A great bat smashed against Maget, and knocked the light out of his hand, but the blow was a glancing one, and he was able to retrieve his light and hurry on.
They were far from the entrance now. The hole which had been broken through by the peons showed before them, and they could see milky water dashing over black rocks.
Pallid eyes looked at them, and they knew they gazed upon another of the giant frogs. They tossed a bomb at the creature, and blew a jagged hole in his back. No sooner had he begun to die than there came a sudden rush of other monsters and a feast began.
"Throw, all together," yelled Kenneth Gurlone.
Into the vast mass of creatures, who crowded one another in the river for their share of the spoils, they threw bomb after bomb. The dynamite deafened them, and acrid fumes choked them, but they fired their rifles at the prodigious animals and there, in the big river cavern, was a seething mass of horrible life, dying in agony.
The bellowings and hissings sounded louder, so loud that the earth shook as if actuated by a mighty earthquake.
Maget gripped Kenneth Gurlone's arm. "My bombs are gone," he shouted.
He had but a few rounds of ammunition left, and still more of the giant reptiles appeared. A centipede with its creeping, horrible legs topped the mass of squirming matter; they could see the terrific sting of the creature, so deadly when but a fraction of an inch long, and which was now at least a foot, armed with poison.
There came the rush of more bats and moths, a rush that threw the three men off their feet.
"We must have opened the hole more with our bombs," shrieked old Gurlone. "The dead bodies attract the other creatures, more and more of them are coming. It is impossible; we cannot deal with them all."