第28章

"Smelled it!" ejaculated Pan-at-lee."Smelled it?"

"Certainly.How do you suppose I found this deer so quickly? And I sensed the gryf, too, but faintly as at a great distance."

Tarzan suddenly ceased speaking and looked down at the bellowing creature below them--his nostrils quivered as though searching for a scent."Ah!" he exclaimed."I have it!"

"What?" asked Pan-at-lee.

"I was deceived because the creature gives off practically no odor," explained the ape-man."What I smelled was the faint aroma that doubtless permeates the entire jungle because of the long presence of many of the creatures--it is the sort of odor that would remain for a long time, faint as it is.

"Pan-at-lee, did you ever hear of a triceratops? No? Well this thing that you call a gryf is a triceratops and it has been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years.I have seen its skeleton in the museum in London and a figure of one restored.I

always thought that the scientists who did such work depended principally upon an overwrought imagination, but I see that I was wrong.This living thing is not an exact counterpart of the restoration that I saw; but it is so similar as to be easily recognizable, and then, too, we must remember that during the ages that have elapsed since the paleontologist's specimen lived many changes might have been wrought by evolution in the living line that has quite evidently persisted in Pal-ul-don."

"Triceratops, London, paleo--I don't know what you are talking about," cried Pan-at-lee.

Tarzan smiled and threw a piece of dead wood at the face of the angry creature below them.Instantly the great bony hood over the neck was erected and a mad bellow rolled upward from the gigantic body.Full twenty feet at the shoulder the thing stood, a dirty slate-blue in color except for its yellow face with the blue bands encircling the eyes, the red hood with the yellow lining and the yellow belly.The three parallel lines of bony protuberances down the back gave a further touch of color to the body, those following the line of the spine being red, while those on either side are yellow.The five- and three-toed hoofs of the ancient horned dinosaurs had become talons in the gryf, but the three horns, two large ones above the eyes and a median horn on the nose, had persisted through all the ages.Weird and terrible as was its appearance Tarzan could not but admire the mighty creature looming big below him, its seventy-five feet of length majestically typifying those things which all his life the ape-man had admired--courage and strength.In that massive tail alone was the strength of an elephant.

The wicked little eyes looked up at him and the horny beak opened to disclose a full set of powerful teeth.

"Herbivorous!" murmured the ape-man."Your ancestors may have been, but not you," and then to Pan-at-lee: "Let us go now.At the cave we will have deer meat and then--back to Kor-ul-ja and Om-at."

The girl shuddered."Go?" she repeated."We will never go from here."

"Why not?" asked Tarzan.

For answer she but pointed to the gryf.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the man."It cannot climb.We can reach the cliff through the trees and be back in the cave before it knows what has become of us."

"You do not know the gryf," replied Pan-at-lee gloomily.

"Wherever we go it will follow and always it will be ready at the foot of each tree when we would descend.It will never give us up."

"We can live in the trees for a long time if necessary," replied Tarzan, "and sometime the thing will leave."

The girl shook her head."Never," she said, "and then there are the Tor-o-don.They will come and kill us and after eating a little will throw the balance to the gryf--the gryf and Tor-o-don are friends, because the Tor-o-don shares his food with the gryf."

"You may be right," said Tarzan; "but even so I don't intend waiting here for someone to come along and eat part of me and then feed the balance to that beast below.If I don't get out of this place whole it won't be my fault.Come along now and we'll make a try at it," and so saying he moved off through the tree tops with Pan-at-lee close behind.Below them, on the ground, moved the horned dinosaur and when they reached the edge of the forest where there lay fifty yards of open ground to cross to the foot of the cliff he was there with them, at the bottom of the tree, waiting.

Tarzan looked ruefully down and scratched his head.