Trevna's heavy charge had blown in the top of the skull. The shrunken
yellow face wore the gaunt eager look of one who had died the slow death
of starvation. It seemed to be trying to get at them to bite and rend
them.
Peter Vaudin was the first to climb the wall behind him, but the rest
were close at his heels, and hustled him up through the crack under the
slab.
Peter struck down towards the landing-place the moment he had wriggled
through.
"Stop then, Peter," called John Drillot, in a low insistent voice, lest
that dreadful thing below should hear him.
"Not me! I've had enough, John Drillot. That is not what we came for ...
and I had hold of its leg last night," and he shivered at the
recollection, and the thought that it might have turned on him and
gripped him with its grisly hands.
"I don't know what it is," began John Drillot, "but--"
"It's the man I shot inside there," said Trevna.
"That man hass peen det a hundert years," said Morgan.
"All the same, he was running about last night," said Peter, "and I had
hold of his leg"--with another shiver.
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