The Metal Monster | Page 9

triangles where, were this thing indeed a footprint, the spreading claws sprang from the flat of it.
The track was fresh. At its upper edges were clipped bushes and split trees, the white wood of the latter showing where they had been sliced as though by the stroke of a scimitar.
I stepped out upon the mark. It was as level as though planed; bent down and stared in utter disbelief of what my own eyes beheld. For stone and earth had been crushed, compressed, into a smooth, microscopically grained, adamantine complex, and in this matrix poppies still bearing traces of their coloring were imbedded like fossils. A cyclone can and does grip straws and thrust them unbroken through an inch board--but what force was there which could take the delicate petals of a flower and set them like inlay within the surface of a stone?
Into my mind came recollection of the wailings, the crashings in the night, of the weird glow that had flashed about us when the mist arose to hide the chained aurora.
"It was what we heard," I said. "The sounds--it was then that this was made."
"The foot of Shin-je!" Chiu-Ming's voice was tremulous. "The lord of Hell has trodden here!"
I translated for Drake's benefit.
"Has the lord of Hell but one foot?" asked Dick, politely.
"He bestrides the mountains," said Chiu-Ming. "On the far side is his other footprint. Shin-je it was who strode the mountains and set here his foot."
Again I interpreted.
Drake cast a calculating glance up to the cliff top.
"Two thousand feet, about," he mused. "Well, if Shin-je is built in our proportions that makes it about right. The length of this thing would give him just about a two thousand foot leg. Yes--he could just about straddle that hill."
"You're surely not serious?" I asked in consternation.
"What the hell!" he exclaimed, "am I crazy? This is no foot mark. How could it be? Look at the mathematical nicety with which these edges are stamped out--as though by a die--
"That's what it reminds me of--a die. It's as if some impossible power had been used to press it down. Like-- like a giant seal of metal in a mountain's hand. A sigil-- a seal--"
"But why?" I asked. "What could be the purpose--"
"Better ask where the devil such a force could be gotten together and how it came here," he said. "Look--except for this one place there isn't a mark anywhere. All the bushes and the trees, all the poppies and the grass are just as they ought to be.
"How did whoever or whatever it was that made this, get here and get away without leaving any trace but this? Damned if I don't think Chiu-Ming's explanation puts less strain upon the credulity than any I could offer."
I peered about. It was so. Except for the mark, there was no slightest sign of the unusual, the abnormal.
But the mark was enough!
"I'm for pushing up a notch or two and getting into the gorge before dark," he was voicing my own thought. "I'm willing to face anything human--but I'm not keen to be pressed into a rock like a flower in a maiden's book of poems." Just at twilight we drew out of the valley into the pass. We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us to make camp. The gorge was narrow. The far walls but a hundred feet away; but we had no quarrel with them for their neighborliness, no! Their solidity, their immutability, breathed confidence back into us.
And after we had found a deep niche capable of holding the entire caravan we filed within, ponies and all, I for one perfectly willing thus to spend the night, let the air at dawn be what it would. We dined within on bread and tea, and then, tired to the bone, sought each his place upon the rocky floor. I slept well, waking only once or twice by Chiu-Ming's groanings; his dreams evidently were none of the pleasantest. If there was an aurora I neither knew nor cared. My slumber was dreamless.

CHAPTER III
RUTH VENTNOR
The dawn, streaming into the niche, awakened us. A covey of partridges venturing too close yielded three to our guns. We breakfasted well, and a little later were pushing on down the cleft.
Its descent, though gradual, was continuous, and therefore I was not surprised when soon we began to come upon evidences of semi-tropical vegetation. Giant rhododendrons and tree ferns gave way to occasional clumps of stately kopek and clumps of the hardier bamboos. We added a few snow cocks to our larder--although they were out of their habitat, flying down into the gorge from their peaks and table-lands for some choice tidbit.
All that day we marched on, and when at night we made camp, sleep came to us quickly and overmastering. An hour