The tea was boiling and everyone was preparing to dip his tin cup into the pot, when suddenly a noise of rolling stones and a strange, harsh, and frightful roar made us all spring to our feet.
The beast for which we had been looking—a black, gigantic form, the corners of his mouth filled with blood-stained slime, his jaws munching something, I know not what—was slowly and heavily climbing the opposite side of the ravine, making the large boulders roll into the valley as he went!