he monster began to
feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.

Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.
"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's
the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,
we'd better be going at once--"

"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the
thing heard your voice!"

The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in
the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it
expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough--and started
directly for their tree.

"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.

* * * * *

Moving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got
to their overhanging branch before they could pull the triggers. Both
shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long
neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with
cataclysmic rapidity.

Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,
with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust
its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which
its two puny destroyers were clinging.

With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death
agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch
itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.

There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to
cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their
only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body--and, with a
last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!

The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the
bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.
The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,
helpless without their guns....

"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.
Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no
night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."

* * * * *

He started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.
Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled
trail toward their shell.

They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing
of unde