We crowded to the brink. Fifty feet down this ragged wall, Blaine, Vivian and Mack stood backed against it. An abyss was near them. And in front of them a great crimson, python-like thing was slithering, almost upon them now, with Blaine futilely firing his gun at it!
There was nothing we could do; and for those seconds all four of us stood staring, mute, numbed with horror. The scene on the ledge below us was clear as though on a little stage. The monster in another second would be upon its victims. I saw Blaine throw down his gun in despair. His voice floated up to us.
"Damn thing won't work! Got to—try to run—"
Then, suddenly we saw Mack leap forward, not toward where he might have a wild chance of climbing up our ragged little cliff-wall, but the other way—toward the brink that dropped down to another terrace, between the brink and the monster's slithering length. His intention was obvious—to lead the monster over that other brink after him.... To sacrifice himself so that his companions might escape.
In the chaos of that second we saw Mack get past the monster's head and neck. Its head turned. And then, before Mack could hurl himself down the hundred-foot drop, a loop of the great crimson body lashed out. It seemed that a tentacle whipped separate from the undulating snake-like body—a tentacle that seized Mack, looped around him and flung him into the air.
Just a ghastly second or two as Mack's whirling body came up diagonally toward us in the air, and then fell back, into a ragged cluster of rocks beyond the monster's tail. Horribly we could hear the thud as it struck. For another second the great crimson head of the monster seemed to rear, with swaying eye-beams searching. But Mack's body was hidden by the rock-cluster.