n, he saw again the high ground where they had stood. There
was more rock there on the volcanic slope: the growing things were in
clumps--islands, rather than continents of rank growth.

"We must go back," he told Winslow, "and climb while we can. Get to
the high ground, take bearings on the place where we left the ship.
We'll look over the ground and figure some way to get there."

Winslow nodded. He was plainly bewildered, lost in the new jungle. He
followed Jerry, who bounded across a crevice in the earth. The ground
was rotten with the honeycomb of caves and cracks.

Jerry forced his way through and over a rock heap, where the thick
trunks of nightmare trees were spaced farther apart. There was an
opening ahead; he started forward, then stopped abruptly and motioned
the other to silence.

* * * * *

From beyond there came sounds. There was rending of soft, pliant
tissue. The sound came through the thin air from a grove up ahead,
where big plants were waving, though the wind had long since ceased.
To their ears came a snoring, blubbering snuffle. A stone was
dislodged, to come bounding toward them from the hillside; the soft
plants were flattened before it. The men cowered in the shelter of a
giant fungus.

Beyond the rocks, above the mottled reds and yellows of the grotesque
trees, a head appeared. It waved at the end of a long, leathery neck.
All mouth, it seemed to the watchers, as they saw a pair of short
forelegs pull the succulent tops of the giant growth into a capacious
maw. Below, there was visible a part of a gigantic, grayish body. It
was crashing down toward them, eating greedily as it came.

"Back," said Jerry softly. "Go back to that cave. We will hide there
in some crack in the ground."

They picked their way noiselessly over the rocks. The cave they had
crossed offered a refuge from the beast. It went slantingly down into
the ground, a great tunnel, deep in the rock. They dropped into the
opening and started forward, only to recoil at the fetid stench that
assailed their nostrils.

"A bear pit," gasped Jerry. "Great Heavens! What a smell!"

They stopped, dismayed. Far below them in the bowels of some
subterranean passage was the crashing of loose stone; a scrambling and
scratching of great claws came echoing to them. They leaped madly for
the outer air.

"Over here," Jerry directed, and led the way, crouching, to the
concealment of great stalks and vine-cov