The light and the untainted air began to rush back into the cave, as with a heavy lurch the beast withdrew its blocking body from the entrance. The dark blood was dripping in gouts from its wounded tongue, mixing with its saliva in pools upon the rocks, and sinking smearingly into the sand. Even in that moment of horror I couldn’t help noticing how the red stains shone upon the yellow nails in each webby foot, and how the pulses in its wrinkled dewlap increased their throbbings with the sudden pain of the wound.
As it waddled sulkily away from the cave mouth, Denvarre slipped in another cartridge, and aiming carefully for its head, fired again. The merest shred of horny skin flicked away from above its eyelid as the bullet thudded home, and not a vestige of blood showed upon the green hide. Evidently those scales were bullet-proof.
It turned with a puzzled air as it felt the rap of the ball, looking back at us in an almost meditative manner, as if wondering if we had anything to do with this thing. Then its eye caught and dwelt upon the Mayan mummy, which still lay half divested of its coverings upon the slab of stone beside the stream. It ambled forward a pace or two, nosing at the carrion uncertainly. Then it swung its head toward the ice-stream, and laved and slobbered its tongue in the water till the bleeding had well-nigh ceased. There was a snap of his bony jaws and a twist of the hard lips as the head shot back again. A single gulp sufficed, and both coats and body were gone. Nothing remained but the slowly-sinking swelling of the long thick throat, and a ragged shred or two of cloth upon the gray stones at its feet.
With heavy strides it moved off ponderously in the direction whence it came, clambering up the rubble of the volcanic slope. For a quarter of an hour we saw it dwindle into the distance of the mountain-side, till finally it rounded a spur of the cañon and disappeared from our view.
Then we left our staring, to which we had kept with an intentness which only those who have experienced a like nerve-sapping fear can understand. First we examined poor Lessaution’s palm and shoulder. They were in a sorry case indeed.
The surface of his flesh where the rasping tongue had swept it was scored as if by some huge nutmeg-grater. The skin was hanging from it in thin strips and filaments. Where the utmost tip had touched his cheek in the swift withdrawal was a deep, livid scar like the brand of a hot iron. His left palm was raw, not a vestige of skin remained upon it.
We set the unfortunate little chap upon a boulder outside the cave, and I tore a rag or two from my shirt, wrung them out in the stream, and washed and cleansed the wound to the best of my ability. With the remaining lint I bound up the quivering hand and shoulder, and improvised a sling from a handkerchief. Then we set ourselves to consider what should be done.
“We ought to follow the brute and not rest till we’ve finally polished him off,” said Denvarre emphatically. “Supposing he descended upon the ship when we were away?”
“I am supposing it,” said I, “and it makes me sick when I think of it, and that’s why I say return to the ship at once to warn them in case he pays them a visit. How are we to track him among all these rifts and gorges of the mountain-side? and meanwhile he may be rolling down upon that undefended ship in that open pool. No. Home first, hunting him down afterward—if you like. As for me, I fail to see how we are going to do it without losing our own lives over the job.”
They all seemed to have a good deal to say upon this point. Lessaution, in spite of the pain of his wounds, had not lost his voice, and offered plan after plan of the most strategic order, being frantic for further interviews with the monster, the discovery of which he regarded as the culminating honor of the expedition. But by degrees Gerry and I managed to instill a little sense into him.