CHAPTER XXVII.
[THE MONSTER LET LOOSE.]
Neither man spoke. Phelan's amazement had bereft him of words. He knew the place thoroughly. He had known and feared it from his earliest years. To left and right were perpendicular cliffs. In front stretched the evil Black Rock. From where they stood descended the pathway to the table rock below. On the broken ground around them was nothing taller than dwarf bushes, which could not conceal a goat and to reach which the sure-footedness of a goat would have been needed. In his youth Phelan had been as bold as any lad in the village. But neither he nor any other lad of the village had ever dared to tempt death on those steep, friable, rotten slopes.
Beyond all doubt he had seen the figure of a man disappear over this cliff a few moments ago. Where was he--it--now? The Black Rock lay bare, naked, at their feet. A man's head could not be hidden there. Whither had that figure gone? It could not have reached the sea in the time. The monster had not yet broken loose, and the man could not have been swept into the water. No shattered corpse lay on the greasy rock beneath. A man cannot fly. What had become of this man? Or had they seen a ghost?
He turned to O'Brien and noticed that the latter looked pale and scared.
"You saw him?" he shouted above the storm. "You saw him as plain as daylight?"
"Yes."
"What do you make of it?"
"I don't know."
Once more Phelan looked carefully around him. Absolutely no trace of man was to be seen. Except for their presence, the place might have been alone since the making of the world. He again turned to O'Brien.