I’ve caught a unicorn!
A warm and steaming mist hung with a dull purple haze over a landscape that seemed familiar, though the boy knew that his eyes had never seen it before. Huge monkey-puzzles thrust their spiny arms into the heavy air, ferns a hundred feet high swayed their livid green tracery against the lowering sky, and here and there a leafless pillar twenty feet in height showed where still remained a struggling horsetail of the weird forests of the age before. Over all hung the red ball of the sun, unable to pierce the low-hung curling wreaths of mist which held the landscape like a bowl.
The glow of the half-obscured sun shone dully on the quaking bog and deepened the shadows of huge black forms, monstrous and menacing, which seemed to be sprawling in the ebon water. To these, there was no shape, although their gross inertness breathed of life. In the distance there was a stir, and Perry, gripping his knees hard upon the Thing he rode, cried aloud in the somber stillness —
“What moved!”
No sound answered. Silence held that flowerless[Pg 44] world like a vise, that world that had never heard the song of a bird, but a rumbling vibration in the distance seemed to the boy like some vast leviathan stirring in its sleep. Sure was he that he saw one of those sprawling shapes — which, near by, seemed like stone — heave itself upward and sway a monstrous neck. Straight in his path, one of the murky masses lay, huge as though the earth had spawned a creature vaster than a whale. In panic, Perry forced the Thing that carried him to swerve to the left. As he raced by, the boy forced himself to look at the sprawling bulk. Shapeless and moveless as a block of stone it lay. But when, a second later, some impulse moved the lad to turn his head back to look again, the seeming stone had lurched itself across his path as though to bar any returning way.
With a shiver, the boy’s glance turned to the creature that he rode. Its horse-like head and short, coarse mane gave a clue that its light limbs and four spreading toes seemed to deny.
He was nearly thrown to the ground as the Thing shied, then reared, nearly on its haunches. And Perry, looking to see the cause of fear, distinctly saw a quiver run over another monstrous mass immediately before him, like the rippling[Pg 45] muscles on the back of a black panther about to spring. He drove his heels into his steed.
“They’re waking,” he cried hoarsely. “I’ve only got until the sun goes down!”
Through the humid swamp, spotted with its foul giant brood, that moved, yet never seemed to move, he rode, panic knocking at his ribs. The sinking sun bore down with it his hopes, and as the shadows grew more slanting, the sense of silent life around him grew more threatening. A breeze with a tang of cold in it swept over the swamp and the grip of danger tightened. Now, in the distance, the masses could be seen to drag their slow length along, but near at hand, all was still.
“They’re only waiting,” he thought, “waiting for the dusk.”
From under a huge flat block that bore a fair resemblance to a giant tortoise-shell, a wicked head with lidless green eyes and a turtle beak darted out.
The animal he bestrode leaped as though a snake had struck. And, with the leap came a new thing. Even as the boy watched, the rough mane dwindled and a smooth red-brown coat glinted in the darkening sun. The neck grew longer and more pliant and the swift lumbering gallop gave place to the[Pg 46] leaping bounds of some creature that man had never ridden before. Perry’s only thought was to go on — on — no matter what he rode, to go on — and out of that swamp where the monstrous reptiles were. But the strangeness of the marvel held him when he saw in the center of the forehead of the Thing, just in front of the ears, a gleam of white like a milk-tooth.
“It’s — it’s a horn,” he muttered.
The sun touched the rim of the horizon. At the same instant, with a sucking sound, the vast bulk of a Diplodocus squirmed up from the slough and poised its ungainly head, as though to see. A leaping Compsognathus loomed black against the sky. Noiseless, but menacing, a winged Pteranodon, twenty-one feet from tip to tip of wing, soared heavily above him. A pigmy in a world of giant monsters, the boy raced on, speeding from — he knew not what, to — he knew not whither.
The sense of terror from the monstrous brood became more keen as a closer peril grew. His knees ached almost beyond endurance from the strain of trying to keep his seat, for no horsemanship could avail upon such a steed as that which he was riding. The long jerking leaps, though they covered ground amazingly, seemed to drag[Pg 47] him inside out at every stride. The red-brown neck stretched far ahead, and gleaming in the dull-red dusk jutted the single horn, spirally twisted like a kudu’s and lengthening even as he looked at it.
Suddenly, without an instant’s warning, the beast threw back his head. The gleaming horn jerked to within a few inches of the boy. The lad paled.
“Next time — ” he said.
What could he do next time?
Without pausing, the Thing sped on, racing like the wind over a mountainless world, so that Perry did not dare throw himself off its back. Lower sank the sun, till only one-half of its orb was seen, its beams lying level over the plain that saw never a hill over its thousand miles of length. Worst of all, instead of the kinship between steed and rider that gives strength in the most desperate pursuit, he felt the malevolence of the evil thing he bestrode, and tried to brace his nerve against an attack from his sole means of escape from this browsing ground of swollen reptiles.
He had not long to wait. In mid-leap, the creature checked its speed, plunging stiff-legged, at the same time tossed back its now long and[Pg 48] twisted horn to pierce him to the vitals. Tense for the spring, Perry thrust himself upwards from the knees, the sudden stoppage throwing him over the creature’s head. Well he knew that if he fell on the ground sharp hoof and sharper horn would pin him to the earth. He grabbed the horn as it slid under him, and clung to it like death.
In fury, the unicorn tossed him as a terrier does a rat. The boy felt his hold weakening, but he clung desperately. Sight and hearing failed him, yet he clutched blindly, till with a wrench the strained finger-clasp gave way and he found himself flying through the air. Fortune favored him. He landed on his feet, and though he staggered, he did not actually fall. The second’s recovery sufficed to clear his wits, and he dodged as the vicious creature lunged. Before him loomed the vast bulk of a Brontosaurus and behind this he ran, trusting for safety to the small brain and sluggish movements of the giant.
The ruse almost landed him into the jaws of the nose-horned lizard, the carnivorous Ceratosaurus, twenty feet in height, and he doubled back, actually under its fore-limbs, as its large head and formidable flesh-tearing teeth threatened the unicorn, which reared and refused the combat.[Pg 49] The moment’s respite as the monsters faced each other, gave Perry a chance to breathe.
“Where now?” he gasped, glancing round wildly for some place to hide.
But, in that flat expanse, with the araucarias and tree-ferns only a green blur in the distance, there was no cover. The unicorn saw him and charged again. Some strange instinct told him what to do. Again doubling around the huge dinosaur, the boy cast himself despairingly on the back of a creature browsing a few feet away.
“Up!” he yelled.
As though impelled by the terror in the boy’s voice, or by the still greater terror of sound in that silent world, the light-limbed Anchisaurus rose to its kangaroo-like attitude and began clumsily to run. Some twenty feet of start was gained before the unicorn caught sight of him and then the chase began. The Anchisaurus, more terrified even than the boy by this strange creature clinging to its neck, and driven on by the gleaming horn behind, leaped into full stride, covering ten feet at every step. If the gallop of the unicorn had been hard to bear, this swaying run was worse, for, as the Anchisaurus swung first one foot then the other, the neck and tail rolled to the opposite[Pg 50] side to maintain the creature’s balance. No cockle shell on a stormy sea ever tossed as did Perry on the Anchisaurus’ neck. But it was his only chance of safety from that gleaming horn behind, and tightly with arms and legs he gripped the creature’s neck above the shoulder.
The sun was nearly down, but a slight, a very slight rise in the ground gave firmer footing, both to unicorn and Anchisaurus, so the speed of both increased. Little by little the lumbering saurians began to grow fewer and at last were seen no more. In their place came spiny lizards, at first few in number, then more and more, huge and monstrous, until in the dim twilight and the silver glow of the rising moon, their threatening shapes seemed like a world of jagged rocks heaving as the billows of a tempest-whipped lake.
Then, as though determined to give battle to its strange pursuer, the Anchisaurus stopped, and Perry, fearing that his strange mount would find some swift accounting for his temerity, slipped off, again to face the unicorn.
There was no need.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Stegosaurus, the Super-Dreadnought of Old.
Huge armored monster of the reptile world, thirty-five feet long, as tall as a modern elephant to the top of the spines, protected by sharp horny plates against the attacks of flesh-eating giants.
Between him and the savage beast that had chased him for miles over the swamp stood an old battle-scarred Stegosaurus, fully twenty feet in [Pg 51]length, its spines jutting into the air far above the boy’s head. As he looked, the armored tail, with its jagged, horny plates, lashed out at the unicorn and felled it to the ground. The beast half tried to rise and lunged its horn, white in the moonlight, at the throat of its terrible foe. But no weapon could pierce that living fortress of defense and the horn slipped uselessly over the scales.
The head of the Stegosaurus — so tiny for so great a bulk of body — bent as though to smell the wounded creature that the blow of his tail had crushed, but, not being an eater of flesh, the huge living fortress turned scornfully away.
Injured, but not mortally, the unicorn half rose, when Perry, seizing his chance, drew from his belt his hunting-knife and slit the creature’s throat.
Then, placing one foot on the body of the animal, he cried aloud — the faded green book fluttering from his lap as he sprang up —
“I’ve caught a unicorn!”
Excerpt from The monster-hunters by Francis Rolt-Wheeler
