"Beatrice!" he shouted in a terrible voice, leaping forward. The guides broke into a crouching run. All three crashed through the thickets, split the fern-masses, struggled through the tall saber-grass that here and there rose higher than their heads. Allan cursed himself for a fool. That other cry he had heard while on his way from the Pauillac to Settlement Cliffs--that had been her cry for help--and he had neither known nor heeded. "Fool that I was! Oh, damnable idiot that I was!" he panted as he ran. From moment to moment he fired. He paused a few seconds to jack a fresh cartridge-clip into the automatic. "Thank God I've got a belt full of ammunition!" thought he, and again smashed along with the two Merucaans. All at once a formidable roar gave them pause. Hollow, booming, deep, yet rising to a wild shriek of rage and horrid brutality, the beast-cry flung itself through the jungle. And, following it, they heard again that muffled drumming, as though gigantic fists were flailing a tremendous tambour in the darkness. "Master!" whispered Zangamon, recoiling a step. "Oh, Kromno, what is _that?_" "Never have we heard such in our place!" added Bremilu, gripping his ax the tighter. "Is that a man-cry, or the cry of a beast--one of the beasts you told us of, that we have never seen?" "Both! A man-beast! Kill! Kill!" Now, Allan, sure of his direction, took the lead. No longer he flashed the light, and only once more he called: "Beatrice! O Beatrice! We're coming!" Again he heard her cry, but suddenly it died as though swiftly choked in her very throat. Allan spat a blasphemy and surged on. The two white barbarians followed, peering with those strange, pinkish eyes of theirs, courageous still, yet utterly at a loss to know what manner of thing they were now drawing near. They burst through a thicket, waded a marshy swale and went splashing, staggering and slipping among tufts of coarse and knife-edged grasses, the haunt of unknown venomous reptiles. Up a slope they won; and now, all at once the roar burst forth again close at hand, a rending tumult, wild, earthshaking, inexpressibly terrible. All three stopped. "Beatrice! Are you there? Answer!" shouted Stern. Silence, save for a peculiar mumbling snuffle off ahead, among the deeper shadows of a fern-tree thicket. "Beatrice!" No answer. With a groan Allan shot his light toward the thicket. He seemed to distinguish something moving. To his ears now came a sound of twigs and brushwood snapping. Absolutely void of fear he pressed forward, and the two colonists with him, their weapons ready. Stern held his revolver poised for instant action. His heart was hammering, and his breath surged pantingly; but within him his consciousness and soul lay calm. For he knew one of two things were now to happen. Either that beast ahead there in the gloom, or he, must die. CHAPTER XV IN THE GRIP OF TERROR