He saw it as fearful and loathsome a sight as human eyes ever beheld!
THE shocking size of the horror was apparent. It bulged out of the steam like a tall house. It hopped on massive rear legs, balancing itself by a great tail, kangaroolike.
The two forelegs were tiny in proportion like short strings dangling. Yet those forelegs that seemed so small were thicker through by far than Doc Savages body!
The revolting odor of a carnivorous thing accompanied the dread apparition. The stench was of decaying gore. The hide of the monster had a pebbled aspect, somewhat like a crocodile. Its claws were frightful weapons of offense, being of such proportions as to easily grasp and crush a large bull.
Perhaps the most ghastly aspect of the thing were the teeth. They armored a blunt, revolting snout of a size as stupendous as the rest of the hopping terror.
So great was the weight of the thing that its feet sank into the spongy earth the depth of a tall man at each step.
"What is it, Doc?" Monk shouted.
"Tyrannosaurus!" Doc answered him. "Look lively!"
The monster reptile, after bounding past Doc, stopped. An instant following Monks called words, the beast charged the sound of his voice.
"Dodge it, Monk!" Doc barked. "Dodge it! The thing probably has a very sluggish brain. That has always been supposed to be a trait of prehistoric dinosaurs. Get out of its path, and several seconds will elapse before it can make up its mind to follow you!"
Shrubs ripped. A stream of shots erupted from Monks compact machine gun. Bushes fluttered again. Monk gave a bark of utter awe.
"Monk!" Doc called. "You shouldnt have tried to shoot it! Nothing less than a cannon can even trouble that baby!"
"Youre tellin me!" Monk snorted. "Man! Man! The bat of a thing that chewed the wing of our plane was a pretty little angel alongside this cuss! O-o-op!Here it comes again!"
The noisy charge, and Monks dodging, was repeated. Monk did not fire this time. He knew Doc was right. The little machine guns, efficient though they might be, would bother this reptilian monster less than beans thumbed at an alligator.
"Made it!" Monk called.
"Then keep that noisy mouth shut!" snapped the waspish Ham. "It rushes the sound of your voice!"
The steam it had come from the eruption of the mud lake was rapidly disappearing. The ferocious tyrannosaurus would soon be able to search them out with its eyes!
"All of you get over with Monk!" Doc shouted.
He nimbly evaded the great reptile as it sought his voice, then worked over until Monks anthropoid figure loomed in the dispersing steam.
Oliver Wording Bittman was there. The taxidermists face was the color of a soiled handkerchief. His jaw jerked up and down visibly, but he had his tongue thrust between his teeth, fearful lest their chattering attract the awful bounding reptile.
Doc felt surprise. Bittman had turned into a craven coward! But this direful world in which they found themselves was enough to reduce the valor of even the bravest.
Johnny, Long Tom and Ham were with Monk. They, too, were pale. But the light of a magnificent courage glowed in their eyes. They were enthralled. They lived for adventure and excitement and it was upon them in quantities undreamed of.
"Wheres Renny?" Docs tone was so low the odious tyrannosaurus, still prowling about, did not hear.
Renny was not present!
Docs shout pealed out like a great bell. "Renny! Renny!"
That drew the giant reptile. With frantic dodging, they evaded it.
But there came no answer from Renny!
"That that cross between a crocodile, the Empire State Building and a kangaroo, must have got him!" Monk muttered in horror.
"A terrible fate!" gulped Johnny, the geologist. "The tyrannosaurus is generally believed to be the most destructive killing machine ever created by nature! To think that I should live to see the things in flesh and blood!"
"If you wanta live to tell about it, we gotta get away from the thing!" Monk declared. "Howll we do it, Doc?"
"See if we cannot leave the vicinity silently," Doc suggested.
AN attempt to do this, however, nearly proved disastrous. The monster tyrannosaurus seemed to have very sensitive ears. Too, it could see them for a distance of many yards, now that the steam had nearly dissipated. It rushed them.
Doc, to save the lives of his friends, took the awful risk of decoying the reptile away while the others fled. Only the power and agility of his mighty bronze body saved him, for once he had to dodge between the very legs of the monster, evading by a remarkable spring snapping, foul, fetid teeth that were nearly as long as a mans arm.
Gliding under a canopy of overlapping ferns, Doc evaded the bloodthirsty reptile.
Darkness was descending swiftly, for the steam above the pit, although it let through sunlight, kept out the moonbeams and made the period of twilight almost nonexistent.
While the days within the crater were probably as light as a cloudy day in the outside world, the nights were things of incredible blackness.
Doc found his companions in the thickening murk.
"Wed better take a page out of the life of Monks ancestors and climb a tree for the night!" suggested Ham.
"Yeah!" growled Monk, goaded by the insult. "Yeah!" He apparently couldnt think of anything else to say.
"We can tackle that tree fern!" Doc declared, pointing.
The tree fern in question was on the order of a palm tree, but with fronds all the way up. In height, it exceeded by far the tallest of ordinary palms. Doc and his men climbed this.
"Remarkable!" Johnny murmured. "Although this species is closely related to fern growths found in fossilized state in certain parts of the world, it is much larger than anything "
"You must consider the fact that this crater is merely a spot left behind in the march of time," Doc interposed. "Some changes are bound to have taken place in the countless ages, however. And after all, science has but scratched the surface in ascertaining the nature of prehistoric fauna and flora. We may; indeed, we surely should, find many species undreamed of hitherto "
"How we gonna sleep up here without fallin off?" Monk wanted to know.
"Sleep!" jeered Ham. "If you ask me, there wont be much sleep tonight. Listen!"
In a distant part of the crater, another ferocious fight between reptilian monsters was in progress. Although the sound was borne to them muffled, it had a fearsome quality that brought a cold sweat to each man.
"What an awful place!" Oliver Wording Bittman whimpered. Terror had literally frozen the taxidermist to the limb to which he clung.
IT was a ghastly night they spent. No sooner did one titanic struggle of dinosaurs subside, than another arose. Often more than one noisy, blood-curdling fight was in progress at the same moment.
Vast bodies sloughed through the dense plant growth, some going with great hops as had the tyrannosaurus, others traveling on all fours.
Sleep was out of the question. Doc and his friends felt safe in their fern top until some monstrous dinosaur came along and browsed off the crest of a fern which they could tell by the sound was nearly as tall as their perch. After this, throughout the night, they rested in momentary expectation of meeting disaster.
But, had they been in perfect safety, they would not have slept. Slumber was unthinkable. There was too much to hear. For they were wayfarers in another world!
They might as well have stepped back in time a thousand ages!
Daylight returned as suddenly as it had departed. With the appearance of the sun, a heavy rain fell, a tropical downpour that lasted only a few minutes. But as the water hit the red-hot surface of the mud lake up on the crater side, tremendous clouds of steam rolled.
The day was about as bright as a very cloudy winter afternoon in New York City, due to the "steam" clouds always above the crater.