As he walked, apparently unconcerned, his ears were open to every sound, and, although he knew that it was from above the peril should come, he did not look up, at least not directly. Then, suddenly, and without apparent reason, he leaped nimbly about a yard to his left; for his trained ear had caught the faintest possible sound overhead, and, as he did so, there was a soft hiss past his ear. Harley Greenoak had escaped death that time.
Quick as thought he threw up his gun, but in the moment between that action and the roar of the piece he glimpsed the most hideous and revolting object imaginable. The simian face, staring in bestial ferocity, the horn-like ears, the brown misshapen frame and limbs, were more suggestive of some forest fiend than of anything human. When the smoke had cleared away the thing had disappeared.
What did it mean? For the first time Harley Greenoak felt a thrill of superstitious misgiving as unpleasant as it was strange. He to miss, and to miss at that short distance, with a charge of buckshot too—for he had fired the smooth-bore barrel—why, it was incredible! Nothing human could have escaped. Yet this thing had done so. It had not fallen, it had simply disappeared.
He stared upward at the spot. The tall, yellow-wood tree was strong and sound, and showed no sign of hole or cleft that would have held a rat. Ha!
Lying behind a large limb, motionless as the wood itself, blending so completely with its colour as to escape detection, was the object of his search, watching him. But for the glint of the eye, he would have failed to discover it at all. Again his gun roared.
But—too late. With superhuman agility the thing had leapt away, and, springing from branch to branch with the quickness and security of cat and monkey combined, it seemed a hopeless chase to Greenoak, who, as he ran, marking its course by the swaying of the branches, had already reloaded both barrels. Just the fraction of a glimpse, and it was his last chance. Again the reverberation of the report rolled bellowing from cliff to cliff. With it was a shrill, beast-like scream, and something thudded heavily to the earth. Harley Greenoak walked leisurely up to it, and after a moment’s examination came away with a smile of grim satisfaction on his face, It was not to last, though. He had not gone far when a stony glare of horror came into his eyes as they rested on something lying on the ground, the form of a man, the form of Dick Selmes, his charge.
It was lying on its face with arms extended. But as he stood over it the eyes opened with a dull stupid stare, as that of a person awakened out of a heavy sleep.
“Wake up, Dick. Wake up, man,” said Greenoak, decidedly, lugging him into a sitting posture. “Here, take a drink of this.”
From the bundle that bulged he produced a bottle of brandy.
“Don’t want to,” said the other, sleepily.