briefest moment: “My darling, oh, my darling!”
Then he was gone. With a business-like air Professor Ravenden examined
the weapon Dick had given him, and placed himself in front of the
girls. To the east they could see Johnston’s sturdy form, and westward
Helga’s brooding eyes now and again glimpsed the buoyant figure of her
lover.
“Don’t be afraid, dearest,” he had called back to her. “When it comes
to running I can do just as well as the next fellow, and generally
better.”
Shadows and patches of oak covered Dick’s course. Five minutes passed,
and then came a shout from Johnston. Professor Ravenden walked coolly
forward a few paces, raising and lowering his pistol arm as if to make
sure that it was well oiled at the joints. At rest it pointed in the
direction of Whalley. The juggler was running toward them from the side
of the ravine down which Dick had moved. Taking advantage of the land’s
broken contour, he had eluded and passed Dick; now he was making
straight for them.
“Stand!” called the professor.
It was as if he had not spoken. The juggler approached with no
lessening of pace, no swerve from his course.
“Don’t come any farther. Do you want to be shot?”
This time it was Helga’s voice. Whalley checked his rush. His hands
clutched at his breast; he strove for utterance against an agonised
exhaustion. His arms beating out into the air expressed with shocking
vividness a warning of extremest terror. Obviously there was nothing to
fear from the man in this mood. Nevertheless, Professor Ravenden held
his pistol ready as he went forward.
“Take—her—away!” he hacked out like a man fighting for utterance in the
last stage of strangulation. “Eet—comes. I—haf—seen—eet!”
“Compose yourself, my man,” soothed the professor. “Be calm and explain
what has so alarmed you.”
But the juggler only flung up his arms in a wild gesture toward the
sky, and dropped.
“We must call in the others,” said Professor Ravenden.
Helga lifted her head and sent her clear and beautiful call rolling
across the hills. At the sound the juggler crawled to her feet and
brokenly begged her to keep silence. Before they could win an
explantation from him Everard’s tall figure came speeding down the
hillside, and only half a minute later Dick’s great bulk toiled up
through the ravine. Johnston came in last. No sooner had Dick set eyes
on the juggler than he advanced upon him.
“You are our prisoner,” he said. “Professor, is he armed?”
“I have not ascertained. He is suffering from an access of unmanning
terror, and I believe is not formidable.”
“Anyway,” said Dick, “we had best—”
He broke off as the juggler drew from his belt one of his huge,
broad-bladed knives, which he doubtless had cached on the point before
his capture.
“Cover him, professor,” cried Dick.
“Do not tak eet away,” begged the man. “We will need eet. I bring eet,
for her.” He turned the dog-like adoration of his eyes upon Helga. “She
safe my life; I die for her.”
“What the deuce is he talking about?” growled Everard.
“When I hear ze gun of ze sheepwreck, somesing tell me she weel come
out. I run here an’,” a strong shudder racked him, “I see eet.”
“That’s all very well,” said Dick sternly. “But you must come with us.”
“Afterward! afterward!” cried the man in an agony of supplication. “Now
we hide, teel eet go. Zen I gif you ze knife. Anysing after we make her
safe before ze death strike her.”
“This is not all lunacy,” said Dolly Ravenden quickly. “There is some
danger he is trying to warn us from.”
Whirling upon her, the wretched juggler threw out his arms in an
eloquent gesture.
“You will believe! I am murderer, zey say. So! Yet I come an’ give up
to safe her. Is zere not some-sing?”
“Anyway, you’ve got to give up that knife,” said Dick.
Tigerish lines came out on the man’s face. “Fools!” he snarled and
leaped back, a dangerous animal once more. Again the professor’s gun
came up.
“Shoot him!” cried Dick.
“I can’t shoot him in cold blood!” protested the professor.
Slowly Everard moved up from the other side. In a moment the test must
have come, when a sound between a gasp and a moan turned every face
toward Johnston.
“Great God of Wonders!” whispered the old man, and pointed in the face
of the glowing moon. One after another the little group turned, caught
the vision, and were stricken motionless.
Far in the radiant void, at a distance immeasurable to the estimate,
soared terrifically an unknown creature. Its wings, spreading over a
huge expanse, bore up with unimaginable lightness a bloated and
misshapen body. From a neck that writhed hideously, as a serpent in
pain, wavered a knobbed head, terminating in a great bladed beak. With
slow sweep it described majestic circles. Always the waving head gave
the impression of hopeless search. It was like a foul and monstrous
gnat buzzing in futile endeavour at the pale-lit window of the
infinite. Suddenly it fell, plunging headlong, then over and over, like
a tumbler pigeon, miles and miles, so it seemed, through the empty air,
only to bring up with a turn that carried it just above the sea, in a
ghastly and horrid playfulness.
The little human creatures far below followed with awful eyes. Not
until a low-scudding cloud blotted the portent from sight did the power
of speech and coherent thought return. Then, each according to his own
way, they bore themselves in the face of a terror such as no creature
of human kind ever before had confronted. Professor Ravenden, holding
an envelope on his knee, burrowed fiercely for a pencil muttering:
“Gyrations comprising three distinct turns. Most amazing. New light
upon the entire race of flying reptiles. I must preserve my calm;
surely I must preserve my calm!”
Dolly Ravenden was looking at Dick with her soul in her eyes.
Old Johnston, fallen to his knees, was praying with the formal
steadfastness of the blue Long Island Presbyterian.
Everard crossed to Helga, who was pale but quiet, and threw his arm
around her. She leaned against him and gazed into the sky. Dick
wrenched his hungry eyes from Dolly and turned a face absolutely white
and absolutely set to Professor Ravenden.
“The pteranodon!” he said.
“Yes. Oh, what an opportunity! What an enlightenment to science! To no
observer has it been given since the beginning of the race. May I
trouble you for a pencil?”
“Then it was this creature,” said Dick, “that killed Petersen the
sailor, and the sheep. It fouled Ely’s kites and snapped the strong
cord as if with scissors. It impaled Ely on its beak, carried him aloft
and shook him to earth again. It made the footprints which Whalley-”
“Eet will come back!” shrieked the little juggler, who had been
speechless with terror. “Eet will kill you all! Zat is not matter. But
her! Eet shall not kill her while I leef! Eet see ze kite man, an’ I
see it come down, an’ I run. See! Ze moon!”
From behind the clouds the moon moved again, and now they saw the
reptile swaying back toward them. Of a sudden it uttered a harsh,
grating sound and passed.
“That is what I heard just before my horse bucked,” said Everard.
“Raucous—metallic,” said the professor in rapt tones. “Sounded twice—or
was it three times?” He looked up from his notes, questioning the
group.
Again the hideous sound was borne to their ears as the monster whirled
and soared downward, in a long slanting line.
“It has sighted us!” said Dick. “Dolly! Helga! Run for the gully. Find
what cover you can. Ev, go with them.”
Helga reached out her hand. “Come, Dolly,” she said.
For one moment the girl hesitated. Then, with a little wail of love and
dread, she leaped to Dick and clung close to him, pressing her lips
upon his.
“Now you know!” she sobbed. “Whatever happens, you know! I could not
leave you so, without——”
“God bless and keep you, my own!” said Dick, thrusting her from him
into his brother’s grasp. “Quick, Ev! It’s coming!”
With another metallic cry, the pteranodon increased its speed in a
wide, dropping curve. Instantly Dick became the man of action again.
“Professor, I want you with your pistol on the right. Ev, stand by the
gully and guard the girls. Johnston, take the left; don’t fire until it
is close. Fire for the head.”
“For the wing-joint where it meets the body, if you will allow me,”
amended the scientist, putting away his notes carefully in his pocket.
“Thank you. For the wing-joint,” said Dick coolly. “If it strikes,
throw yourselves on the ground, all of you. Look out for the beak.
Whalley, give me your knife.”
“I keep eet,” returned the little juggler. He had regained his courage
now, and with an intelligent eye had stationed himself on a hummock
above the depression whither Everard had guarded the two women. “What
can you do wiz eet? But me, I show you! Now come ze death-bird!”
“That’s all right then,” said Dick approvingly. “Remember, Whalley,
whatever happens, you are to save the ladies.”
Throwing off his coat, he swung the heavy net-butt in the air, and
stationed himself.
“If it tackles me first,” thought he, “the pistol shots may do the
business, while I check it.”
Yet, beholding the terrific size and power of the tiger of the air, it
seemed impossible that any agency of man might cope with it. That it
meant an attack was obvious; for while Dick was disposing his little
force it had been circling, perhaps two hundred yards above, choosing
the point for the onslaught.
Now it rushed down; not at Dick, but from the opposite quarter. All ran
in that direction. The pteranodon rose, sounding its raucous croak as
if in mockery. Before they had regained their position, it had whirled,
and was plunging with the speed of an express train down the aerial
slope directly upon Dick. Straight for his heart aimed the great
bayonet that the creature carried for a bill.
Dick stood braced. The heavy, loaded club swung high. The creature was
almost upon him when he leaped to one side, and brought his weapon
around. The next instant he lay stunned and bleeding from the impact of
the piston-rod wing.
The reptile swerved slightly. Shouting aloud, Professor Ravenden poured
the six bullets from his revolver into the great body. From the other
side Johnston was shooting. The monster was apparently unaffected, for
it skimmed along toward the spot where the girls crouched, guarded by
Everard Colton, who held ready a small boulder, his only weapon.
But between stood “The Wonderful Whalley” with knife poised. On came
the reptile. Like a bow, the little juggler bent backward until his
knife almost touched the ground behind him. Then it swung, flashed, and
went home as the pteranodon, with a foot of steel driven into its
hideous neck, pierced the man through and through, and rising, shook
the limp body from its beak.
The air was poisoned with the reek of the great saurian. Sharp to the
left it turned, made a halfcircle and, beating the air with the
thunderstrokes of sails flapping loose in a mighty wind, fell to the
ground ten paces from Professor Ravenden.
Instantly that intrepid scientist was upon it, with clubbed revolver,
everything forgot except the hope of capturing such a prize. Everard,
holding aloft his rock, sprinted to the rescue. Dick staggered after
him. They had almost reached the spot when the reptile’s dying agony
began.
The first wing-beat hurled Professor Ravenden headlong with a broken
collar-bone. Frenzied and unseeing, the monster of the dead centuries
projected itself from the hill, and with one dreadful scream that might
have rung from the agonised depths of hades, sped out across the
waters. Once, twice, thrice, and again, the vast pinions beat; then a
plunge, a whirl, a wild maelstrom of foam far out at sea—and quiet.
Dolly Ravenden, with a cry, ran to her father, and with the help of
Dick and old Johnston got him to his feet.
“A boat! A boat!” he cried. “We must pursue it!”
Then he tried to lift his arm, and all but fainted.
Meantime Helga and Everard were bending over the juggler. He was dead
as instantly as Haynes had been dead by his stroke.
“Poor fellow!” said the young man. “He has paid his debt as best he
could. It was his knife that saved us, my Helga.”
The girl said nothing, but she loosed the soft neckerchief that she
wore and covered the worn, fantastic and peaceful face. They stood with
clasped hands looking at the body when a loud cry from Professor
Ravenden brought them hurriedly to where he stood, frenziedly gesturing
toward the sea.
About the spot where the pteranodon had fallen glittered little flashes
of phosphorescence. Soon the sea was furiously alight. A school of
dogfish had found the prey. One great black wing was thrust aloft for a
brief moment. The water bubbled and darkened—and the sons of men had
seen the last of the lone survival that had come out of the mysterious
void, bearing on its wings across the uncounted eons, joy and sorrow,
love and death.
THE END