In Search of the Unknown Part 43

"'I know,' I muttered. 'I must run back for the rifle.'

"'And--and leave me?'

"I took her by the hand, and we dragged ourselves through the wire-gra.s.s to the open end of a boiler lying in the sand.

"She crept in on her hands and knees, and called to me to follow.

"'You are safe now,' I cried. 'I must go back for the rifle.'

"'The birds may--may attack you.'

"'If they do I can get into one of the other boilers,' I said. 'Daisy, you must not venture out until I come back. You won't, will you?'

"'No-o,' she whispered, doubtfully.

"'Then--good-bye.'

"'Good-bye,' she answered, but her voice was very small and still.

"'Good-bye,' I said again. I was kneeling at the mouth of the big iron tunnel; it was dark inside and I could not see her, but, before I was conscious of it, her arms were around my neck and we had kissed each other.

"I don't remember how I went away. When I came to my proper senses I was swimming along the coast at full speed, and over my head wheeled one of the birds, screaming at every turn.

"The intoxication of that innocent embrace, the close impress of her arms around my neck, gave me a strength and recklessness that neither fear nor fatigue could subdue. The bird above me did not even frighten me. I watched it over my shoulder, swimming strongly, with the tide now aiding me, now stemming my course; but I saw the sh.o.r.e pa.s.sing quickly, and my strength increased, and I shouted when I came in sight of the house, and scrambled up on the sand, dripping and excited.

There was n.o.body in sight, and I gave a last glance up into the air where the bird wheeled, still screeching, and hastened into the house.

Freda stared at me in amazement as I seized the rifle and shouted for the professor.

"'He has just gone to town, with Captain McPeek in his wagon,'

stammered Freda.

"'What!' I cried. 'Does he know where his daughter is?'

"'Miss Holroyd is asleep--not?' gasped Freda.

"'Where's Frisby?' I cried, impatiently.

"'Yimmie?' quavered Freda.

"'Yes, Jimmie; isn't there anybody here? Good Heavens! where's that man in the shop?'

"'He also iss gone,' said Freda, shedding tears, 'to buy papier-mache.

Yimmie, he iss gone to post bills.'

"I waited to hear no more, but swung my rifle over my shoulder, and, hanging the cartridge-belt across my chest, hurried out and up the beach. The bird was not in sight.

"I had been running for perhaps a minute when, far up on the dunes, I saw a yellow dog rush madly through a clump of sweet-bay, and at the same moment a bird soared past, rose, and hung hovering just above the thicket. Suddenly the bird swooped; there was a shriek and a yelp from the cur, but the bird gripped it in one claw and beat its wings upon the sand, striving to rise. Then I saw Frisby--paste, bucket, and brush raised--fall upon the bird, yelling l.u.s.tily. The fierce creature relaxed its talons, and the dog rushed on, squeaking with terror. The bird turned on Frisby and sent him sprawling on his face, a sticky ma.s.s of paste and sand. But this did not end the struggle. The bird, croaking horridly, flew at the prostrate bill-poster, and the sand whirled into a pillar above its terrible wings. Scarcely knowing what I was about, I raised my rifle and fired twice. A scream echoed each shot, and the bird rose heavily in a shower of sand; but two bullets were embedded in that ma.s.s of foul feathers, and I saw the wires and scarlet tape uncoiling on the sand at my feet. In an instant I seized them and pa.s.sed the ends around a cedar-tree, hooking the clasps tight. Then I cast one swift glance upward, where the bird wheeled, screeching, anch.o.r.ed like a kite to the pallium wires; and I hurried on across the dunes, the sh.e.l.ls cutting my feet and the bushes tearing my wet swimming-suit, until I dripped with blood from shoulder to ankle. Out in the ocean the carca.s.s of the thermosaurus floated, claws outspread, belly glistening in the gray light, and over him circled two birds. As I reached the shelter I knelt and fired into the ma.s.s of scales, and at my first shot a horrible thing occurred--the lizard-like head writhed, the slitted yellow eyes sliding open from the film that covered them. A shudder pa.s.sed across the undulating body, the great scaled belly heaved, and one leg feebly clawed at the air.

"The thing was still alive!

"Crushing back the horror that almost paralyzed my hands, I planted shot after shot into the quivering reptile, while it writhed and clawed, striving to turn over and dive; and at each shot the black blood spurted in long, slim jets across the water. And now Daisy was at my side, pale and determined, swiftly clasping each tape-marked wire to the iron rings in the circle around us. Twice I filled the magazine from my belt, and twice I poured streams of steel-tipped bullets into the scaled ma.s.s, twisting and shuddering on the sea.

Suddenly the birds steered towards us. I felt the wind from their vast wings. I saw the feathers erect, vibrating. I saw the spread claws outstretched, and I struck furiously at them, crying to Daisy to run into the iron shelter. Backing, swinging my clubbed rifle, I retreated, but I tripped across one of the taut pallium wires, and in an instant the hideous birds were on me, and the bone in my forearm snapped like a pipe-stem at a blow from their wings. Twice I struggled to my knees, blinded with blood, confused, almost fainting; then I fell again, rolling into the mouth of the iron boiler.

"When I struggled back to consciousness Daisy knelt silently beside me, while Captain McPeek and Professor Holroyd bound up my shattered arm, talking excitedly. The pain made me faint and dizzy. I tried to speak and could not. At last they got me to my feet and into the wagon, and Daisy came, too, and crouched beside me, wrapped in oilskins to her eyes. Fatigue, lack of food, and excitement had combined with wounds and broken bones to extinguish the last atom of strength in my body; but my mind was clear enough to understand that the trouble was over and the thermosaurus safe.

"I heard McPeek say that one of the birds that I had anch.o.r.ed to a cedar-tree had torn loose from the bullets and had winged its way heavily out to sea. The professor answered: 'Yes, the ekaf-bird; the others were ool-ylliks. I'd have given my right arm to have secured them.' Then for a time I heard no more; but the jolting of the wagon over the dunes roused me to keenest pain, and I held out my right hand to Daisy. She clasped it in both of hers, and kissed it again and again.

"There is little more to add, I think. Professor Bruce Stoddard's scientific pamphlet will be published soon, to be followed by Professor Holroyd's sixteen volumes. In a few days the stuffed and mounted thermosaurus will be placed on free public exhibition in the arena of Madison Square Garden, the only building in the city large enough to contain the body of this immense winged reptile."

The young man hesitated, looking long and earnestly at Miss Barrison.

"Did you marry her?" she asked, softly.

"You wouldn't believe it," said the young man, earnestly--"you wouldn't believe it, after all that happened, if I should tell you that she married Professor Bruce Stoddard, of Columbia--would you?"

"Yes, I would," said Miss Barrison. "You never can tell what a girl will do."

"That story of yours," I said, "is to me the most wonderful and valuable contribution to nature study that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. You are fitted to write; it is your sacred mission to produce. Are you going to?"

"I am writing," said the young man, quietly, "a nature book. Sir Peter Grebe's magnificent monograph on the speckled t.i.tmouse inspired me.

But nature study is not what I have chosen as my life's mission."

He looked dreamily across at Miss Barrison. "No, not natural phenomena," he repeated, "but unnatural phenomena. What Professor Hyssop has done for Columbia, I shall attempt to do for Harvard. In fact, I have already accepted the chair of Psychical Phenomena at Cambridge."

I gazed upon him with intense respect.

"A personal experience revealed to me my life's work," he, went on, thoughtfully stroking his blond mustache. "If Miss Barrison would care to hear it--"

"Please tell it," she said, sweetly.

"I shall have to relate it clothed in that artificial garb known as literary style," he explained, deprecatingly.

"It doesn't matter," I said, "I never noticed any style at all in your story of the thermosaurus."

He smiled gratefully, and pa.s.sed his hand over his face; a far-away expression came into his eyes, and he slowly began, hesitating, as though talking to himself:

XXII

"It was high noon in the city of Antwerp. From slender steeples floated the mellow music of the Flemish bells, and in the spire of the great cathedral across the square the cracked chimes clashed discords until my ears ached.