The Lost Warship Part 20

Dimly, in the distance, he heard the beginning thunder of sound. It was something like the vague roar of a starting avalanche, a rumble, a mutter, a dim murmur growing louder. The smoke was too thick for him to see what was happening.

The murmur grew in volume. It became as loud as the roar of a tornado.

The Ogrum stared toward it, trying to understand what it was. They were getting nervous, now. A few of them had started to run.

Something came through the smoke. It came in a lumbering gallop, a huge and terribly frightened beast. It saw the fires in front of it.

Screaming it tried to turn back. The pressure of the horde behind carried it along.

A confused ma.s.s of dark bodies poured into the city. There were hundreds of them, thousands of them. Scared to the point of madness their one thought was how to escape. The smallest of them weighed more than two tons.

Craig, fighting against the effect of the gas, sobbed in sudden relief.

"Michaelson," he whispered. "You got there in time. You did it! You did it--"

Phase four of the attack plan had come into operation. Phase four called for Guru and the scientist to go around the edges of the vast swamp and set it on fire. Part of the swamp foliage would not burn under any circ.u.mstances. But great areas of dry reeds would burn like tinder.

The dinosaurs would run from the fires. The blazes would be set so the great monsters would have to flee toward the city. At the proper moment, the wall the Ogrum had built to keep them from the city would be blown up.

The dinosaurs would stampede across the city.

Craig remembered reading of the stampede of the long-horn cattle in the early days of the American west. Thousands of cattle, running madly, shook the earth with the thunder of their hooves, destroyed everything that stood in their way.

Not cattle, but dinosaurs, were stampeding across the city of the Ogrum.

Too late, the Ogrum saw them coming. They tried to run. The great beasts trampled them into muck. Huts, struck by the maddened animals, flew to pieces. Many of them, blinded, not knowing where they were going, ran into the temple. The great building shuddered at each impact. Voronoff, caught somewhere in that wild stampede, must have known too late that he had deserted too soon, before he knew the complete plan of attack.

Either he did not know of phase four or the Ogrum had not believed him when he told them about it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The great beast trampled them into the muck]

For hours, it seemed to Craig, the screams of the Ogrum echoed through the city. The screams were drowned in the earth-shaking thunder of the stampede. The herd of dinosaurs crossed the city, turned and swept along the edge of the bay. By the time the last of them had pa.s.sed through, the only building left standing in the whole area was the temple.

Everything else had been smashed flat. Smouldering fires were rising again in the wreckage of the huts. What the dinosaurs had started, fires would finish.

When the last of the beasts had gone, Michaelson, his squad of sailors, and Guru came hurrying through the darkness. Guru was accompanied by dozens of his people, hastily recruited for the task of firing the swamp. Craig yelled at them.

"Come up here and stand guard!" he shouted. "I'm going to take a nap."

CHAPTER VIII

The End of Adventure

Craig stood at the rail of the ship.

The sun was setting and the long shadows of dusk reached across the world. Michaelson stood beside Craig. As usual, the scientist was excited.

"The Ogrum presented a strange case of warped development," he said. "Do you know what they were?"

"Devils," Craig grunted. He was not much interested in what the scientist was saying.

"Chemists!" Michaelson said triumphantly. "Through some freak, nature developed a type of life that had the mentality to become excellent chemists but with little or no ability in any other line. The acid they used on the Idaho, the gas they had developed, everything points to the conclusion that they were chemists. From what was left of their hangar, their planes were made of plastics--not a piece of metal in them. Even the ruined motors looked as though they were made of plastics. The Ogrum knew nothing of the wheel, the arch, or of architecture, yet they were almost perfect chemists."

The scientist sounded very pleased with himself for having made this discovery. "If you had not destroyed their temple, we might have found out more about them," he said accusingly.

On the dawn of the next day the systematic destruction of the entire city had been carried out. Hundreds of grenades had been planted in the temple and it had been demolished.

"Survival," Craig said. "We've got to live in this world and it's not big enough to hold us and the Ogrum. Certainly I destroyed their city.

Some of them probably managed to escape alive. I'm not going to leave any rat's nest where they can get together again."

"Well, you were right about it," the scientist said. "The only thing is, I would have liked to know more about them."

"I know enough about them to last me a life-time," Craig said bitterly.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo." The last was spoken to the girl who had emerged from below and had come to the rail.

"Good evening," she answered. She said nothing more but stood at the rail and stared into the gathering dusk. Craig was silent too.

"I should have liked to know how they worked those silent plane motors,"

Michaelson said.

"Huh? What did you say?" Craig asked.

"You weren't listening," the scientist accused. He adjusted his gla.s.ses and looked along the rail to where Margy Sharp was standing. "Ah. I see," he said.

"You see what?" Craig challenged, grinning.

"I see that my presence not only is no longer necessary but is not wanted." The scientist smiled and walked away.

Dusk came down. Craig was never quite sure how it happened but somehow he and the girl found themselves closer together. "Margy," he said, "about the water, in the life-boat--"

"Oh, that," the girl said. "If you're worried about that, I've been talking to Mrs. Miller. She was awake most of the night the water disappeared. She says she isn't certain but she thought she saw somebody crawl forward and help himself while you were asleep."

Craig sighed. All the time he had known he hadn't taken the water. The important thing was for Margy to know it.

"Look," said Craig, gesturing toward the sh.o.r.e-line, "out there is a new world, new lands, new places, all waiting to be explored. It's all ours, every foot of it, to be explored--"

"Ours?" the girl questioned, and her voice was very low.

"Yes," Craig said. "What I mean is--Margy--Well, you once said we were two of a kind--and--"

"I think," the girl said calmly, "that Captain Higgins has the authority to make us _one_ of a kind, if that is what you are trying to say."

"That," Craig shouted, "is exactly what I am trying to say."