“May be a tribal war,” suggested Mr. Chadwick.
“Maybe. But hark, what in the ‘Tarnal is that?”
Upon the wind there came, loud above the Indians’ shrieks and cries, a long-drawn noise like a yapping bark.
He had hardly spoken before through the woods, a short distance below them, a number of Indians burst upon the river bank. They piled into some canoes that the adventurers had not perceived hitherto but which had been lying on the bank. Entering them they paddled off down the stream in mad haste, as if in mortal fear of whatever was pursuing them.
The party were still watching them when again that queer bark resounded, and from the forest, at just the point where the canoes had lain, there burst an enormous animal, the like of which none of them had ever beheld.
[Illustration: At the same instant, Jack’s rifle cracked.—_Page 297._]
It was larger than a big cow and ran with a queer, romping sort of gait, suggestive of a rocking horse. Its head was flat and hideous. Its color a dirty brownish white. A more repulsive looking creature could hardly be imagined.
As his eyes fell on it, the professor gave a gasp. He shook from head to foot as if he had been suddenly taken with a fit of the ague.
“Mein Gott in Himmel!” he gasped, and there was no irreverence in his tone, “Der Megatherium!”
At the same instant, Jack’s rifle cracked. The creature gave a loud, terribly human scream and swung toward them. Tom’s rifle barked and with a crash the huge animal sank down in a heap on the river bank. They rushed pell-mell upon it. The professor was yelling like a wild man. The others were hardly less excited.
“Be careful,” warned Mr. Chadwick, as they approached, but the animal was quite dead.
It lay on its side with its legs outstretched. On its feet were large curved claws and its hair was as rough and coarse as that of the small sloth they had shot some days before. As they stood by it, gazing with a wonder in which there was something reverential at this survivor of the age of the mammoth, the professor spoke.
“Chentlemen, ve are der only living beings besides de savages dot haf efer seen such a sighdt. Poys! Der contracdt is ge-fulfilled!”
“Mumping mammoths of Mauretania, I’ll take a picture!” shouted Dick Donovan by a happy inspiration. And there, by the side of that lonely river, was taken the photo that has since been reproduced in countless periodicals throughout the world.