"They didnt!" snorted Monk. "You can look for yourself!"
"Use those machine guns!" Doc directed. "The thing is going to attack us!"
The hideous flying reptile was slowly opening its huge, tooth-armed jaws!
Rapid-firer barrels poked through the plane windows. They spewed. Empty cartridges rained on the floorboards. Bullets found their mark.
The aлrial reptile started its blood-curdling cry. The sound ended in a drawn, piercing blare. The thing fell, bones broken, foul canvas like wings flapping. It was like a dirty gray cloth somebody had dropped.
Monk grinned. "What a relief that it "
The plane lurched madly as Doc whipped the controls about.
A second of the prehistoric pterodactyls had materialized out of the vapor. A gigantic, eerie thing reminiscent of a mangy crocodile clad in a great gray cape, it plunged at the plane.
Its horrid, conical teeth closed upon the left wing. A wrench, a gritty scream of rending metal and the plane wing was ruined! The ship keeled off on a wing tip and began a slow spin.
The pterodactyl hung to the wing it had grabbed, like a tenacious bulldog.
"The parachutes!" Doc barked. "Jump! We may crash any instant!"
Chapter 16. THE AWFUL NIGHT
IN quick succession, Docs five men piled through the plane door, hands on the ripcord rings of their backpack parachutes.
Renny was first to go. Monk paused to grab his can of tobacco out of a seat, then followed. Long Tom, Ham and Johnny dived after him.
Only Oliver Wording Bittman held back, trembling.
"I dont want " he whined.
"Neither do we!" Doc said firmly. "Theres no choice!" Then, before it should be too late, Doc swept Bittman up in bronze arms of vast power and sprang with him into space.
As calmly as though he were on solid ground, Doc snapped open Bittmans chute, then dropped down a few hundred feet and bloomed his own mushroom of silk. A jerk, and he floated gently. He had time to view the astounding domain about him.
The vapor, as he had half suspected would be the case, was becoming less dense. At the same time, the warmth increased. The hot, moist air, suddenly striking the cool strata above the crater, formed the steamlike clouds, which had curtained whatever additional shocking secrets the place held.
A stutter of machine-gun shots below drew Docs golden eyes. He hastily plucked his own compact rapid-firer from its belt holster.
The pterodactyl had released its silly hold on the falling plane and had attacked Johnny. The lanky archaeologists bullets had driven its first dive aside. But it was coming back. The repellent jaws were widely distended. Each of the many odious, conical teeth could pierce through a mans body.
Docs machine gun clattered. He knew where to aim. Greater even than the learning of Johnny, whose profession was knowing the world and all its past, was Doc Savages fund of knowledge on prehistoric reptiles and vegetation. Doc realized this pterodactyl probably had little or no brain. He shot for the neck bones and shattered them.
The air reptile tumbled away. Johnny lifted a grateful face.
"My shots didnt seem to do much good!" he called.
"Try for the neck or eyes!" Doc replied.
Strong air currents now made themselves felt. The parachutes were swept rapidly to one side, away from the edge of the crater.
Directly below, Docs gaze rested upon a remarkable sight. It would have been a fearsome sight, too, except that his practiced eye told him they were going to be carried clear of danger by the wind.
A mud lake, narrow, but spreading for thousands of rods along the crater side, was below. A crust, resembling asphalt and apparently very hard, covered the lake. This must be nearly red-hot, judging from the heat of the moist air which rushed upward.
Probably this amazing mud lake reached in a horseshoe shape halfway around the crater. Certainly, the ends were lost to sight.
A natural lava wall confined it to the crater side, well above the floor.
The ruined plane fell into the mud lake. Its weight broke the crust. Instantly, there was a great eruption at that point. A geyser column of scalding, lavalike mud shot hundreds of feet upward, driven by steam pressure gathered beneath the crust. Steam itself now exuded. It made a deafening roar.
A thunderous crackling swept over the mud lake as the crust settled. From countless points came minor eruptions. The steam, squirting outward and upward, enveloped the falling parachutes.
They could not see where they were landing!
THE parachutes pitched like leaves in the disturbed air. Not only did the gushing, superheated winds carry them clear of the mud lake, but they were flung far out on the crater floor.
Doc, compact machine gun in hand, waited. His golden eyes sought to pierce the steamy world. The air was so hot as to be near sickening. It possessed a weird, unusual fragrance.
It was like the atmosphere within a greenhouse impregnated with the odor of rankly growing plants.
The thunderous crackling from the mud lake subsided as quickly as it began.
Suddenly a shocking din arose below. A piercing, trumpetlike cry quavered. A coarse, beastly bawling joined it. Tearing of branches, the hollow pops of green timber breaking, the dull reverberations of great bodies thumping the earth, made a nightmarish discord. It was a sound to make the flesh creep.
"Renny! Monk! The rest of you!" Docs resonant tones pealed through the hobgoblin clamor. "Spill air from one side of your chute and try to avoid the vicinity of that noise!"
From below the abyss of steam, where his men were lost from view, came replying shouts. But there was little time to comply.
The frond of an immense plant brushed past Docs mighty bronze form. The plant was of colossal size. It seemed to be something on the order of a tree fern. So towering was it that there elapsed a distinct interval before the parachute reached the ground.
Doc landed in a tangle of creepers and low trees which looked like ordinary evergreens. More ferns, these much smaller, made a spongy mat of the whole. It was like descending in a pile of enormous, coarse green cobwebs.
Shucking off the parachute harness, Doc sprang to less tangled footing. The ground was a soft mulch underfoot as though fresh plowed.
The hideous uproar they had heard from the air had subsided! A low rumble had replaced it. This rumble seemed to be some great monster in flight! The sound was already some distance away, and departing like an express train.
Of a sudden, there came into the surrounding air the low, trilling note that was part of Doc. Now, more than ever, was that sound suggestive of a strange bird of the jungle. It might have been a wind filtering through the ghostly, fantastic forest around about.
And as always, that inspiring sound conveyed some definite meaning. This time it was be silent! There is danger near!
Doc knew that grisly, caterwauling concert he had heard while in the air meant a fight between behemoths of a prehistoric reptilian world. He recognized the plant forms about him. Some had been extinct for ages.
Doc had dropped into a land which was very much as it had been countless ages ago. A fearsome, bloodcurdling land where survival of the fiercest was the only law!
Docs strange sound trailed away in echoes that, although they possessed no definite tune, were entrancingly musical in their quality.
Now he could hear some gigantic horror breathing near by! The breathing was hurried, as though the terrible thing had been engaged in strife. The sounds were hollow, very loud almost like the pant of an idling freight locomotive!
Suddenly vegetation swished and crashed as the monster got into motion.
It was charging Doc!
Docs mighty bronze figure flashed sidewise, moving with a speed such as it possibly had never before attained. But as he changed position, his golden eyes were sharpened for sight of the peril that rushed him.