Only a few yards distant, the creodont reared and separated its great, frothing jaws. It sprang with a hideous snarl.

It looked like the end for Doc and his men — an end as terrible as they supposed Renny had suffered.

Chapter 17. RENNY, THE HUNTED

WHILE Doc and his friends faced the dangers of this weird place the first night, Renny, lost from the others, had difficulties of his own.

When Renny’s parachute lowered him to the spongy floor of the vast crater, he landed in the midst of such a scene as his wildest nightmares had never produced.

He dropped squarely into the fight which was heard from the air. This was a ferocious battle between the same tyrannosaurus which had pursued Doc and the others, and a three-horned rhinoceros of a monster.

Renny’s parachute spilled over the revolting face of the terrible tyrannosaurus. Renny instantly squirmed out of the ‘chute harness and dropped to the cushionlike earth.

The tyrannosaurus, pitching about like a tall house caught in a tornado, soon got the silken folds out of its face.

But Renny had no time to witness that. The other beast came thundering straight for Renny.

The iron-fisted engineer had inspected the pictures of a few of the genus triceratops in textbooks, and had gazed without particular interest at a skeleton of one as displayed in a great museum. Beyond that, his knowledge did not extend.

He recognized the thing as a triceratops, for Renny had an excellent memory. But he didn’t know it was a herb eater. He wouldn’t have believed that at the moment, anyway. The thing looked like it was bent on making a meal out of Renny.

The monster dinosaur came at him with all the noise and impressive size of a snorting locomotive. Renny didn’t have time to clutch for his gun. It was just as well. He could not have stopped the triceratops.

The huge reptile possessed three rhinoceroslike horns. Two jutted straight forward, one above each eye. These were fully as long as Renny’s by-no-means-short body. The third horn was much smaller, and set down on the nose, as though for rooting purposes.

The striking thing about the triceratops was the great bony hood extending back from the head. This natural armor protected the neck and fore part of the body.

The armor was marked with great, fresh gouges. The fearful tyrannosaurus had been engaged in slaying this armored, three-horned vegetation eater for supper. Only the armor had saved the triceratops.

The three-horned dinosaur was now fleeing madly for its life! But Renny had no way of knowing that. He happened to be directly in the path of the thing. There was no time for a leap sidewise.

"Only one chance!" Renny gritted — and sprang high into the air, flinging his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame directly between the two massive horns set over the dinosaur’s eyes.

Renny’s hands, each one a gallon of knuckles, clasped the horns. They clung tightly.

When the hulking beast ran straight forward, not even shaking its vast head, Renny merely hung on. The space between the horns was ample to accommodate him. The smaller lower horn furnished a footrest.

"If I get off, the thing will turn on me!" Renny reasoned — wrongly.

This particular dinosaur was a peace lover, despite its formidable looks. Its only idea now was to get away from the terrible tyrannosaurus. Such a small object as Renny clinging to its head bothered it not at all for the time being.

The steam was dissipating now, and Renny could take in his surroundings. His amazing steed had a bald skin. It reminded Renny of an elephant’s hide, although rougher and thicker. It was hard as sole leather to his touch.

"A bullet wouldn’t faze the thing!" he decided.

RENNY"S scant knowledge was sufficient to inform him the major portion of this creature’s brain probably lay in its spine. It was even likely the spinal cord served as a brain, a function not uncommon in the prehistoric members of the dinosaur tribe.

The stampeding beast wallowed through a small body of water without slackening pace. Renny was drenched. He noted the water was very warm, like piping hot coffee. It did not scald, though.

The breathing of Renny’s conveyance was becoming labored. The thing was short of wind. Renny began to have an unpleasant feeling it would soon stop. He wondered how he would dismount without meeting disaster.

The problem solved itself.

Blindly, as unvarying in its wild course as a bullet, the triceratops hit a great tangle of lianas and ferns and small coniferous trees. It gauged through by main strength.

Renny was left behind, hanging over a vine!

To this vine Renny clung for a time. He listened. The ground was about seven feet below. Renny didn’t know but what other predatory monsters might be about. He glanced up nervously, fearing sight of the gruesome, batlike flying reptiles.

Exploring, Renny found he still had his pistol-like machine gun.

"Wish I had a pocketful of hand grenades too!" he muttered. He dropped down from the liana and set out on the triceratops’s back trail. He found traveling difficult. Clinging creepers and packed ferns interfered.

Renny had penetrated the thick jungles of the upper Amazon. He had explored in rankest Africa. But he had never seen a jungle which approached this for denseness. Without the path the dinosaur had opened, Renny would have been baffled.

As it was, he had to be alert steadily, lest he stumble into the waist-deep tracks of the monster.

He soon noted the unusual character of the growth. Many of the trees were of a type he had never seen before. But others had a familiar look.

"The ones I don’t recognize became extinct ages ago," he concluded. "The others, more fitted to changing conditions in the outside world, survived."

Renny chuckled. He felt exhilarated, now that he had escaped with his life.

"What I mean, this is a sure-enough example of how evolution has worked on the rest of the world!"

Suddenly came the dismaying knowledge that night had almost arrived.

Renny was conservative. He knew the safe thing to do.

"I’ll hunt a tree for the night!" he concluded.

But he was not fortunate enough to be in a region of tall growth. He saw that climbing any of the small ferns or evergreen trees about him would not give him safety from the hulking dinosaurs.

He began to run, hoping to reach Doc before darkness. But, as though the very moist, depressively hot air were turning a jet-black ink, night started closing in.

Sprinting, Renny reached the body of water through which his huge steed had plowed. About to plunge in, he hesitated. A great gurgling arose beyond the enormous rushes that edged the shore. The sound was like huge tanks of water emptying in succession. Then a vast body, which was apparently dunking up and down and making the noises, must have rolled over.

A miniature tidal wave came boiling inshore. It reached above Renny’s knees! What a monster this prehistoric beast must be!

Over the rushes suddenly projected what Renny at first took to be the head and neck of a snake. A work-a-day-world serpent magnified a thousandfold! A large barrel could not have held the head!

For all its snaky look and fantastic size, the head had a peaceful look, though. A repetition of the loud water noises showed that the long, lithe neck was attached to a monster body.

Slowly, the weird beast came dragging out of the water.

RENNY felt a ticklish sensation in his scalp, which might have been his hair standing on end.

The thing was longer than a freight car!

"Good — " Renny spun and fled.

He knew he had just looked at a member of the family of largest creatures ever to tread the earth. Even the ferocious, meat-eating killer, the tyrannosaurus, was eclipsed by the bulk of this colossus.