The alarm! The search was on! The wild shriek of a siren
broke the stillness near at hand, followed a few seconds later by
the gradually increasing roar of an engine as it sped up the dirt
road not three hundred yards to his left,--the road that ran past
the gate on the other side of the hill. God! They were getting
close!
Another and even more disturbing sound came to him as he stood with
his fingers gripping one of the little ledges, the toe of his shoe
fumbling for a foothold in another. Somewhere back on the trail he
had just traversed, a rock went clattering down to the river. He
heard it bounding--and the splash as it shot into the water.
He hesitated no longer. Shutting his eyes, he began the ascent....
A dark object turned the corner of the cliff below and moved slowly,
cautiously along the wall. Suddenly it stopped. From somewhere in
the gloom ahead came a strange and puzzling sound, as of the dragging
of a tree limb across the face of the rock. The crouching object
in the trail straightened up and was transformed into the tall,
shadowy figure of a man.
For many seconds he stood motionless, listening, his eyes searching
the trail ahead. The queer sound of scraping went on, broken at
intervals by the faint rattle of sand or dirt upon the rocky path.
At last he looked up. Far up the face of the cliff a bulky, shapeless
thing was crawling, slowly but surely like a great beetle.
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