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Looking up, we could see them waving their arms from the rocks
above and beckoning to us to join them in their refuge. We had
both seized our magazine rifles and ran out to see what the
danger could be. Suddenly from the near belt of trees there
broke forth a group of twelve or fifteen Indians, running for
their lives, and at their very heels two of those frightful
monsters which had disturbed our camp and pursued me upon my
solitary journey. In shape they were like horrible toads, and
moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an
incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never
before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal
animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been.
We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty
skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight
struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved.
We had little time to watch them, however, for in an instant they
had overtaken the fugitives and were making a dire slaughter
among them. Their method was to fall forward with their full
weight upon each in turn, leaving him crushed and mangled, to
bound on after the others. The wretched Indians screamed with
terror, but were helpless, run as they would, before the
relentless purpose and horrible activity of these monstrous creatures.
One after another they went down, and there were not half-a-dozen
surviving by the time my companion and I could come to their help.
But our aid was of little avail and only involved us in the same peril.
At the range of a couple of hundred yards we emptied our magazines,
firing bullet after bullet into the beasts, but with no more effect
than if we were pelting them with pellets of paper. Their slow
reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springs of
their lives, with no special brain center but scattered throughout
their spinal cords, could not be tapped by any modern weapons.
The most that we could do was to check their progress by
distracting their attention with the flash and roar of our guns,
and so to give both the natives and ourselves time to reach the
steps which led to safety. But where the conical explosive
bullets of the twentieth century were of no avail, the poisoned
arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice of strophanthus and
steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed. Such arrows
were of little avail to the hunter who attacked the beast, because
their action in that torpid circulation was slow, and before its
powers failed it could certainly overtake and slay its assailant.
But now, as the two monsters hounded us to the very foot of the
stairs, a drift of darts came whistling from every chink in the
cliff above them. In a minute they were feathered with them,
and yet with no sign of pain they clawed and slobbered with
impotent rage at the steps which would lead them to their victims,
mounting clumsily up for a few yards and then sliding down again
to the ground. But at last the poison worked. One of them gave
a deep rumbling groan and dropped his huge squat head on to the earth.
The other bounded round in an eccentric circle with shrill, wailing
cries, and then lying down writhed in agony for some minutes before
it also stiffened and lay still. With yells of triumph the Indians
came flocking down from their caves and danced a frenzied dance
of victory round the dead bodies, in mad joy that two more of the
most dangerous of all their enemies had been slain. That night
they cut up and removed the bodies, not to eat--for the poison
was still active--but lest they should breed a pestilence.
The great reptilian hearts, however, each as large as a cushion,
still lay there, beating slowly and steadily, with a gentle rise
and fall, in horrible independent life. It was only upon the third
day that the ganglia ran down and the dreadful things were still.
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