THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE _SEAL._
SOME moments later, when the shock had somewhat passed, the two friends
rose, not a little dazed and bewildered.
But their astonishment knew no bounds when they saw that the dead
elk and its late hunters had vanished, blown to fragments by the
bursting of the explosive fungus. Even the boulder, in the shadow of
which the bull had met his doom, had been partly destroyed.
By what marvellous chance the two comrades had escaped the flying
fragments they themselves could not imagine, and they moved on their
way, feeling deeply thankful that they had escaped the fury of the
elk-hunters, and had also come safely through the explosion.
“I guess we’ll have, to be careful what we’re shootin’ at,”
remarked Haverly. “This pesky mushroom stuff seems to be made of
gunpowder!”
“It got us out of a tight corner, anyway,” returned Seymour; “we
should scarcely have come off scatheless but for that explosion. What
do you think of the natives of the underworld?”
“I guess they don’t improve on acquaintance,” was the answer.
“For sheer devilry they romp in an easy first. Heaven help Garth and
Mervyn if they’re in the power of them critters!”
“I reckon ‘wolf-men’ would be a suitable handle for the brutes,”
Silas went on, “with a fair marjority of the ‘wolf.’ They’re real
stunners! Say, I guess old Darwin could ha’ had a hull heap of missing
links if he’d only ha’ burrowed his way down here.”
“I wish the brutes were missing literally,” Seymour retorted.
“We’ll do our best to give ’em that same distinction,” replied
the Yankee. “I guess this old planet ’ud wobble along quite as well
without these lantern-jawed freaks trottin’ around in her innards.
Anyway, the population of this yer desirable location is going to find
itself considerable reduced at an early date if our two pards ain’t
handed over safe and sound. My barker’s kinder impatient
occasionally.”
Another hour went by, and still the dual tracks of Garth’s
captors and the great Triceratops stretched before them.
The plain grew more and more gloomy as they advanced, the fungi
failing entirely, so that the two had to grope their way as best they
could through the dim twilight of this subterranean world; and, though
haste was so necessary, Haverly dared not use his lantern, save
occasionally, when the trail grew indistinct, lest the light would
attract some of the hideous creatures whom he had well named
“Wolf-men.”
Suddenly the baronet stumbled over some bulky object lying beside
the track.
Recovering himself, he stooped and picked it up.
_It was the scientist’s specimen case._
“I assume the professor must have got pitched off somewhere
hereabouts,” remarked the Yankee. “You can gamble on it he’s in the
same boat as Garth. See, here’s the identical spot where he struck
earth,” pointing to a deep impression in the clayey soil.
“Perhaps the fall killed him!” Seymour suggested.
“It may be better for him if it did,” retorted Silas; “Heaven
alone knows what tortures these darned, red-haired freaks will be
trying on him if he’s a prisoner in their hands; but I guess they’ll
hardly have taken the trouble to cart his body off, if he’d been
killed by the drop, so let’s get a hustle on.”
Nothing loth, the baronet stepped out briskly again.
Now the trail of the wolf-men led over stony ground, and many
precious moments were lost in tracing the faint tracks, sometimes all
but invisible. Then it would pass through the midst of some quaking
morass, where a false step meant death, and that in a form so hideous
that even the boldest could not face it calmly. Yet they kept
tenaciously to their task, determined to do their utmost to rescue
their friends, or, failing that, to avenge them.
For the most part they proceeded in silence, with hearing
strained to catch the first sound of approaching foes; then suddenly
to their ears came the noise of rushing waters.
A few paces farther and a great, black chasm yawned before them,
splitting the plain in twain. At its depth they could only guess, but
in width it appeared to be about thirty feet, and from its black
depths arose the roar of a mighty torrent.
“See!” cried the baronet, “the ‘wolf-men,’ as you call them, must
have crossed here.”
He pointed to where a frail, hide rope bridge--formed by two
long strands united by numerous cross-ties after the manner of a rope
ladder--swayed giddily above the abyss.
“It will take a bit of nerve to cross that flimsy thing,” he went
on, “but I suppose there’s no other way; so here goes.”
He placed one foot carefully upon the first rung of the bridge,
and was about to commit his whole weight to it, when suddenly he was
dragged forcibly backward by his companion.
The next moment a knife flashed through the twilight on the
farther side of the chasm, and the hide bridge, severed from its
fastening, swished downward into the depths, and hung dangling against
the rocky wall.
Quick as thought the Yankee’s revolver spoke, and a dark figure,
leaping high into the air, hurtled over the brink of the abyss.
“I calculate he was a trifle too previous,” drawled Silas. “The
flash of his knife gave the show away, or you’d ha’ been down there by
now.”
Seymour gazed into the darkness below, then turned and gripped
his friend’s hand.
Not a word of thanks did he speak, but that grip expressed more
eloquently than words his gratitude to Haverly for the prompt action
which alone had saved him from a fearful death.
“I assume it’s a case of checkmate,” the American remarked after
a few moments, gazing ruefully at the dangling bridge. “We’ll have to
get back to the _Seal,_ and bring her round past the mouth of
this plaguey river.”
“I suppose there’s no chance of the chasm being narrower higher
up,” Seymour hazarded, “so that we might jump it?”
“Not an eyeful of a chance,” was the reply. “You can bet your
last dollar that if this yer land-crack was jumpable anywhere
hereabouts these wolfish brutes wouldn’t ha’ troubled to sling a
bridge across. I take it the sooner we get back to the old boat the
better for Garth and the professor. Say, what’s that?”
Far away on the plain beyond the chasm an arch of light arose,
flashing and scintillating with dazzling brilliance. High into the
darkness it towered, like a golden rainbow, and, as the two men
watched in amazement, against its shimmering surface appeared a number
of strange, black figures.
A few moments it hung thus, then vanished as mysteriously as it
had come.
“Wal,” remarked Silas, “I reckon that’s a real caution. What do
you make of it, William?”
But the baronet did not answer. He was puzzling over certain of
the figures--weird, animal-like forms--which had appeared
upon the arch.
Strangely familiar they seemed to him, yet, try as he might, he
could not call to mind where he had seen them before.
He was still pondering the matter when they turned to retrace
their steps towards the coast, and Haverly, though not knowing the
cause of his abstraction, forbore to question him.
A mile of the return journey they had covered when light came to
Seymour’s mind.
“I’ve got it” he cried.
“Got what?” asked the millionaire.
“The meaning of those signs on the arch,” was the answer. “I have
been trying to recall where I saw those figures before. It has just
flashed across me. Do you remember that visit Mervyn and I paid to an
island in the South Atlantic?”
“Ayuti?”
“The same. Well, it was there I saw the signs. Both Mervyn and I
learnt the language during our stay.”
“Then I take it you can read them hieroglyphics?”
“I can,” returned Seymour. “The six signs meant ‘_Leino yos
tragumee!_’”
“I’d be almighty obliged if you’d translate the same. I guess my
list of languages don’t include Ayuti.”
“It is a warning,” Seymour murmured reflectively, “and one that
we cannot afford to neglect, though I cannot imagine why it was given,
or why it should be in the language of Ayuti.”
“But the translation?”
“Let the white strangers beware!”
“Jupiter! That’s kinder queer,” cried Silas, startled for once
out of his composure. “The fireworks were mysterious enough, without
this message. I reckon the citizens of this yer location are educated
some, for all their peculiar appearance.”
“You surely don’t consider that the wolf-men were responsible for
the warning?” asked the baronet in surprise.
“Seems more like a threat than a warning to me,” Haverly
rejoined. “I guess they’d hardly hang a message up that all the
wolfish freaks in the underworld could see, if they intended to warn
us. No pard, you take----”
A screech awoke the echoes of the underworld; there was a
whirring of mighty wings, and out of the gloom swooped a monstrous
black shape, swift and terrible.
Seymour was knocked sprawling to the ground as the creature
flashed past him and vanished again into the darkness whence it had
emerged.
The millionaire stared in amazement, then, as his friend rose, he
found voice.
“I guess that’s the biggest bat I ever struck!”
“Bat!” ejaculated Seymour, “you don’t mean to say that was a
bat?”
“It was nothing more or less,” retorted Silas; “but here he comes
again; now’s your chance to get your own back.”
Simultaneously the two men pulled trigger, and the huge creature
swooping down upon them, flapped wildly for a moment, then sank
heavily to earth, beating the ground madly with its mighty wings.
Its eyes glared savagely at the two comrades, and it made a
futile effort to drag itself towards them, seeming to know that they
were the cause of its injury.
Half a dozen shots they fired into the great body ere the
creature lay still; then, when all movements of the wings had ceased,
they moved forward to examine the carcase.
It was, as Haverly had said, a gigantic bat or vampire, armed
with hyaena-like teeth and great curved claws that made it a terrible
enemy.
Its membranous wings, outstretched, could not have been less than
fifteen feet from tip to tip, and it would apparently have had little
difficulty in carrying off either of the comrades had it succeeded in
gripping one of them at its first swoop.
“What hideous monsters this underworld contains!” exclaimed the
baronet disgustedly, as they pushed on once more. “Mervyn would be in
raptures could he see that brute. Anything new or strange attracts him
like a magnet.”
“I reckon we’ll have to flicker if we’re to save him and Garth,”
returned Silas shortly, and increased his pace.
Pressing forward with redoubled speed, every nerve and muscle
strained to the utmost, they reached the glade.
A brief rest, then on again until they emerged upon the beach,
off which they had left their vessel.
Eagerly they looked for the welcome gleam of the searchlight. But
they looked in vain.
_The “Seal” had vanished!_
A despairing cry burst from the baronet as this fresh misfortune
became apparent.
What hope was there for Garth and Mervyn? What chance of their
ultimate rescue now?
Even Haverly grew depressed as he thought of the issues at stake.
It seemed as though fate itself were against them.
That now, while their comrades’ lives were perhaps trembling in
the balance, the vessel, upon whose aid they had relied, should fail
them, was a blow indeed.
“Perhaps Wilson’s been attacked, and had to put out from shore,”
Seymour suggested gloomily, after standing for some time in moody
silence; but the hopelessness of his tones belied his words. In his
heart he fully believed that the faithful _Seal_ had vanished for
ever.
Vividly to his mind came the adventure of a few days
before--the attack of the giant octopus. What if another of the
huge cephalopods had attacked the vessel, and had dragged both it and
the engineer below the surface!
He shuddered at the thought.
“I reckon we’ll be getting used to reverses shortly,” said the
Yankee bitterly.
“He may return,” Seymour answered.
“I wouldn’t gamble on it,” was the retort; “but we’ll camp here
awhile, and see if he turns up. If he don’t, I guess it’s a case!” He
finished with a significant gesture.
For ten long hours they waited on that dreary beach, waiting
vainly for the vessel that was their only hope in this land of eternal
twilight.
They slept and watched by turns; but no welcome flash from the
searchlight of the submarine made glad their aching eyes, no voice
answered their repeated hails.
At intervals they discharged their rifles, caring nought for the
risk they ran in so doing should any wolf-men still remain on this
side of the abyss.
But no answering report echoed over the water, and at length,
fully persuaded that their faithful vessel had disappeared for ever,
they turned reluctantly inland once more.