"Brontosaurs!" he cried, standing there for the moment quite unconscious of his own peril from the onward-thundering monsters. Brontosaurs! Monsters out of earth's dawn, thundering through a Twentieth Century city! Mighty dinosaurs of the Mesozoic age, the most terrible creatures ever to appear on this planet, bridging the gap of millions of years to crash through the little town! Rowan stood rigid as they thundered on toward him, heard their mighty, throaty bellows as they overtook the fleeing mob, and then saw them trampling over that mob as bulls might trample ants, smashing them beneath gigantic feet, annihilating them with sweeps of the huge tails, thundering, crashing on.
And now they were within yards of him and he found himself staggering back from the street into a crevice between two buildings at its side. The next moment the great monsters had thundered past him, their gigantic tread shaking the earth beneath him, and in that moment he glimpsed clearly the creatures who rode upon their backs. Small and manlike shapes were these, but lizardlike, too, their limbs and bodies green-scaled, their extremities armed with sharp talons, their heads thick and conical and featureless, except for the big, dark, disklike eyes and the wide-fanged mouths. And as they thundered past on their gigantic mounts he saw one raise an arm with a white globe in its grasp, saw a beam of pale and feeble light which flickered out from that globe and struck buildings to right and left, buildings which burst into great masses of flame as the pale beam touched them.
And now the great creatures had swept past him and from farther up the street came their bellowing clamor, pierced by sharp, agonized screams from the tiny running figures there. Around Rowan flames were shooting up in great roaring bursts, and beyond he saw one of the great brontosaurs rearing up against the side of a building, saw that building's walls collapse and crash beneath the huge beast's weight. From right and left came other mighty crashes throughout the city, and an unceasing, thunderous clamor of sounds, the deep and terrible bellowing of the dinosaurs as they crashed across the town, the screams of their victims trampled beneath giant feet, the hiss of the flickering beams, the roar of bursting flames. Down the street, too, was the rumbling of more of the great brontosaurs, racing up the street and past the spot where Rowan crouched, galloping gigantically to the attack.
After them came a single dark, great shape, almost as huge, a great reptilian form whose huge paws gleamed with mighty claws, whose broad-gaping mouth showed immense fangs, leaping forward in quick, gigantic hops like some giant toad, its small eyes glittering in the flame-light of the burning buildings. In a moment it had whirled past Rowan in a series of mighty hops and he glimpsed it farther up the street, pouncing upon the few surviving little figures who ran screaming for shelter, inconceivably swift and catlike in its resistless rushes. And as Rowan saw it leaping on he felt reason deserting him.
"God!" he whispered. "A tyrannosaurus!"
Crouched there at the street's edge he huddled, the buildings around him a storm of leaping flame, while down through that lane of fire there thundered into the town from the east the creatures of a long-dead age, the mighty beasts of earth's youth extinct for millions of years. Rowan was never afterward able to recall all that he saw and heard in the minutes that he crouched there. He knew that other brontosaurs rumbled past, bellowing, ridden by the lizard-creatures whose pale rays swept and stabbed in great circles of fiery destruction; that other tyrannosaurs swept by with swift and mighty leaps, pawing human victims from the wreckage at the street's sides, pouncing and whirling like gigantic cats; that other colossal reptilian shapes, their mighty, curving backs armored by great, upstanding plates, rushed past like great battering-rams of flesh and bone, crashing into buildings and through walls as though of paper, great stegosaurs that thundered on after the others who carried annihilation and death across the town; that still other huge rhinoceroslike shapes galloped past, triceratops who crashed resistlessly on with lowered heads, impaling all before them on their three terrible horns.
All of these Rowan saw, dimly, as though from a great distance, while in his ears beat all the vast roar of sound from the stricken town around him, screams and shouts and hissing cries and vast bellows, roar of flame and crash of falling walls. The great wave of destruction, the mass of the attacking monsters, had swept past and was rolling now over the town toward the west, but still Rowan crouched, motionless. Then behind him was a mounting roar of swiftly catching flame, and out toward him crept little tongues of red fire as the walls between which he crouched began to burn. Then, at last, Rowan rose to his feet and staggered out into the street.
The street-lights had vanished with the bursting of their poles and cables by the rush of the great dinosaurs, but all around him was illumined brilliantly by the light of the flaming buildings. North and south and west the city was burning, vast sheets of murky flame roaring up from it in scores of places, and by the light of those distant fires Rowan glimpsed the scores of titanic dark shapes that crashed still through streets and walls, glimpsed the play of the livid rays and heard the thin cries of those who still fled before the mighty, bellowing dinosaurs. A moment he stood at the street's center, motionless, and then above him was a whirring and flapping of colossal wings, and he looked up to see a vast, dark shape swooping swiftly down upon him.
In a single moment he glimpsed the thing, the forty-foot spread of its huge, batlike wings, the great reptilian head thrust down toward him as it swooped, white fangs gleaming and red eyes shining in the firelight, and in that flashing moment recognized the thing for what it was, a pterodactyl, a flying monster out of the dead ages. Then he saw that upon it rode one of the sealed, dark-eyed lizard-creatures, whose arm was coming up with a white globe in its grasp as its dragon-mount dove down toward Rowan.
The next moment Rowan had thrown himself suddenly aside, and as he did so felt the great pterodactyl sweep over him by a few feet, glimpsed a beam of pale light that flickered down from the upheld globe and struck the street beside him, cracking and rending the pavement there with its intense heat and scorching his own shoulder as it grazed it. Then the giant thing had passed and was flapping on to the west, while behind and above it flew others of its kind, mighty flying reptiles ridden by the lizard-creatures, whose pallid rays struck down with fire and death as they swooped on with whirring wings.