He was then neither the savage nor the civilized
man, but he had many of the qualities of both.
The slight swaying motion of his body ceased suddenly and he remained as
still as a rock. He seemed to be a part of the green bushes that grew
around him, yet he was never more watchful, never more alert. The
indefinable sixth sense, developed in him by the wilderness, had taken
alarm; there was a presence in the forest, foreign in its nature; it was
not sight nor hearing nor yet smell that told him so, but a feeling or
rather a sort of prescience. Then an extraordinary thrill ran through
him; it was an emotion partaking in its nature of joy and anticipation;
he was about to be confronted by some danger, perhaps a crisis, and the
physical faculties, handed down by a far-off ancestor, expanded to meet
it. He knew that he would conquer, and he felt already the glow of
triumph.
Presently he sank down in the undergrowth so gently that not a bush
rustled; there was no displacement of nature, the grass and the foliage
were just as they had been, but the figure, visible before to the
trained eye at a dozen paces, could not have been seen now at all.
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