Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/19

 moment he took the opportunity to scan the deepening shadows once more.

The first glance brought a piercing shriek from his white lips.

The thing was there!

The young man did not fall groveling to the sand this time—instead, he stood staring with protruding eyes at the vague form, while shriek after shriek broke from his grinning lips.

Reason was tottering.

The thing, whatever it was, halted at the first blood-curdling cry, and then when the cries continued it slunk back toward the wood.

With what remained of his ebbing mentality Waldo Emerson realized that it were better to die at once than face the awful fears of the black night. He would rush to meet his fate, and thus end this awful agony of suspense.

With the thought came action, so that, still shrieking, he rushed headlong toward the thing at the wood’s rim. As he ran it turned and fled into the forest, and after it went Waldo Emerson, his long, skinny legs carrying his emaciated body in great leaps and bounds through the tearing underbrush.

He emitted shriek after shriek—ear-piercing shrieks that ended in long drawn out wails, more wolfish than human. And the thing that fled