Chapter 2


When bradley went on guard at midnight, September 14th, his
thoughts were largely occupied with rejoicing that the night
was almost spent without serious mishap and that the morrow
would doubtless see them all safely returned to Fort Dinosaur.
The hopefulness of his mood was tinged with sorrow by recollection
of the two members of his party who lay back there in the savage
wilderness and for whom there would never again be a homecoming.

No premonition of impending ill cast gloom over his anticipations
for the coming day, for Bradley was a man who, while taking every
precaution against possible danger, permitted no gloomy
forebodings to weigh down his spirit. When danger threatened, he
was prepared; but he was not forever courting disaster, and so it
was that when about one o'clock in the morning of the fifteenth,
he heard the dismal flapping of giant wings overhead, he was
neither surprised nor frightened but idly prepared for an attack
he had known might reasonably be expected.

The sound seemed to come from the south, and presently, low above
the trees in that direction, the man made out a dim, shadowy form
circling slowly about. Bradley was a brave man, yet so keen was
the feeling of revulsion engendered by the sight and sound of
that grim, uncanny shape that he distinctly felt the gooseflesh
rise over the surface of his body, and it was with difficulty
that he refrained from following an instinctive urge to fire upon