Suddenly he awoke—awoke with the weight of an indefinable terror upon him. A broad moon in its third quarter was sailing aloft in the heavens, flooding the hollow with its ghostly light. Instinctively he sprang to his feet. As he did so there came upon him a resistless and shuddering fear akin to that which had paralyzed him in the cave. What was it? The magnetic proximity of the awful thing stealthily stalking him? No. The reason now lay clear.
In the moonlight he could make out, shadowy and indistinct, the corpse he had found during the afternoon. But, as he gazed, a change seemed to have come over it. It had increased in size—had more than doubled its bulk. Heavens! the dark mass began to move—to heave—and then he thought the very acme of horror was reached. Not one body was there, but two. Spread out over the human body was that of the monster. Now he could make out almost every detail of its hideous shape, the convulsive working of the frightful tentacles as it devoured its lifeless prey. He could stand it no longer. His brain was bursting; he must do something. Raising his voice he shouted—shouted as assuredly he had never shouted in his life. There was a maniacal ring in his voice. He felt as though he must rush right at this thing of fear. Was he really going mad? Well, it began to look like it.
But the effect was prompt. The awful vampire, gathering its horrible legs under it, sprang clear of the carcass. It stood for a moment in rigid immobility, then ere the maniacal echoes of that shout had quavered into silence among the cliffs, it shoggled over the ridge and was lost to view.
The night wore through somehow, and if ever mortal eyes were rejoiced by the light of dawn, assuredly they were those of Laurence Stanninghame, as once more he found himself the sole living tenant of that ghastly place of death. Yet, to what end? One more dreary day in his rock prison, another night of horror—and—the same brooding fate awaiting! He could not remain awake forever. Even though the sound of his voice thus unexpectedly lifted up had alarmed the vampire, it would not always do so. Still, with the light of the new-born day after the night of terror came some medium of relief.
Once more he drew upon his provision stores. While repacking them his gaze rested on the native blanket with the wild idea of manufacturing therefrom a cord. But to do this he needed a knife. The stuff was of material too stout for tearing.
A knife! Ha! With the thought came another. It was not worth much, but it was something,—and with that came a hard, fierce, desperate hope. The broad gold bracelet which still encircled Lutali's skeleton wrist—could not that be banged and flattened into something sharp and serviceable? It was hard metal, anyway.
Still the grim horror lurked within its cave—still it came not forth. It was waiting until another night should embolden it to seize its defenceless human prey. He glanced upwards. There were still from two to three hours of daylight. In a very few moments he had reached the skeleton of the Arab, and, snapping off the bony wrist without hesitation, the bracelet was within his grasp.
But as he looked around for some means of flattening it, there flashed in upon him another idea—a perfectly heaven-sent idea, grisly under ordinary circumstances, as it might be. The bracelet was large and massive, and for it a new use suggested itself. Critically examining the skeletons, he selected two with the largest and strongest leg-bones. These he soon wrenched off, and, running one through the gold bracelet, he jammed the latter fast against the thicker end—binding it as tightly as he could to the bulging joint with a strip torn from his clothing. With a thrill of unutterable joy he realized that he was no longer unarmed. He had manufactured a tolerably effective mace. He swung it through the air two or three times with all his force. Such a blow would strike a human enemy dead;—was this thing so heavily armour-plated as to be proof against a similar stroke?