"But why does she not scream? Why are her eyes fastened--not on her lover--not on the madman, but upon another object? What is that object? Is it a man? Can any man move as that thing moves? Surely that cannot be a man, that streak of drab color--yonder thing that casts to the ground a garment, then shoots backward twenty feet from the abyss--swifter than a panther, as silent as death, with two balls of living fire glaring from--from a face? Surely not a human face! Yes, it is a human face. She does not see the pallid face, the wild eyes of her lover, looking, too, at that thing--that human embodiment of animal agility. No: she has not time to look, for though the human eye is quick, that thing is quicker; and if she take her eye from it for half a second, her gaze will lose it. She cannot take from it her gaze--she is fascinated. Within the past second of time an heroic resolve has been formed, and a drama has begun; in the next two seconds an act in the drama will be completed; in sixty seconds more, a whole tragedy will be added to the list of human sorrows. "No tongue can tell what cannot quite be seen. A rush of color toward that awful gap; it reaches the edge; it rises in the air and shoots out over that gulf that might indeed have been the portal of Tartarus. Fifty feet as flies the bird. It is in the air--it is half-way over--and yet the maniac has seen it not. But the maniac is turning with his victim in his arms. The streak of drab has passed forty feet--ten feet further if it is to reach the other brink--ten thousand if it fails to reach it; and it has already sunk ten feet in space--with ten feet more of horizontal distance to cover, it is already on a level with the edge of the abyss which it must safely reach, or--The maniac has turned; and the streak of drab has reached the brink--but, ah! below the surface. The form is that of Peters--the only man who could be in such a situation yet live on. One of those invincible arms is thrown upon the surface above the chasm, and those long fingers fasten upon the immovable lava. And now the madman sees the danger that menaces his design--but too late, for Peters the unconquerable stands erect between him and the chasm. Then Ahpilus quickly sets on the ground his living burden; and Peters, the human bird of passage, risks again his life.