They did. Their flesh began to creep.
Up, upward, struggling between great rocks, it climbed, that cry, where the stony teeth of the Man Killer bit the trail right in two.
“Help–h-help!” it pleaded. “Oh–help!” Then feebly, but fierily: “Oh-h! confound it–help, I say!”
That was the moment when Pemrose Lorry shook as if the old Man Killer were devouring her.
Was there–could there be something familiar, half-familiar, about the faint, volcanic shout: some accent she seemed to have heard before? And yet–and yet, not quite that, either!
“My word! Some puir body’s hur-rted bad–ba-ad–like a toad under a harrow,” grunted Andrew, and scrambled hastily on over a gray barrier of rocks,–the girls following.
Once again it limped painfully up to them, the cry, like a visible, broken thing. “Help–h-help, I say!” Then, feebly, in rock-bitten echo: “Help!”
CHAPTER XXI
The Man Killer
“We must lift him out of the mud! Oh-h! even if it hurts him–terribly–we’ll have to lift him to a dry spot.”