“What was that?” I asked when he deliberated.
“You’ll hear,” he answered, and went on: “I got the thing out at last, little chunks of ice clinging to it, and dragged it ashore, if a glacier has a shore. It froze me to look at the thing with those little chunks of ice sticking to the long hair. Once, at Dawson, I’d seen a man pulled out of the Yukon, ice clinging to him. That was different, though; at Dawson there was a crowd to sort of buck a man up. I turned the thing over on its back to see what it looked like in front.”
“Well?” said I.
“You’ve seen apes, MacNeal?”
“This thing looked like that?” I countered, beginning to connect up his first queer questions with what he was telling me. “You don’t mean it, Chris!”
“I’m telling you,” he nodded solemnly. “An ape man, that’s what it was. More man than ape, if you ask me. For instance, the face was flatter than an ape’s, and the forehead and chin were more pronounced. The nose was flat, but it wasn’t an ape’s nose. And the hands and feet were like those of a man. Oh, it was a man, all right. The thing that convinced me, I think, was the knife gripped in its hand.”
“The knife you have there?” I inquired.
“This very knife,” he answered.
“What then, Chris?” I urged him to go on.
“I had a good look at that thing and started for my shack. Yes, MacNeal, I ran, and I’m not ashamed to say so. It scared me. Ugliest thing I ever saw. Eyes wide open, glaring and glinting, and the thick lips parted to show the nastiest set of fangs I ever saw in the mouth of man or beast. Why, I tell you the damned thing looked alive! No wonder I scooted. You would have done the same. Anybody would.