Perchance our tensioned nerves may have exaggerated the resemblance, but nothing more horribly real have my eyes ever beheld.
For a moment I cowered, like a nerveless craven, behind the logs, gazing up at that awful apparition, that mocking devil's-face, as a man fronts death in some terrible and unexpected form.

It seemed as if the breath of the creature must be pestilence, and that it would smite us gasping to earth, or draw us helplessly struggling within its merciless clutch.

A prayer trembled on my lips, but remained unuttered, for I could only stare upward at the mighty, crawling thing now overshadowing us, my arms uplifted in impotent effort to avert the crushing blow.
I could hear the girl sob where she had sunk upon the platform, and caught one glimpse of De Croix, his face yellow in the weird glare as he stared in speechless terror out over the water, his hands clutching the palisades.

It was Captain Wells, who had been standing near us, who first found voice.
"'Tis the Death-Shadow of the Miamis!" he cried, in choked accents, striding toward us along the narrow plank, and pointing eastward.

"I knew it must come, for our doom is sealed." What centuries of Indian superstition rested behind the fateful utterance, I know not; but facing that horrible spectre as we did, his words held me in speechless awe.