods, he threw himself down close to the stone seat and was soon in a deep sleep. And the doctor could but grumble between his teeth when he heard his companion breathing at regular intervals.

      As for him, it was impossible for him for some minutes to deaden his senses of hearing and seeing. In spite of his fatigue he continued to see and to listen. His brain was a prey to those extravagant visions which are due to the troubles of insomnia.

      What was he looking for in the depths of darkness?—the hazy shapes of the objects which surrounded him, the scattered clouds across the sky, the almost imperceptible mass of the castle? The rocks on the Orgall plateau seemed to be moving in a sort of infernal saraband. And if they were to crumble on their bases, slip down the slope, roll on to the two adventurers, and crush them at the castle gate to which admission was denied them!

      The unhappy doctor got up; he listened to the noises which are ever present on lofty table-lands—those disquieting murmurs which seem to whisper and groan and sigh. He heard the nyctalops fanning the rocks with frenzied wing, the stryges in their nocturnal flight, and two or three pairs of funereal owls whose hooting echoed like a cry of pain. Then his muscles contracted all at once, and his body trembled, bathed in icy perspiration.

      In this way the long hours went by until midnight. If the doctor had been able to talk, to exchange but a few words now and then, to give free course to his recriminations, he would have been less afraid. But Nic Deck slept and slept in a deep slumber.

      Midnight—that terrible hour for all, the hour of apparitions, the hour of evil deeds!

      What could it be?

      The doctor had just got up again. He was asking himself if he were awake, or if he were suffering from a nightmare.