alons--legs that
sprang from out the neck to clutch and tear at what the jaws might
hold.

Deadly and hateful--loathsome beyond all imagining--still Jerry Foster
found it was something a man could meet. Its devilish power to
paralyze and still the soul of him was gone.

He snatched quickly for the gun at his belt and knelt to aim--then
checked his finger on the trigger. The figure of the priest had come
between him and the monster.

* * * * *

The golden robe was dragging. It fell to the floor, to gleam dully in
the flickering light of the fire. Against the heaping coils of white
the priest was outlined, drawn, as Jerry sensed, against the protest
of every fiber of his being. Yet, one stiff step at a time, he went
faltering on. The hair above his white face was torn in disarray. And
the face itself, so exultantly fierce in its hour of triumph, now a
mask of quivering, hopeless terror.

The head of the monster came slowly to life. It raised and raised into
the air. The mouth gaped open with a hoarse, sucking sound, then
struck, like a whip of light, at the doomed priest.

His screams, as the thing descended upon him, rang through the roar of
the forty-five. Jerry fired again where the black eyes showed above
the writhing body of their prey. The head jerked backward, to tower in
the darkness overhead. The mouth disgorged its contents to the floor.

Only for a shuddering instant did the monster pause. Then it launched
its great bulk in a counter-attack, while the automatic poured out the
rest of its futile lead.

The gun was knocked from his grasp as the great head smashed past,
swerved from its aim by the blinding bullets. Jerry knew only that his
knife was in his hand as the great scabrous coils closed about
inevitably about him.

Vaguely he heard the shouting from behind as the writhing folds
engulfed him. He stabbed blindly at the scaly mass; again and again
his knife ripped slashingly at the abhorrence that drew him close.
Then his arm, too, was caught in the crushing loathsome embrace....

* * * * *

He felt no pain--the pressure alone was insufferable. His head was
drawn back. Above him the horrible eyes glared into his--there was
blood dripping from the jaws....

He saw it in the brilliance of a light that flashed in blue heat
overhead. There came in his ears a vast roaring of sound, a great
heat-blast that scorched and burned at his face