They set it down upon a smooth lump of granite, and the Professor tripped round it ecstatically. Denvarre and Gerry listened to his chatterings with the solemn attention of profound ignorance, and Parsons eyed the whole proceeding with melancholy and distrust. The sun was exceedingly powerful, and I lit another cigarette. After about ten minutes I sniffed suspiciously.
“Your beastly mummy’s waking up,” I hazarded. “There’s a confounded smell of musk.”
Lessaution opened his mouth to answer me. His eyes were agleam with native fire, and his podgy little nostrils and upper lip were curled into a sneer. I perceived that he proposed to wither me with a torrent of sarcasm.
As he stood opposite me his gaze took in the whole of the upper valley over my shoulder. Instead of the volley of winged words that I expected, the only sound that escaped between his teeth was a raucous croak. His mouth stayed, gaping widely. The fire died from his eyes, and I saw terror settle in them like a gray mist. His cap rose distinctly an inch upon his head, and he splayed out his hands before him, thrusting away from his white face as if to keep off a horror unimaginable.
We four wheeled in our tracks. Then my throat dried up within me; my lips twitched; my knees were stricken with sudden palsy. For if ever nightmare walked abroad embodied on God’s earth, it was there confessed before my eyes.
CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT GOD CAY
High up the slope of the mountain-side, lurching slowly across the bare, bleak slabs of granite, was a Beast, and he was like unto nothing known outside the frenzy of delirium. Swartly green was his huge lizard-like body, and covered with filthy excrescences of a livid hue. His neck was the lithe neck of a boa-constrictor, but glossy as with a sweat of oil. A coarse, heavy, serrated tail dragged and lolloped along the rocks behind him, leaving in its wake a glutinous, snail-like smear. Four great feet or flippers paddled and slushed beside—rather than under—this mass of living horror, urging it lingeringly and remorselessly toward us. The great neck swayed and hovered before it, poising the little malignant head. The horny eyelids winked languidly over the deep-set wicked eyes. The lean, red tongue, slavering over the thin, hide-like lips, wagged out at us as if in mockery. The teeth, and the nails in the webbed, puddy feet, were yellow and tusklike, and a skinny dewlap rustled as it crawled across the stones.
Three hundred yards away the Thing stopped and shook and swung its horrid neck at us almost derisively. The luminous eyes shone iridescent beneath the slow winking lids. The poised head swayed uncertainly.
Suddenly the long neck stiffened. It set stiff as a rope that warps a ship from harbor. The eyes settled into a glassy stare. The swallowings that had pulsed at the junctions of the neck and dewlap ceased. The muscles became rigid. A hideous paralysis seemed to fall upon it as if by magic.
A sigh—almost a sob—shivered up into the stillness, and I looked at my companions. All of them were staring, staring, staring—three of them with eager, human, living faces, the fourth with the carven visage of the dead.