At that instant, as the angel stood there with upraised hand, it happened.
That sound came again, only more horrible than before, and the demon sprang at us. Caught thus off her guard, the angel was jerked, whirled forward. There was a wild, piercing cry, which rose to a scream; but the winged monster paid not the slightest heed. It was as though the thing had gone mad.
The woman went down; in an instant, however, she was up again. She screamed at the demon, but it lunged toward us, flapping its great hideous wings and dragging her after it farther out onto the bridge.
Her position now was one of peril scarcely less than our own.
All this had passed, of course, with the quickness of thought. We could not fire, for fear of hitting the angel, right behind the demon; we could not move back; and we could not stand there and let this nightmare-monster come upon us. In a second or two, if nothing were done, it would do so. But what could we do? The thought of saving ourselves by killing the woman—and the chances were a hundred to one that we would kill her if we fired at the demon—was a horrible one. But to stand there and be sent over the edge was horrible, too. And the angel, in all probability, would be killed anyway; that she had not already been jerked from the rock was nothing less than a miracle.
Why didn't she loose her hold on the leash?
These are some of the things that flashed through my mind—yes, even then. I never before knew what a rapid thing thought can be. Oh, those things that shot through my brain in those brief, critical seconds. My whole life, from childhood to that very moment, flashed before me like the film of a cinematograph, though with the speed of light. I wondered what death was like—what it would be like somewhere in the depths of that black gulf. And I wondered why the angel did not loose her hold on that leash. I didn't know that she had wrapped the chain around her hand and that the chain had in some way got caught. The poor angel could not free herself.
Little wonder, forsooth, that she was screaming so wildly at the demon.
"We must risk it!" I cried.
"Hold!"