"The limb to which the monster had attached itself—see where the limb has been struck, perhaps by a falling tree, and weakened—well, it broke, and down the monster came crashing onto that branch on which we see it."
"That too is quite clear," said Rhodes. "But what killed the thing? The fall, it seems to me, could not have done it."
The next moment we halted, a little distance from the spot where hung the still, white body of the Droman.
"Oh, I see it now," said Rhodes, pointing. "Why didn't I see that before? As the monster came down, it was impaled upon those sword-like stubs of branches, one going through the body, the other out through the face. Face! The thing seems to be all face. And the human aspect of that visage! How like the big face of a fat man!"
That, there could be no doubt, was what had happened. And that Gorgonic horror, in the shock of the fall and its impalement, even in its death-throes, had never loosed the grip on its victim.
"We can't leave the poor devil hanging like that," I said.
"Of course not. And to give him burial will mean the loss of time probably more precious even than we think it. This is a wood horrible as any that Dante ever found himself in."
"We must risk it. We can't leave him like that or the body lying on the ground for the beasts to devour."
Rhodes and I still had our ice-picks, and we at once divested ourselves of the packs and started the grave. And, as we worked, try as I would I could not shake off from me—the feeling that, concealed somewhere in the trees, something was lurking, was watching us.
Zenvothunbro cut down the victim. Along the tentacle, ran two rows of suckers, like those of a devil-fish. So powerful was the grip, we could not remove the thing; and so we buried the poor Droman, in his shallow grave, with those coils still gripping him.