A sudden grimace lighted the frightful face as the grotesque eyes fell
upon this new creature. Number One had never before seen a woman, but
the sight of this one awoke in the unplumbed depths of his soulless
breast a great desire to lay his hands upon her. She was very
beautiful. Number One wished to have her for his very own; nor would it
be a difficult matter, so fragile was she, to gather her up in those
great, brute arms and carry her deep into the jungle far out of hearing
of the bull-whip man and the cold, frowning one who was continually
measuring and weighing Number One and his companions, the while he
scrutinized them with those strange, glittering eyes that frightened
one even more than the cruel lash of the bull whip.
Number One lurched forward, his arms outstretched toward the horror
stricken girl. Virginia tried to cry out again—she tried to turn and
run; but the horror of her impending fate and the terror that those
awful features induced left her paralyzed and helpless.
The thing was almost upon her now. The mouth was wide in a hideous
attempt to smile. The great hands would grasp her in another second—and
then there was a sudden crashing of the underbrush behind her, a
yellow, wrinkled face and a flying pig-tail shot past her, and the
brave old Sing Lee grappled with the mighty monster that threatened
her.
The battle was short—short and terrible. The valiant Chinaman sought
the ashen throat of his antagonist, but his wiry, sinewy muscles were
as reeds beneath the force of that inhuman power that opposed them.
Holding the girl at arm’s length in one hand, Number One tore the
battling Chinaman from him with the other, and lifting him bodily above
his head, hurled him stunned and bleeding against the bole of a giant
buttress tree. Then lifting Virginia in his arms once more he dived
into the impenetrable mazes of the jungle that lined the more open
pathway between the beach and camp.
4
A NEW FACE
As Professor Maxon and von Horn rushed from the workshop to their own
campong, they neglected, in their haste, to lock the door between, and
for the first time since the camp was completed it stood unlatched and
ajar.
The professor had been engaged in taking careful measurements of the
head of his latest experiment, the while he coached the young man in
the first rudiments of spoken language, and now the subject of his
labors found himself suddenly deserted and alone. He had not yet been
without the four walls of the workshop, as the professor had wished to
keep him from association with the grotesque results of his earlier
experiments, and now a natural curiosity tempted him to approach the
door through which his creator and the man with the bull whip had so
suddenly disappeared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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