The Freebooters by Gustave Aimard — Read

We have said that night had fallen for some time past, and it was quite dark under covert. In the black sky a chaos of clouds, laden with the electric fluid, rolled heavily along. Not a star glistened in the vault of heaven; an autumnal breeze whistled gustily through the trees, and at each blast covered the ground with a shower of dead leaves.

In the distance could be heard the dull and mournful appeals of the wild beasts proceeding to the drinking place, and the snapping bark of the coyotes, whose ardent eyes at intervals gleamed like incandescent coals amid the shrubs. At times lights flashed in the forest and ran along the fine marsh grass like will-o'-the-wisps. Large dried up sumach trees stood at the corners of the clearing, in which the bivouac was established, and in the fantastic gleams of the fire waved like phantoms their winding sheets of moss and lianas. A thousand sounds passed through the air; nameless cries escaped from invisible lairs, hollowed beneath the roots of the aged trees; stifled cries descended from the crests of the quebradas, and our adventurers felt an unknown world living around them, whose proximity froze the soul with a secret terror.