“Oh, you’re hurt—you’re hurt,” she whispered pantingly as we raced toward the ship. “And it’s my fault. But I couldn’t stand the screams of the poor little wretch—I couldn’t have seen her torn and mangled. Hadn’t we better get into it?” and she pointed up the ship’s side above us.
“No,” I answered, as I handed her swiftly on to the ledge, and helped her down into the cave beyond, “he might manage to break in upon us. Here we’re safe for the present, at any rate. He may try to starve us out, but it isn’t likely. After a bit, when he finds he can’t get at us, he’ll shuffle away as he came.”
Fidget was barking furiously, and bristling up her hair, but at the farthest end of the cavern. A sludgy, dragging movement became audible, and the murky odor of the Horror clouded down to us. Looking out from under the overhanging roof I saw a single shining claw project over the edge of the cleft. Then the half of the pad came into view, the rock dinting its podginess.
The brute swung his head over me, and parted his thin, inquisitive lips almost to a sneer. For one halting second the head was poised motionless. Then, swift as a dropping stone, it smote down at me, and I flung myself back, the evil eyes flashing past not five yards away. There they hung and balanced, glinting evilly at us, while the long pendant neck strained into the cleft from above. The huge body made twilight in the cavern, swelling eagerly into the space between the rock and the ship. The muscular fore-arms kneaded and crumbled the edges of the fissure. So were we desperately prisoned, and such was our jailer.
CHAPTER XVIII
A DESPERATE BETROTHAL
At the farthest limit of the cave we leaned upon the rock, and looked at that wicked, weaving head. Twice before had I seen it, but never in such circumstances as this. On both occasions we had been men alone. The peril had been distributed, so to speak, amongst us all. But with a girl, and a beautiful girl moreover, with whom I happened to be desperately in love—to have that outrageous atrocity mouthing upon her and me alone, and to feel that any accident might send her into its bestial maw—Good God! it might turn any brain. I stood between Gwen and the entrance and tried to smile into her face.
“I wouldn’t look that way, if I were you,” said I persuasively. “He’ll take himself off directly, I hope.”
Her lips were very white and they trembled unrestrainedly, but she smiled back into my eyes—a ghostly, uncertain sort of smile, though, I must confess.
“I don’t mind. Not much at least.” Then with a strained attempt to look at the humorous side of it she added, “What an opportunity for M. Lessaution and his squirt.”
I loved to see the pluck of her, and answered cheerfully.