"Oh, Bill!"
I gave a smothered exclamation and dashed forward. Rhodes was safe; at any rate, he was alive. A second or two, and I burst from the fern-growth.
Surprise, amazement brought me up instanter, and the next instant an indescribable horror had me in its grip.
The surprise, the amazement will be explained when I say that there before me stood my companions, every one of them, safe and sound. There they stood, motionless and silent as so many statues, gazing, as though held in a baleful charm, upon that thing before them. Rhodes was the only one that moved as I burst out into the scene.
"I wondered, Bill, why you didn't come. I was just about to call out to you again."
"And I wondered why you all were so silent, after that exclamation and that scream. I understand it now."
Shuddering, I pointed with my alpenstock at that thing before us.
"In the name of the Gorgons, what is that?"
"I wish that I knew, Bill. What is your name for such a monstrosity as that?"
A silence of some seconds followed, and then I remembered something, that rustling sound.