THE MONSTER-HUNTERS

BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER

U. S. Service Series

Illustrations from Photographs taken for U. S. Government. Large 12mo. Cloth. Price $1.50 each.

THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. EXPLORERS
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON

Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.

A Battle to the Death.

Arsinothere of three million years ago impaling a carnivorous creodont, somewhat resembling a hyena.

THE
MONSTER-HUNTERS
BY
FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
Author of “U. S. Service Series”
WITH FIFTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS, MOSTLY FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS LOANED BY THE AMERICAN
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Published, June, 1916

Copyright, 1916,
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

All Rights Reserved

THE MONSTER-HUNTERS
Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Author desires to express his appreciation of the consultation and assistance of Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, and of the members of the Scientific Staff of the Museum, especially: Dr. Frederic A. Lucas, Director; Dr. W. D. Matthew, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology; Mr. Walter Granger, Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology (Mammals); and Mr. Barnum Brown, Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology (Reptiles). The Author further wishes to express appreciation for the use of illustrations provided by the Museum, naming especially the restorations of Mr. Charles R. Knight.

PREFACE

Mystery and marvel are the gates to that wild world where the Monsters of the past lived out their monstrous lives. Adventure that carries one into those steaming coal forests, into those black and reptile-haunted swamps, that sets one face to face with the sprawling brood of giants, terribly menacing and terribly true, holds a thrill peculiar to itself. So startling, so madly strange seem the conditions that we scarcely dare to believe the adventure true, and then, the slow processes of Time turn one by one the pages of that age-old book, and the most extravagant flight of the imagination is outdistanced by facts.

Out to the waste and desert corners of the earth, men go to read these stories. They find the bones of the colossal gladiators still locked in their Titanic struggle, though that struggle ended in death ten million years ago; they find a ruthless war of tooth and claw made tenfold more ferocious than any combat of living beasts of prey by the huge bulk, and the terrible offensive and defensive weapons of those vast animals that the Earth could no longer tolerate.

There is scarcely a place in all the world where a boy cannot find for himself some tokens of this Age of Monsters, where he cannot himself be the hunter and the captor of strange things. In this book all that is told of that grim past is true and every statement may be taken as scientifically accurate. To show to the boys of the United States the thrill of discovery in their own country, and the splendor of the work that their scientists and museum experts are accomplishing, is the aim and purpose of

The Author.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MONSTER-HUNTERS

THE MONSTER-HUNTERS

CHAPTER I
KILLING THE LAST DRAGON

“Father, I want a dragon!”

The shrewd old merchant lowered the evening newspaper he was diligently reading, and looked over it at his son.

“All right, my boy,” he said with a smile; “go ahead and get one.”

“But I mean a real dragon!”

“About how big, Perry?”

“I’d like one about a hundred feet long, if I could find it.”

“You don’t want much,” was his father’s half-humorous reply, as he folded the newspaper so that he could read the next column with more ease. After a few moments, pursuing the subject, he continued,

“Is there any particular breed of dragon that you’re after?”

“What I really want,” the boy answered, “is one of those spiny ones—the sort Uncle George discovered out West.”

The keen old financier looked thoughtful, then deliberately took off his reading-glasses, laid down the paper and turned to the boy.

“You’re talking about fossil monsters, then,” he said.

“Yes, Father, that’s it exactly. And I do hope you’ll let me do it!”

The boy’s earnestness was evident, and he knew he could count on his father, for they had always been close friends.

“Let you do what?” the merchant queried in response. “I suppose all this preamble about a dragon means that you have some crazy notion in your head. Come along, son, tell me all about it.”

This was the chance for which Perry Hunt had long been waiting, and he snatched eagerly at it.

“There’s a chap I know,” he sputtered, “who’s going ’way out to the South Dakota Bad Lands to prospect for fossils. He’s a freshman at Princeton, and it’s their expedition. He told me he was sure he would be able to take me along, if I could fix things up at my end. I’ve always been wild to go fossil-hunting, Father, and this is a real chance. Can’t I go?”

Mr. Hunt tapped the ash from the end of his cigar and looked inquiringly at his son.

“What in thunder do you know about fossils?” he asked, abruptly.

Perry colored. He was inclined to be shy about the things for which he really cared, and he had never before talked to his father about his hobby. The great secret of his boyhood had been a passionate interest in the strange creatures which used to wander over the earth, millions of years before the first man. Mr. Hunt had a sharp, quizzical tongue, and Perry was afraid of being misunderstood and ridiculed. Now, however, the time for concealment was past and he spoke up valiantly.

“I’ve read nearly everything I could get hold of, along that line,” he replied, “and I’ve hung around our little Museum a lot. The curators and everybody have been bully to me down there, and they’ve let me putter about in the workshops. I really have learned quite a bit about fossils, Father, and Mr. Cavalier has shown me how to draw. I’ve drawn heaps!”

“The deuce you have!” the other commented. “Got any of those drawings still?”

The boy nodded.

“Let me see them, Perry—that is, if you don’t mind.”

Still a little flushed with confusion, the boy went to his own room and came back a few minutes later with a sketch-book. His father turned over the pages. The drawings covered a period of several years, and though the first were crude, the later ones were quite well done. Those dated during the last year showed the results of real study. There was no doubting that the lad had picked up a fair knowledge of gross anatomy in following his hobby.

Most of the pictures were copies from illustrations in scientific books or were drawn from models in the Museum. But there were a few, here and there, that were just fancy, idle sketches drawn for amusement’s sake. Over one of these—a picture-book dragon with scales and a snaky tail—the old merchant paused, smiling. Several minutes elapsed before he turned the page. He went through the book twice without saying a word. At last he spoke.

“In the second drawer from the bottom, in that cabinet,” he said, pointing to an old cupboard which Perry had never seen unlocked, and at the same time handing a key to the boy, “you will find a large book bound in faded green leather. Bring it here.”

Although rebuffed by his failure to get a direct answer to his appeal for permission to go on the expedition, Perry took the key. He felt that, in some way, his present quest was connected with the question he had raised, and as he unlocked the cupboard, the boy wondered. In the drawer he found the faded book, with its cover of green Russian leather all dry and crumbling to the touch, and brought it to his father. Still without comment, the old merchant slowly untied the string that held the covers of the ancient book together, and opening it carefully, turned to the first page.

There, drawn with childish detail, was a picture of a dragon such as men in the Middle Ages believed that creature really to be, with two legs armed with claws, spiked wings, a long powerful tail, scales, and a ferocious-looking head with jaws wide open, disclosing pointed teeth, while from the throat, flames and smoke were pouring in volumes.

The boy looked up.

“Why, Father—” he began.

With a faint smile, the old merchant pointed to the date at the bottom of the drawing, its pencil marks so faint as to be almost indistinguishable.

“I must have been nine years old, then,” he said. “I can remember well when I drew that beast. Father had a queer old Latin book, a sort of mediæval natural history, and it gave a drawing of every supposedly known beast in the world. This was one of them. At that time I believed that a dragon was as real as a lion or an elephant. To tell you the truth, Perry, I’ve never quite got away from the feeling of that old book of Aldrovandus, his beasts were so much a part of my childhood. When I was a youngster I was convinced that any adventurous boy could find plenty of dragons like this one, if he only went to the right place to look for them.”

“And did the book tell you where to look?”

“It did, exactly. It described a region south of Ethiopicus—that was Upper Egypt—where a vast region was uninhabited by men because of the presence of three or four of these monsters. I was determined to go there some day and kill a dragon.”

“And you took it all in, Father?”

“Why not? Only a couple of years before, Stanley rescued Livingstone in the first great exploration across Africa. The region that Aldrovandus wrote about, north of the Victoria Nyassa, in my day was still an absolutely unexplored territory. Anything might be there, even dragons.”

“I should think you’d have known there weren’t any real dragons,” protested Perry, with the cocksureness of a boy.

“I had sense enough to know that I didn’t know it all,” said his father with a snort, emphasizing the personal pronoun. “Why even in your lifetime, boy, scientists have found an animal that no one had ever heard of before, still living in the African forests.”

“What was that, Father?”

“The okapi, a sort of giraffe with daggershaped horns and striped on the legs something like a zebra. And that discovery is a good example of the sort of thing I mean.

“Naturalists once used to laugh at some of the old pictures on the Egyptian temples which showed a beast like a cross between an antelope and a zebra, with stripes. One of the heads of the god Set, too, was unlike any animal known in the world. But when, in 1901, the first okapi was caught by Sir H. H. Johnstone in the Semliki forest in Uganda, it was found that the old Egyptians of three thousand years ago were right, and that the modern naturalists were wrong in their disbelief. So you see, Perry, lots of things are possible that one would never expect.”

“But a dragon, Father! It’s such a made-up sort of beast—wings, teeth, snake’s tail and all that sort of thing!”

“Don’t trouble yourself about that,” his father answered, “there are plenty of dragons with wings, teeth and a snake’s tail, and, what’s more, Science calls them dragons. Draco volans, the flying dragon, that’s their real name, my boy. But they are all small, none of them more than ten inches in length, including the tail.”

“Never heard of them,” said Perry, incredulously.

“If you don’t want me to think you a born idiot,” his father answered sharply, “don’t let me catch you taking that tone, suggesting that a thing doesn’t exist because you don’t know about it. There are a few million things that you don’t know now, and when you get older and have more sense, you’ll find a few million more things that you don’t know.”

“I’m sorry, Father,” the boy said, in a milder tone. “I didn’t mean to be uppish. Won’t you tell me about the ‘flying dragon’?”

“They are small lizards,” his father answered, “living throughout Malasia and in Madagascar. They have a long lizard-like tail, four inches in length, a fierce-looking head with a frill around it to make them look ferocious, and the skin from the body to the four legs is stretched out like that of a flying squirrel. If they were bigger, they could play the dragon’s part well enough. But, as I was saying, in my young days there wasn’t any good reason why I should disbelieve the dragon. Aldrovandus said he possessed the skin of one, and that seemed good enough proof for me. Yet I think I would have said less about my belief in dragons, if I had any idea where it would land me. I don’t think I ever told you the story of my fight with a dragon, did I?”

“A real sure-enough fight?”

“An actual fight with an actual dragon,” said his father, with a smile.

“But how could you?”

“I did have one, just the same.”

“I don’t understand you a bit. Won’t you tell the story, Father?”

Without answering directly, the old merchant turned over page after page of the drawing-book, its pages browned and the pencil-sketches faded with age, but all filled with dragons—every kind of dragon that the boy of forty years ago had been able to discover or invent. At last he stopped before a picture of a weird beast, that looked like a cross between a man-eating tiger, a Chinese dragon, an alligator, and a boa-constrictor, which was breathing out fire and smoke as though it had a gas-works in its inside. In front of the dragon was represented a small boy, about as tall as the dragon’s claw was long, and the youngster was sticking a knife as big as himself into the monster’s breast. In the near distance, quite out of perspective, were a number of people running away in terror.

“There,” the old merchant said, with a mixture of amusement and complaisance, “that was the beast I fought. Isn’t that a sure-enough dragon for you?”

After his former rebuke, Perry was a little dubious about seeming too skeptical, but he could not help saying:

“Well, that’s hardly a photograph, is it, after all?”

“No,” his father answered, “it’s not. I suppose I’ll have to admit that it is partly imaginative. But the dragon I fought was something like that.”

“You’ve got me guessing,” the boy admitted. “Won’t you tell me the story, Father? It ought to be a great yarn.”

“I suppose I’ll have to,” the other agreed, “since I’ve led you on so far.” He reached out for a new cigar, clipped it, lighted it, and when sure that it was drawing properly, leant back in his chair and began.

“I suppose I was about thirteen years old,” he said reminiscently, “when this famous combat was held. At that time my folks were living at a small place called Proctor’s Cave, on the Green River, in Kentucky, not far from the Mammoth Cave. As you probably know, Perry, that whole section is just riddled with caves, made by the gradual dissolving of the limestone rock through the action of underground rivers. Most of them, too, are full of stalactites.

“Proctor’s Cave, right on the river, was quite a growing town, and though it was small, there was a right smart heap of children in proportion to its size. About thirty-five boys around my age went to the school there. I can remember the number because we were divided into two gangs. Ours had fifteen members and the other had twenty.”

“I suppose you were ‘boss’ of your gang, Father?”

“I was the ‘War-Chief,’” was the smiling response. “Our gang was called the ‘Indians’ and the others were the ‘Pioneers.’ You can see that it was natural for us always to be ready for a fight. Everything was taken in good part, though, until one day we caught one of the chaps in the other gang and scalped him.”

“You didn’t really scalp him!”

“No, not exactly. There were limits, Perry, even in my young days. But the victim thought it was genuine. That’s where the trouble came in.”

“How was it, Father?” pleaded the boy, fairly wriggling with excitement.

“As I remember,” the old merchant continued, musingly, “a week or so before, the ‘Pioneers’ had got hold of one of our gang and had given him the ‘third degree.’ They said that if he was an ‘Indian’ he ought to look like one. To make sure of it, they gave him a coat of war-paint with some stuff they got from a drug store, and the war-paint wouldn’t wash off. It wouldn’t even scrape off. It was nearly a month before it wore off.

“Our turn came when this ‘Pioneer’ was delivered into our hands. We told him we were going to have our revenge, and I tell you, he was scared stiff! We brought the youngster to our own private ‘Indian’ cave, and there we discussed tortures, so that he could hear what was being said. Each one of us had some kind of torment more excruciating than the last.”

“It sure must have been blood-curdling to the chap who was listening,” put in Perry, with an appreciative grin.

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” his father agreed. “Finally, we came to a formal decision and informed the victim that he was to be scalped alive. You should have heard him yell! However, yelling didn’t do any good, for the cave was half a mile from town and a couple of hundred feet underground, and he would have had to hoot like a Mississippi River steamboat in order to be heard at all. So we went ahead and scalped him.”

“How, Father?” queried the boy, eagerly.

“We made quite a ceremony of it,” was the reply. “First of all, we gathered a lot of stinging nettles that grew outside the cave and mashed them up with vinegar in an old tin can. The vinegar, you know, holds the sting; it even seems to make it stronger. Then, in an old iron pot we had, we mixed up a lot of corn syrup and red ink—we always used that in our initiation powwow, and it certainly did look and feel like blood.

“Next we blindfolded the unfortunate ‘Pioneer.’ We dipped a piece of string in the nettle juice and tied it loosely round his head, and sprinkled his head with the nettle vinegar, knowing that it would only take a minute or two before it began to sting. Then we took his cap, dipped it into the red ink and syrup, and clapped it—not boiling, but still fairly hot—on his head. At the same instant, one of the ‘braves’ stuck a bit of stick in a loop of the nettle-soaked string and twisted it tight, also running his thumbnail around, as if it were a knife. The cap and the blindfold were then yanked off together.

“The youngster gave just one look. He saw the cap, all blood, in the other fellow’s hand, and jumped to the conclusion that it was his scalp. The tight string around his forehead felt like a cut and the nettles began to sting like blazes. He put his hand up to his head, felt the sticky wetness, looked at his hand, all red, let out an earpiercing screech, and started to run. That was forty years ago, but I believe he’d have been running yet, if he hadn’t bumped into some one on the road.

“Help! I’ve been scalped!’ he yelled.

“I reckon he must have given the farmer a jolt, for while we were a good way from the Indian country, still there were plenty of ‘hostiles’ about, and any day there might be a raid. This was about the time of the Little Big Horn Massacre.”

“You mean Custer’s last stand?”

“Yes. So, you see, the farmer had reason enough to be startled. As soon as he had a good look at the boy, though, he saw that the youngster was only frightened. He cut the nettle string from the lad’s head, washed off in the nearest brook as much of the red ink and corn syrup as he could, and started for town.

“I thought we were in for real trouble, but to do that boy’s father plain justice, I’ll admit he was a good sport. Though he was as mad as a hornet, he was fair. He gave me a good tongue-lashing, and told me—which was true—that I ought to have had more sense, as the boy might have been killed with fright. He repeated to me the old story of the man who was ordered to be beheaded, and who died when a cup of cold water was dashed on his neck in joke. Still, he said it was a boys’ row, he remembered when he was a boy himself, and it wasn’t his business to interfere. He added that he hoped I would get my medicine from the other gang, twice as hot as I had given it.”

“That was fair enough, Father.”

“Indeed it was. But even he was satisfied with what I got in return.”

“What was it?”

The old merchant rolled up his sleeve to the shoulder, and showed his son a white scar running down almost the whole length of the upper arm. The wound had evidently been a deep one.

“I got that from the dragon,” he said.

“You’d a real fight, then?” ejaculated Perry, surprised at this evidence of an actual encounter.

“I was laid up for nearly a month,” was the reply. “But they didn’t build any statues to me as they did to St. George, when he slew the dragon, and no one gave me a triumph, as the people of Rome did to Regulus over his combat with a monster.”

“I never heard of the Regulus story,” Perry said.

“It wasn’t a story,” his father corrected him, “it was a real fight, like mine. Or at least it was said to be a real fight. Regulus sent home the skin of his dragon, and it was carried before him in his triumph.”

“But I thought all those dragon fights were just fairy tales!”

“Most of them are,” his father answered. “With the exception of mine, I think Regulus’ fight with the dragon is the only one that is supposed to be attested by history. Do you want to hear about it?”

“I’d rather hear yours,” Perry replied.

“I’ll come to that presently,” the merchant assured him, “and the story of Regulus may put you in the right frame of mind to hear about my prowess.

“Marcus Atillius Regulus, almost the only historical character to have fought with a dragon,” he began, “bore one of the noblest names in Rome. You may have learned in school, Perry, how he ravaged the shores of Africa and brought Carthage into subjection, but that, at the last moment, he was defeated. As a prisoner, he was sent by Carthage on an embassy to make peace, upon his own honorable promise to return to his foes to die by torture unless his embassy of peace was successful. On arriving at Rome, Regulus gave the message with which he had been entrusted by the Carthaginians, but ended with a patriotic appeal to Rome not to let their affection and loyalty to him overtop their honor.

“‘Let the prisoners be left to perish unheeded,’ he said, ‘let war go on till Carthage be subdued.’ His counsel prevailed, the offers of peace were refused, and Regulus returned voluntarily to Carthage. The Romans have enshrined the name of Regulus high in the pages of honor, but the Carthaginians had little understanding of valor and good faith. They cut off his eyelids, placed him in a barrel spiked with nails, knocked the head of the barrel out and fastened him there so that he was immovable. Even his hands were tied. Then they exposed him, naked, to the glare of an African sun, to die by the slow agonies of thirst, fever, the scorch of the sun upon the unprotected eyeballs, and the stinging insects of the desert.”

“But Rome got back at them?”

“Yes,” his father answered, “Scipio Africanus captured Carthage, leveled every house to ground, sowed salt on the ruins and in the name of Rome forbade any building to be erected there again. But I’ve told you the story of Regulus, son, so that you might see that such a man was scarcely likely to invent a story about a dragon to help his reputation.”

“Where did he fight the dragon? In Africa, too?”

“Not very far from Carthage. It was in the year 256 B.C., after the first Punic War had been raging for eight years, that Regulus captured the city of Utica, about sixty miles northwest of Carthage, near the modern city of Tunis. Between Utica and Carthage flowed a river, then called the Bagrada, difficult to cross except at one ford. When Regulus and his soldiers came to this ford, they found the passage disputed by an enormous dragon, one hundred and twenty feet long.”

“A real monster!” ejaculated the boy.

“Wasn’t he? And, so the old Roman historian tells, the skin of the monster was so tough that the Romans could not pierce his hide. Several times Regulus led the attack upon the dragon, but each time the beast killed and devoured several of the soldiers. At last Regulus brought up the artillery, the ballistæ and catapults, and bombarded the dragon. Supported by the artillery, Regulus plunged across the river alone, fought the dragon single-handed and slit his throat. The skin was carried to Rome and graced Regulus’ triumph.”

“What do you suppose it really was?” queried the boy.

“I think,” his father answered, “it must have been a huge crocodile. That would explain why the Roman swords could not pierce the so-called dragon’s hide, and why the combat seems to have taken place at the ford of a river.”

“But a hundred and twenty feet long, Father!”

“Possibly that was worked out from the skeleton. In those days it would be quite easy to put the backbones of several animals together. That trick was done only thirty years ago, when Dr. Albert Koch collected the bones of two or three Zeuglodons or primitive whales and made a monster which he called ‘Hydrarchus, the Water King,’ and which he exhibited all over Europe. Regulus’ dragon, carried in his triumph, might have been something of the kind. As for the Zeuglodons, I’ve often thought that the discovery of skeletons of antediluvian beasts might have been one of the reasons for popular belief in dragons.”

DRAGON SLAIN BY REGULUS. (upper left)

SCYLLA OF THE SEVEN HEADS. (upper right)

MERMAN FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. (lower left)

THE DRAGON OF THE DRACHENFELS. (lower right)

Monsters Thought Real by the Ancients.

These pictures are taken from professedly scientific works of the Middle Ages.

“Was yours one of that kind?”

“Mine,” said his father, with a twinkle in his eye, “was a real dragon.”

“But it couldn’t be, Father. You said the other gang had something to do with it!”

“They unearthed him from his lair,” the other answered. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you just how it all happened, Perry, and then you’ll see if you don’t think I deserve a triumph, just as much as Regulus did!”

The boy waited expectantly, and, in a moment, his father continued:

“All that summer, the summer after the scalping, I was on the lookout for squalls, but nothing happened. The ‘Pioneers’ didn’t seem to be trying to get their revenge, or if they were trying, we were too much on the alert. I afterwards found out that they had been laying plans all summer, but that none of them had worked. It was not until the autumn that their plot came to a head.

“One evening, late in October, when it was already beginning to get dark early, I was delayed in going to the cave. It was one of the regular evenings for a meeting and we had something very important to do—I forget what, now—so I was running at a good clip. Just as I struck the little hidden path that diverged toward the cave, I heard the fellows talking loudly, in excited tones. Wondering what could have happened, for it was one of the rules always to approach the hiding place in silence, I quickened my run still more, and in a minute or two, burst upon the fellows who were gathered in a clump not far from the entrance to the cave. The second I appeared, three or four of them shouted, in a breath:

“‘Chief! There’s a dragon in the cave!’

“I told you, Perry, that I’d always done a lot of talking about dragons, and this ought to have made me suspicious. But I’d been reading, a day or two before, about Regulus, and all my early interest had been suddenly awakened. As I look back on it now, I don’t think doubt even entered my mind. The gang was evidently so scared that the scare got into my bones, too.

“I found out that one of the smallest of the boys had come early and gone into the cave, and that he had rushed out again, screaming to another fellow, who was just coming up the path, that in the cave there was a huge dragon, with a shining tail, breathing out flames. He said it had roared at him and that it was as long as a barge.

“The older boy, he was ‘Chief Brave’ and second in command of the gang, had laughed at him, picked up a chunk of wood for a club, and started for the opening. Half-way down, he heard the growling of some beast and his courage oozed out. Without going in to see what it was, he bolted out again as promptly as the little lad had done. He was afraid the dragon would follow him, but nothing appeared. None of the rest of the gang had volunteered. They waited for me to show up, and tell them what to do. It wasn’t that I was any bigger, son, but, after all, I was ‘War Chief’ and it was my part to lead them on.

“If there had only been the little fellow’s story,” the old merchant continued, “I don’t think I’d have felt the same way about it. But the ‘Chief Brave’ was not only a plucky sort, but I depended a good deal on his judgment. As I saw it, there was only one thing to do, and that was—to face the monster and find out what could be done. If I could really slay a dragon, I thought, I should go down in history with Siegfried and Beowulf and all the rest of them. So I loaded an old horse pistol that we had, and, more for show than anything else, stuck a bowie knife in my belt and started into the tunnel-like opening of the cave, the gang following cautiously behind.

“I tell you, my boy, it was mighty uncomfortable, creeping through that long, black passage, hearing nothing but the hard breathing of the frightened fellows behind. And when, about halfway down, the silence was suddenly broken by a savage, whining snarl, I had a feeling that ice was being rubbed down my spine. It wasn’t quite my idea of a dragon’s roar, it was worse, there was such an evil relish in the sound that the flesh under my hair just crawled.

“If I had been alone, I’d have done the same thing as the others did, I’d have turned tail and got out of that place as quickly as I could. But the gang was behind me. I was afraid, afraid to death, of that snarl in front, but the fear of ridicule was even stronger. I would rather be clawed to death by a dragon than be guyed as a coward. So, gripping the pistol closer, I crawled forward.

“I think I could have walked with more confidence, but on hands and knees, it was ghastly. I could put my hands out without difficulty, but the fear sent a spasm into my knees so that it was hard to move them. Still, foot by foot, ever hearing that malignant whine grow closer, I groped my way through the opening. It was only fifty feet long, but it seemed interminable. At last I saw the light and, with a huge sense of relief, leaped from the narrow tunnel into the cave itself.

“I leaped almost into the monster’s jaws. For, facing the mouth of the tunnel, not six paces away, was the dragon, growling and snapping, while every few seconds he followed the clash of the gnashing teeth with that long whining snarl that had so scared me during that endless crawl in the dark.”

“What did he look like, Father?”

“In the half-dusk of the cave he looked fearful! In my excitement he looked every inch a dragon. The front part of him was like a wolverine, and his body all glittered with silver scales. Behind him he dragged a thick tail, something like an alligator’s, only round, all covered with shiny scales.”

“How about the fire-breathing business?”

“I didn’t stop to notice. I was too excited and too frightened to bother myself with thinking what breed of dragon he was. I aimed the old pistol and fired. The ‘kick’ of it nearly broke my wrist. At the same instant, the dragon lifted himself heavily, dragging his hinder part, and launched full at me. I shrank back, flat against the wall of the cave, and his spring fell short. The hot froth and blood on his fangs slathered on my coat, and I knew that the monster was badly hurt. There was little room to dodge in that cave, but I jumped sideways.

“He turned jerkily, and I saw that his huge tail was injured. For the first time, my spirits rose. It was his tail I had feared. I had been afraid that he would lash out with it, crushing me to pieces. If, however, he were already hurt, I might be able to dodge about him, and get the best of him yet. But he could move quicker than I thought.

“Before I realized it, he was on me. Again he sprang, with that curious dragging of his hinder parts as though they were paralyzed. I had no room to dodge away, for the wall of the cave was behind me. In desperation, I pulled out my bowie knife. Before I could lunge, however, a paw with curved claws like Turkish daggers flashed out and laid my left arm open to the bone.

“Reeling from pain and the loss of blood, I struck forward with the knife. I hit some kind of a bone, I remember, then felt the curious sense of the blade piercing through living flesh. Again the monster reared. I swayed back, too far gone to move my feet, which seemed fastened to the floor of the cave. But as I stared, almost fascinated, into the green light of the creature’s eyes, I saw a glaze pass over them. He reared, wavered and fell over in a heap. Almost I collapsed upon him myself, but as I tottered, one of the fellows sprang out from the mouth of the cave and caught me. He snatched the bowie to give another blow, but the dragon never moved again. My knife had reached the heart.”

CHAPTER II
THE MONSTERS THAT NEVER WERE

“But, Father,” cried Perry, “you haven’t told me what the dragon really was!”

“I didn’t know, myself, for a few minutes,” was the reply. “I dropped in my tracks, right there. A couple of the fellows picked me up, though, as soon as I began to feel a little less faint, and the three of us, waiting until we were sure that the monster was quite dead, went up close to him. I had noticed, in a dim kind of way, that the dragon’s scales looked queer and that some of them had been scraped off on the floor of the cave. But when we got right up to him, what do you suppose we found those scales were?”

“I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” the boy answered expectantly.

“They were made of the silver paper that comes wrapped around bars of chocolate.”

“What?”

“Just plain silver paper.”

“It was the other gang, then—” suggested Perry, seeing a clue.

“That’s just what it was, the other gang.”

“Then it was a fake dragon!” cried the boy, disappointed. “You said it was alive!”

“Does my arm look as if the beast hadn’t been alive?” retorted his father. “It was a mighty lucky thing for me it wasn’t any more alive than I found it!”

“What was the dragon, really, Father?” the lad persisted.

“It was a lynx, or bob-cat,” was the reply. “The ‘Pioneers’ had trapped the beast in the woods and brought it to our cave, with the trap still fastened to the bob-cat’s hind foot. The other hind paw had been tied to a heavy log.

“Then the fellows had gone to work and made a long tail of sacking, stuffed with shavings, and fastened this tail tightly around the lynx’s haunches, so that it would trail behind. They’d dusted it all over with mustard and red pepper, so that the animal wouldn’t chew at it and tear it off. After that, they chucked a couple of pailfuls of carpenter’s glue, almost boiling hot, over the beast, head, tail and all, and stuck the silver paper on, when the glue was wet. I don’t wonder the bob-cat was savage!”

“They must have had a picnic doing it!” exclaimed Perry.

“I’ve thought of that many times since,” his father agreed. “But they made a good job of it. They even took the trouble to cut all the silver paper in shapes so that it would look like real scales.”

“They took an awful chance, though, Father. Suppose the tail had come off? What would have happened to you?”

“I don’t think the tail saved me,” the other answered. “After all, the bob-cat was badly crippled, with both hind legs out of commission. You see, Perry, a lynx leaps for his prey, grips with teeth and fore-claws and tears with the hind claws. With the trap on one foot and a log on the other, the other gang knew I was fairly safe. So far, they had been right enough. Where they went wrong was in not knowing the animal. They all thought the creature was just a big domestic pussy that had got a bit wild running around in the woods. It was a true lynx, though, and a big one.”

“Did you send the skin home for a ‘triumph’?” the boy quickly asked. “Where is it?”

“When that combination of glue and silver paper got thoroughly dry,” the old merchant commented, “there wasn’t much value to the skin. We kept it as a trophy, of course, but we kept it in the cave. For all I know, it’s there yet. If you’re so keen to find a dragon, Perry, I’ll tell you exactly where to go for it.”

“I’m afraid even our own local Museum wouldn’t take it,” the boy objected, smiling.

“Maybe they wouldn’t, but, so far as I know, it’s the only genuine dragon that has put up a genuine fight for the last couple of thousand years. So, my son, if you ever do go dragon-hunting, don’t forget that your father was the last of all the champions of valor who fought and defeated a dragon single-handed.”

“Then you really will let me go dragon-hunting with the Princeton crowd?” Perry interjected, returning to his first plea.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” his father answered meditatively, “and I don’t think I will. Wait a bit—” he continued, as he saw the bitter disappointment in the lad’s face, “I haven’t finished. I don’t say that I won’t let you go on a search for fossils some time, but I don’t think this Princeton expedition is the right thing for you. And I’ll tell you why.”

“I’m sure it would,” burst out Perry.

“I’ll tell you why,” his father said again, with that calm repetition from which the boy knew of old there was no appeal. “You would simply go as a helper, you wouldn’t have any real share in the plan, and you would only have a lot of dirty and laborious work to do without any real chance to learn.”

“But, Father,” interrupted the boy. He caught the glance of reproof and stopped.

“If you interrupt me again, Perry, I shall not say what I was going to say—and you’ll be the loser.”

Distinctly set back, Perry straightened himself and sat still. After a pause, his father continued:

“That book of drawings you showed me, son, which covered several years of work, looks to me like fairly good evidence that your interest is genuine. I want to be sure that it’s not just a fad, that you’ll tire of in a month or two.”

“Oh, it isn’t, Father!”

“You’d say that, Perry, of course, in any case. Just the same I rather think you mean it. Now, what I want to say is this: Since you really so seem to have an interest in these dragon-forms of old times, and as I suppose you’ve inherited it, to a certain extent, it seems to me that I ought to give you a chance to find out if that’s the sort of thing you want to take up for your life-work.

“So far, I haven’t made any special plans for your future, Perry, because I haven’t known just how your desires would run. I wanted to see which way the cat would jump, first. Do you really think that you would like to give your whole time to paleontology, or do you want to keep it as a hobby? Answer carefully, now, because quite a stretch of your life may hang on the reply.”

Perry thought for a minute or two, then answered slowly:

“I think I’d rather try to find the monsters that no one has ever seen. I’d like to dig up secrets in all the queer corners of the world. I’d rather find a new kind of creature, such as no one had even dreamt of before, than be a multi-millionaire!”

“Very good,” his father answered, “if that’s your feeling, my boy, you shall have your chance and you shall have it in the best way possible. I suppose you know that your Uncle George is going to take out an expedition for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, this year?”

“No, Father, I didn’t know it,” Perry replied. “Out West?”

“I think not,” his father answered. “If I remember rightly, when he was here a month or two ago, he said something about going to Egypt.”

“And I could go?”

“That depends on a number of things,” the old merchant answered, guardedly. “Still, there’s a possibility that I might persuade him to take you along. You see, Perry, if I were to pay for your part of the expenses out of my pocket, the New York Museum wouldn’t lose anything and perhaps you might do something to help.”

“But that would cost a heap, Father.”

The financier smiled.

“You don’t imagine that you’re not an expense, do you?” he queried. “But I don’t mind footing the bill for anything that will give you a real start in the world at the kind of work you want to do. I don’t believe in wasting money on things you don’t need—that’s why I wouldn’t buy you that two-cylinder motorcycle—but I’ll keep my wallet open, any time that you want something that is really worth while. Now trot along, son, and I’ll write to Uncle George and see what he thinks about the whole project.”

“Thanks ever and ever and ever so much, Father,” the boy said, heartily, getting up from his chair, “and I do hope I can go! Oh, and say, Father,” he continued, pointing to the faded green book which lay on the table, “can I take this along and go over it a bit more thoroughly? I’ll be ever so careful.”

“All right, son,” the other answered, “but don’t take what you see in there, literally. There are enough weird creatures in that book to make the fortunes of a dozen Barnums, if they could ever be found and put under a circus tent. Watch out that they don’t give you a nightmare!”

“I’ve dreamt about fossils, heaps and heaps of times, Father,” said Perry grinning, as he opened the door. “Some of these days, I’m going to make all those dreams come real, too!”

As, in his own room, the boy turned over the pages of that book of his father’s childhood, the fascination of the monsters of the past crept over him more and more. There was no doubt that Perry had inherited this interest, for every leaf of the volume before him was indelibly stamped with the eagerness of a boy absorbed in the subject.

Although Perry was more or less familiar with the three-horned Triceratops, the twenty-ton Brontosaurus and the gaunt-winged Pterodactyl, the still stranger creatures in the faded green book were unknown to him. The Roc, the Griffin, the Chimæra, the Phœnix, the Basilisk—they were like characters in a fairy tale. Still, as he looked at the pictures of them limned by the boy of forty years ago, a strange feeling came over Perry that perhaps—in some remote corner of the world—these creatures might be living still.

There was an air of expectant reality in their pose, and, not only had his father drawn them in the book, but he had also—in a round immature scrawl—copied upon the opposite page the words of the old naturalists who claimed to have seen the monsters with their own eyes.

One page showed (in red and yellow chalk) a blazing fire in an Egyptian temple courtyard, the flames of which shot higher than the pylons of the temple gateway. Full in the center of the flames, wearing a peaceful look as though enjoying the process of being burned alive, was a large bird, with a crest of yellow feathers on its head, like an imperial crown. Under the picture was written “The Phœnix,” and on the page opposite, the story read:

“Sir Thomas Browne says: ‘There is but one Phœnix in all the world, which after many hundred years burns herself, and from the ashes thereof riseth up another, is a conceit (belief) of great antiquity, not only delivered by humane (learned) writers but frequently expressed by holy writers.’”

Perry’s father—then ten years old, had added:

“Swan says this can’t be right because the animals had to go two by two into the Ark, and if there was only one Phœnix, Noah wouldn’t have let him in till he got another, and as there wasn’t another to get, he had to stay out, and everything that stayed out, died. For feathers of the Phœnix, see next page.”

Wondering what in the wide world the feathers of the Phœnix could be like, Perry turned eagerly to the next page. There his father had drawn two long feathers and under them had written:

“Feathers of the Phœnix. In Tradescant’s Museum, in Italy.”

“But,” said Perry aloud, “I know what those feathers are! They’re from the Japanese Longtailed Fowl! I don’t wonder that those old fellows thought a feather eight feet long must come from a queer kind of bird! I think I’d do some guessing myself!”

Old Sir John de Mandeville, that joyous traveler of the fourteenth century, was responsible for the next weird beast. This was a combination of an eagle and a lion. Perry’s father had evidently drawn it from a crest and labeled it “The Griffin,” while opposite was de Mandeville’s description:

“Some men say that they have the body upward of an eagle and beneath, of a lion; and that is true. But one Griffin has a greater body and is stronger than ten lions, and greater and stronger than a hundred eagles.”

“I should think,” commented Perry to himself, “Father could have seen that this was a fake, because a Griffin with a body as heavy as ten lions would have to have wings the size of an armored aëroplane.”

The boy had hardly framed the words, when turning the page, he saw some birds pictured, which made the largest modern flying machine seem small. In the distance was one of these huge birds flying away with an elephant in its beak. Near by, a man in turban and robe was tying himself to the claw of one of the birds, the creature’s leg being as thick as the trunk of a big tree. This was “The Roc,” and Perry’s father had copied out in his smallest handwriting, all that happened to Sindbad the Sailor and the Third Calendar in the land of the Roc, as told in the Arabian Nights.

“I suppose,” mused Perry, “the Roc is just the Æpyornis exaggerated. After all, it’s only the other day that somebody found an Æpyornis egg bobbing up and down on the waves off Madagascar after a hurricane and that egg was nearly seven times as big as an ostrich egg. You can’t blame a fellow in Madagascar several centuries ago figuring that a bird to lay an egg like that must be seven times as tall as an ostrich. My eye, wouldn’t a bird over fifty feet high be a bogey! And yet they told me down at the Museum that an Æpyornis was really only about eleven feet high.”

The Basilisk or Cockatrice was the next wonder that struck the boy’s gaze. Evidently his father had found some difficulty in securing a picture of the creature, for under the fantastic drawing were the words:

“The Basilisk. This one I made up.”

The monster resembled a serpent walking on its tail, in grand and imposing style, with two searchlights for eyes. On the opposite page was a quotation from John Swan, the author of the curious old book “Speculum Mundi” (A Mirror of the World), which was written in the first half of the seventeenth century. It read:

“The Cockatrice is the king of Serpents, not for his magnitude or greatness, but for his stately pace and magnanimous mind. Among all living creatures there is none perisheth sooner by the poyson of a Cockatrice than a man; for with his sight he killeth him. His hissing is likewise said to be bad, in regard that it blasteth trees, killeth birds, etc., by poysoning the aire.”

Perry turned over page after page. He saw the picture of the Humma, the bird without feet, that was supposed never to alight on the ground. There was a drawing of the Wak-Wak tree which had beautiful women for fruit. The Chimæra was not forgotten, with its head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a serpent.

A whole section of the faded green book was given to the monsters who were half men, half beasts. There Perry saw his old friends the Centaurs, and among them Cheiron, “wisest of beasts and men,” human to the waist, with a horse’s body. Pan, playing on his pipes of reed, was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, while goat-legged Satyrs and Fauns danced to his piping. One particularly creepy picture showed the Gorgons, with writhing poisonous snakes in place of hair, whom, the Greeks believed, it was death to look upon, and none of the monsters that were slain by Hercules, Theseus, and Perseus was forgotten.

Little by little the spell of the old-time wonderland began to creep over Perry. At first these childish drawings of monsters had seemed impossible, but earnest belief in the artist always reveals itself in the picture, and Perry’s father, when a boy, had believed in these creatures just as did the ancient Greeks. The spirit of the boy who had fought the lynx, believing it to be a dragon, stirred on those pages and quickened Perry’s blood.

At last he came to Unicorns. Page after page of unicorns! The boy read the story of Vertomannus who measured two unicorns that had been presented to the Sultan of Mecca in 1503. He learned how Father Lobo, a missionary, had chased a unicorn in Abyssinia in 1622. He saw the drawings of one-horned asses in China sent to Rome by Grueber, the Jesuit Father, in 1661. From utter disbelief, he passed to doubt, and his doubt received a sudden shock when he read that the Russian naturalist Prjevalsky, in his book “Mongolia,” published in 1876, had declared that the orongo, in northern Thibet, sometimes, though rarely, has one horn, though not in the center of the forehead. To this picture there was a note, in his father’s handwriting, evidently made after he was grown up. It read:

“Personally, I see no reason to deny the existence of the unicorn. It is quite likely that occasional specimens of a two-horned animal should only have one horn. The narwhal often has two tusks, but generally only one. If the one-tusked narwhal is a natural development, why not a one-horned antelope? The Nepalese unicorn sheep has one horn, and a rhinoceros, as well.”

The faded green book dropped into Perry’s lap, as he leaned back in his chair, thinking. He recalled the finding of the okapi, only a few years before, and his mind pictured an adventurous trip into Central Thibet where the one-horned orongo of Prjevalsky, the unicorn, might still be found. Deeper and more profound grew the day-dream, more and more real the vision, until, with a start, the boy found himself riding at full speed over a coarse-ferned swampy plain.

The Unicorn in China.

The Sz, or Malayan Rhinoceros, as pictured by a Chinese artist in the ’Rh Ya. The Indian Rhinoceros is one-horned. The African square-lipped rhinoceros, or “white rhino,” though possessing two horns, one behind the other, has the forward horn so long and powerful as to be truly unicorn-like, though it is nasal and not frontal.

A warm and steaming mist hung with a dull purple haze over a landscape that seemed familiar, though the boy knew that his eyes had never seen it before. Huge monkey-puzzles thrust their spiny arms into the heavy air, ferns a hundred feet high swayed their livid green tracery against the lowering sky, and here and there a leafless pillar twenty feet in height showed where still remained a struggling horsetail of the weird forests of the age before. Over all hung the red ball of the sun, unable to pierce the low-hung curling wreaths of mist which held the landscape like a bowl.

The glow of the half-obscured sun shone dully on the quaking bog and deepened the shadows of huge black forms, monstrous and menacing, which seemed to be sprawling in the ebon water. To these, there was no shape, although their gross inertness breathed of life. In the distance there was a stir, and Perry, gripping his knees hard upon the Thing he rode, cried aloud in the somber stillness—

“What moved!”

No sound answered. Silence held that flowerless world like a vise, that world that had never heard the song of a bird, but a rumbling vibration in the distance seemed to the boy like some vast leviathan stirring in its sleep. Sure was he that he saw one of those sprawling shapes—which, near by, seemed like stone—heave itself upward and sway a monstrous neck. Straight in his path, one of the murky masses lay, huge as though the earth had spawned a creature vaster than a whale. In panic, Perry forced the Thing that carried him to swerve to the left. As he raced by, the boy forced himself to look at the sprawling bulk. Shapeless and moveless as a block of stone it lay. But when, a second later, some impulse moved the lad to turn his head back to look again, the seeming stone had lurched itself across his path as though to bar any returning way.

With a shiver, the boy’s glance turned to the creature that he rode. Its horse-like head and short, coarse mane gave a clue that its light limbs and four spreading toes seemed to deny.

He was nearly thrown to the ground as the Thing shied, then reared, nearly on its haunches. And Perry, looking to see the cause of fear, distinctly saw a quiver run over another monstrous mass immediately before him, like the rippling muscles on the back of a black panther about to spring. He drove his heels into his steed.

“They’re waking,” he cried hoarsely. “I’ve only got until the sun goes down!”

Through the humid swamp, spotted with its foul giant brood, that moved, yet never seemed to move, he rode, panic knocking at his ribs. The sinking sun bore down with it his hopes, and as the shadows grew more slanting, the sense of silent life around him grew more threatening. A breeze with a tang of cold in it swept over the swamp and the grip of danger tightened. Now, in the distance, the masses could be seen to drag their slow length along, but near at hand, all was still.

“They’re only waiting,” he thought, “waiting for the dusk.”

From under a huge flat block that bore a fair resemblance to a giant tortoise-shell, a wicked head with lidless green eyes and a turtle beak darted out.

The animal he bestrode leaped as though a snake had struck. And, with the leap came a new thing. Even as the boy watched, the rough mane dwindled and a smooth red-brown coat glinted in the darkening sun. The neck grew longer and more pliant and the swift lumbering gallop gave place to the leaping bounds of some creature that man had never ridden before. Perry’s only thought was to go on—on—no matter what he rode, to go on—and out of that swamp where the monstrous reptiles were. But the strangeness of the marvel held him when he saw in the center of the forehead of the Thing, just in front of the ears, a gleam of white like a milk-tooth.

“It’s—it’s a horn,” he muttered.

The sun touched the rim of the horizon. At the same instant, with a sucking sound, the vast bulk of a Diplodocus squirmed up from the slough and poised its ungainly head, as though to see. A leaping Compsognathus loomed black against the sky. Noiseless, but menacing, a winged Pteranodon, twenty-one feet from tip to tip of wing, soared heavily above him. A pigmy in a world of giant monsters, the boy raced on, speeding from—he knew not what, to—he knew not whither.

The sense of terror from the monstrous brood became more keen as a closer peril grew. His knees ached almost beyond endurance from the strain of trying to keep his seat, for no horsemanship could avail upon such a steed as that which he was riding. The long jerking leaps, though they covered ground amazingly, seemed to drag him inside out at every stride. The red-brown neck stretched far ahead, and gleaming in the dull-red dusk jutted the single horn, spirally twisted like a kudu’s and lengthening even as he looked at it.

Suddenly, without an instant’s warning, the beast threw back his head. The gleaming horn jerked to within a few inches of the boy. The lad paled.

“Next time—” he said.

What could he do next time?

Without pausing, the Thing sped on, racing like the wind over a mountainless world, so that Perry did not dare throw himself off its back. Lower sank the sun, till only one-half of its orb was seen, its beams lying level over the plain that saw never a hill over its thousand miles of length. Worst of all, instead of the kinship between steed and rider that gives strength in the most desperate pursuit, he felt the malevolence of the evil thing he bestrode, and tried to brace his nerve against an attack from his sole means of escape from this browsing ground of swollen reptiles.

He had not long to wait. In mid-leap, the creature checked its speed, plunging stiff-legged, at the same time tossed back its now long and twisted horn to pierce him to the vitals. Tense for the spring, Perry thrust himself upwards from the knees, the sudden stoppage throwing him over the creature’s head. Well he knew that if he fell on the ground sharp hoof and sharper horn would pin him to the earth. He grabbed the horn as it slid under him, and clung to it like death.

In fury, the unicorn tossed him as a terrier does a rat. The boy felt his hold weakening, but he clung desperately. Sight and hearing failed him, yet he clutched blindly, till with a wrench the strained finger-clasp gave way and he found himself flying through the air. Fortune favored him. He landed on his feet, and though he staggered, he did not actually fall. The second’s recovery sufficed to clear his wits, and he dodged as the vicious creature lunged. Before him loomed the vast bulk of a Brontosaurus and behind this he ran, trusting for safety to the small brain and sluggish movements of the giant.

The ruse almost landed him into the jaws of the nose-horned lizard, the carnivorous Ceratosaurus, twenty feet in height, and he doubled back, actually under its fore-limbs, as its large head and formidable flesh-tearing teeth threatened the unicorn, which reared and refused the combat. The moment’s respite as the monsters faced each other, gave Perry a chance to breathe.

“Where now?” he gasped, glancing round wildly for some place to hide.

But, in that flat expanse, with the araucarias and tree-ferns only a green blur in the distance, there was no cover. The unicorn saw him and charged again. Some strange instinct told him what to do. Again doubling around the huge dinosaur, the boy cast himself despairingly on the back of a creature browsing a few feet away.

“Up!” he yelled.

As though impelled by the terror in the boy’s voice, or by the still greater terror of sound in that silent world, the light-limbed Anchisaurus rose to its kangaroo-like attitude and began clumsily to run. Some twenty feet of start was gained before the unicorn caught sight of him and then the chase began. The Anchisaurus, more terrified even than the boy by this strange creature clinging to its neck, and driven on by the gleaming horn behind, leaped into full stride, covering ten feet at every step. If the gallop of the unicorn had been hard to bear, this swaying run was worse, for, as the Anchisaurus swung first one foot then the other, the neck and tail rolled to the opposite side to maintain the creature’s balance. No cockle shell on a stormy sea ever tossed as did Perry on the Anchisaurus’ neck. But it was his only chance of safety from that gleaming horn behind, and tightly with arms and legs he gripped the creature’s neck above the shoulder.

The sun was nearly down, but a slight, a very slight rise in the ground gave firmer footing, both to unicorn and Anchisaurus, so the speed of both increased. Little by little the lumbering saurians began to grow fewer and at last were seen no more. In their place came spiny lizards, at first few in number, then more and more, huge and monstrous, until in the dim twilight and the silver glow of the rising moon, their threatening shapes seemed like a world of jagged rocks heaving as the billows of a tempest-whipped lake.

Then, as though determined to give battle to its strange pursuer, the Anchisaurus stopped, and Perry, fearing that his strange mount would find some swift accounting for his temerity, slipped off, again to face the unicorn.

There was no need.

Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.

Stegosaurus, the Super-Dreadnought of Old.

Huge armored monster of the reptile world, thirty-five feet long, as tall as a modern elephant to the top of the spines, protected by sharp horny plates against the attacks of flesh-eating giants.

Between him and the savage beast that had chased him for miles over the swamp stood an old battle-scarred Stegosaurus, fully twenty feet in length, its spines jutting into the air far above the boy’s head. As he looked, the armored tail, with its jagged, horny plates, lashed out at the unicorn and felled it to the ground. The beast half tried to rise and lunged its horn, white in the moonlight, at the throat of its terrible foe. But no weapon could pierce that living fortress of defense and the horn slipped uselessly over the scales.

The head of the Stegosaurus—so tiny for so great a bulk of body—bent as though to smell the wounded creature that the blow of his tail had crushed, but, not being an eater of flesh, the huge living fortress turned scornfully away.

Injured, but not mortally, the unicorn half rose, when Perry, seizing his chance, drew from his belt his hunting-knife and slit the creature’s throat.

Then, placing one foot on the body of the animal, he cried aloud—the faded green book fluttering from his lap as he sprang up—

“I’ve caught a unicorn!”

CHAPTER III
PIRATES OF THE AIR

Perry’s father, whose entrance had awakened the boy, looked quizzically at the lad as he stood rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“I don’t know about catching a unicorn,” the old merchant said, with more than a trace of amused understanding in his tone, “but there’s a big chance that you’ve caught a cold! You’d better get to bed, son, just about as quickly as you know how. Then you can go ahead and catch all the unicorns you want.”

The boy looked a little shame-faced at having disclosed the fact that he had fallen asleep and had dreamed of the monsters on which his mind had been set, but his father put his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and said kindly:

“We’ll talk about this again some other time, Perry, and if you really feel that you want to take up a fossil-hunter’s life, I’ll not put anything in your way. I had hoped—” he added regretfully, “that you would come right into my business, but after all, every tub must stand on its own bottom. If you do go into the scientific work, I’ll at least have the satisfaction of seeing some of my own old dreams coming true, even though at second-hand. Slip along to bed, now, lad.”

Still only half-awake, Perry made some indistinct reply, undressed and in a few minutes was fast asleep, this time too soundly even to dream of monsters, until the light of a morning that had forgotten those ancient times, woke him to the interests of a new day. It did occur to him, though, as he was dressing, that the sun as it rose that morning had risen just the same, thousands of years ago, and would rise the same way hundreds of thousands of years hence, and he wondered what kind of creatures would be living on the earth then.

By tacit consent, nothing was said at the breakfast table concerning the subject that had been discussed the night before, for Perry’s mother was inclined to jump to conclusions and it was an understood thing in the household that the best time to inform her about anything that was new was after it had been decided and settled. So Perry started off for school, just as usual, and for over a week he kept his ambitions to himself.

One Saturday morning, however, at breakfast time, his father said to him:

“Perry, if you’ve nothing better to do, you might walk down with me to the office this morning.”

“Sure!” the lad replied gladly, for these Saturday morning walks were a great pleasure to him. The old financier always had his car come round to the door sharp at 8:30 in the morning, but if the day were fine, it was his custom to dismiss the chauffeur and to take the three miles to his office at a brisk walk. He was a good walker and had trained Perry to keep up a lively pace. This morning, as soon as they had struck their gait, the merchant said to his son:

“I had a letter from your Uncle George last night.”

“Uncle George?” repeated the boy, questioningly.

“Yes.”

“Was it—” Perry hesitated.

“About you?” interpolated his father. “Yes, it was.”

“Oh, Father, what did he say?”

“I had asked him about his proposed expedition to Egypt, and especially I wanted to find out when he planned to start.”

“And he’s going soon?”

“Two weeks from Monday.”

The boy was aching to hurl a series of questions at his father, to bombard him with them, but experience had taught him not to show impatience. Trying to hold himself in check, therefore, he said, only: