CHAPTER IITHE MONSTERS THAT NEVER WERE
“But, Father,” cried Perry, “you haven’t told me what the dragon really was!”
“I didn’t know, myself, for a few minutes,” was the reply. “I dropped in my tracks, right there. A couple of the fellows picked me up, though, as soon as I began to feel a little less faint, and the three of us, waiting until we were sure that the monster was quite dead, went up close to him. I had noticed, in a dim kind of way, that the dragon’s scales looked queer and that some of them had been scraped off on the floor of the cave. But when we got right up to him, what do you suppose we found those scales were?”
“I haven’t the ghost of an idea,” the boy answered expectantly.
“They were made of the silver paper that comes wrapped around bars of chocolate.”
“What?”
“Just plain silver paper.”
“It was the other gang, then—” suggested Perry, seeing a clue.
“That’s just what it was, the other gang.”
“Then it was a fake dragon!” cried the boy, disappointed. “You said it was alive!”
“Does my arm look as if the beast hadn’t been alive?” retorted his father. “It was a mighty lucky thing for me it wasn’t any more alive than I found it!”
“What was the dragon, really, Father?” the lad persisted.
“It was a lynx, or bob-cat,” was the reply. “The ‘Pioneers’ had trapped the beast in the woods and brought it to our cave, with the trap still fastened to the bob-cat’s hind foot. The other hind paw had been tied to a heavy log.
“Then the fellows had gone to work and made a long tail of sacking, stuffed with shavings, and fastened this tail tightly around the lynx’s haunches, so that it would trail behind. They’d dusted it all over with mustard and red pepper, so that the animal wouldn’t chew at it and tear it off. After that, they chucked a couple of pailfuls of carpenter’s glue, almost boiling hot, over the beast, head, tail and all, and stuck the silverpaper on, when the glue was wet. I don’t wonder the bob-cat was savage!”
“They must have had a picnic doing it!” exclaimed Perry.
“I’ve thought of that many times since,” his father agreed. “But they made a good job of it. They even took the trouble to cut all the silver paper in shapes so that it would look like real scales.”
“They took an awful chance, though, Father. Suppose the tail had come off? What would have happened to you?”
“I don’t think the tail saved me,” the other answered. “After all, the bob-cat was badly crippled, with both hind legs out of commission. You see, Perry, a lynx leaps for his prey, grips with teeth and fore-claws and tears with the hind claws. With the trap on one foot and a log on the other, the other gang knew I was fairly safe. So far, they had been right enough. Where they went wrong was in not knowing the animal. They all thought the creature was just a big domestic pussy that had got a bit wild running around in the woods. It was a true lynx, though, and a big one.”
“Did you send the skin home for a ‘triumph’?”the boy quickly asked. “Where is it?”
“When that combination of glue and silver paper got thoroughly dry,” the old merchant commented, “there wasn’t much value to the skin. We kept it as a trophy, of course, but we kept it in the cave. For all I know, it’s there yet. If you’re so keen to find a dragon, Perry, I’ll tell you exactly where to go for it.”
“I’m afraid even our own local Museum wouldn’t take it,” the boy objected, smiling.
“Maybe they wouldn’t, but, so far as I know, it’s the only genuine dragon that has put up a genuine fight for the last couple of thousand years. So, my son, if you ever do go dragon-hunting, don’t forget that your father was the last of all the champions of valor who fought and defeated a dragon single-handed.”
“Then you really will let me go dragon-hunting with the Princeton crowd?” Perry interjected, returning to his first plea.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” his father answered meditatively, “and I don’t think I will. Wait a bit—” he continued, as he saw the bitter disappointment in the lad’s face, “I haven’t finished. I don’t say that I won’t let you go on a search for fossils some time, but I don’t thinkthis Princeton expedition is the right thing for you. And I’ll tell you why.”
“I’m sure it would,” burst out Perry.
“I’ll tell you why,” his father said again, with that calm repetition from which the boy knew of old there was no appeal. “You would simply go as a helper, you wouldn’t have any real share in the plan, and you would only have a lot of dirty and laborious work to do without any real chance to learn.”
“But, Father,” interrupted the boy. He caught the glance of reproof and stopped.
“If you interrupt me again, Perry, I shall not say what I was going to say—and you’ll be the loser.”
Distinctly set back, Perry straightened himself and sat still. After a pause, his father continued:
“That book of drawings you showed me, son, which covered several years of work, looks to me like fairly good evidence that your interest is genuine. I want to be sure that it’s not just a fad, that you’ll tire of in a month or two.”
“Oh, it isn’t, Father!”
“You’d say that, Perry, of course, in any case. Just the same I rather think you mean it. Now, what I want to say is this: Since you really soseem to have an interest in these dragon-forms of old times, and as I suppose you’ve inherited it, to a certain extent, it seems to me that I ought to give you a chance to find out if that’s the sort of thing you want to take up for your life-work.
“So far, I haven’t made any special plans for your future, Perry, because I haven’t known just how your desires would run. I wanted to see which way the cat would jump, first. Do you really think that you would like to give your whole time to paleontology, or do you want to keep it as a hobby? Answer carefully, now, because quite a stretch of your life may hang on the reply.”
Perry thought for a minute or two, then answered slowly:
“I think I’d rather try to find the monsters that no one has ever seen. I’d like to dig up secrets in all the queer corners of the world. I’d rather find a new kind of creature, such as no one had even dreamt of before, than be a multi-millionaire!”
“Very good,” his father answered, “if that’s your feeling, my boy, you shall have your chance and you shall have it in the best way possible. I suppose you know that your Uncle George isgoing to take out an expedition for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, this year?”
“No, Father, I didn’t know it,” Perry replied. “Out West?”
“I think not,” his father answered. “If I remember rightly, when he was here a month or two ago, he said something about going to Egypt.”
“And I could go?”
“That depends on a number of things,” the old merchant answered, guardedly. “Still, there’s a possibility that I might persuade him to take you along. You see, Perry, if I were to pay for your part of the expenses out of my pocket, the New York Museum wouldn’t lose anything and perhaps you might do something to help.”
“But that would cost a heap, Father.”
The financier smiled.
“You don’t imagine that you’re not an expense, do you?” he queried. “But I don’t mind footing the bill for anything that will give you a real start in the world at the kind of work you want to do. I don’t believe in wasting money on things you don’t need—that’s why I wouldn’t buy you that two-cylinder motorcycle—but I’ll keep my wallet open, any time that you want somethingthat is really worth while. Now trot along, son, and I’ll write to Uncle George and see what he thinks about the whole project.”
“Thanks ever and ever and ever so much, Father,” the boy said, heartily, getting up from his chair, “and I do hope I can go! Oh, and say, Father,” he continued, pointing to the faded green book which lay on the table, “can I take this along and go over it a bit more thoroughly? I’ll be ever so careful.”
“All right, son,” the other answered, “but don’t take what you see in there, literally. There are enough weird creatures in that book to make the fortunes of a dozen Barnums, if they could ever be found and put under a circus tent. Watch out that they don’t give you a nightmare!”
“I’ve dreamt about fossils, heaps and heaps of times, Father,” said Perry grinning, as he opened the door. “Some of these days, I’m going to make all those dreams come real, too!”
As, in his own room, the boy turned over the pages of that book of his father’s childhood, the fascination of the monsters of the past crept over him more and more. There was no doubt that Perry had inherited this interest, for every leaf of the volume before him was indelibly stampedwith the eagerness of a boy absorbed in the subject.
Although Perry was more or less familiar with the three-horned Triceratops, the twenty-ton Brontosaurus and the gaunt-winged Pterodactyl, the still stranger creatures in the faded green book were unknown to him. The Roc, the Griffin, the Chimæra, the Phœnix, the Basilisk—they were like characters in a fairy tale. Still, as he looked at the pictures of them limned by the boy of forty years ago, a strange feeling came over Perry that perhaps—in some remote corner of the world—these creatures might be living still.
There was an air of expectant reality in their pose, and, not only had his father drawn them in the book, but he had also—in a round immature scrawl—copied upon the opposite page the words of the old naturalists who claimed to have seen the monsters with their own eyes.
One page showed (in red and yellow chalk) a blazing fire in an Egyptian temple courtyard, the flames of which shot higher than the pylons of the temple gateway. Full in the center of the flames, wearing a peaceful look as though enjoying the process of being burned alive, was a large bird, with a crest of yellow feathers on its head,like an imperial crown. Under the picture was written “The Phœnix,” and on the page opposite, the story read:
“Sir Thomas Browne says: ‘There is but one Phœnix in all the world, which after many hundred years burns herself, and from the ashes thereof riseth up another, is a conceit (belief) of great antiquity, not only delivered by humane (learned) writers but frequently expressed by holy writers.’”
Perry’s father—then ten years old, had added:
“Swan says this can’t be right because the animals had to go two by two into the Ark, and if there was only one Phœnix, Noah wouldn’t have let him in till he got another, and as there wasn’t another to get, he had to stay out, and everything that stayed out, died. For feathers of the Phœnix, see next page.”
Wondering what in the wide world the feathers of the Phœnix could be like, Perry turned eagerly to the next page. There his father had drawn two long feathers and under them had written:
“Feathers of the Phœnix. In Tradescant’s Museum, in Italy.”
“But,” said Perry aloud, “I know what those feathers are! They’re from the Japanese LongtailedFowl! I don’t wonder that those old fellows thought a feather eight feet long must come from a queer kind of bird! I think I’d do some guessing myself!”
Old Sir John de Mandeville, that joyous traveler of the fourteenth century, was responsible for the next weird beast. This was a combination of an eagle and a lion. Perry’s father had evidently drawn it from a crest and labeled it “The Griffin,” while opposite was de Mandeville’s description:
“Some men say that they have the body upward of an eagle and beneath, of a lion; and that is true. But one Griffin has a greater body and is stronger than ten lions, and greater and stronger than a hundred eagles.”
“I should think,” commented Perry to himself, “Father could have seen that this was a fake, because a Griffin with a body as heavy as ten lions would have to have wings the size of an armored aëroplane.”
The boy had hardly framed the words, when turning the page, he saw some birds pictured, which made the largest modern flying machine seem small. In the distance was one of these huge birds flying away with an elephant in its beak.Near by, a man in turban and robe was tying himself to the claw of one of the birds, the creature’s leg being as thick as the trunk of a big tree. This was “The Roc,” and Perry’s father had copied out in his smallest handwriting, all that happened to Sindbad the Sailor and the Third Calendar in the land of the Roc, as told in the Arabian Nights.
“I suppose,” mused Perry, “the Roc is just the Æpyornis exaggerated. After all, it’s only the other day that somebody found an Æpyornis egg bobbing up and down on the waves off Madagascar after a hurricane and that egg was nearly seven times as big as an ostrich egg. You can’t blame a fellow in Madagascar several centuries ago figuring that a bird to lay an egg like that must be seven times as tall as an ostrich. My eye, wouldn’t a bird over fifty feet high be a bogey! And yet they told me down at the Museum that an Æpyornis was really only about eleven feet high.”
The Basilisk or Cockatrice was the next wonder that struck the boy’s gaze. Evidently his father had found some difficulty in securing a picture of the creature, for under the fantastic drawing were the words:
“The Basilisk. This one I made up.”
The monster resembled a serpent walking on its tail, in grand and imposing style, with two searchlights for eyes. On the opposite page was a quotation from John Swan, the author of the curious old book “Speculum Mundi” (A Mirror of the World), which was written in the first half of the seventeenth century. It read:
“The Cockatrice is the king of Serpents, not for his magnitude or greatness, but for his stately pace and magnanimous mind. Among all living creatures there is none perisheth sooner by the poyson of a Cockatrice than a man; for with his sight he killeth him. His hissing is likewise said to be bad, in regard that it blasteth trees, killeth birds, etc., by poysoning the aire.”
Perry turned over page after page. He saw the picture of the Humma, the bird without feet, that was supposed never to alight on the ground. There was a drawing of the Wak-Wak tree which had beautiful women for fruit. The Chimæra was not forgotten, with its head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a serpent.
A whole section of the faded green book was given to the monsters who were half men, half beasts. There Perry saw his old friends the Centaurs, and among them Cheiron, “wisest of beastsand men,” human to the waist, with a horse’s body. Pan, playing on his pipes of reed, was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, while goat-legged Satyrs and Fauns danced to his piping. One particularly creepy picture showed the Gorgons, with writhing poisonous snakes in place of hair, whom, the Greeks believed, it was death to look upon, and none of the monsters that were slain by Hercules, Theseus, and Perseus was forgotten.
Little by little the spell of the old-time wonderland began to creep over Perry. At first these childish drawings of monsters had seemed impossible, but earnest belief in the artist always reveals itself in the picture, and Perry’s father, when a boy, had believed in these creatures just as did the ancient Greeks. The spirit of the boy who had fought the lynx, believing it to be a dragon, stirred on those pages and quickened Perry’s blood.
At last he came to Unicorns. Page after page of unicorns! The boy read the story of Vertomannus who measured two unicorns that had been presented to the Sultan of Mecca in 1503. He learned how Father Lobo, a missionary, had chased a unicorn in Abyssinia in 1622. He saw the drawings of one-horned asses in China sentto Rome by Grueber, the Jesuit Father, in 1661. From utter disbelief, he passed to doubt, and his doubt received a sudden shock when he read that the Russian naturalist Prjevalsky, in his book “Mongolia,” published in 1876, had declared that the orongo, in northern Thibet, sometimes, though rarely, has one horn, though not in the center of the forehead. To this picture there was a note, in his father’s handwriting, evidently made after he was grown up. It read:
“Personally, I see no reason to deny the existence of the unicorn. It is quite likely that occasional specimens of a two-horned animal should only have one horn. The narwhal often has two tusks, but generally only one. If the one-tusked narwhal is a natural development, why not a one-horned antelope? The Nepalese unicorn sheep has one horn, and a rhinoceros, as well.”
The faded green book dropped into Perry’s lap, as he leaned back in his chair, thinking. He recalled the finding of the okapi, only a few years before, and his mind pictured an adventurous trip into Central Thibet where the one-horned orongo of Prjevalsky, the unicorn, might still be found. Deeper and more profound grew the day-dream, more and more real the vision, until, with a start,the boy found himself riding at full speed over a coarse-ferned swampy plain.
The Unicorn in China.The Sz, or Malayan Rhinoceros, as pictured by a Chinese artist in the ’Rh Ya. The Indian Rhinoceros is one-horned. The African square-lipped rhinoceros, or “white rhino,” though possessing two horns, one behind the other, has the forward horn so long and powerful as to be truly unicorn-like, though it is nasal and not frontal.
The Unicorn in China.The Sz, or Malayan Rhinoceros, as pictured by a Chinese artist in the ’Rh Ya. The Indian Rhinoceros is one-horned. The African square-lipped rhinoceros, or “white rhino,” though possessing two horns, one behind the other, has the forward horn so long and powerful as to be truly unicorn-like, though it is nasal and not frontal.
The Unicorn in China.
The Sz, or Malayan Rhinoceros, as pictured by a Chinese artist in the ’Rh Ya. The Indian Rhinoceros is one-horned. The African square-lipped rhinoceros, or “white rhino,” though possessing two horns, one behind the other, has the forward horn so long and powerful as to be truly unicorn-like, though it is nasal and not frontal.
A warm and steaming mist hung with a dull purple haze over a landscape that seemed familiar, though the boy knew that his eyes had never seen it before. Huge monkey-puzzles thrust their spiny arms into the heavy air, ferns a hundred feet high swayed their livid green tracery against the lowering sky, and here and there a leafless pillar twenty feet in height showed where still remained a struggling horsetail of the weird forests of the age before. Over all hung the red ball of the sun, unable to pierce the low-hung curling wreaths of mist which held the landscape like a bowl.
The glow of the half-obscured sun shone dully on the quaking bog and deepened the shadows of huge black forms, monstrous and menacing, which seemed to be sprawling in the ebon water. To these, there was no shape, although their gross inertness breathed of life. In the distance there was a stir, and Perry, gripping his knees hard upon the Thing he rode, cried aloud in the somber stillness—
“What moved!”
No sound answered. Silence held that flowerlessworld like a vise, that world that had never heard the song of a bird, but a rumbling vibration in the distance seemed to the boy like some vast leviathan stirring in its sleep. Sure was he that he saw one of those sprawling shapes—which, near by, seemed like stone—heave itself upward and sway a monstrous neck. Straight in his path, one of the murky masses lay, huge as though the earth had spawned a creature vaster than a whale. In panic, Perry forced the Thing that carried him to swerve to the left. As he raced by, the boy forced himself to look at the sprawling bulk. Shapeless and moveless as a block of stone it lay. But when, a second later, some impulse moved the lad to turn his head back to look again, the seeming stone had lurched itself across his path as though to bar any returning way.
With a shiver, the boy’s glance turned to the creature that he rode. Its horse-like head and short, coarse mane gave a clue that its light limbs and four spreading toes seemed to deny.
He was nearly thrown to the ground as the Thing shied, then reared, nearly on its haunches. And Perry, looking to see the cause of fear, distinctly saw a quiver run over another monstrous mass immediately before him, like the ripplingmuscles on the back of a black panther about to spring. He drove his heels into his steed.
“They’re waking,” he cried hoarsely. “I’ve only got until the sun goes down!”
Through the humid swamp, spotted with its foul giant brood, that moved, yet never seemed to move, he rode, panic knocking at his ribs. The sinking sun bore down with it his hopes, and as the shadows grew more slanting, the sense of silent life around him grew more threatening. A breeze with a tang of cold in it swept over the swamp and the grip of danger tightened. Now, in the distance, the masses could be seen to drag their slow length along, but near at hand, all was still.
“They’re only waiting,” he thought, “waiting for the dusk.”
From under a huge flat block that bore a fair resemblance to a giant tortoise-shell, a wicked head with lidless green eyes and a turtle beak darted out.
The animal he bestrode leaped as though a snake had struck. And, with the leap came a new thing. Even as the boy watched, the rough mane dwindled and a smooth red-brown coat glinted in the darkening sun. The neck grew longer and more pliant and the swift lumbering gallop gave place to theleaping bounds of some creature that man had never ridden before. Perry’s only thought was to go on—on—no matter what he rode, to go on—and out of that swamp where the monstrous reptiles were. But the strangeness of the marvel held him when he saw in the center of the forehead of the Thing, just in front of the ears, a gleam of white like a milk-tooth.
“It’s—it’s a horn,” he muttered.
The sun touched the rim of the horizon. At the same instant, with a sucking sound, the vast bulk of a Diplodocus squirmed up from the slough and poised its ungainly head, as though to see. A leaping Compsognathus loomed black against the sky. Noiseless, but menacing, a winged Pteranodon, twenty-one feet from tip to tip of wing, soared heavily above him. A pigmy in a world of giant monsters, the boy raced on, speeding from—he knew not what, to—he knew not whither.
The sense of terror from the monstrous brood became more keen as a closer peril grew. His knees ached almost beyond endurance from the strain of trying to keep his seat, for no horsemanship could avail upon such a steed as that which he was riding. The long jerking leaps, though they covered ground amazingly, seemed to draghim inside out at every stride. The red-brown neck stretched far ahead, and gleaming in the dull-red dusk jutted the single horn, spirally twisted like a kudu’s and lengthening even as he looked at it.
Suddenly, without an instant’s warning, the beast threw back his head. The gleaming horn jerked to within a few inches of the boy. The lad paled.
“Next time—” he said.
What could he do next time?
Without pausing, the Thing sped on, racing like the wind over a mountainless world, so that Perry did not dare throw himself off its back. Lower sank the sun, till only one-half of its orb was seen, its beams lying level over the plain that saw never a hill over its thousand miles of length. Worst of all, instead of the kinship between steed and rider that gives strength in the most desperate pursuit, he felt the malevolence of the evil thing he bestrode, and tried to brace his nerve against an attack from his sole means of escape from this browsing ground of swollen reptiles.
He had not long to wait. In mid-leap, the creature checked its speed, plunging stiff-legged, at the same time tossed back its now long andtwisted horn to pierce him to the vitals. Tense for the spring, Perry thrust himself upwards from the knees, the sudden stoppage throwing him over the creature’s head. Well he knew that if he fell on the ground sharp hoof and sharper horn would pin him to the earth. He grabbed the horn as it slid under him, and clung to it like death.
In fury, the unicorn tossed him as a terrier does a rat. The boy felt his hold weakening, but he clung desperately. Sight and hearing failed him, yet he clutched blindly, till with a wrench the strained finger-clasp gave way and he found himself flying through the air. Fortune favored him. He landed on his feet, and though he staggered, he did not actually fall. The second’s recovery sufficed to clear his wits, and he dodged as the vicious creature lunged. Before him loomed the vast bulk of a Brontosaurus and behind this he ran, trusting for safety to the small brain and sluggish movements of the giant.
The ruse almost landed him into the jaws of the nose-horned lizard, the carnivorous Ceratosaurus, twenty feet in height, and he doubled back, actually under its fore-limbs, as its large head and formidable flesh-tearing teeth threatened the unicorn, which reared and refused the combat.The moment’s respite as the monsters faced each other, gave Perry a chance to breathe.
“Where now?” he gasped, glancing round wildly for some place to hide.
But, in that flat expanse, with the araucarias and tree-ferns only a green blur in the distance, there was no cover. The unicorn saw him and charged again. Some strange instinct told him what to do. Again doubling around the huge dinosaur, the boy cast himself despairingly on the back of a creature browsing a few feet away.
“Up!” he yelled.
As though impelled by the terror in the boy’s voice, or by the still greater terror of sound in that silent world, the light-limbed Anchisaurus rose to its kangaroo-like attitude and began clumsily to run. Some twenty feet of start was gained before the unicorn caught sight of him and then the chase began. The Anchisaurus, more terrified even than the boy by this strange creature clinging to its neck, and driven on by the gleaming horn behind, leaped into full stride, covering ten feet at every step. If the gallop of the unicorn had been hard to bear, this swaying run was worse, for, as the Anchisaurus swung first one foot then the other, the neck and tail rolled to the oppositeside to maintain the creature’s balance. No cockle shell on a stormy sea ever tossed as did Perry on the Anchisaurus’ neck. But it was his only chance of safety from that gleaming horn behind, and tightly with arms and legs he gripped the creature’s neck above the shoulder.
The sun was nearly down, but a slight, a very slight rise in the ground gave firmer footing, both to unicorn and Anchisaurus, so the speed of both increased. Little by little the lumbering saurians began to grow fewer and at last were seen no more. In their place came spiny lizards, at first few in number, then more and more, huge and monstrous, until in the dim twilight and the silver glow of the rising moon, their threatening shapes seemed like a world of jagged rocks heaving as the billows of a tempest-whipped lake.
Then, as though determined to give battle to its strange pursuer, the Anchisaurus stopped, and Perry, fearing that his strange mount would find some swift accounting for his temerity, slipped off, again to face the unicorn.
There was no need.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.Stegosaurus, the Super-Dreadnought of Old.Huge armored monster of the reptile world, thirty-five feet long, as tall as a modern elephant to the top of the spines, protected by sharp horny plates against the attacks of flesh-eating giants.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.Stegosaurus, the Super-Dreadnought of Old.Huge armored monster of the reptile world, thirty-five feet long, as tall as a modern elephant to the top of the spines, protected by sharp horny plates against the attacks of flesh-eating giants.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Stegosaurus, the Super-Dreadnought of Old.
Huge armored monster of the reptile world, thirty-five feet long, as tall as a modern elephant to the top of the spines, protected by sharp horny plates against the attacks of flesh-eating giants.
Between him and the savage beast that had chased him for miles over the swamp stood an old battle-scarred Stegosaurus, fully twenty feet inlength, its spines jutting into the air far above the boy’s head. As he looked, the armored tail, with its jagged, horny plates, lashed out at the unicorn and felled it to the ground. The beast half tried to rise and lunged its horn, white in the moonlight, at the throat of its terrible foe. But no weapon could pierce that living fortress of defense and the horn slipped uselessly over the scales.
The head of the Stegosaurus—so tiny for so great a bulk of body—bent as though to smell the wounded creature that the blow of his tail had crushed, but, not being an eater of flesh, the huge living fortress turned scornfully away.
Injured, but not mortally, the unicorn half rose, when Perry, seizing his chance, drew from his belt his hunting-knife and slit the creature’s throat.
Then, placing one foot on the body of the animal, he cried aloud—the faded green book fluttering from his lap as he sprang up—
“I’ve caught a unicorn!”