“I came to with a splitting headache, and for a long time I could
remember nothing of the preceding events, so great was the pain of my
head. As my brain grew clearer, memory came back to me, and the
incidents of the last few hours flashed through my mind in a long
procession. Then, for the first time, I became aware of the fact that
I was being carried. Jolly good of Seymour, I thought, to cart me
along like this. I opened my eyes dreamily. Imagine my horror, if you
can, when I discovered that it was not Seymour who was carrying me,
but one of those Things!” Garth indicated the motionless forms which
still lay as they had fallen upon the beach.
“The creature bore me in its arms as easily as though I were a
child,” he went on, “and for some moments I felt too dazed by the
discovery of my terrible position to do aught but lie still. Then a
thought came to me that, if the creature were alone, I might manage to
escape from his grip. Vain hope! I gazed about me, only to find that a
few paces ahead were a dozen more of the brutes, who appeared to be
following a trail of some sort. I could see by the deep depressions in
the clayey ground that it was the trail of the Triceratops, but for
what reason they should follow the monstrous brute I could not
imagine--until I remembered Mervyn. Then I perceived their
motive.
“Sure enough, before we had gone much farther, the foremost of
the trackers set up a howl. The rest, and among them my bearer,
hurried forward. Beside the track, unconscious, with a great wound on
his temple, lay the professor. Picking him up, one of the brutes slung
him roughly over his shoulder; and the whole band set forward again at
a rapid trot. The rest of the journey seemed to me like some terrible
nightmare, with only one impression standing out clear in my mind, and
that was the hideous forms of the Things that flitted, spectre-like,
before me.
“But all things have an end, and this journey was no exception to
the rule. Ere long the creatures pulled up on the brink of a ravine,
from the depths of which arose a sound of a mighty torrent. Above this
chasm hung a frail hide bridge, and I shuddered as I became aware that
my captors were preparing to cross.
“Gripping Mervyn more firmly, the creature who carried him
stepped upon the swaying ropes. Luckily, the professor was still
unconscious, or I do not doubt he would have made some hasty action,
the result of which would have been disastrous in the extreme. I
marvelled how the creature, burdened as he was, kept his precarious
balance, but he managed it somehow, and at length laid down his
captive upon the farther side of the gorge, while he awaited the
crossing of his fellows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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