protecting her then. Accustomed as he was to dangerous
situations, he felt no fear. He felt only a great tenderness for the
girl by his side, who had ceased trembling but was still staring
wide-eyed at the monster through a crevice.

"Scared, Peggy?" he whispered.

"Not now, Martin, but if you weren't here I would die of fright."

At this reply his arm tightened involuntarily, but he forced it to
relax.

"It will not be long," he promised himself silently, "until she is back
at home among her friends, and then...."

There came the crack of a rifle from the Skylark. There was an awful
roar from the dinosaur, which was quickly silenced by a stream of
machine-gun bullets.

"Blackie's on the job--let's go!" cried Seaton, and they raced up the
slope. Making a detour to avoid the writhing and mutilated mass they
plunged through the opening door. DuQuesne shut it behind them and in
overwhelming relief, the adventurers huddled together as from the
wilderness without there arose an appalling tumult.

* * * * *

The scene, so quiet a few moments before, was instantly changed. The
trees, the swamp, and the air seemed filled with monsters so hideous as
to stagger the imagination. Winged lizards of prodigious size hurtled
through the air, plunging to death against the armored hull.
Indescribable flying monsters, with feathers like birds, but with the
fangs of tigers, attacked viciously. Dorothy screamed and started back
as a scorpion-like thing with a body ten feet in length leaped at the
window in front of her, its terrible sting spraying the glass with
venom. As it fell to the ground, a huge spider--if an eight-legged
creature with spines instead of hair, many-faceted eyes, and a bloated,
globular body weighing hundreds of pounds, may be called a
spider--leaped upon it and, mighty mandibles against poisonous sting,
the furious battle raged. Several twelve-foot cockroaches climbed nimbly
across the fallen timber of the morass and began feeding voraciously
upon the body of the dead dinosaur, only to be driven away by another
animal, which all three men recognized instantly as that king of all
prehistoric creatures, the saber-toothed tiger. This newcomer, a tawny
beast towering fifteen feet high at the shoulder, had a mouth
disproportionate even to his great size--a mouth armed with four great
tiger-teeth more than three feet in length. He had barely begun his
meal, however, when he was challe