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!
Doc’s 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!
Doc’s 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.
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 Savage’s 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 Monk’s 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 Monk’s compact machine gun. Bushes fluttered again. Monk gave a bark of utter awe.
'Monk!' Doc called. 'You shouldn’t have tried to shoot it! Nothing less than a cannon can even trouble that baby!'
'You’re 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!
The noisy charge, and Monk’s 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 Monk’s anthropoid figure loomed in the dispersing steam.
Oliver Wording Bittman was there. The taxidermist’s 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.
'Where’s Renny?' Doc’s tone was so low the odious tyrannosaurus, still prowling about, did not hear.
Renny was not present!
Doc’s 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. 'How’ll 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 man’s 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.
'We’d better take a page out of the life of Monk’s ancestors and climb a tree for the night!' suggested Ham.
'Yeah!' growled Monk, goaded by the insult. 'Yeah!' He apparently couldn’t 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.
