"He was armed with a bow and arrows, a spear and a rope," said Dorf, "and I think he carried a hunting knife as well. But he might as well have had nothing but a pea-shooter if he met some of the things I have seen since I went on watch." "What do you mean?" demanded Zuppner. "What have you seen?" Dorf grinned sheepishly. "Honestly, Captain, I hate to tell you," he said, "for I'm damned if I believe it myself." "Well, out with it," exclaimed Zuppner. "We will make allowances for your youth and for the effect that the sun and horizon of Pellucidar may have had upon your eyesight or your veracity." "Well," said Dorf, "about an hour ago a bear passed within a hundred yards of the ship." "There is nothing remarkable about that," said Zuppner. "There was a great deal that was remarkable about the bear, however," said Dorf. "In what way?" asked Gridley. "It was fully as large as an ox," said Dorf, "and if I were going out after bear in this country I should want to take along field artillery." "Was that all you saw--just a bear?" asked Zuppner. "No," said Dorf, "I saw tigers, not one but fully a dozen, and they were as much larger than our Bengal tigers as the bear was larger than any bear of the outer crust that I have ever seen. They were perfectly enormous and they were armed with the most amazing fangs you ever saw--great curved fangs that extended from their upper jaws to lengths of from eight inches to a foot. They came down to this stream here to drink and then wandered away, some of them toward the forest and some down toward that big river yonder." "Greystoke couldn't do much against such creatures as those even if he had carried a rifle," said Zuppner. "If he was in the forest, he could escape them," said Gridley. Zuppner shook his head. "I don't like the looks of it," he said. "I wish that he had not gone out alone." "The bear and the tigers were bad enough," continued Dorf, "but I saw another creature that to me seemed infinitely worse." Robert, who was more or less a privileged character, had entered from the galley and was listening with wide-eyed interest to Dorf's account of the creatures he had seen, while Victor, one of the Filipino cabin-boys, served the officers.