o scream.

I must have been mad to turn. A weaving target has a chance, but a
target standing motionless is a sitting duck and his life hangs by a
hair. But still I turned.

Something was happening between the well and the shacks which halted the
pursuit dead in its tracks. One of the shacks was wrapped in darting
tongues of flame, and a woman was screaming, and a man close to her was
grappling with something huge and misshapen which loomed starkly against
the dawn glow.

A human shape? I could not be sure. It seemed monstrous, with a bulge
between its shoulders which gave a grotesque and distorted aspect to the
shadow which its weaving bulk cast upon the sand. I could see the shadow
clearly across three hundred feet of sand. It lengthened and shortened,
as if an octopus-like ferocity had given it the power to distort itself
at will, lengthening its tentacles and then whipping them back again.

But it was not an octopus. It had legs and arms, and it was crushing the
man in a grip of steel. I could see that now. I stared as the others
were staring, their backs turned to me, their blind hatred for me
blotted out by that greater horror.

I suddenly realized that the shape was human. It had the head and
shoulders of a man, and a torso that could twist with muscular purpose,
and massive hands that could maul and maim. It threw the hapless man
from it with a sudden convulsive contraction of its entire bulk. I had
never seen a human being move in quite that way, but even as its
violence flared its manlike aspect became more pronounced.

A frightful thing happened then. The woman screamed and rushed toward
the brutish maniac with her fingers splayed. The swaying figure bent,
grabbed her about the waist, and lifted her high into the air. I thought
for a moment he was about to crush her as he had crushed the man. But I
was wrong. She was hurled to the sand, but with a violence so brutal
that she went instantly limp.

Then the brutal madman turned, and I saw his face. If ever monstrous
cruelty and malign cunning looked out of a human countenance it looked
out of the eyes that stared in my direction, remorseless in their hate.

I could not tear my gaze from his face. The hate in it could be sensed,
even across a blinding haze of sunlight that blotted out the sharp
contours of physical things. But more than hate could be sensed. There
was something tremendous about that face, as if the evil which had
ravaged it had left the