Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/243

 Thurg, and had the distance been less he would have been left far behind, but it was a long distance from the spot, where they had met, to Nadara’s cliffs. The girl could out-run the man for a short distance, but when victory depended upon endurance the advantage was all upon the side of the brute.

As they neared the goal Nadara realized that the lead she had gained at first was rapidly being overcome by the horrid creature panting so close behind her. She strained every nerve and muscle in a last mad effort to distance the fate that was closing upon her. She reached the cliff. Thurg was just behind her. Half spent, she stumbled upward in, what seemed to her, pitiful slowness. At last her hand grasped the sapling that led to the mouth of her cave—in another instant she would be safe. But her new-born hope went out as she felt the sapling slipping and glanced downward to see Thurg dragging it from its position.

She shut her eyes that she might not see the depths below into which she was about to be hurled, and then there smote upon her ears the most terrific burst of sound that had ever assailed them, other than the thunders that rolled down out of the heavens when the rains came. But this sound did not come from above—it came from the valley beneath.