s which
carpeted the jungle. The monstrous splayed feet stretched a good yard
and a half from front to rear upon the ground. Even its waddling
footprints were yards apart, and it moved in terror.

Tommy tripped, fell, and got to his feet again, and the shrieking
tumult was farther away. He raced madly toward the sound, the
flashlight beam cutting swordlike through the blackness. He caught
sight of the warty, scaly bulk of the monster at the extreme limit of
the rays. It was moving faster than he could travel. He sobbed
helpless curses at the thing and put forth superhuman exertions. He
leaped fallen tree-fern trunks, he splashed through shallow
ponds--later, when he knew something of the inhabitants of such pools,
Tommy would turn cold at that memory--and raced on, gasping for breath
while the shrieking of the thing that bore Evelyn grew more and more
distant.

* * * * *

In five minutes he was almost strangling and the thing was half a mile
ahead of him. In ten, he was exhausted, and the shrieking noise it
made as it waddled away was distinctly fainter. In fifteen minutes he
only heard its hooting scream between the harsh laboring rasps of his
own breath as he drew it into tortured lungs. But he ran on. He leaped
and climbed and ran in a terrible obliviousness to all dangers the
jungle might hold.

He leaped down from one toppled tree-trunk upon what seemed be
another. But the thing he landed upon gave beneath his boots in the
unmistakable fashion of yielding flesh. Something vast and angry
stirred and hissed furiously. Something--a head, perhaps--whipped
toward him among the fallen fern-fronds. But he was racing on,
sobbing, cursing, praying all at once.

Then suddenly he broke out into a profuse sweat. His breathing became
easier, and then he was running lightly. His second wind had come to
him. He was no longer exhausted. He felt as if he could run forever,
and ran on more swiftly still. Suddenly the flashlight beam showed him
a deep furrow in the rotting vegetation underfoot, and something
glistened. A musky reek filled his nostrils. The thing's trail--the
furrow left by its dragging tail! That musky reek was the thing's
blood. It was bleeding from the wounds the explosive bullets had made.
It was spouting whatever filthy fluid ran in its veins even as it
waddled onward, screaming.

Five minutes more, and he felt that he was gaining on it. Then, and he
was sure of it. But it