figure and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping
staghound back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolver
in hand.

For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage
behind me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey
face and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me.
I looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yards
in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray
of light slanted into the shadows.

"Stop!" cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, "Hold him!"

At that, first one face turned towards me and then others.
Their bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulder
into a clumsy monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant,
and flung him forward into another. I felt his hands fly round,
clutching at me and missing me. The little pink sloth-creature
dashed at me, and I gashed down its ugly face with the nail
in my stick and in another minute was scrambling up a steep
side pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of the ravine.
I heard a howl behind me, and cries of "Catch him!" "Hold him!"
and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed
his huge bulk into the cleft. "Go on! go on!" they howled.
I clambered up the narrow cleft in the rock and came out upon
the sulphur on the westward side of the village of the Beast Men.

That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney,
slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers.
I ran over the white space and down a steep slope,