THE FATAL MAGNET.
When the central sun shone forth again through the clouds, they started
north once more.
They had been but a short time on the wing, when they saw far to the
left of them a barren rocky desert, and beyond that an encampment of
tents.
"Let's reconnoiter," suggested Angus. "That may be Nick Fratelli and
his Skraelings. We have been unable to locate them ever since we routed
them, and drove them south."
So the plane headed for the desolate valley.
But scarcely had they winged over its edge, when their motor started
coughing and sputtering, and the plane seemed strangely nose-heavy.
"Not out of gas, I hope?" inquired Scarface anxiously.
Tom Jones cocked his ear, and listened intently.
"N-n-no," he replied judiciously. "The gauge shows nearly full,
although that isn't any proof. It sounds like ignition trouble. It's
as though the ignition were all right in itself, but were struggling
against something that is trying to interfere with it."
The engines sputtered a few times more, and then stopped completely.
Jones headed down, and made a pancake landing; but the plane did not
bounce--it hit with a jar, and rolled along as if glued to earth.
As their ship came to a stop, they examined the gas tanks, which were
almost full; then Tom and Angus went over the wiring, which seemed all
right.
But when he brought out the pocket voltmeter to test the wiring, the
little instrument behaved most queerly. It did not appear to be broken,
and yet the needle registered a high voltage, without any current being
connected up at all.
As they worked, they all kept hitching up their belts. They did
it subconsciously, hardly noticing that they were doing so, until
Scarface, who not being an electrical expert, wasn't so engrossed as
the two others, remarked, "What the devil is the matter with my gat? It
seems heavy as lead."
He took it from his holster, and immediately it was nearly wrenched
from his hand by some invisible downward pull.
"Why, it weighs a ton!" he gasped, stooping to lay the weapon on the
ground.
As the pistol neared the rocky floor of the valley it was jerked
downward, and struck the ground with a click. Scarface tried to lift
it again, but it stuck to the ground as though glued there. He found,
however, that he could quite easily slide it along the surface.
Selkirk and Jones had knocked off work to watch the performance. Each
took out his own gun, and went through the same experience. Their faces
were wrapped in puzzled frowns. Then suddenly the light dawned on them.
"I have it!" exclaimed Tom. "Lodestone! This whole valley is made of
lodestone, magnetic iron ore. That's what put our ignition out of
kilter."
"If you're right," said Angus, "the only way we can ever get out of
here is to wheel our plane out of this valley. The bank to the west
looks less steep. Let's get going."
"How do you know which way is west?" asked Scarface.
"Because we were headed west when we crashed," explained the _yarl_.
"But how did you head west in the first place?" persisted the other.
"Gyroscopic compass."
"Oh, so you have one of those new-fangled things, same as we did on the
Miami. Well, let's go."
They started pushing the plane westward. It was an arduous task. Just
merely pushing the plane wasn't so bad, but the floor of the valley was
strewn with bowlders of all sizes, and was pitted with holes. Some of
the smaller bowlders they could and did move out of their way. Some of
the smaller pits they could and did fill with stones. But the larger
bowlders and holes they had to go around; and often, after making
considerable progress, they would reach an impasse and have to back up
and lose all that they had gained. This was most discouraging.
[Illustration: _It was a fearful task to push the plane across that
infernal valley._]
* * * * *
The place was weird and oppressive. On all sides stretched the bare
magnetic ore. The many pits in its surface gave it a lunar appearance.
There was no soil, and hence no plant life. There were no animals,
not even any insects. Of course there were no birds, for birds are
not found that far south within the earth. Even the winged lizards
gave the place a wide berth. Was it some sixth sense, unpossessed by
humans, that enabled the pterodactyls and insects to feel the magnetic
emanations, or was it merely the desolation that drove them away?
The heat was intense. The central sun beat pitilessly down. The
metallic rocks absorbed the heat until they were like the top of a
stove. The air trembled and writhed as it rose from the hot surface,
distorting the shape of the surrounding hills. But luckily this very
rising of the air sucked in cooler air from all sides, and thus created
a slight breeze, which was all that made the awful valley bearable.
Even so, the three men quickly stripped off practically all of their
already scant primitive garments, except their sandals, and stowed the
discarded clothes in the cockpit. The pistol-belts had long since been
removed, because of the magnetic weight of the pistols.
"This is worse than Death Valley!" exclaimed Tom.
"It is that!" assented Angus, puffing from his exertions.
"Never been there, but I can well believe it," added Jimmy.
The sweat poured down their muscular bodies, as they struggled on.
So intent were they on their work that they didn't notice anything
particular going on around them, until a rifle cracked ahead of them.
At the same instant a splinter flew from one of the struts of the
plane, striking Angus in the cheek.
"Duck!" he cried, and plunged behind a near-by bowlder.
But the others needed no command. Scarface, from long experience, had
automatically taken to cover almost before the shot reached them, and
Tom Jones was quick to follow suit.
"It's Nick the Rat, and his Skraelings!" exclaimed Scarface grimly.
"And all our guns are in the airplane. Curse the luck!"
"The top of the cliff wobbles in this heated air so badly that I can
hardly see what's there," replied. Angus, "but I guess it's them all
right."
"Lucky for you it does, old man," asserted Tom. "If it hadn't been as
hard for them to see us, as it is for us to see them, you'd have been
hit."
"How'll we get our guns?" asked Angus. "I don't fancy standing up again
and being potted. And we can't reach the cockpit without standing up."
"I tell you," announced Tom. "First, do you think they know how many of
us there are?"
"I doubt it," replied Angus. "We've kept pretty close to the plane all
the time, so that our outlines, in this wiggly heat, must have blended
into it pretty well."
"Then suppose you and Jimmy start off south as conspicuously as
possible, as though you were trying to escape. Draw their fire from
time to time by standing up when running from cover to cover."
"Sounds like a book," interrupted Scarface, grinning.
"Well, then, let's hope they read it wrong," replied Angus.
"Nick never was much of a hand at reading," added Scarface. "Go on,
Tom. What's the rest of your plan?"
The boy made a gesture of impatience at all this levity.
"When you get quite a way from the ship," he continued, "I shall try
to sneak into the cockpit and get our guns. Then you can crawl back,
really keeping under cover, and we shall be armed to defend ourselves."
"Come on then," agreed Angus.
"It's jake with me," confirmed Scarface.
Suddenly arising to his feet, he sped southward across the meteoric
floor of the valley. A perfect volley of shots resulted from the cliff
to the west. He dropped behind a bowlder.
"Are you all right?" called Angus.
"Never touched me," came back the cheery reply.
This interchange of shouts brought several more shots from the enemy,
some directed at Scarface's bowlder and some at the plane.
Tom whispered to Angus. "This shows that there mustn't be any hollering
back and forth after you get away from here. The acoustics are too
good."
"Glad there's something that's good about this infernal place. Well,
here I go. Watch me!"
And, amid another volley of shots, he dashed across the open, and
joined Jimmy.
From then on, the two were a bit more cautious, and yet they made
certain, each time they moved, to be conspicuous enough to draw fire.
Draw fire they did, and even had one or two very narrow escapes, in
spite of the waviness of the atmosphere.
* * * * *
When they were well on their way, Tom sneaked carefully around to the
end of the tail. No shots resulted. Quite evidently he had not been
seen. He stood up by the rudder. Now he could see the cliff-top, but
they did not see him. His figure must have blended with that of the
ship, for no bullets came his way.
The firing continued, and at every shot, Tom would jerk nervously; but
the bullets were apparently directed at his two companions.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he crawled up over the elevators, and
then wormed his way along the top of the tail, until he dropped into
the cockpit with a gasp of relief.
Scarface and Angus were still dodging from rock to rock, inviting
potshots, but no one had yet noticed Tom's maneuver. One by one,
he took out the precious rifles, and lowered them slowly over the
side with a loop of rope. Quite a job, on account of the magnetic
attraction. But he accomplished it without any tell-tale clatter.
The three pistol belts followed, with equal success.
Just as he was about to crawl back along the tail again, the thought
suddenly occurred to him, "Why all the precautions now? I've got the
firearms out. Why not jump, and run for a rock?"
But then he decided that the less the enemy knew, the better, even if
he couldn't see any particular harm in giving them any particular bit
of information. So back along the tail he crawled.
Halfway there he slipped. Groping quickly for a hand-hold threw him
still further off his balance, and he slid clattering off the plane, to
land with a thud on the metallic ground beneath.
A volley of shots spattered about the plane.
"Are you all right, Tom?" shouted Scarface and Angus in unison.
But poor Tom made no reply.
"Stay here!" exclaimed Scarface to Angus. "No need of both of us
getting bumped off."
So saying, he sprang up from the rock behind which he was taking cover,
and raced across the open toward where Tom lay motionless on the ground
by the tail of the plane.
Meanwhile Angus started crawling cautiously back toward the plane.
The element of surprise in Scarface's dash was probably all that saved
him from annihilation. He was halfway to his goal before the enemy
opened fire, and he reached it without mishap, dropping beside Tom.
Angus did not dare to shout and ask if Scarface were hit, for that
would reveal his own whereabouts. Nor did Scarface dare shout to
reassure him. So both kept quiet, and Angus continued his crawl.
There was not much cover where the two lay by the plane, so Scarface,
after catching his breath, dragged Tom's body behind a near-by bowlder.
This brought another volley; but no casualties. Then he searched the
body for bullet wounds; but none were evident. He placed his ear on the
other's chest; the heart still beat. Tom was only stunned.
* * * * *
There was no water to throw in his face to revive him. The heat was
intense; even Scarface was reeling with it. However, he chafed the
other's wrists and ankles, and finally brought him round.
"Where am I?" asked Tom, sitting up weakly.
"In Death Valley, still," replied Scarface grimly. "How do you feel?"
"Hot as hell," replied Jones, "but otherwise okeh."
Just then Angus joined them.
After inquiring for the health of both of them, he said: "I've an
idea. Your friend Nick and his Skraelings never fired at me once on
my way back here. If I can crawl in one direction without being seen,
I can crawl in the other. So can one of you. Let's two of us crawl in
opposite directions to the cliff, get up over the edge somehow, take
cover on the top, flank them, and open fire. Try to pot Nick. If we
succeed, the leaderless natives will run.
"The one of us who stays at the plane--and I think it had better be
Jones, because he's still a bit weak--can crawl back and forth from
rock to rock near by here, and fire an occasional shot from different
spots, to make them think we are all still here. What do you say?"
It was an unusually long speech for the taciturn Scot. He never spoke
without thinking, but this plan he had carefully thought out.
Scarface approved at once. Tom demurred at playing the least dangerous
part on the program, but finally yielded to the insistence of the two
others. To mollify him, they permitted him to sneak out and drag in the
firearms.
They had completely forgotten the magnetic nature of their
surroundings. But when they came to pick up their rifles and
automatics, preparatory to setting forth, the lodestone was brought
forcibly to their attention again.
"How the devil are we going to carry several tons of firearms with us?"
exclaimed Scarface, exasperated.
"We've just got to, that's all," sighed Angus.
So they started out, one to the right, and the other to the left,
dragging their guns with difficulty, while Tom crawled from bowlder
to bowlder around the plane, firing from time to time at the cliff.
At first he planned to fire from three different locations, thus
simulating the three of them; but then it occurred to him that, if he
used six or eight locations, he might be able to give the impression
that the plane had carried quite a large force.
Unfortunately he overdid it. Nick had become quite certain that there
were only three men confronting him, but he had been too cowardly to
make a direct attack on even only three. He saw through Tom's ruse at
once. In fact he got a glimpse of Tom on one of his crawls, and nearly
potted him. And then he searched for and located the other two.
Tom Jones sat behind a bowlder and bandaged a bad nick in his left
upper arm. If it hadn't been for the wavy atmosphere they might
have got him that time. Several more shots rang out, but no bullets
spattered near. Far to one side he could see Scarface lying low, behind
a rock; he must be their target now.
Tom turned to look at Angus, who was just then worming his way out from
behind some cover. Another fusillade from the cliff top, and then Angus
leaped in the air with a yell of pain and collapsed behind a bowlder.
Tom heard a cheer in front of him, and peering out from behind his
protecting rock, he saw the Skraelings charging down over the face of
the bank, brandishing their rifles as they came.
Coolly steadying his heavy and unwieldy piece on the rock before him,
Tom opened fire on the oncoming enemy. Far to one side, Scarface Boston
Jimmy did the same.
But as the Skraelings reached the bottom of the bank, a surprising
thing happened. Their rifles were snatched from their hands by some
unseen force, and fell clattering to the ground.
Several of them bolted back up the face of the bank. Several more fell
before the bullets of the lone two who were opposing them. The rest
stooped to pick up their fallen weapons again, and found to their
horror that the rifles had suddenly and inexplicably become so heavy
that they could scarcely be budged.
* * * * *
As the Skraeling horde paused irresolute at the foot of the cliff, with
their leaders urging them on, although almost as astonished as they,
the motionless central sun was darkened by a cloud. And then the rain
fell in torrents.
Each crowd was blotted from the other's sight by the descending deluge.
All was dark as night, the only night ever known to this central world,
the night of a tropical tempest.
The thunder roared like an artillery barrage. The lightning flashed
almost continually, and yet did not serve to illumine the scene
appreciably, so thick was the falling rain.
Neither Tom Jones nor Scarface Jimmy sought shelter from the downpour.
So parched and feverish were they from the sweltering heat of the awful
valley that they both welcomed the refreshing rain. It soothed and
cooled them, in spite of its driving force. They scooped up and drank
the water which collected in hollows in the rocky floor of the valley.
They were filled with renewed life and pep.
But not so the enemy. The Skraelings had been living in comfort in the
jungle near by, and were in no need of cooling water. To them, the
cloud-burst was merely another calamity added to the ghostly snatching
of their rifles, and the inexplicable weight which those weapons had
suddenly acquired.
So when the storm finally lifted, Tom and Scarface were all set to
renew the fray, with rifles propped against sheltering bowlders,
whereas the majority of the Skraelings were frantically scrambling
up the slippery side of the cañon, their firearms for the most part
abandoned at the bottom.
The rain had cleared the air and cooled the rocks. No longer did
the valley glow with unbearable furnace heat. No longer did rising
heat waves distort the appearance of all objects into wiggly lines.
Everything looked clear and normal; and as soon as the last drop had
fallen, and the light of the red central sun again showed through
the scurrying clouds, the two young Americans began to pick off the
scrambling Skraelings one by one with unerring accuracy. Almost every
shot told.
Among the naked savages, certain leaders could be seen urging them
to return to the attack. At these leaders, therefore, the two
marksmen directed their first shots, and soon had the satisfaction
of eliminating every one of them. But, because these leaders were
clothed--or rather unclothed--exactly like their followers, it was
impossible to make out which, if any, of them was the hated Nick
Fratelli. For Nick, with his World War experience, had had the sense
not to garb himself in Viking armor, as had been the custom among the
Skraeling chiefs who had preceded him. Thus he saved himself from
becoming the conspicuous target that he otherwise would have been.
Nor could the two marksmen tell whether the enemy leaders whom they had
brought down had been hit, or merely had been driven to take cover.
The now leaderless Skraelings abandoned their futile attempt to scale
the slippery cliff. Some took cover at the foot, but by far the larger
part of their number turned and fled precipitately southward around the
interior edge of the valley. Many lay dead or dying.
Scarface signaled to Tom, and the two at once began a steady crawl from
rock to rock, converging toward the enemy position, their common idea
being to gain possession of the deserted rifles, before the Skraelings
could recover sufficient morale to attack them again in force. For even
the remaining handful of the enemy would be more than a match for the
two Americans, if only the Skraelings would get together again and act
with courage.
But apparently a very similar idea had occurred to some of those on
the other side, for as Scarface Jimmy was crawling cautiously around a
large rock about halfway to the foot of the cliff, he almost bumped his
head against that of Nick the Rat.
Instantly the two men staggered to their feet, and raised their rifles
to fire. But they had forgotten the magnetic pull of the lodestone
ground, which resisted this movement. The rifles stayed down, and
nearly upset both men in their efforts to lift them so precipitately.
* * * * *
Scarface was the first to size up the situation. Letting go his rifle,
which rushed with a clatter to the rocky floor, he grabbed for his
automatic. But his opponent, instantly sensing the movement, flung
himself upon him. Grappling, the two went down.
The clatter of Jimmy's rifle, as it fell, attracted the attention of
Tom Jones. Raising his own rifle and resting its great weight upon
a rock, he drew a careful bead upon the struggling pair, and calmly
waited for an opportunity to fire at the Italian without endangering
his friend.
At last the opportunity offered. Tom gave a rapid but steady squeeze
on the trigger. But just as the firing-pin clicked into place, and
the shot roared forth, a heavy form flung itself from behind upon the
unsuspecting Tom. The bullet struck harmlessly just to one side of the
wrestlers.
Tom tried to wrench his gun around toward his assailant, but the
magnetic pull prevented thus sudden a movement, so he turned and swung
his fist at the man who was grappling with him. The man staggered back,
and Tom sprang to his feet and faced him.
It was Cicero Tony Schultz!
For a moment they confronted each other glaring. Then, as if suddenly
inspired by a common thought, each drew his automatic and fired.
But both entirely failed to take into account that fatal magnetic pull.
Even Billy the Kid in his palmiest days couldn't have been "quick on
the draw" with a hundred-pound six-gun.
Before firing a second time, each clapped his left hand beneath his
right hand and lifted with all his force.
It was a cold-blooded performance, standing there within a few paces of
each other, each with both feet firmly braced, and both hands employed
in trying to lift a massive piece of ordnance--about four inches
long--into position to annihilate the other.
Both fired simultaneously, and Tom Jones dropped his gun with a cry.
His right arm hung limp.
Cicero still held his heavy gun in both hands, steadying it to fire
again. He stepped backward several paces. Tom stood for a moment,
bewildered by his wound; then flung himself on his enemy.
Tom realized that he was leaping to his death, but it was his one and
only chance. Some trick of fate might stay the bullet of the Dutchman
until Tom could reach him and strike him with his intact left fist. His
right arm was useless.
The imminence of death speeded Jones's perceptions to an unbelievable
degree. Just as the whole past life of a drowning man is supposed to
flash before his eyes as he goes down, so time was distorted for Tom
Jones during the brief instant in which he sprang across the space
which separated him from Cicero Tony.
So stimulated was his mind, that it seemed as though he were taking
part in a slow-motion picture. He saw, as in a nightmare, the other man
swing the muzzle of the automatic steadily toward his heart.
A sneer played over the features of his executioner. Cicero wanted to
be so very sure that his aim was true, before he pulled the trigger.
Then came a flash and a roar! But Tom felt no pain, no stunning blow.
And yet it could not be that the other had missed at that short
distance.
As the two crashed to the ground together, Tom's mind, still working
with lightning-like speed, recalled the stories he had read of the
Moros of the Philippines, who, although shot through the heart at fifty
yards by American soldiers, would still keep on coming, and would bury
their curved knives in the vitals of their slayers.
But it was to meet just that situation that the forty-fives had been
invented. A forty-five would not only _kill_ at fifty paces, but the
impact of its bullet would stop a man in his tracks and drop him at
the very spot where he was when hit. And Cicero was armed with a
forty-five! Why then had Tom been able to keep on?
With this thought flashing through his mind, Tom's left hand clutched
his enemy's throat.
But a calm voice behind him said, "Lay off him, Tom, he's dead."
And Angus Selkirk leaned down and pulled the youth off his victim.
Bewildered, Tom staggered to his feet and looked around. Angus stood
beside him, an automatic in one hand.
"But I was killed!" exclaimed Jones inanely, not yet realizing that it
was Selkirk's shot which he had heard, and that Cicero had delayed his
trigger-finger an instant too long.
"About the way I was," replied the Scot grinning, "until the rain
brought me out of it, just in time. Say, see what's going on over
there." Tom turned.
* * * * *
Jimmy and his former lieutenant were confronting each other with
clenched fists.
"You're facing the middleweight champion of Chicago," taunted Nick,
"and you've made the last wise-crack about me that you're ever going to
make. Come on and take your medicine!"
Scarface saved his breath, and drove at the other's chest with his
right fist. The Italian gave way a step, and lunged straight at Jimmy's
face. But Jimmy swayed a bit to one side, tilted his head a bit
further, and then drove square at Nick's oncoming chin.
The impact threw the Italian off his balance. Up went both hands to
steady himself. He was completely unguarded.
Jimmy was too eager to take advantage of the situation. He swung
viciously--and missed! He fanned the air as his feet skidded on the
rain-wet rocks.
But so did Nick's. The two men toppled over together.
Jimmy, catlike, was on his feet again in an instant, but his opponent
lay stunned. Out flashed Jimmy's automatic from beneath his left
armpit, but was nearly wrenched from the hand that held it by the
tremendous pull of the magnetic rocks.
"Stop!" thundered Angus. "Take him alive! The Althing--the
council--will deal with him."
So Scarface grabbed his gun in both hands and stood over the prostrate
figure, ready and waiting for any hostile move.
But none came. Nick's body lay limp and still.
Tom and Angus hurried over; and while the two others stood guard, Tom
dropped to his knees and put his head to the fallen man's chest. Not a
sound. He pulled the body to one side, and the head wobbled loosely and
disconnectedly.
"Neck broken," asserted Scarface. Then, with a bit of his old-time
Napoleonic braggadocio, "_Sic semper_ Fratelli."
"Why, you're using your right arm!" exclaimed Angus to Tom.
"So I am," replied Tom, in surprise.
Then, raising it he inspected it carefully for signs of a wound. Blood
was dripping from the elbow.
"I guess it nicked my crazy-bone, that's all," said he.
A shot from the cliff startled them. Instantly the three dropped to
cover. Then they peered cautiously out.
From behind a bowlder by the foot of the cliff there projected a
Skraeling rifle.
Angus carefully drew a bead, and fired. The bullet almost nicked the
other's gun, but did no harm to the Skraeling himself.
"He'll keep his head down for a while now," remarked Scarface Jimmy
grimly.
Tom Jones picked up a small round piece of lodestone about the size of
a baseball.
"What we need," said he, "is mortar-fire."
Whereupon he heaved the rock at the hiding enemy. It described a
graceful parabola, and landed neatly on the Skraeling's rifle, as Tom
had known it would. His two companions followed suit.
There came a howl of surprise and pain, and then not one Skraeling, but
rather four, leaped from their cover and bolted south.
The three Americans watched them go. The fleeing men had left their
rifles behind, and were not worth firing at. They ran for a hundred
yards or so, until they came to a low and rather gently sloping part of
the bank, up which they scrambled, and soon disappeared into the jungle
beyond.
"That's just the place to roll out our airplane!" exclaimed Angus.
"Come on."
The tropical central sun was now beating down on them again with full
force. The cloud remnants of the recent storm had long since departed.
The rain-water in the pitted holes of the magnetic valley was steaming
skyward. The air was becoming insufferably hot again.
"First we must bury poor old Nick," asserted Scarface.
"Bury _him_!" exclaimed Angus in disgust. "Let's feed him to the
hyænodonts!"
But Scarface emphatically shook his head.
Said he, "Nick the Rat was my partner and my pal and my right-hand man
for years. You two have known him only at his worst. But I remember him
as he was before Cicero Schultz poisoned his mind. For old times' sake,
I am going to bury him."
"But we have no shovels," objected Tom.
"And the jungle beasts will dig him up anyhow," added Angus. "That's
why we always sail our Viking dead out to sea, on a burning raft or
ship."
"Then let's bury him here in Death Valley, where the beasts never
come," suggested Jimmy.
So together the three men rolled the body into the deepest hole in the
metallic surface of the valley's floor, and then piled the hole full of
rocks, on top of the body.
Similar burial they gave to Cicero Tony Schultz, not out of any love or
respect, nor even for old times' sake, but merely because, after all,
he had been an American like themselves.
* * * * *
Amid sweltering heat, they proceeded to roll their crippled aircraft to
the low spot in the cliff. But they could not get her up the incline.
It was too muddy and too steep.
So they dragged out the rifles--some job, with the magnetic rocks
trying to pull them back--and made camp to await the drying of the
incline.
Some small game was shot, and rain-water was fetched from the valley.
Then they slept for uncounted hours. Time meant nothing in this land of
the central sun.
They had a strange awakening. From some bushes a little way inland from
the cliff-top, there appeared two long swan-like necks, each topped by
a reptilian head.
"Great Scott, what a snake!" exclaimed Tom.
"I don't blame you for thinking so," said Angus, "but those are
dobrats."
"What?" asked Tom.
"Dobrats."
"And what are dobrats?"
"A kind of prehistoric reptile. I think the scientists call them
iguanodons."
At just that moment the two beasts waddled out into the open, directly
toward the camp. They stood about fifteen feet high. Their hindquarters
were heavy, their tails and hind legs muscular, their shoulders narrow,
and their fore legs puny. The general effect was like kangaroos except
that these reptiles walked rather than hopped.
Tom and Jimmy sprang to their feet and snatched up their rifles. The
beasts saw them, but appeared to be neither enraged nor frightened.
"Don't shoot!" admonished Angus. "They're perfectly harmless. Not much
good to eat, but their eggs are delicious."
"Fancy eating dinosaur eggs!" exclaimed Tom, laying down his rifle and
studying the two creatures. "Wouldn't Ray Chapman Andrews be thrilled!"
The dobrats stopped at a tall bush quite near the men's camp, and
started browsing off the top leaves. But suddenly they ceased their
feeding, and became alert, gazing this way and that with evident
apprehension. And then, without warning, a third beast, very similar
to the other two except that its head was larger and its neck shorter
and more sturdy, charged out of the woods with a roar. The dobrats
scattered.
"A man-eater!" cried Angus.
The three men promptly raced for a near-by tree, and boosted and hauled
each other up into its branches. When they were safely ensconced thirty
feet or so above the ground, they looked down. The tyrannosaurus, or
allosaur, or whatever it was, was perched on the back of one of the
dobrats, and had borne it to the ground. The captor's jaws were clamped
about its victim's neck.
With a wrench, the head was severed. Then the huge carnivore began to
feast on its victim. At various spots in the distant sky several small
black specks appeared, and rapidly converged, growing larger as they
came. They were winged lizards the size of crows, the buzzards of that
prehistoric world. On their arrival, they perched on near-by trees,
awaiting their turn at the feast.
One of these pterosaurs, becoming a bit impatient for its share of the
carcass of the dobrat, circled the feasting beast; but a sudden lift
of the latter's head and a snap from its jaws, and the little bat-like
creature dropped crushed and quivering to the ground. With a growl, the
huge beast resumed its eating, tearing great pieces of flesh from the
body of its kill, and gulping them down without chewing.
The three men watched, fascinated.
* * * * *
Now the surrounding underbrush began to rustle and shake with the
motion of unseen forms, one of which finally emerged. It was a long and
narrow beast, with high arched back, covered with horny plates. Its
legs were stocky, its head abnormally small. But its most remarkable
feature was the bunch of spikes, like a Viking war-club, in which its
tail terminated.
"A stegosaurus, I'll bet!" exclaimed Tom.
Whatever it was, it cautiously and tentatively approached the carcass.
The feasting reptile raised its head and growled. But the spiked one,
unheeding, snatched a piece of meat. At that, the killer of the carcass
sprang suddenly on the other's back. But he could not get either his
claws or his teeth through the heavy armor-plates. And then the clubbed
tail was brought into play, until finally the original attacker was
driven off.
The other, also somewhat mauled, in spite of its armor, retired into
the bushes. The feaster returned to gorge undisturbed.
Tom and Scarface had brought their rifles with them in their flight.
Scarface now drew a careful bead on the huge prehistoric reptile, and
fired. The bullet struck the creature's head. But the beast merely
scratched fumblingly at the place with one forepaw for a moment, as
though annoyed by an insect, and then resumed eating.
Said Tom, "That huge head has probably only a spoonful of brains. It
will take a better shot than that, to reach a vital spot."
So they didn't fire again.
At last the beast satisfied his appetite and waddled off. The
bat-winged lizards flapped down from the tree-tops and perched on what
was left of the poor dobrat. Smaller reptiles emerged from the bushes,
and contested for the remains. The three men clambered out of the tree,
picked up their camp, and hastened down into the valley to their plane.