Twenty
yards off he stopped and faced about, judging them slow, and behold! the
tentacles of their leader were already pouring over the rocky ridge on
which he had just been standing!
At that he shouted again, but this time not threatening, but a cry of
dismay, and began jumping, striding, slipping, wading across the uneven
expanse between him and the beach. The tall red cliffs seemed suddenly at
a vast distance, and he saw, as though they were creatures in another
world, two minute workmen engaged in the repair of the ladder-way, and
little suspecting the race for life that was beginning below them. At one
time he could hear the creatures splashing in the pools not a dozen feet
behind him, and once he slipped and almost fell.
They chased him to the very foot of the cliffs, and desisted only when he
had been joined by the workmen at the foot of the ladder-way up the cliff.
All three of the men pelted them with stones for a time, and then hurried
to the cliff top and along the path towards Sidmouth, to secure assistance
and a boat, and to rescue the desecrated body from the clutches of these
abominable creatures.
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