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 and twisted 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 opposite side 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.