2
It is in the account of young Rowan that one finds, now, the clearest picture of the coming of the terror to Brinton. There are other accounts, for though the survivors of that terror were but few most of them have recorded their experiences; yet for the most part their narratives are too horror-stricken and incoherent to be of any real value. Rowan, on the other hand, not only saw the thing as well or better than any other single man, but set down his impressions of it in vivid style.
His narrative begins with the events already detailed, the disappearance of Dr. Morton and his own coming to Brinton. It had been some time after nightfall that he had arrived, and after making arrangements to accompany the posse into the swamp on the next morning he had ventured out into the streets of the town, which were still filled with the shuffling throngs discussing the sensation of the day. Along the streets the windows of stores were still brilliant, their proprietors taking advantage of the unaccustomed throngs, while a few raucous-voiced newsboys were selling late editions of a Chicago daily which had featured the sensation. For an hour or more Rowan strolled on through the streets and then, yawning, began to move back toward his hotel, through the thinning crowds. He had just reached the building's door when he suddenly halted.
From away toward the street's eastern end had come a sudden, high-pitched cry, a thrilling scream which was repeated in the distance by a score of voices, and then succeeded by a dull roar. Rowan stepped out into the street, gazing down its length, lit by the suspended brilliance of the street-lights. A few of the groups on the sidewalks near by had stepped out beside him, and with these he stared down the long street's length toward the source of the shouting cries.
He glimpsed, in a moment, a horde of figures running up the street toward him, a disorganized little mob which was giving utterance to a medley of hoarse shouts and screams. The mob parted, for a moment, and there roared through it a crowded automobile, racing up the street with immense speed, and past the wondering Rowan and those around him. And now he heard, simultaneously, a wild ringing of bells toward the south and a far-away crash which murmured faintly to his ears from the east. With every moment the clamor around him was increasing, the whole city awakening, and lights flashing out in windows on every side.
By then the people around him had caught the contagion of panic and were hastening away toward the west also, but Rowan held his ground until the first running figures of the mob farther down the street were racing past him. Then he reached out and seized one of these, a shabby, middle-aged man whose face was contorted with panic.
"What's the matter?" he cried, striving to make himself heard over the thunderous, increasing clamor about him. "What's happening?"
The man he held bawled something indistinguishable in his ear, and at the same time wrenched frantically loose from his grasp, hurrying on. Some hundreds of feet down the street the main body of the mob was now racing toward Rowan, and then, beyond that mob, Rowan saw by the brilliant street-lamps the cause of their panic flight.
Far down the street there was thundering toward him a gigantic creature which his eyes refused for the moment to credit, a titanic, dark thing whose tremendous, rumbling tread shook the very ground on which he himself stood. A hundred feet in length and a third of that in height it loomed, a colossal dark bulk upheld by four massive legs, tapering into a huge tail behind and carrying before it a long, sinuous neck which ended in a small, reptilian head. High up on the great thing's mighty, curving back clung some smaller creature which he could but vaguely glimpse, and down the street behind it were thundering a half-dozen more like itself, vast, incredible, charging down the street upon the madly screaming mob which fled before them. For one mad, whirling moment Rowan stared, and then he shouted aloud.