Dashing the mud from my face, I saw Regan spring upon the huge back, now heaving and moving like a small mountain; dodging the head, he sprang into the morass beside me; missing the reeds, he sunk into the mud to his shoulders, but, clutching some vines and reeds as he fell, he drew himself partly up, and reaching a log stood upon it. He stretched out his hand to me and I clambered to where he stood; together we climbed up the bank, not pausing for even a moment’s rest. The sun burned down; the morass was steaming in white vapor, but the monster began to loosen its bulk from the slough bed and, partially turned, came toward us, swaying its hideous head, its tongue darting not far from us. It clawed the banks, but they fell under its feet, and it splashed into the slough. Recovering its lost ground, it clumsily climbed on. Trees crushed down like the grass as it moved. I could not breathe in the heat; even with that creature coming I did not think I could flee. “Leave me, leave me! Escape? I cannot move!” I gasped to Regan. “Man, have you nothing to live for?” cried Regan, with a look of rage in his face which even then I noticed. “It is a terrible death! Rouse up! There is the river! Run, Roy, run!” I saw the blue water. I thought I might as well try. We ran a few steps and came where a bridge of vines, falling to the surface of the river, gave us the salvation of a little island. We swung across and sank down in some shade to dash water on our hot faces and hands. Then we glanced back. There came the awful shape, blindly and madly following us. We could see it plainly—a head like that of a hippopotamus on a huge trunk which looked like a tree bole, a great flattened body like a turtle’s, a black shell which we had thought lava, long paws ending, as I had before observed, in human-shaped hands. Devoid of instinct, although in bulk as large as twenty full-grown elephants and in strength proportioned, it did not stop when it clawed vines instead of earth, but pushed itself over the river’s edge of lava rocks and fell headlong, helpless, into the water. “If it can swim, we are lost!” I said. “Yes, or if the water is shallow it will crawl out!” said Regan. “Swing back on the vines; a few farther up are left!” shouted I. “It is gone!” said Regan. “Look!” There was a mighty surge of the waves, a few tremendous tossings; then the water settled silently, and whatever became of the monster in the depths below we saw it no more. “Like lead or like a leaf, all is the same in those swallowing waters!” said we, as we wearily sought a path home. Then I could but think how brave he was, that Regan, to return from comparative safety upon the very block of his danger to drag from death one who claimed not even to be his friend!