THE MONSTERS THAT NEVER WERE
“But, Father,” cried Perry, “you haven’t told me what the dragon
really was!”
“I didn’t know, myself, for a few minutes,” was the reply. “I dropped
in my tracks, right there. A couple of the fellows picked me up,
though, as soon as I began to feel a little less faint, and the three
of us, waiting until we were sure that the monster was quite dead,
went up close to him. I had noticed, in a dim kind of way, that the
dragon’s scales looked queer and that some of them had been scraped
off on the floor of the cave. But when we got right up to him, what
do you suppose we found those scales were?”
“I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” the boy answered expectantly.
“They were made of the silver paper that comes wrapped around bars of
chocolate.”
“What?”
“Just plain silver paper.”
“It was the other gang, then—” suggested Perry, seeing a clue.
“That’s just what it was, the other gang.”
“Then it was a fake dragon!” cried the boy, disappointed. “You said
it was alive!”
“Does my arm look as if the beast hadn’t been alive?” retorted his
father. “It was a mighty lucky thing for me it wasn’t any more alive
than I found it!”
“What was the dragon, really, Father?” the lad persisted.
“It was a lynx, or bob-cat,” was the reply. “The ‘Pioneers’ had
trapped the beast in the woods and brought it to our cave, with the
trap still fastened to the bob-cat’s hind foot. The other hind paw
had been tied to a heavy log.
“Then the fellows had gone to work and made a long tail of sacking,
stuffed with shavings, and fastened this tail tightly around the
lynx’s haunches, so that it would trail behind. They’d dusted it all
over with mustard and red pepper, so that the animal wouldn’t chew at
it and tear it off. After that, they chucked a couple of pailfuls of
carpenter’s glue, almost boiling hot, over the beast, head, tail and
all, and stuck the silver paper on, when the glue was wet. I don’t
wonder the bob-cat was savage!”
“They must have had a picnic doing it!” exclaimed Perry.
“I’ve thought of that many times since,” his father agreed. “But they
made a good job of it. They even took the trouble to cut all the
silver paper in shapes so that it would look like real scales.”
“They took an awful chance, though, Father. Suppose the tail had come
off? What would have happened to you?”
“I don’t think the tail saved me,” the other answered. “After
all, the bob-cat was badly crippled, with both hind legs out of
commission. You see, Perry, a lynx leaps for his prey, grips with
teeth and fore-claws and tears with the hind claws. With the trap on
one foot and a log on the other, the other gang knew I was fairly
safe. So far, they had been right enough. Where they went wrong was
in not knowing the animal. They all thought the creature was just
a big domestic pussy that had got a bit wild running around in the
woods. It was a true lynx, though, and a big one.”
“Did you send the skin home for a ‘triumph’?” the boy quickly asked.
“Where is it?”
“When that combination of glue and silver paper got thoroughly dry,”
the old merchant commented, “there wasn’t much value to the skin. We
kept it as a trophy, of course, but we kept it in the cave. For all I
know, it’s there yet. If you’re so keen to find a dragon, Perry, I’ll
tell you exactly where to go for it.”
“I’m afraid even our own local Museum wouldn’t take it,” the boy
objected, smiling.
“Maybe they wouldn’t, but, so far as I know, it’s the only genuine
dragon that has put up a genuine fight for the last couple of
thousand years. So, my son, if you ever do go dragon-hunting, don’t
forget that your father was the last of all the champions of valor
who fought and defeated a dragon single-handed.”
“Then you really will let me go dragon-hunting with the Princeton
crowd?” Perry interjected, returning to his first plea.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” his father answered meditatively,
“and I don’t think I will. Wait a bit—” he continued, as he saw the
bitter disappointment in the lad’s face, “I haven’t finished. I don’t
say that I won’t let you go on a search for fossils some time, but I
don’t think this Princeton expedition is the right thing for you.
And I’ll tell you why.”
“I’m sure it would,” burst out Perry.
“I’ll tell you why,” his father said again, with that calm repetition
from which the boy knew of old there was no appeal. “You would simply
go as a helper, you wouldn’t have any real share in the plan, and you
would only have a lot of dirty and laborious work to do without any
real chance to learn.”
“But, Father,” interrupted the boy. He caught the glance of reproof
and stopped.
“If you interrupt me again, Perry, I shall not say what I was going
to say—and you’ll be the loser.”
Distinctly set back, Perry straightened himself and sat still. After
a pause, his father continued:
“That book of drawings you showed me, son, which covered several
years of work, looks to me like fairly good evidence that your
interest is genuine. I want to be sure that it’s not just a fad, that
you’ll tire of in a month or two.”
“Oh, it isn’t, Father!”
“You’d say that, Perry, of course, in any case. Just the same I
rather think you mean it. Now, what I want to say is this: Since you
really so seem to have an interest in these dragon-forms of old
times, and as I suppose you’ve inherited it, to a certain extent, it
seems to me that I ought to give you a chance to find out if that’s
the sort of thing you want to take up for your life-work.
“So far, I haven’t made any special plans for your future, Perry,
because I haven’t known just how your desires would run. I wanted to
see which way the cat would jump, first. Do you really think that you
would like to give your whole time to paleontology, or do you want to
keep it as a hobby? Answer carefully, now, because quite a stretch of
your life may hang on the reply.”
Perry thought for a minute or two, then answered slowly:
“I think I’d rather try to find the monsters that no one has ever
seen. I’d like to dig up secrets in all the queer corners of the
world. I’d rather find a new kind of creature, such as no one had
even dreamt of before, than be a multi-millionaire!”
“Very good,” his father answered, “if that’s your feeling, my boy,
you shall have your chance and you shall have it in the best way
possible. I suppose you know that your Uncle George is going to take
out an expedition for the American Museum of Natural History in New
York, this year?”
“No, Father, I didn’t know it,” Perry replied. “Out West?”
“I think not,” his father answered. “If I remember rightly, when he
was here a month or two ago, he said something about going to Egypt.”
“And I could go?”
“That depends on a number of things,” the old merchant answered,
guardedly. “Still, there’s a possibility that I might persuade him to
take you along. You see, Perry, if I were to pay for your part of the
expenses out of my pocket, the New York Museum wouldn’t lose anything
and perhaps you might do something to help.”
“But that would cost a heap, Father.”
The financier smiled.
“You don’t imagine that you’re not an expense, do you?” he queried.
“But I don’t mind footing the bill for anything that will give you
a real start in the world at the kind of work you want to do. I
don’t believe in wasting money on things you don’t need—that’s why I
wouldn’t buy you that two-cylinder motorcycle—but I’ll keep my wallet
open, any time that you want something that is really worth while.
Now trot along, son, and I’ll write to Uncle George and see what he
thinks about the whole project.”
“Thanks ever and ever and ever so much, Father,” the boy said,
heartily, getting up from his chair, “and I do hope I can go! Oh, and
say, Father,” he continued, pointing to the faded green book which
lay on the table, “can I take this along and go over it a bit more
thoroughly? I’ll be ever so careful.”
“All right, son,” the other answered, “but don’t take what you see
in there, literally. There are enough weird creatures in that book
to make the fortunes of a dozen Barnums, if they could ever be found
and put under a circus tent. Watch out that they don’t give you a
nightmare!”
“I’ve dreamt about fossils, heaps and heaps of times, Father,” said
Perry grinning, as he opened the door. “Some of these days, I’m going
to make all those dreams come real, too!”
As, in his own room, the boy turned over the pages of that book of
his father’s childhood, the fascination of the monsters of the past
crept over him more and more. There was no doubt that Perry had
inherited this interest, for every leaf of the volume before him
was indelibly stamped with the eagerness of a boy absorbed in the
subject.
Although Perry was more or less familiar with the three-horned
Triceratops, the twenty-ton Brontosaurus and the gaunt-winged
Pterodactyl, the still stranger creatures in the faded green book
were unknown to him. The Roc, the Griffin, the Chimæra, the Phœnix,
the Basilisk—they were like characters in a fairy tale. Still, as he
looked at the pictures of them limned by the boy of forty years ago,
a strange feeling came over Perry that perhaps—in some remote corner
of the world—these creatures might be living still.
There was an air of expectant reality in their pose, and, not only
had his father drawn them in the book, but he had also—in a round
immature scrawl—copied upon the opposite page the words of the old
naturalists who claimed to have seen the monsters with their own eyes.
One page showed (in red and yellow chalk) a blazing fire in an
Egyptian temple courtyard, the flames of which shot higher than the
pylons of the temple gateway. Full in the center of the flames,
wearing a peaceful look as though enjoying the process of being
burned alive, was a large bird, with a crest of yellow feathers on
its head, like an imperial crown. Under the picture was written “The
Phœnix,” and on the page opposite, the story read:
“Sir Thomas Browne says: ‘There is but one Phœnix in all the world,
which after many hundred years burns herself, and from the ashes
thereof riseth up another, is a conceit (belief) of great antiquity,
not only delivered by humane (learned) writers but frequently
expressed by holy writers.’”
Perry’s father—then ten years old, had added:
“Swan says this can’t be right because the animals had to go two by
two into the Ark, and if there was only one Phœnix, Noah wouldn’t
have let him in till he got another, and as there wasn’t another to
get, he had to stay out, and everything that stayed out, died. For
feathers of the Phœnix, see next page.”
Wondering what in the wide world the feathers of the Phœnix could be
like, Perry turned eagerly to the next page. There his father had
drawn two long feathers and under them had written:
“Feathers of the Phœnix. In Tradescant’s Museum, in Italy.”
“But,” said Perry aloud, “I know what those feathers are! They’re
from the Japanese Longtailed Fowl! I don’t wonder that those old
fellows thought a feather eight feet long must come from a queer kind
of bird! I think I’d do some guessing myself!”
Old Sir John de Mandeville, that joyous traveler of the fourteenth
century, was responsible for the next weird beast. This was a
combination of an eagle and a lion. Perry’s father had evidently
drawn it from a crest and labeled it “The Griffin,” while opposite
was de Mandeville’s description:
“Some men say that they have the body upward of an eagle and beneath,
of a lion; and that is true. But one Griffin has a greater body and
is stronger than ten lions, and greater and stronger than a hundred
eagles.”
“I should think,” commented Perry to himself, “Father could have seen
that this was a fake, because a Griffin with a body as heavy as ten
lions would have to have wings the size of an armored aëroplane.”
The boy had hardly framed the words, when turning the page, he saw
some birds pictured, which made the largest modern flying machine
seem small. In the distance was one of these huge birds flying away
with an elephant in its beak. Near by, a man in turban and robe was
tying himself to the claw of one of the birds, the creature’s leg
being as thick as the trunk of a big tree. This was “The Roc,” and
Perry’s father had copied out in his smallest handwriting, all that
happened to Sindbad the Sailor and the Third Calendar in the land of
the Roc, as told in the Arabian Nights.
“I suppose,” mused Perry, “the Roc is just the Æpyornis exaggerated.
After all, it’s only the other day that somebody found an Æpyornis
egg bobbing up and down on the waves off Madagascar after a hurricane
and that egg was nearly seven times as big as an ostrich egg. You
can’t blame a fellow in Madagascar several centuries ago figuring
that a bird to lay an egg like that must be seven times as tall as an
ostrich. My eye, wouldn’t a bird over fifty feet high be a bogey! And
yet they told me down at the Museum that an Æpyornis was really only
about eleven feet high.”
The Basilisk or Cockatrice was the next wonder that struck the boy’s
gaze. Evidently his father had found some difficulty in securing a
picture of the creature, for under the fantastic drawing were the
words:
“The Basilisk. This one I made up.”
The monster resembled a serpent walking on its tail, in grand and
imposing style, with two searchlights for eyes. On the opposite page
was a quotation from John Swan, the author of the curious old book
“Speculum Mundi” (A Mirror of the World), which was written in the
first half of the seventeenth century. It read:
“The Cockatrice is the king of Serpents, not for his magnitude or
greatness, but for his stately pace and magnanimous mind. Among all
living creatures there is none perisheth sooner by the poyson of a
Cockatrice than a man; for with his sight he killeth him. His hissing
is likewise said to be bad, in regard that it blasteth trees, killeth
birds, etc., by poysoning the aire.”
Perry turned over page after page. He saw the picture of the Humma,
the bird without feet, that was supposed never to alight on the
ground. There was a drawing of the Wak-Wak tree which had beautiful
women for fruit. The Chimæra was not forgotten, with its head of a
lion, body of a goat, and tail of a serpent.
A whole section of the faded green book was given to the monsters
who were half men, half beasts. There Perry saw his old friends the
Centaurs, and among them Cheiron, “wisest of beasts and men,” human
to the waist, with a horse’s body. Pan, playing on his pipes of
reed, was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, while goat-legged Satyrs
and Fauns danced to his piping. One particularly creepy picture
showed the Gorgons, with writhing poisonous snakes in place of hair,
whom, the Greeks believed, it was death to look upon, and none of
the monsters that were slain by Hercules, Theseus, and Perseus was
forgotten.
Little by little the spell of the old-time wonderland began to creep
over Perry. At first these childish drawings of monsters had seemed
impossible, but earnest belief in the artist always reveals itself in
the picture, and Perry’s father, when a boy, had believed in these
creatures just as did the ancient Greeks. The spirit of the boy who
had fought the lynx, believing it to be a dragon, stirred on those
pages and quickened Perry’s blood.
At last he came to Unicorns. Page after page of unicorns! The boy
read the story of Vertomannus who measured two unicorns that had been
presented to the Sultan of Mecca in 1503. He learned how Father Lobo,
a missionary, had chased a unicorn in Abyssinia in 1622. He saw the
drawings of one-horned asses in China sent to Rome by Grueber, the
Jesuit Father, in 1661. From utter disbelief, he passed to doubt,
and his doubt received a sudden shock when he read that the Russian
naturalist Prjevalsky, in his book “Mongolia,” published in 1876,
had declared that the orongo, in northern Thibet, sometimes, though
rarely, has one horn, though not in the center of the forehead. To
this picture there was a note, in his father’s handwriting, evidently
made after he was grown up. It read:
“Personally, I see no reason to deny the existence of the unicorn.
It is quite likely that occasional specimens of a two-horned
animal should only have one horn. The narwhal often has two tusks,
but generally only one. If the one-tusked narwhal is a natural
development, why not a one-horned antelope? The Nepalese unicorn
sheep has one horn, and a rhinoceros, as well.”
The faded green book dropped into Perry’s lap, as he leaned back in
his chair, thinking. He recalled the finding of the okapi, only a few
years before, and his mind pictured an adventurous trip into Central
Thibet where the one-horned orongo of Prjevalsky, the unicorn, might
still be found. Deeper and more profound grew the day-dream, more and
more real the vision, until, with a start, the boy found himself
riding at full speed over a coarse-ferned swampy plain.
[Illustration: THE UNICORN IN CHINA.
The Sz, or Malayan Rhinoceros, as pictured by a Chinese artist
in the ’Rh Ya. The Indian Rhinoceros is one-horned. The African
square-lipped rhinoceros, or “white rhino,” though possessing two
horns, one behind the other, has the forward horn so long and
powerful as to be truly unicorn-like, though it is nasal and not
frontal.]
A warm and steaming mist hung with a dull purple haze over a
landscape that seemed familiar, though the boy knew that his eyes had
never seen it before. Huge monkey-puzzles thrust their spiny arms
into the heavy air, ferns a hundred feet high swayed their livid
green tracery against the lowering sky, and here and there a leafless
pillar twenty feet in height showed where still remained a struggling
horsetail of the weird forests of the age before. Over all hung the
red ball of the sun, unable to pierce the low-hung curling wreaths of
mist which held the landscape like a bowl.
The glow of the half-obscured sun shone dully on the quaking bog and
deepened the shadows of huge black forms, monstrous and menacing,
which seemed to be sprawling in the ebon water. To these, there was
no shape, although their gross inertness breathed of life. In the
distance there was a stir, and Perry, gripping his knees hard upon
the Thing he rode, cried aloud in the somber stillness—
“What moved!”
No sound answered. Silence held that flowerless world like a vise,
that world that had never heard the song of a bird, but a rumbling
vibration in the distance seemed to the boy like some vast leviathan
stirring in its sleep. Sure was he that he saw one of those sprawling
shapes—which, near by, seemed like stone—heave itself upward and sway
a monstrous neck. Straight in his path, one of the murky masses lay,
huge as though the earth had spawned a creature vaster than a whale.
In panic, Perry forced the Thing that carried him to swerve to the
left. As he raced by, the boy forced himself to look at the sprawling
bulk. Shapeless and moveless as a block of stone it lay. But when,
a second later, some impulse moved the lad to turn his head back to
look again, the seeming stone had lurched itself across his path as
though to bar any returning way.
With a shiver, the boy’s glance turned to the creature that he rode.
Its horse-like head and short, coarse mane gave a clue that its light
limbs and four spreading toes seemed to deny.
He was nearly thrown to the ground as the Thing shied, then reared,
nearly on its haunches. And Perry, looking to see the cause of fear,
distinctly saw a quiver run over another monstrous mass immediately
before him, like the rippling muscles on the back of a black panther
about to spring. He drove his heels into his steed.
“They’re waking,” he cried hoarsely. “I’ve only got until the sun
goes down!”
Through the humid swamp, spotted with its foul giant brood, that
moved, yet never seemed to move, he rode, panic knocking at his ribs.
The sinking sun bore down with it his hopes, and as the shadows
grew more slanting, the sense of silent life around him grew more
threatening. A breeze with a tang of cold in it swept over the swamp
and the grip of danger tightened. Now, in the distance, the masses
could be seen to drag their slow length along, but near at hand, all
was still.
“They’re only waiting,” he thought, “waiting for the dusk.”
From under a huge flat block that bore a fair resemblance to a giant
tortoise-shell, a wicked head with lidless green eyes and a turtle
beak darted out.
The animal he bestrode leaped as though a snake had struck. And, with
the leap came a new thing. Even as the boy watched, the rough mane
dwindled and a smooth red-brown coat glinted in the darkening sun.
The neck grew longer and more pliant and the swift lumbering gallop
gave place to the leaping bounds of some creature that man had never
ridden before. Perry’s only thought was to go on—on—no matter what
he rode, to go on—and out of that swamp where the monstrous reptiles
were. But the strangeness of the marvel held him when he saw in the
center of the forehead of the Thing, just in front of the ears, a
gleam of white like a milk-tooth.
“It’s—it’s a horn,” he muttered.
The sun touched the rim of the horizon. At the same instant, with a
sucking sound, the vast bulk of a Diplodocus squirmed up from the
slough and poised its ungainly head, as though to see. A leaping
Compsognathus loomed black against the sky. Noiseless, but menacing,
a winged Pteranodon, twenty-one feet from tip to tip of wing, soared
heavily above him. A pigmy in a world of giant monsters, the boy
raced on, speeding from—he knew not what, to—he knew not whither.
The sense of terror from the monstrous brood became more keen as a
closer peril grew. His knees ached almost beyond endurance from the
strain of trying to keep his seat, for no horsemanship could avail
upon such a steed as that which he was riding. The long jerking
leaps, though they covered ground amazingly, seemed to drag him
inside out at every stride. The red-brown neck stretched far ahead,
and gleaming in the dull-red dusk jutted the single horn, spirally
twisted like a kudu’s and lengthening even as he looked at it.
Suddenly, without an instant’s warning, the beast threw back his
head. The gleaming horn jerked to within a few inches of the boy. The
lad paled.
“Next time—” he said.
What could he do next time?
Without pausing, the Thing sped on, racing like the wind over a
mountainless world, so that Perry did not dare throw himself off its
back. Lower sank the sun, till only one-half of its orb was seen,
its beams lying level over the plain that saw never a hill over
its thousand miles of length. Worst of all, instead of the kinship
between steed and rider that gives strength in the most desperate
pursuit, he felt the malevolence of the evil thing he bestrode, and
tried to brace his nerve against an attack from his sole means of
escape from this browsing ground of swollen reptiles.
He had not long to wait. In mid-leap, the creature checked its speed,
plunging stiff-legged, at the same time tossed back its now long and
twisted horn to pierce him to the vitals. Tense for the spring, Perry
thrust himself upwards from the knees, the sudden stoppage throwing
him over the creature’s head. Well he knew that if he fell on the
ground sharp hoof and sharper horn would pin him to the earth. He
grabbed the horn as it slid under him, and clung to it like death.
In fury, the unicorn tossed him as a terrier does a rat. The boy
felt his hold weakening, but he clung desperately. Sight and hearing
failed him, yet he clutched blindly, till with a wrench the strained
finger-clasp gave way and he found himself flying through the air.
Fortune favored him. He landed on his feet, and though he staggered,
he did not actually fall. The second’s recovery sufficed to clear his
wits, and he dodged as the vicious creature lunged. Before him loomed
the vast bulk of a Brontosaurus and behind this he ran, trusting for
safety to the small brain and sluggish movements of the giant.
The ruse almost landed him into the jaws of the nose-horned lizard,
the carnivorous Ceratosaurus, twenty feet in height, and he doubled
back, actually under its fore-limbs, as its large head and formidable
flesh-tearing teeth threatened the unicorn, which reared and refused
the combat. The moment’s respite as the monsters faced each other,
gave Perry a chance to breathe.
“Where now?” he gasped, glancing round wildly for some place to hide.
But, in that flat expanse, with the araucarias and tree-ferns only a
green blur in the distance, there was no cover. The unicorn saw him
and charged again. Some strange instinct told him what to do. Again
doubling around the huge dinosaur, the boy cast himself despairingly
on the back of a creature browsing a few feet away.
“Up!” he yelled.
As though impelled by the terror in the boy’s voice, or by the still
greater terror of sound in that silent world, the light-limbed
Anchisaurus rose to its kangaroo-like attitude and began clumsily
to run. Some twenty feet of start was gained before the unicorn
caught sight of him and then the chase began. The Anchisaurus, more
terrified even than the boy by this strange creature clinging to
its neck, and driven on by the gleaming horn behind, leaped into
full stride, covering ten feet at every step. If the gallop of the
unicorn had been hard to bear, this swaying run was worse, for, as
the Anchisaurus swung first one foot then the other, the neck and
tail rolled to the opposite side to maintain the creature’s balance.
No cockle shell on a stormy sea ever tossed as did Perry on the
Anchisaurus’ neck. But it was his only chance of safety from that
gleaming horn behind, and tightly with arms and legs he gripped the
creature’s neck above the shoulder.
The sun was nearly down, but a slight, a very slight rise in the
ground gave firmer footing, both to unicorn and Anchisaurus, so the
speed of both increased. Little by little the lumbering saurians
began to grow fewer and at last were seen no more. In their place
came spiny lizards, at first few in number, then more and more, huge
and monstrous, until in the dim twilight and the silver glow of the
rising moon, their threatening shapes seemed like a world of jagged
rocks heaving as the billows of a tempest-whipped lake.
Then, as though determined to give battle to its strange pursuer, the
Anchisaurus stopped, and Perry, fearing that his strange mount would
find some swift accounting for his temerity, slipped off, again to
face the unicorn.
There was no need.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
STEGOSAURUS, THE SUPER-DREADNOUGHT OF OLD.
Huge armored monster of the reptile world, thirty-five feet long,
as tall as a modern elephant to the top of the spines, protected by
sharp horny plates against the attacks of flesh-eating giants.]
Between him and the savage beast that had chased him for miles over
the swamp stood an old battle-scarred Stegosaurus, fully twenty feet
in length, its spines jutting into the air far above the boy’s
head. As he looked, the armored tail, with its jagged, horny plates,
lashed out at the unicorn and felled it to the ground. The beast half
tried to rise and lunged its horn, white in the moonlight, at the
throat of its terrible foe. But no weapon could pierce that living
fortress of defense and the horn slipped uselessly over the scales.
The head of the Stegosaurus—so tiny for so great a bulk of body—bent
as though to smell the wounded creature that the blow of his tail had
crushed, but, not being an eater of flesh, the huge living fortress
turned scornfully away.
Injured, but not mortally, the unicorn half rose, when Perry, seizing
his chance, drew from his belt his hunting-knife and slit the
creature’s throat.
Then, placing one foot on the body of the animal, he cried aloud—the
faded green book fluttering from his lap as he sprang up—
“I’ve caught a unicorn!”