Flinging themselves down in the shadow of an enormous boulder--only one of many with which the plain was dotted--they made a hasty meal. They were sitting resting for a short time, ere resuming their journey, when, sudden and terrible, the hideous wolf-cry they knew so well trembled over the plain. Thrice it was repeated; then, as the two men sprang to their feet in expectation of an attack, the sound of running feet broke upon their ears. The next instant, through the twilight, loomed the monstrous form of a gigantic elk. “Jupiter!” “Great Scott!” The exclamations burst simultaneously from the two men, as the huge bull--almost as large as an elephant--flashed past them. His great tongue was lolling out, and his mighty sides heaved madly, as the breath poured, hissing, through his nostrils. He was evidently nearly spent, for, when he had covered a score yards or so, he swung round and stood at bay, with his back against a boulder almost opposite to the one in the shadow of which the rescuers were flattening themselves, with their rifles at the ready. His towering antlers gleamed like silver in the light of a great fungus growing close at hand; yet, for all the vast size of the creature, for all his great strength, there was something indescribably pathetic in the droop of the proud head, and a great feeling of pity rose in the hearts of the watchers for the hunted brute. “What a magnificent creature!” Seymour whispered; “but where are its----” His sentence ended in a choking gasp, and his face paled beneath its tan, as, silent as phantoms, six sinister forms glided out of the shadows. So hideous were they in form that the two comrades stood as though stunned, every energy being completely paralysed by the horror of the things. Had the creatures attacked Seymour and the Yankee at that moment theirs would have been an easy victory, for neither man could have lifted a weapon in defence; but they apparently had no idea of the presence of other than themselves. Their long, fearfully-distorted limbs, their hideous feet and hands, armed with talon-like nails, their lean, emaciated bodies, covered with coarse, brown hair; their low, receding foreheads, flat noses, and immense, protruding, wolf-like fangs--all this, crowned by a mass of thickly-matted hair, which hung almost to the loins, seen in the dim, ghostly twilight of the underworld, made up a picture of diabolical horror such as would be difficult, if not impossible, to beat. Their thick, coarse lips were drawn back in an everlasting snarl, and their bloodshot eyes gleamed savagely as they sighted the motionless figure of the giant elk. “What are they?” Haverly whispered hoarsely, when the first shock of their appearance had passed, “men or devils?” “Heaven knows!” was the low answer. “They are more like wolves than either!”