Another hour went by, and still the dual tracks of Garth’s captors and the great Triceratops stretched before them.
The plain grew more and more gloomy as they advanced, the fungi failing entirely, so that the two had to grope their way as best they could through the dim twilight of this subterranean world; and, though haste was so necessary, Haverly dared not use his lantern, save occasionally, when the trail grew indistinct, lest the light would attract some of the hideous creatures whom he had well named “Wolf-men.”
Suddenly the baronet stumbled over some bulky object lying beside the track.
Recovering himself, he stooped and picked it up.
It was the scientist’s specimen case.
“I assume the professor must have got pitched off somewhere hereabouts,” remarked the Yankee. “You can gamble on it he’s in the same boat as Garth. See, here’s the identical spot where he struck earth,” pointing to a deep impression in the clayey soil.
“Perhaps the fall killed him!” Seymour suggested.
“It may be better for him if it did,” retorted Silas; “Heaven alone knows what tortures these darned, red-haired freaks will be trying on him if he’s a prisoner in their hands; but I guess they’ll hardly have taken the trouble to cart his body off, if he’d been killed by the drop, so let’s get a hustle on.”
Nothing loth, the baronet stepped out briskly again.
Now the trail of the wolf-men led over stony ground, and many precious moments were lost in tracing the faint tracks, sometimes all but invisible. Then it would pass through the midst of some quaking morass, where a false step meant death, and that in a form so hideous that even the boldest could not face it calmly. Yet they kept tenaciously to their task, determined to do their utmost to rescue their friends, or, failing that, to avenge them.