Out of Times Abyss | Page 9

be repeated before it could attract his attention. He insisted that he was
already a dead man, for if the thing didn't come for him during the day
he would never live through another night of agonized apprehension,
waiting for the frightful end that he was positive was in store for him.
"I'll see to that," he said, and they all knew that Tippet meant to take his
own life before darkness set in.
Bradley tried to reason with him, in his short, crisp way, but soon saw
the futility of it; nor could he take the man's weapons from him without
subjecting him to almost certain death from any of the numberless
dangers that beset their way.
The entire party was moody and glum. There was none of the bantering

that had marked their intercourse before, even in the face of blighting
hardships and hideous danger. This was a new menace that threatened
them, something that they couldn't explain; and so, naturally, it aroused
within them superstitious fear which Tippet's attitude only tended to
augment. To add further to their gloom, their way led through a dense
forest, where, on account of the underbrush, it was difficult to make
even a mile an hour. Constant watchfulness was required to avoid the
many snakes of various degrees of repulsiveness and enormity that
infested the wood; and the only ray of hope they had to cling to was
that the forest would, like the majority of Caspakian forests, prove to be
of no considerable extent.
Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque
creature of Titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees, which here
commenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what appeared to be an
enormous dragon devouring the carcass of a mammoth. From frightful
jaws to the tip of its long tail it was fully forty feet in length. Its body
was covered with plates of thick skin which bore a striking resemblance
to armor-plate. The creature saw Bradley almost at the same instant that
he saw it and reared up on its enormous hind legs until its head towered
a full twenty-five feet above the ground. From the cavernous jaws
issued a hissing sound of a volume equal to the escaping steam from
the safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, and then the creature
came for the man.
"Scatter!" shouted Bradley to those behind him; and all but Tippet
heeded the warning. The man stood as though dazed, and when Bradley
saw the other's danger, he too stopped and wheeling about sent a bullet
into the massive body forcing its way through the trees toward him.
The shot struck the creature in the belly where there was no protecting
armor, eliciting a new note which rose in a shrill whistle and ended in a
wail. It was then that Tippet appeared to come out of his trance, for
with a cry of terror he turned and fled to the left. Bradley, seeing that he
had as good an opportunity as the others to escape, now turned his
attention to extricating himself; and as the woods seemed dense on the
right, he ran in that direction, hoping that the close-set boles would
prevent pursuit on the part of the great reptile. The dragon paid no

further attention to him, however, for Tippet's sudden break for liberty
had attracted its attention; and after Tippet it went, bowling over small
trees, uprooting underbrush and leaving a wake behind it like that of a
small tornado.
Bradley, the moment he had discovered the thing was pursuing Tippet,
had followed it. He was afraid to fire for fear of hitting the man, and so
it was that he came upon them at the very moment that the monster
lunged its great weight forward upon the doomed man. The sharp,
three-toed talons of the forelimbs seized poor Tippet, and Bradley saw
the unfortunate fellow lifted high above the ground as the creature
again reared up on its hind legs, immediately transferring Tippet's body
to its gaping jaws, which closed with a sickening, crunching sound as
Tippet's bones cracked beneath the great teeth.
Bradley half raised his rifle to fire again and then lowered it with a
shake of his head. Tippet was beyond succor--why waste a bullet that
Caspak could never replace? If he could now escape the further notice
of the monster it would be a wiser act than to throw his life away in
futile revenge. He saw that the reptile was not looking in his direction,
and so he slipped noiselessly behind the bole of a large tree and thence
quietly faded away in the direction he believed the others to have taken.
At what he considered a safe distance he halted and looked back. Half
hidden by the intervening