Doc felt surprise. Bittman had turned into a craven coward! But this direful world in which they found themselves was enough to reduce the valor of even the bravest.

Johnny, Long Tom and Ham were with Monk. They, too, were pale. But the light of a magnificent courage glowed in their eyes. They were enthralled. They lived for adventure and excitement — and it was upon them in quantities undreamed of.

"Where’s Renny?" Doc’s tone was so low the odious tyrannosaurus, still prowling about, did not hear.

Renny was not present!

Doc’s shout pealed out like a great bell. "Renny! Renny!"

That drew the giant reptile. With frantic dodging, they evaded it.

But there came no answer from Renny!

"That — that cross between a crocodile, the Empire State Building and a kangaroo, must have got him!" Monk muttered in horror.

"A terrible fate!" gulped Johnny, the geologist. "The tyrannosaurus is generally believed to be the most destructive killing machine ever created by nature! To think that I should live to see the things in flesh and blood!"

"If you wanta live to tell about it, we gotta get away from the thing!" Monk declared. "How’ll we do it, Doc?"

"See if we cannot leave the vicinity silently," Doc suggested.

AN attempt to do this, however, nearly proved disastrous. The monster tyrannosaurus seemed to have very sensitive ears. Too, it could see them for a distance of many yards, now that the steam had nearly dissipated. It rushed them.

Doc, to save the lives of his friends, took the awful risk of decoying the reptile away while the others fled. Only the power and agility of his mighty bronze body saved him, for once he had to dodge between the very legs of the monster, evading by a remarkable spring snapping, foul, fetid teeth that were nearly as long as a man’s arm.

Gliding under a canopy of overlapping ferns, Doc evaded the bloodthirsty reptile.

Darkness was descending swiftly, for the steam above the pit, although it let through sunlight, kept out the moonbeams and made the period of twilight almost nonexistent.

While the days within the crater were probably as light as a cloudy day in the outside world, the nights were things of incredible blackness.

Doc found his companions in the thickening murk.

"We’d better take a page out of the life of Monk’s ancestors and climb a tree for the night!" suggested Ham.

"Yeah!" growled Monk, goaded by the insult. "Yeah!" He apparently couldn’t think of anything else to say.

"We can tackle that tree fern!" Doc declared, pointing.

The tree fern in question was on the order of a palm tree, but with fronds all the way up. In height, it exceeded by far the tallest of ordinary palms. Doc and his men climbed this.

"Remarkable!" Johnny murmured. "Although this species is closely related to fern growths found in fossilized state in certain parts of the world, it is much larger than anything — "

"You must consider the fact that this crater is merely a spot left behind in the march of time," Doc interposed. "Some changes are bound to have taken place in the countless ages, however. And after all, science has but scratched the surface in ascertaining the nature of prehistoric fauna and flora. We may; indeed, we surely should, find many species undreamed of hitherto — "

"How we gonna sleep up here without fallin’ off?" Monk wanted to know.

"Sleep!" jeered Ham. "If you ask me, there won’t be much sleep tonight. Listen!"

In a distant part of the crater, another ferocious fight between reptilian monsters was in progress. Although the sound was borne to them muffled, it had a fearsome quality that brought a cold sweat to each man.

"What an awful place!" Oliver Wording Bittman whimpered. Terror had literally frozen the taxidermist to the limb to which he clung.

IT was a ghastly night they spent. No sooner did one titanic struggle of dinosaurs subside, than another arose. Often more than one noisy, blood-curdling fight was in progress at the same moment.

Vast bodies sloughed through the dense plant growth, some going with great hops as had the tyrannosaurus, others traveling on all fours.

Sleep was out of the question. Doc and his friends felt safe in their fern top — until some monstrous dinosaur came along and browsed off the crest of a fern which they could tell by the sound was nearly as tall as their perch. After this, throughout the night, they rested in momentary expectation of meeting disaster.

But, had they been in perfect safety, they would not have slept. Slumber was unthinkable. There was too much to hear. For they were wayfarers in another world!

They might as well have stepped back in time a thousand ages!

Daylight returned as suddenly as it had departed. With the appearance of the sun, a heavy rain fell, a tropical downpour that lasted only a few minutes. But as the water hit the red-hot surface of the mud lake up on the crater side, tremendous clouds of steam rolled.

The day was about as bright as a very cloudy winter afternoon in New York City, due to the "steam" clouds always above the crater.

It was at once evident that the ferocious dinosaurs preferred to prowl at night. For with dawn, the hideous bloodshed within the crater subsided to a marked degree.

Doc at once led his friends — with the exception of the whimpering Oliver Wording Bittman, who would not desert his perch in the fern tree — to see what had happened to Renny.

They found Renny’s collapsed parachute at last. The spot where it lay was some hundreds of yards from the nearest giant fern which would offer safety to a man.

Monk had been making himself a cigarette. But at sight of what lay near Renny’s parachute, his big and hairy hands froze, can of tobacco in one, papers in the other.

For all about Renny’s ‘chute was torn and ripped turf. And blood! Amid the gore lay Renny’s hat.

It looked like a dinosaur had devoured Renny!

"Maybe — he got away?" Long Tom mumbled hopefully. But Doc, after a quick circle of the spot, replied: "There is no human trail away from this place! I’m sure of that! The soft earth would take the prints. Renny never walked away from here!"

Monk slowly stuffed the tobacco can in a pocket. He had no appetite for a smoke now.

A reverent, sorrowful silence prevailed, dedicated to the memory of Renny.

This was broken in a frightful fashion.

"Over there!" Ham’s voice cracked. "What — "

They looked, as one man, at first hoping Ham had sighted Renny. But it was not that.

OUT of the unhealthy rank jungle growth had come an amazing animal. In appearance, the thing was a conglomerate of weasel, cat, dog and bear. It was remarkable because it seemed a combination of most animals known to the twentieth century world.

But it was approximately the size of a very large elephant!

Monk gulped, "What the — "

"A creodont!" breathed Johnny, awed. "The ancestor of a great many of our modern animals!"

"Yeah?" muttered Monk. "Well, from right now on, you don’t catch me out of jumping distance of a tree!"

These words brought home to the others the shocking fact that they were helpless before the nondescript but fierce creodont. This animal could not be dodged as they had evaded the tyrannosaurus. It could turn too quickly! And its jaws were full of great teeth; its claws long and sharp. And no safety lay within reach!

The creodont abruptly charged!

Their guns cracked. But the gigantic animal came on as fast as ever. The thing had its head low — they could not locate its small eyes for an effective target.

The men spread apart. But that could help but little. The monstrous creodont would lay about among them, crushing and mangling. They could not hope to outrun it!