The Monster-Hunters

CHAPTER XI

UNDER THE CLAWS OF A DINOSAUR 306

ILLUSTRATIONS

A Battle to the Death Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Dragon Slain by Regulus 20

Scylla of the Seven Heads 20

Merman from the Mediterranean 20

The Dragon of the Drachenfels 20

Monsters Thought Real by the Ancients 20

The Unicorn in China 42

Stegosaurus, the Super-Dreadnought of Old 50

The Largest Creature that Ever Flew 72

A Flying Nightmare of Olden Time 72

Sea-Serpent Attacking a Pirate Ship 82

The Fiercest Monster that Ever Lived 84

The Sharp-Toothed Death 86

The Jurassic Sea-Serpent 86

Combat Between Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus 88

Sea-Serpent Swallowing Sailors 96

The Most Authentic Sea-Serpent 96

Waiting for the Load 158

Roaring at the Weight 158

Rising, Still Protesting 158

Ready for Desert March 158

A Camel Being Loaded with Half-Ton Fossil Cases 158

At the Temple of Qasr-el-Sagha 194

Across the Libyan Desert 194

Zeuglodon, the Primitive Whale 220

Climbing to the Fossils 228

Finding a Sea-Cow Skeleton 228

The Four-Horned Giants at Bay 232

Into the Heart of Mexico 242

Carrying Shell of Glyptodont 242

Pteranodon, Climbing for a Swoop 250

Finding the Eobasileus 256

The Eobasileus or Loxolophodon 256

The American Mastodon 270

The Siberian Mammoth 270

The Mammoth Tusk He Found 276

Uncovering a Frozen Mammoth 276

Finding the Eohippus 292

Eohippus, the Four-Toed Horse 292

Finding the Mesohippus 294

Mesohippus, the Three-Toed Horse 294

Smilodon, the Sabre-Tooth Tiger 302

Museum Camp in Wyoming Bad Lands 308

The Largest of the Titanotheres 308

Herd Crossing Red Deer River, Alberta 312

Museum Boat Camp on Red Deer River 312

Opening (Rear Tent) to Moropus Quarry 322

Inside the Moropus Quarry, Agate, Neb. 322

The Dryptosaurus, a Giant Carnivorous Reptile 328

Unearthing a Saurolophus Skeleton 330

Unearthing a Diplodocus Hind Limb 330

Brontosaurus in his Native Swamp 332

Trachodon, a Duck-Billed Dinosaur 338

A Brachiosaur, Largest of All Land Creatures 346

THE MONSTER-HUNTERS

THE MONSTER-HUNTERS

CHAPTER I. Killing the Last Dragon

KILLING THE LAST DRAGON

“Father, I want a dragon!”

The shrewd old merchant lowered the evening newspaper he was diligently reading, and looked over it at his son.

“All right, my boy,” he said with a smile; “go ahead and get one.”

“But I mean a real dragon!”

“About how big, Perry?”

“I’d like one about a hundred feet long, if I could find it.”

“You don’t want much,” was his father’s half-humorous reply, as he folded the newspaper so that he could read the next column with more ease. After a few moments, pursuing the subject, he continued,

“Is there any particular breed of dragon that you’re after?”

“What I really want,” the boy answered, “is one of those spiny ones—the sort Uncle George discovered out West.”

The keen old financier looked thoughtful, then deliberately took off his reading-glasses, laid down the paper and turned to the boy.

“You’re talking about fossil monsters, then,” he said.

“Yes, Father, that’s it exactly. And I do hope you’ll let me do it!”

The boy’s earnestness was evident, and he knew he could count on his father, for they had always been close friends.

“Let you do what?” the merchant queried in response. “I suppose all this preamble about a dragon means that you have some crazy notion in your head. Come along, son, tell me all about it.”

This was the chance for which Perry Hunt had long been waiting, and he snatched eagerly at it.

“There’s a chap I know,” he sputtered, “who’s going ’way out to the South Dakota Bad Lands to prospect for fossils. He’s a freshman at Princeton, and it’s their expedition. He told me he was sure he would be able to take me along, if I could fix things up at my end. I’ve always been wild to go fossil-hunting, Father, and this is a real chance. Can’t I go?”

Mr. Hunt tapped the ash from the end of his cigar and looked inquiringly at his son.

“What in thunder do you know about fossils?” he asked, abruptly.

Perry colored. He was inclined to be shy about the things for which he really cared, and he had never before talked to his father about his hobby. The great secret of his boyhood had been a passionate interest in the strange creatures which used to wander over the earth, millions of years before the first man. Mr. Hunt had a sharp, quizzical tongue, and Perry was afraid of being misunderstood and ridiculed. Now, however, the time for concealment was past and he spoke up valiantly.

“I’ve read nearly everything I could get hold of, along that line,” he replied, “and I’ve hung around our little Museum a lot. The curators and everybody have been bully to me down there, and they’ve let me putter about in the workshops. I really have learned quite a bit about fossils, Father, and Mr. Cavalier has shown me how to draw. I’ve drawn heaps!”

“The deuce you have!” the other commented. “Got any of those drawings still?”

The boy nodded.

“Let me see them, Perry—that is, if you don’t mind.”

Still a little flushed with confusion, the boy went to his own room and came back a few minutes later with a sketch-book. His father turned over the pages. The drawings covered a period of several years, and though the first were crude, the later ones were quite well done. Those dated during the last year showed the results of real study. There was no doubting that the lad had picked up a fair knowledge of gross anatomy in following his hobby.

Most of the pictures were copies from illustrations in scientific books or were drawn from models in the Museum. But there were a few, here and there, that were just fancy, idle sketches drawn for amusement’s sake. Over one of these—a picture-book dragon with scales and a snaky tail—the old merchant paused, smiling. Several minutes elapsed before he turned the page. He went through the book twice without saying a word. At last he spoke.

“In the second drawer from the bottom, in that cabinet,” he said, pointing to an old cupboard which Perry had never seen unlocked, and at the same time handing a key to the boy, “you will find a large book bound in faded green leather. Bring it here.”

Although rebuffed by his failure to get a direct answer to his appeal for permission to go on the expedition, Perry took the key. He felt that, in some way, his present quest was connected with the question he had raised, and as he unlocked the cupboard, the boy wondered. In the drawer he found the faded book, with its cover of green Russian leather all dry and crumbling to the touch, and brought it to his father. Still without comment, the old merchant slowly untied the string that held the covers of the ancient book together, and opening it carefully, turned to the first page.

There, drawn with childish detail, was a picture of a dragon such as men in the Middle Ages believed that creature really to be, with two legs armed with claws, spiked wings, a long powerful tail, scales, and a ferocious-looking head with jaws wide open, disclosing pointed teeth, while from the throat, flames and smoke were pouring in volumes.

The boy looked up.

“Why, Father—” he began.

With a faint smile, the old merchant pointed to the date at the bottom of the drawing, its pencil marks so faint as to be almost indistinguishable.

“I must have been nine years old, then,” he said. “I can remember well when I drew that beast. Father had a queer old Latin book, a sort of mediæval natural history, and it gave a drawing of every supposedly known beast in the world. This was one of them. At that time I believed that a dragon was as real as a lion or an elephant. To tell you the truth, Perry, I’ve never quite got away from the feeling of that old book of Aldrovandus, his beasts were so much a part of my childhood. When I was a youngster I was convinced that any adventurous boy could find plenty of dragons like this one, if he only went to the right place to look for them.”

“And did the book tell you where to look?”

“It did, exactly. It described a region south of Ethiopicus—that was Upper Egypt—where a vast region was uninhabited by men because of the presence of three or four of these monsters. I was determined to go there some day and kill a dragon.”

“And you took it all in, Father?”

“Why not? Only a couple of years before, Stanley rescued Livingstone in the first great exploration across Africa. The region that Aldrovandus wrote about, north of the Victoria Nyassa, in my day was still an absolutely unexplored territory. Anything might be there, even dragons.”

“I should think you’d have known there weren’t any real dragons,” protested Perry, with the cocksureness of a boy.

“I had sense enough to know that I didn’t know it all,” said his father with a snort, emphasizing the personal pronoun. “Why even in your lifetime, boy, scientists have found an animal that no one had ever heard of before, still living in the African forests.”

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