Mudd paused for a moment, looked back and hesitated.
At the same instant the lake monster treated him to another taste of that tremendous hissing roar, alongside of which the bellow of the Plesiosaurus was sweet music.
It was too much for Mr. Mudd. He went bounding toward the remaining horses, which stood half paralyzed with fear.
In a moment he was astride one of them and dashing away after the others, while the monster, without altering its course, kept steadily on toward the hut.
“Great Scott! What’s going to become of Clara Eglinton?” thought Dick. “Is she tied up in there a prisoner all alone?”
CHAPTER IX.
WHAT MONSTER IS COMING NOW?
No such thought as fear, no idea of holding back, ever entered Dick Darrell’s head.
He scrambled down off the rocks and ran at full speed over the grass, giving that moving nightmare a wide berth and by a semi-circular course making for the hut.
The monster moved very slowly, seeming to have but slight powers of locomotion on land, although Dick never doubted that in the water it would show itself lively enough.
“If it was to rise up on that tail and fall on the hut it would crush it to splinters,” thought Dick, “but I don’t believe it has any such idea.”