They had proceeded for about a mile below the mouth of the canyon;
around them were low, rolling hills which gradually merged with the
plain below; here and there were scattered clumps of trees; to their
knees grew the gently waving grasses that rendered the Gyor Cors a
paradise for the huge herbivorous dinosaurs. The noonday sun shone
down upon a scene of peace and quiet, yet Tarzan of the Apes was
restless. The apparent absence of animal life seemed almost uncanny to
one familiar with the usual teeming activity of Pellucidar; yet the
ape-man knew that there were creatures about and it was the strange and
unfamiliar scent spoors carried to his nostrils that aroused within him
a foreboding of ill omen. Familiar odors had no such effect upon him,
but here were scents that he could not place, strangely disagreeable
in the nostrils of man. They suggested the scent spoor of Histah the
snake, but they were not his.
For Jana's sake Tarzan wished that they might quickly find a crossing
and ascend again to the higher levels on their journey to Zoram, for
there the creatures would be well known to them, and the dangers which
they portended familiar dangers with which they were prepared to cope,
but the vertical banks of the raging torrent as yet offered no means of
descent and now they saw that the appearance of flatness which distance
had imparted to the great Gyor Cors was deceptive, since it was cut by
ravines and broken by depressions, some of which were of considerable
extent and depth. Presently a lateral ravine, opening into the now
comparatively shallow gorge of the river, necessitated a detour which
took them directly away from Zoram. They had proceeded for about a mile
in this direction when they discovered a crossing and as they emerged
upon the opposite side the girl touched Tarzan's arm and pointed. The
thing that she saw he had seen simultaneously.
"A Gyor," whispered the girl. "Let us lie down and hide in this tall
grass."
"He has not seen us yet," said Tarzan, "and he may not come in this
direction."
No description of the beast looming tremendously before them could
convey an adequate impression of its titanic proportions or its
frightful mien. At the first glance Tarzan was impressed by its
remarkable likeness to the Gryfs of Pal-ul-don. It had the two large
horns above the eyes, a medial horn on the nose, a horny beak and a
great, horny hood or transverse crest over the neck, and its coloration
was similar but more subdued, the predominant note being a slaty gray
with yellowish belly and face. The blue bands around the eyes were
less well marked and the red of the hood and the bony protuberances
along the spine were less brilliant than in the Gryf. That it was
herbivorous, a fact that he had learned from Jana, convinced him that
he was looking upon an almost unaltered type of the gigantic triceratop
that had, with its fellow dinosaurs, ruled the ancient Jurassic world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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