'If he was hunting,' said Muviro, 'he would have moved in a straight line until he caught the scent spoor of game or came to a well-beaten game trail.'
'And then what would he do?' asked Gridley.
'He might wait above the trail,' replied Muviro, 'or he might follow it. In a new country like this, I think he would follow it, for he has always been interested in exploring every new country he entered.'
'Then let us push straight into the forest in this same direction until we strike a game trail,' said Gridley.
Muviro and three of his warriors went ahead, cutting brush where it was necessary and blazing the trees at frequent intervals that they might more easily retrace their steps to the ship. With the aid of a small pocket compass Gridley directed the line of advance, which otherwise it would have been difficult to hold accurately beneath the eternal noonday sun, whose warm rays filtered down through the foliage of the forest.
'God! What a forest!' exclaimed Von Horst. 'To search for a man here is like the proverbial search for the needle in a haystack.'
'Except,' said Gridley, 'that one might stand a slight chance of finding the needle.'
'Perhaps we had better fire a shot occasionally,' suggested Von Horst.
'Excellent,' said Gridley. 'The rifles carry a much heavier charge and make a louder report than our revolvers.'
After warning the others of his intention, he directed one of the blacks to fire three shots at intervals of a few seconds, for neither Gridley nor Von Horst was armed with rifles, each of the officers carrying two .45 caliber Colts. Thereafter, at intervals of about half an hour, a single shot was fired, but as the searching party forced its way on into the forest each of its members became gloomily impressed with the futility of their search.
Presently the nature of the forest changed. The trees were set less closely together and the underbrush, while still forming an almost impenetrable screen, was less dense than it had been heretofore and here they came upon a wide game trail, worn by countless hoofs and padded feet to a depth of two feet or more below the surface of the surrounding ground, and here Jason Gridley blundered.
'We won't bother about blazing the trees as long as we follow this trail,' he said to Muviro, 'except at such places as it may fork or be crossed by other trails.'
It was, after all, a quite natural mistake since a few blazed trees along the trail would not serve any purpose in following it back when they wished to return.
The going here was easier and as the Waziri warriors swung along at a brisk pace, the miles dropped quickly behind them and already had the noonday sun so cast its spell upon them that the element of time seemed not to enter into their calculations, while the teeming life about them absorbed the attention of blacks and whites alike.
Strange monkeys, some of them startlingly man-like in appearance and of large size, watched them pass. Birds of both gay and somber plumage scattered protestingly before their advance, and again dim bulks loomed through the undergrowth and the sound of padded feel was everywhere.
At times they would pass through a stretch of forest as silent as the tomb, and then again they seemed to be surrounded by a bedlam of hideous growls and roars and screams.
'I'd like to see some of those fellows,' said Von Horst, after a particularly savage outburst of sound.
'I am surprised that we haven't,' replied Gridley; 'but I imagine that they are a little bit leery of us right now, not alone on account of our numbers but because of the, to them, strange and unfamiliar, odors which must surround us. These would naturally increase the suspicion which must have been aroused by the sound of our shots.'
'Have you noticed,' said Von Horst, 'that most of the noise seems to come from behind us; I mean the more savage, growling sounds. I have heard squeals and noises that sounded like the trumpeting of elephants to the right and to the left and ahead, but only an occasional growl or roar seems to come from these directions and then always at a considerable distance.'
'I can't account for it,' replied Von Horst. 'It is as though we were moving along in the center of a procession with all the savage carnivores behind us.'
'This perpetual noonday sun has its compensations,' remarked Gridley with a laugh, 'for at least it insures that we shall not have to spend the night here.'
At that instant the attention of the two men was attracted by an exclamation from one of the Waziri behind them. 'Look, Bwana! Look!' cried the man, pointing back along the trail. Following the direction of the Waziri's extended finger, Gridley and Von Horst saw a huge beast slinking slowly along the trail in their rear.
'God!' exclaimed Von Horst, 'and I thought Dorf was exaggerating.'
'It doesn't seem possible,' exclaimed Gridley, 'that five hundred miles below our feet automobiles are dashing through crowded streets lined by enormous buildings; that there the telegraph, the telephone and the radio are so commonplace as to excite no comment; that countless thousands live out their entire lives without ever having to use a weapon in self-defense, and yet at the same instant we stand here facing a saber-tooth tiger in surroundings that may not have existed upon the outer crust for a million years.'
'Look at them!' exclaimed Von Horst. 'If there is one there are a dozen of them.'
'Shall we fire, Bwana?' asked one of the Waziri. 'Not yet,' said Gridley. 'Close up and be ready. They seem to be only following us.'
Slowly the party fell back, a line of Waziri in the rear facing the tigers and backing slowly away from them. Muviro dropped back to Gridley's side.
'For a long time, Bwana,' he said, 'there has been the spoor of many elephants in the trail, or spoor that looked like the spoor of elephants, though it was different. And just now I sighted some of the beasts ahead. I could not make them out distinctly, but if they are not elephants they are very much like them.'
'We seem to be between the devil and the deep sea,' said Von Horst.
'And there are either elephants or tigers on each side of us,' said Muviro. 'I can hear them moving through the brush.'
Perhaps the same thought was in the minds of all these men, that they might take to the trees, but for some reason no one expressed it. And so they continued to move slowly along the trail until suddenly it broke into a large, open area in the forest, where the ground was scantily covered with brush and there were few trees. Perhaps a hundred acres were included in the clearing and then the forest commenced again upon all sides.
And into the clearing, along numerous trails that seemed to center at this spot, came as strange a procession as the eyes of these men had ever rested upon. There were great ox-like creatures with shaggy coats and wide- spreading horns. There were red deer and sloths of gigantic size. There were mastodon and mammoth, and a huge, elephantine creature that resembled an elephant and yet did not seem to be an elephant at all. Its great head was four feet long and three feet wide. It had a short, powerful trunk and from its lower jaw mighty tusks curved downward, their points bending inward toward the body. At the shoulder it stood at least ten feet from the ground, and in length it must have been fully twenty feet. But what resemblance it bore to an elephant was lessened by its small, pig-like ears.
The two white men, momentarily forgetting the tigers behind them in their amazement at the sight ahead, halted and looked with wonder upon the huge gathering of creatures within the clearing.
'Did you ever see anything like it?' exclaimed Gridley.
'No, nor anyone else,' replied Von Horst.
'I could catalog a great many of them,' said Gridley, 'although practically all are extinct upon the outer crust. But that fellow there gets me,' and he pointed to the elephantine creature with the downward pointing tusks.
'A Dinotherium of the Miocene,' said Von Horst.
Muviro had stopped beside the two whites and was gazing in wide-eyed astonishment at the scene before him, stilled, and the full attention of hunters and hunted was focused upon the little band of men, so puny and insignificant in the presence of the mighty beasts of another day. A dinotherium, his little ears up-cocked, his tail stiffly erect, walked slowly toward them. Almost immediately others followed his example until it seemed that the whole aggregation was converging upon them. The forest was yet a hundred yards away as Jason Gridley realized the seriousness of the emergency that now confronted them.
'We shall have to run for it,' he said. 'Give them a volley, and then beat it for the trees. If they charge, it will have to be every man for himself.'
The Waziri wheeled and faced the slowly advancing herd and then, at Gridley's command, they fired. The
