Then he sprang to his feet, gripping his hand-ax, and ran panting to the place where he had dug for food. His excavations tended to close and heal overnight; now he went to work with vicious strokes enlarging the latest one, hacking and tearing it deeper and deeper.
He was almost hidden in the cavity when a shadow fell across him from behind. He whirled, for there could be no shadows on the monster's back.
A man stood watching him calmly—an elderly man in rusty black clothing, leaning on a stick. The staff, the snowy beard, and something that smoldered behind the benign eyes, gave him the look of an ancient prophet.
"Who are you?" asked Westover, breathlessly but almost without surprise.
"I am the Preacher," the old man said. "The Lord hath sent me to save you. Arise, my son, and follow me."
Westover hesitated. "I'm not just imagining you?" he appealed. "Somebody else has really found the answer?"
The Preacher's brows knitted faintly, but then his look turned to benevolent understanding. "You have been alone too long here. Come with me—I will take you to the Doctor."
Westover was still not sure that the other was more than one of the powerful specters of childhood—the Preacher, the Doctor, no doubt the Teacher next—risen to rob him of his last shreds of sanity. But he nodded in childlike obedience, and followed.
When, a few hundred yards nearer the monster's head, the other halted at a black rent in the rugose hide, the mouth of a burrow descending into utter blackness—Westover knew that both the Preacher and his own wild hope were real.
"Down here. Into the belly of Leviathan," said the old man solemnly, and Westover nodded this time with alacrity.