CHAPTER IX.
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 hyæna-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.