Stern, running but the faster, plugged him with a forty-four. The Anthropoid, still clinging, yowled hideously, then all at once dropped off and vanished in the depths.
Full drive, Allan hurled himself toward the entrance of the bridge. It seemed to him the beasts were almost on him now.
Plainly he could hear the slavering click of their tushes and see the red, bleared winking of their deep-set eyes.
Now he was at the rope-anchorage, where the cables were lashed to two stout palms.
He emptied his automatic point-blank into the pack.
Pausing not to note effects, he slashed furiously at the left-hand rope.
One strand gave. It sprang apart and began untwisting. Again he hewed with mad rage.
“Crack!”
The cable parted with a report like a pistol-shot. From the bridge a wild, hideous tumult of yells and shrieks arose. The whole fabric, now unsupported on one side, dropped awry. Covered from end to end with Anthropoids, it swayed heavily.
Had men been on it, all must have been flung into the rapids by the shock. But these beast-things, used to arboreal work, to scaling cliffs, to every kind of dangerous adventuring, nearly all succeeded in clinging.