Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/107

wavelike shaking and rippling agitated the entire monster.

"'It's loosening! Put every ounce of strength into it!' I gasped as I heaved desperately at the broad shoulders—and moved them! Swaying him from side to side, inch by inch I drew him clear to the waist; then abruptly resistance ceased and I went sprawling. He was free, and groaning and attempting to rise as I picked myself up and leapt to his side.

"'Lean on me! We've got to reach the trail—it's the only shelter about here!' I panted, winded by my efforts and the fall.

"Somehow I got him standing, and with my arm about him we started, at a tangent to clear the throbbing horror, and made with all speed we could summon for the trail. Lurching and stumbling—for as I have said, Daimler is a big, heavy man, and now was badly shaken and benumbed by the pressure he had borne—we circled the brute; and though in the blurring dusk I had but a hasty glimpse of its black immensity, yet at once I saw that it had become even larger than a moment back and the throbbing had changed to a swaying motion that went from side to side. At once I guessed the truth.

"'My God! Daimler, the brute is rising—we must go quicker!' I hoarsely whispered, somehow fearing that even a whisper would precipitate another attack.

"I heard the staggering man's breath indrawn with terror, and felt his form stiffen and strain to further effort, but a shambling amble was the utmost we could manage. My spirit fairly crawled within me as every step of that slow passage I felt that escape was impossible; and any second we might be dashed headlong with the blackness of unimaginable night and tons of living pulp smothering us.

"But at last, unharmed, we reached the ascent and staggered up until the walls closed in and we neared the narrow slit where I had been chipping and which now offered our only refuge. Here we halted for a moment.

"'I think we are fairly safe now, thank heaven!' said I fervently as I peered back into the blur of the bay. Only a toneless pearly gray remained of the many-hued sunset. But one could distinguish quite well the cliffs, and the sands, and the darker band of sea beyond; and all that colorless expanse was solitary and nothing met the eye but the natural and the explainable.

"'Why, it's gone!' I exclaimed in surprize and relief.

"'No! Look up there, Messinger,' said Daimler in a shaking whisper as he clutched at my arm.

"I suppose by recent association of space and horror instinctively he had sought the quarter from which that horror had been born. I followed his lifted, pointing arm, and there floated the beast, level with the cliff crest and directly above us; and as I fearfully stared, it dropped a little lower and lay between the upper outflung sides of the gorge.

"'It's coming down! Quick! into the shelter ahead!' I urged in a panic.

"'Shelter! Where!' asked Daimler eagerly.

"'Just above—the passage is so narrow, it couldn't reach us there,' I replied, regaining some confidence as I thought of the deep narrow cleft ahead.

"In a moment we had stumbled up the steep slope and stood between the sheer walls that for thirty or forty feet lay so close together that we could only just stand abreast and stare up at the thing that loomed so menacingly against the infinite gray behind it. But now I had less fear, for I felt it was impossible that such a huge mass could ever penetrate into our shelter; and probably the brute was of the same opinion, for it made no further attempt to attack us but