CHAPTER VII.
A REMARKABLE DISCOVERY AND ITS SEQUEL.
BUT the mood of the adventurers had changed. No longer did this underworld appear to them as the paradise of beauty they had first thought it. Its very silence seemed full of menace, and Mervyn found himself repeatedly listening to imaginary rustlings among the fungi.
Garth’s interest flagged, too, as time went on, and he longed to retrace his steps, yet, while his comrades held on, he could not for shame suggest return. The boy—for he was little more—was brave enough, but these ghostly jungles were so weird, so unnatural, in their stillness, that it was scarcely to be wondered at that he felt nervous.
And, added to this, was the knowledge that somewhere in these wilds lurked wolves or, at least, some beast with the voice of a wolf.
Yet no sign did Garth show of his growing uneasiness, save that his hand tightened on the butt of the revolver in his pocket.
Seymour alone—his sporting instincts fully aroused—was in his element; indeed, it is not too much to say that he was longing for an encounter with some beast; his finger itched to press the trigger; yet, although he looked around keenly, he could discover nothing on which to test his aim.
Mervyn moved a few paces in advance, for the discovery of a fresh fungus of rather peculiar growth had rekindled his scientific zeal, and, despite Seymour’s repeated warnings as to the danger of such a course, he plunged fearlessly in among the fungi in search of fresh treasures, often being lost to the sight of his friends for some moments, then reappearing with a choice specimen for their inspection.
Suddenly an excited cry burst from his lips, and his friends, fearing that some accident had befallen him, hurried in the direction of the sound.
They found him standing upon the crest of a rocky ridge, which broke away sharply upon the other side, descending precipitously into a small valley, the sides of which were fairly ablaze with a mass of trailing fungi, somewhat after the habit of ivy in growth.
“What is it?” they asked as they joined him.
“Sh!” was the whispered warning. “Look there!”
Then they saw. In the midst of the fairy-like glade, with its mighty sides rising and falling by its heavy breathing as it slept, lay a monstrous animal.
The glowing light of the fungi revealed with startling distinctness the huge bulk of its body and the great, rhinoceros-like head, which, armed with three fearful horns, was further protected by a ridge of bony plates about the base of the skull.
It needed nought else to enable the explorers to identify the creature.
“Triceratops!” gasped Garth and the baronet in a breath.
“Triceratops!” repeated Mervyn triumphantly; “one of the first inhabitants of the globe! It seems too good to be true. That it has been permitted for us to discover the monster here, in these wilds, when the whole species was thought to be extinct eras ago, is a slice of luck which we cannot too highly appreciate.”
“What a monstrous brute!” Seymour exclaimed. “Of course, I have often read of the creature, but never, in the wildest stretch of my imagination, did I dream of a monster so vast. Why, the brute must be thirty-five feet long if it’s an inch!”
“And look at the armour plates along its back,” Garth added; “nothing less than a six-inch shell would penetrate that hide!”
The professor, note-book in hand, was busily scribbling down a description of the monster.
“Total length,” he murmured as he wrote, “thirty-five feet. I think that is what you said, Seymour?”
“About that,” replied the baronet.
“Length of skull, eight feet,” Mervyn went on, standing perilously close to the edge of the ridge, and leaning far over in his eagerness to obtain a good view of the Triceratops.
“Take care!” Seymour cried sharply, “or you’ll fall.”
Scarcely had he spoken when the catastrophe he feared happened.
The treacherous ground crumbled beneath the scientist’s feet, and, amid an avalanche of loose stones and débris, he pitched headlong into the glade.
But for a fortunate chance he would assuredly have broken his neck in the fall. Instead of striking the solid ground below, Mervyn landed with a thud upon the back of the sleeping monster.
The shock awoke the creature, and, with a hoarse snort of rage, it rose to its feet, shaking itself furiously to dislodge its unnatural burden.
Terrible enough it had looked as it lay asleep, but now, in its rage, its appearance was enough to daunt the boldest.
Small wonder that Mervyn was half mad with terror, as, clutching desperately at the monster’s bony necklet, he strove to prevent the brute unseating him, and pounding him to a jelly beneath its terrible hoofs, which, even now, were trampling the floor of the glade in a paroxysm of fury.
At length, finding himself utterly unable to get rid of the encumbrance, the monster broke out of the glade at a lumbering trot, and thundered across the plain which lay beyond.
As for Garth and Seymour, they stood for a few seconds as though stunned. The thing had happened so suddenly that it had paralysed their powers of action, dried up the fountain of their energies.
When at last they recovered their scattered wits, the two scrambled recklessly down the side of the ridge and hurried out on to the plain.
But the thunderous tread of the Triceratops had already died away, and there was no sign of their friend.
“We must follow the trail,” Seymour muttered, pointing to the broadly-defined track made by the monster’s hoofs, which stretched away into the darkness.
“Yes,” Garth assented, with a quiver in his voice, “and may Heaven grant we find him safe!”
The plain looked particularly gloomy and uninviting, owing to the almost total absence of fungi, save for a few isolated clumps, whose presence but made the twilight more gloomy by contrast.
Yet over it the twain must go if they would find their friend, daring its hidden dangers, and braving all the terrors of this unknown land. So, looking well to their weapons, the two comrades stepped out.
Hardly had they taken half a dozen paces when once more that thrilling, wolfish cry arose, but this time it came from somewhere close at hand.
Seymour pulled up sharply, listening intently.
“By Jove! they’ve scented us!” he cried as the howl was repeated. “Back into the valley; we shall stand a better chance there.”
Quick as a flash he turned, and leapt for the glade they had left.
Garth, following, tripped over a trailing fungus, and, losing his footing, pitched heavily to earth. Ere he could rise a bony hand gripped his neck; he received a sharp blow on the head, and then consciousness left him.
“Where are you, Garth?” Seymour called; “this is the way.”
Alarmed at receiving no answer, the baronet retraced his steps.
“Garth!” he cried. “Hilton! Where are you, old chap?” But there was no answer, save the echoes which seemed to mock; even the wolf-like howls had ceased, and Seymour appeared to be the only living thing in the whole ghostly underworld.
Anxiously he searched the ground around, but not a trace could he find of his comrade. For over an hour he sought diligently, eagerly, yet all his efforts were vain. It seemed as though the earth had opened and swallowed the unfortunate inventor. Mervyn’s accident had seemed terrible enough, but Garth’s disappearance eclipsed even that. It was so appallingly mysterious!
Not a sound had Seymour heard but the wolf cries, yet his friend had been snatched almost from under his nose, and that without the baronet catching even a glimpse of his abductors.
“It’s maddening!” he burst forth at length. “Something must have carried him off. He cannot have disappeared into thin air! I’ll fetch Silas, and between the pair of us we may pick up some sort of a trail.”
So ruminating, with his mind still exercised with the baffling problem, he turned, climbed the ridge, and retraced his steps through the jungle.
Suddenly he stopped, thinking he heard a footstep behind him; but nothing could he see moving, and, telling himself that the disappearance of his friend had shaken his nerve and made him fanciful, he pressed on once more.
Three minutes later he pulled up again, and this time he knew there was no mistake. Something was dogging his steps, moving when he moved, and stopping when he came to a halt!
For an instant a wild, unreasoning fear swept over him, urging him to break into a run, but, with an exclamation of disgust at his own weakness, he shook it off, and moved forward again, cool, determined, and watchful.
But once more behind him came those ghostly footsteps.
Roused to a fury by the grim persistency of the thing which was tracking him, Seymour faced round with a jerk, and fired point-blank into the fungi behind him. As the report of the rifle rang out, a fearful death-scream awoke the echoes of the underworld, a scream so full of diabolical rage and impotent fury that the usually iron-nerved baronet trembled like a child as he heard it.
Controlling his agitation with some difficulty, he moved cautiously towards the spot whence the cry had come; but, though he searched long and well, he could see no sign of the creature he had shot, save in one place, where the green of the moss was disfigured by a dark, red stain.
At length he moved on again, with that fearful cry still ringing through his ears, and his heart throbbing madly with a nameless fear.
What creature was it, he wondered, that could give voice to a cry like that? What animal could it be that tracked him with such devilish cunning? Doubtless when he discovered that, he would have found the key to the mysterious fate of the inventor. He shuddered still at the mere thought of the cry.
Then, of a sudden, his heart seemed to stand still. Behind him, tireless as ever, came the pad-pad of feet upon the moss!
So there were more than one of these creatures, and they meant to track him down to the end. A cold sweat broke out upon Seymour.
If he could only see the Thing which menaced him; if he but knew the extent, the nature of his danger!
Against visible foes he would have fought with the bull-dog courage which was his chief characteristic, but against the phantom inhabitants of this land of shadows he was helpless.
The jungle, hitherto silent and lifeless, seemed, to his excited fancy, to be full of strange, ghostly sounds. Weird rustlings sounded amid the gleaming vegetation, but above all these noises came the sound of the relentless footsteps of his invisible pursuers.
A choking sob rose in Seymour’s throat, but he crushed it down with a strong effort of will. It seemed so terrible that he, who had come scatheless through so many dangers, should meet his death amid these wilds, at the hands of the terrible creatures that inhabited the jungles.
Yet, in spite of all, he was determined to sell his life dearly if the chance of a fight came to him, and with that intention he swung round suddenly, rifle at shoulder, and for the second time the report of his weapon broke the silence.
At the sound a dark brown shadow leapt up from the shelter of the dense growth, and, with a choking sob, fell back again.
It all happened too quickly for the baronet to catch more than a glimpse of the Thing, but, as he moved forward to discover what creature it was that had fallen to his aim, something flashed through the twilight.
Startled, he pulled up, and the missile, humming past him, stuck quivering in the ground ten paces to the rear.
It was a great, broad-bladed spear!
While yet the baronet stood hesitating, the wolfish howl he had heard before arose from the jungle around him.
It rose, fell, and rose again, then died away in a series of snarling yelps that made Seymour’s blood run cold.
What could these creatures be, he thought, that howled like wolves, and yet used spears?
Once more that terrible chorus rose, until the whole underworld became hideous with the sound.
At that Seymour turned and broke into a run, tearing through the jungle like one possessed. And after him, spectre-like, flitted a crowd of dusky figures, grim and menacing.