Part 9 (1/2)
Froed another shadow, so grotesque and estion and weird dreay body protruded what appeared to be only a long tubular snout where a head should be, and which looked to be overbalanced at the other end by a great mass of hair It stood stone still, and for the moment Tim could not decide which end of it was head and which was tail, or even whether it were not double-tailed and headless Then, slowly, the apparition e hooked claws, and froathering the outrushi+ng white ants into its gullet Forif he really saw it
Then, picking up his rifle, he slipped outside his net and advanced on the creature
The anireat tail, lifted its terrible claws, and waited Six feet away, just out of its reach, Tirinned
”You win, feller,” he inforot the guts to raood a sport for me to shoot Help yourself to all the ants in the world, for all o' oin' back to bed Bon sewer, , he backed until sure the big invader would not spring at hi of ant bears, he did not knoas hardly a springing animal
Its claws looked sufficiently formidable to disembowel a h But when Tiish brute had decided that it would not need to defend itself, it sank to all-fours and passed stiffly away into the shades whence it had coht, when Ti sound which made him slip off the safety catch of his heavy-bulleted pistol and peer at the hut where slept the crew Nohis net, he spied beyond the hut of the Peruvians a round--a cylindrical bulk which looked to be two feet thick, and which glided past like a solid strea and end were hidden in the bush, and not until it tapered into nothing and was gone did he realize fully that he had been gazing at an enor it But before long he congratulated hio
Perhaps an hour later the startled forest resounded with an agonized screaly hu awake The outcry ca froe, and in the direction tohich the huge serpent had disappeared Before the watcher had time to tell the others of what he had seen, one of the boatround by the reptile Thereafter Knowlton kept his own counsel, listening to the excited curses of theof the shadows Jose said the screech undoubtedly was the death shriek of soht and crushed in the snake's tremendous coil McKay concurred with a nod And when Knowlton casually said it was tough that nobody had been awake to shoot the thing as it passed the careed
A bullet fired into that fiendish giant, he averred, would havecoils and lashi+ng tail would have knocked down the sleeping-hut and shattered the spines of any men they struck No, let Senor Knowlton thank the saints that the awful one its way unht Knowlton kept his watch openly, accompanied by Jose and three of the paddlers, who refused to sleep again until they should be miles away frohts afterward the caain Tim alone saw the start of the disturbance, and he kept mum about it because he did not choose to let the Peruvians know he had been on the alert Out froht past the huts a thick-bodied, curve-snouted ani on its back a ferocious cat creature whose fangs were buried deep in its steed's neck--a tapir attacked by a jaguar With a resounding plunge the elephantine quarry struck the water and was gone The tiger cat, forced to relinquish its hold or droam hurriedly back to the bank below the encampment, where it roared and spat and squalled in a blood-chilling paroxysh every man akened, not one left the flimsy shelter of his net Nor did anyone soof the noise, announced his intention to ”go bust that critter in the nose and give him somethin' to yowl about”
The proposal met with instant and peremptory veto
”As you were!” snapped McKay ”Let him alone! You wouldn't have a Chinauar is bad all the time, and when he's mad he's deadly Never fool with one of those beasts, Tim
I've met thereed with uar was no , obeyed orders
The jaguar, hearing their voices, stopped its noise and probably reconnoitered the camp But no man saw the brute, and its next roar sounded fros, too, passed within Tie of vision from time to time in the moonlit hours: a queer bony creature which he took for some new kind of turtle, but which really was an armadillo; a monstrous hairy spider which slid like a streak up his net, hung there for a tio elsewhere, and departed with such speed that the man inside rubbed his eyes and wondered if he was ”seein' things that ain't”; a couple of vahosts, wheeled and floated silently on ings, seeking an exposed foot protruding from the ham hoarsely, and veered out again into the night
To Knowlton's watch ca eyes and face ringed with pale fur--one of those night apes seldo-tailed animals which looked to bethe branches like frolicsole ed with saw teeth and its pendulous throat pouch dangling grotesquely under its jaw; and liding past with veno quiescent except for occasional openings of horrific jaws
To the ears of both the has unseen From the depths beyond drifted the weird plaint of the sloth, crying in the night, ”Oh me, poor sloth, oh-oh-oh-oh!” Goat suckers repeated by the hour their monotonous refrains, ”Quao quao,” or ”Cho-co-co-cao,” while a third earnestly exhorted, ”Joao corta pao!”
(”John, cut wood!”) Tree frogs and crickets clacked and druuaribas poured their awful discord into the air, and on one bright breathless night there sounded over and over a call freighted retchedness and despair--the wail of that lonely owl known to the bushmen as ”the mother of the moon,” whose dreadful cry portends evil to those who hear it
Soreat falling tree which, long since bled to death by parasitical plant growths, now at last toppled crashi+ng back into the dank soil whence it had forced its way up into a place in the sun Other noises, infrequent and unexplainable, also drifted at long intervals froht sounds not one was cheerful
The burden of the jungle's cacophonic cantanta ever was the same--despair, disaster, death
Then ca an ensanguined battle with the heavytravelers a sinister criain some of those faces were to be stained a deeper red
CHAPTER VII
COLD STEEL
Some two hours after the start, while Knowlton and Ti the coht up ahead--a longish craft ht paddlers and without a cabin
As it ca The Peruvians ignored the salutation The bowure of Jose, resu to pass in silence But then McKay arose, waved a hand, and told Jose to steer for the newconal to Francisco, and the course changed