And I set my strength unto the rock, and heaved; but indeed the rock
gave not from the place where it did be; so that I had a dreadful
despair; for I saw that it did be more secure than had seemed. And the
Maid lent her strength unto mine, and we heaved together, with sore
pantings, and little cries to guide our endeavours and because we could
not be contained in that moment.
And surely it seemed that the great rock moved, and lo! as we strove
together to the task, there came a vast and sudden grinding, and the
rock to cease from our shoulders, and to be gone from us, or scarce we
did wot of the happening. And the rock went over, and rushed downward
upon the Monster, and with mighty crashings, as it did grind and crush
the face of the cliff-side with a quick and constant thundering. And I
caught the Maid, as she did stagger upon that dire upward edge because
that she had set her strength so utter to the endeavour, and the rock to
be gone so sudden, as you do see, and she to be like to follow after.
And she clung unto me, and I to hold her very safe as I lookt down upon
the falling of the Rock. And behold! the Great Rock smote the Monster in
the humpt part of the back, below of the head, and did enter into the
Monster, even as a bullet doth strike, and was gone instant from my
sight into the Vitals.
And there came a mighty sound of anguish from the Monster; and the
Monster did loosen from the cliff, and to crumple, as it did seem, and
sink backward. And a great steam of dread breathing to go upward from
the Beast, and a reek; and it made again the strange and horrid noise of
pain, and the Gorge to be yet full of the echoes of the Rock thundering,
and with the noise of the rock there was now mingled the horrid sounding
of the death-crying of the Beast. And the Gorge to be filled with dull
and dreadful echoings, as that an hundred Monsters died in this place
and that of the darkness in the Gorge, and all to be bred of the noise
of that mildewed hill a-dying.
And the echoes ceased not for a while, even after that the Monster did
be utter quiet; for truly they came presently from far upward and
downward of the Gorge, out of all the eternity of the night, and to be
as that they came backward very faint out of lonesome miles, and out of
the strange deepness of unknown caverns of the world. And so in the end
to silence; and the far bottom of the Gorge to be filled with a white
and horrid hill, very dreadful, and that did yet quiver to show the
slowness of Death. And alway a dreadful reek and stinking to fill all
the air, even unto the height, as of the grave.
And I stood upward in that far, high place, and held the Maid very
strong and tender; and she to have covered her ears from that dreadful
crying; and to be yet shaken with the greatness and horror of the dying
of the Monster, and the nearness that she did come unto falling, as you
have seen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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