The men stood spell-bound with pity.
"A girl!" gasped one of them. "She's as good as dead, if she isn't dead now. He just killed our foreman back in the yards."
"No, thank heaven!" cried Blount, "she's not dead. Look!"
At the top of the cliff they saw Pauline's form suddenly quicken into life. The gorilla had released its hold upon her to make sure of its footing on the perilous ledge. Now she stood, a frail, pitiful, hopeless thing, fighting—actually assailing the beast, more mighty than a dozen men.
Their hearts sick within them they watched the brief struggle. Wrentz, too, watched it, from his hiding place on the top of the cliff. But his heart was not sick. In a moment, he was sure, his work would be accomplished for him, and his employer would be rid of Pauline Marvin in a way that could reflect no blame on any one.
Blount started up the cliff. He took it for granted that the others would follow, but looking down after gaining half the distance, he saw the circus men still huddled together in fascinated awe.
"Look! Look!" they called to him. "He's taking her up the tree."
Blount looked and saw the gorilla climbing ponderously the trunk of a large tree, the branches of which overhung the precipice. Blount climbed on frantically. He stopped again. The gorilla was crawling out upon one of the overhanging branches! The strange beast-brain had conceived a death for Pauline more terrible than any Raymond Owen bad ever plotted. Wrentz himself might have envied the gorilla.
Blount drew his revolver. He was not more than a hundred feet below them now. "It's the chance of hitting her against the chance of saving her," he muttered. He fired. With a snarl of pain the gorilla turned and bit savagely at its shoulder. Blount rushed on. He stopped again and fired. He was at the verge of the cliff. He could blaze away now with no danger of hitting Pauline, for he was a sure marksman.
With a great throb of joy in his heart the gallant young fellow saw the beast turn, and, leaving Pauline with her arms around the limb, her eyes shut against the dizzy depths below, move back and scramble down.