rbrush and leaving a wake
behind it like that of a small tornado.

Bradley, the moment he had discovered the thing was pursuing Tippet,
had followed it. He was afraid to fire for fear of hitting the man,
and so it was that he came upon them at the very moment that the
monster lunged its great weight forward upon the doomed man. The
sharp, three-toed talons of the forelimbs seized poor Tippet, and
Bradley saw the unfortunate fellow lifted high above the ground as the
creature again reared up on its hind legs, immediately transferring
Tippet's body to its gaping jaws, which closed with a sickening,
crunching sound as Tippet's bones cracked beneath the great teeth.

Bradley half raised his rifle to fire again and then lowered it with a
shake of his head. Tippet was beyond succor--why waste a bullet that
Caspak could never replace? If he could now escape the further notice
of the monster it would be a wiser act than to throw his life away in
futile revenge. He saw that the reptile was not looking in his
direction, and so he slipped noiselessly behind the bole of a large
tree and thence quietly faded away in the direction he believed the
others to have taken. At what he considered a safe distance he halted
and looked back. Half hidden by the intervening trees he still could
see the huge head and the massive jaws from which protrude the limp
legs of the dead man. Then, as though struck by the hammer of Thor,
the creature collapsed and crumpled to the ground. Bradley's single
bullet, penetrating the body through the soft skin of the belly, had
slain the Titan.

A few minutes later, Bradley found the others of the party. The four
returned cautiously to the spot where the creature lay and after
convincing themselves that it was quite dead, came close to it. It was
an arduous and gruesome job extricating Tippet's mangled remains from
the powerful jaws, the men working for the most part silently.

"It was the work of the banshee all right," muttered Brady. "It warned
poor Tippet, it did."

"Hit killed him, that's wot hit did, hand hit'll kill some more of us,"
said James, his lower lip trembling.

"If it was a ghost," interjected Sinclair, "and I don't say as it was;
but if it was, why, it could take on any form it wanted to. It might
have turned itself into this thing, which ain't no natural thing at
all, just to get poor Tippet. If it had of been a lion or something
else humanlike it wouldn't look so strange