ten steps, when we had reached the most dangerous spot on that ribbon of rock.
Of a sudden a dark figure, straining at its leash, moved from behind one of the limestone pillars, and two eyes shone horribly in the light, burning with a greenish fire, and the strong rays were flashed back in the horrid gleam of teeth. And, beside that demoniac shape, a tall figure appeared, a figure clothed in white, the eyes wide and blazing, the face white as snow and framed in gleaming gold, which fell in masses about the shoulders—a figure majestic, indescribably lovely and dreadful.
It was the angel and her demon!
Chapter 20
The Attack
That strange, weird scene, like some terrible vision from the pages of Doré, often rises before me—the tall white figure of the angel, the dark, squatting winged monster before her, and we two men from the sunlit world standing there upon that narrow way, the black profundity of the chasm yawning on either side of us.
The angel had indeed well chosen the moment. If that hideous ape-bat, straining at its leash, were loosed at us, our position, despite our revolvers, would be a truly horrible one. Scarce twenty-five feet lay between the monster and ourselves. In case of attack, we would have to drop the monster in its spring—and only a lucky shot could do that—or the result would be a most disastrous one. For we could not meet an attack there; to step aside or to meet the demon in a struggle would mean a plunge over the edge.
It was indeed a critical, appalling scene, one in which I have no desire to see even my worst enemy placed. Our fate, I thought, was in the hands of that white-robed, white-faced being whom we knew as the angel. The demon, however, as will be seen in a moment, was to take the matter in his own hands, if I may use that expression in speaking of that monster, for hands the thing had none. I can easily see how the demon, in the obscurity of the fog, had seemed to old Scranton a thing that had no shape. But here, the strong rays of our lights turned full upon the demon, the sight was an altogether different one. And a stranger sight surely no man had ever seen up there in that world which we had left, that world so near to us still, and yet it seemed so very far away now. It was as though some Circe had changed us into figures in some dread story of ancient days. And this was what men called the Twentieth Century, the golden age of science and discovery! Well, science doesn't yet know everything—a fact that, I am sorry to say, some scientists themselves are very prone to forget.
"Heavens," said Rhodes, keeping his look fixed on those figures before us, "isn't she a wonderful creature!"
"And it," said I, "an awful thing! And I'd wait a while before saying that she is wonderful. She may prove to be something very different."
The next instant I gave a cry. The demon had made a sudden strain forward. Came a sharp word from the angel, and that cerberus sank back again. But, though it sank back, that greenish fire in its eyes seemed to burn more fiercely, malevolently, than before.
"I think," I suggested, "it would be a good plan to move back a little, back to a safer, a wider spot."
"Move back? Never!" said Milton Rhodes. "We are here to move forward, not to go back."
