But somehow I was aware that I had lunged to my feet. And the Thing reared up with me. It was a Thing almost as heavy as myself. My left arm had come loose from its jaws and as its scrambling weight pressed me I went down again. A Thing of rubber? It seemed boneless, the shape of it bending as I seized it. A gruesomely yielding body. My flailing blows bounded back from it. Then I knew that I was gripping it by the head, twisting it. The snarling, snapping jaws suddenly opened wide with a scream—a scream that faded into a mouthing gibber, and in my grip the Thing went limp. I cast it away and it sank to the rocks, quivering.
For an instant I stood panting, trembling with nausea sickening me. On my hands the flesh of the weird antagonist was sticking like viscous, gluey rubber. Hot and clinging. Hot? I stared at my hands in the dimness. For a second I thought it was phosphorescence. Then yellow-green wisps of flame were rising from my hands. Frantically I plunged them into my jacket pockets. The tiny flames were extinguished. I stripped off my jacket, flung it away and it lay with a little smoke rising from it where the weird stuff was trying again to burst into flame.
The skin of my hands was seared, but the contact with the flames had been only momentary and the burns were not severe. It had all happened in a minute or two. I recall that I was standing trembling, staring at the yawning mouth of a cave entrance which was nearby in the cliff-face. A movement in there? A moving blob? Then I was aware that there was a light behind me. Off across the gully there was a blob of light-fire. A red-green blob, swirling, scrambling. And the sound of a distant, gibbering snarl....
The singing whizz of an arrow past my head made me turn again. My human adversary! I saw him now. He was coming at a run from the mouth of the cave—a wide-shouldered, grotesquely-shaped man with a brown hairy garment draped upon him. He swayed like a gorilla on thick bent legs. In one hand he held what seemed an arrow-sling. In the other he carried a long narrow segment of rock, swinging it like a club. He was no more than ten feet from me. In the dimness I could see his huge round head with tangled, matted blank hair. As I whirled to meet him, his voice was a bellow of guttural roar, like an animal bellowing to intimidate its enemy.
I turned, jumped sidewise. And abruptly from a rock-shadow another shape rose up! Slim, small white body, brown-draped with long, gleaming tawny hair. The girl! Her voice gasped,
"You run! He kill you! In here—this way—"
The bellowing savage had turned heavily in his rush and was charging us. In her terror and confusion the girl gripped me, shoving me toward the cave. As we ran I flung an arm around her, lifting her up. She weighed hardly more than a child. Then we were in the blackness of a tunnel-passage. I set her down.
"Lie down. Be quiet," I whispered vehemently. She understood me; she crouched back against the side wall. There seemed a little light here, a glow which I realized was inherent to the rocks, like a vague, faint phosphorescence. But it was brighter outside. The charging savage had evidently paused at the entrance. As I stared now, his bulky figure loomed there, grotesque silhouette. Then doubtless he saw me. With another bellow he came charging in.
I stood waiting, like a Toreador, in front of a heavily charging bull. It was something like that, for as he rushed me, swinging his club and plunging with lowered head of matted hair, nimbly I jumped aside. I had seized a rock half as big as my head. He had no time to turn and poise himself as I jumped on him, crashing the rock at the side of his broad ugly face as he straightened and swung around.
Ghastly blow. His face smashed in as the rock seemed to go into it. For a second his hulking body stood balanced upon the crooked legs and broad flat bare feet. Gruesome dead thing with the face and top of the head gone, it balanced on legs suddenly turned rigid. Then it toppled forward and thudded against the passage wall, sliding sidewise to the ground where it lay motionless.