“It sounds like something or somebody waking up from a long sleep,” he shuddered.
The young reporter could not have described the sound better if he had cast about for a definition of the emanation from the ravine for an hour. That was exactly what the noise did sound like. The first sigh of somebody, “or something,” as Billy said, stretching himself as his eyes open after a long deep slumber.
“Come on, Billy, don’t be all night,” shouted Frank, as the young reporter hesitated and fumbled with the chain that Harry had swung back to him.
“Well, I suppose I’ve got to do it sometime, and it might as well be now,” decided Billy suddenly, making up his mind like a boy about to plunge into his cold tub on a winter morning. As he spoke he gave the necessary run back to gain impetus and started on the swing.
Frank and Harry, standing on the opposite ledge, ready to catch him as he landed, heard the boy scream in mortal terror as he shot over the center of the black gulf.
“Frank! Harry! Save me!” he shrieked.
At the same moment before the boys’ horrified eyes a long, wicked white head, with sightless slits for eyes, shot up out of the black mouth of the pit and darted at Billy.
“FRANK! HARRY! SAVE ME,” SHRIEKED BILLY.
As it did so Frank’s revolver spat out its whole magazine of ten high-powered cartridges. Harry, his arms about Billy, who would otherwise certainly have toppled back into the abyss in his terror, saw the wicked wedge-shaped head vanish instantly as the bullets hummed about it like a loosened hive of bees.