Once more I took up my flight, nor were the Sagoths apparently overanxious to press their pursuit so closely as before.  Unmolested I reached the top of the canyon where I found a sheer drop of two or three hundred feet to the bottom of a rocky chasm; but on the left a narrow ledge rounded the shoulder of the overhanging cliff.  Along this I advanced, and at a sudden turning, a few yards beyond the canyon’s end, the path widened, and at my left I saw the opening to a large cave.  Before, the ledge continued until it passed from sight about another projecting buttress of the mountain.

Here, I felt, I could defy an army, for but a single foeman could advance upon me at a time, nor could he know that I was awaiting him until he came full upon me around the corner of the turn.  About me lay scattered stones crumbled from the cliff above.  They were of various sizes and shapes, but enough were of handy dimensions for use as ammunition in lieu of my precious arrows.  Gathering a number of stones into a little pile beside the mouth of the cave I waited the advance of the Sagoths.

As I stood there, tense and silent, listening for the first faint sound that should announce the approach of my enemies, a slight noise from within the cave’s black depths attracted my attention.  It might have been produced by the moving of the great body of some huge beast rising from the rock floor of its lair.  At almost the same instant I thought that I caught the scraping of hide sandals upon the ledge beyond the turn.  For the next few seconds my attention was considerably divided.

And then from the inky blackness at my right I saw two flaming eyes glaring into mine.  They were on a level that was over two feet above my head.  It is true that the beast who owned them might be standing upon a ledge within the cave, or that it might be rearing up upon its hind legs; but I had seen enough of the monsters of Pellucidar to know that I might be facing some new and frightful Titan whose dimensions and ferocity eclipsed those of any I had seen before.

Whatever it was, it was coming slowly toward the entrance of the cave, and now, deep and forbidding, it uttered a low and ominous growl.  I waited no longer to dispute possession of the ledge with the thing which owned that voice.  The noise had not been loud—­I doubt if the Sagoths heard it at all—­but the suggestion of latent possibilities behind it was such that I knew it would only emanate from a gigantic and ferocious beast.

As I backed along the ledge I soon was past the mouth of the cave, where I no longer could see those fearful flaming eyes, but an instant later I caught sight of the fiendish face of a Sagoth as it warily advanced beyond the cliff’s turn on the far side of the cave’s mouth.  As the fellow saw me he leaped along the ledge in pursuit, and after him came as many of his companions as could crowd upon each other’s heels.  At the same time the beast emerged from the cave, so that he and the Sagoths came face to face upon that narrow ledge.