Up to this point he had been silent from sheer terror; but the feeling of the rough rope served to bring before him with startling reality the awfulness of the fate that was in store for him. He opened his mouth and forthwith gave vent to a cry so weird and unearthly that the yearlings burst out into a shout of laughter. It was no articulate cry, simply a wild howl. It rang and echoed through the woods, like the hoot of an owl at night, or the strange, half-human cry of a frightened dog. And it died into a gasp that Bull Harris described as "the sigh of a homesick bullfrog."