The Raja and I agreed on the following judgment:
That everyone should thereafter stick to his or her own tent. If we found any more trading beds, we would tie up the culprits and leave them in camp while the rest of us went exploring. Ngata said confidentially:
"I'm just as glad, Reggie, that she never got down her list to me. I don't know that my hot Polynesian blood would have let me turn her down!"
Most of the rest of the trip went off in a routine way, with nothing notable on the part either of my sahibs or the rest of the fauna. Alvarado and Carlyle were formal with one another, calling each other "Mister" when they had to communicate. Ngata collected and dissected more pseudo-lizards.
Carlyle shot a big knobby-headed anomodont with a parrotlike beak and hauled its head back to camp. Smith and the Alvarados took scads of photographs. We got soaked by a heavy thunderstorm, but that was all in the game.
Towards the end, I led our lambs westward, down a long slope to the water we could see in the distance. The Raja, whose arm was still bandaged from that cut, stayed in camp to supervise the packing up for departure.
The water proved a bend in a big river, which meandered through flat country with a lot of swamps and oxbow lakes alongside it. The going got really bushy, with masses of ferns as high as your head to hack your way through, and squilchy mud underfoot. If our sahibs thought they had got hot, sweaty, and dirty before, they soon learned it was nothing compared with this.
We finally found an area where we had a good view of the river and a bit more open country stretching back from it. The river gurgled and the insects swirled and buzzed and chirped. Desmond Carlyle said:
"Hey, Reggie! Look at that croc! Bet it beats any of those you have in Australia!"
Sure enough, on a meter-high bank on the edge of the river was a big pseudo-crocodile, which Ngata identified as a phytosaur, dozing under a small conifer. It looked for all the world like the gavial or ghariyal of modern India, except that its nostrils opened in a bump on its forehead instead of at the end of its snout. Ngata said:
"I don't know, Desmond. The salt-water croc grows up to five meters, and I don't think this one's over four. Of course this may not be the largest of its kind."
"Dangerous?" said Alvarado.
"Not really. Those narrow jaws say it's a complete fish-eater. Of course if you walk up and kick it in the ribs, it's likely to retaliate."
Carlyle said: "May I shoot it, Reggie? I want the skin for my wall."
"All right," I said, "if you'll skin and haul it. Be sure to sever the spine, or it'll scramble into the water and be lost."
Desmond stalked the phytosaur with his gun ready. At about thirty meters the brute saw him, opened its toothsome jaws, and hissed. Carlyle raised his gun, took his time, and squeezed off a round.
The phytosaur rolled over, writhing and thrashing. About half its length went off the bank and into the river; but Carlyle, running up, caught the end of its tail and pulled it back on shore. Being a reptile, it continued squirming and snapping long after it was officially dead.
Young Smith ran up, hopping around to get camera shots from different angles. The others also took pictures.
"Will!" said Carlyle commandingly, pulling out his big knife. "Can you lend a hand with the skinning?"
"If you'll show me what to do," said young Smith doubtfully. "I suppose you know how?"
"Oh, sure! I'm an old hand with alligators and crocodiles, and I'm sure these guys work the same way." He began to slit the skin from chin to belly. "Now catch hold here and pull the skin back...."
Skinning any animal is a gory spectacle, though one gets used to it. But it's also pretty dull. After the other lambs had taken all the pictures they wanted, Ngata fell to studying the guts of the phytosaur as Carlyle and Smith uncovered them. The Alvarados had been having some argument in an undertone. Tom Alvarado said:
"Reggie, if you do not mind, I will take a little walk with Inez. We have family matters to discuss."
"Just don't get out of sight," I said, and turned back to watch Carlyle and Smith struggle with that huge hide.
Time passed, and insects buzzed. They had the skin almost all off when young Smith, stepping back from the carcass, backed off the bank and slid down into the water, knee-deep. Carlyle said:
"Oh, you idiot!"
I said: "Get out of there fast, Will! You don't know what's—"
Smith was already scrambling back up the bank; but then he gave a shriek: "Something's got me!"
With a convulsive effort, he managed to clutch the trunk of the tree on top of the bank. I grabbed my gun and looked over the edge. Something had his right foot in its jaws—something with a wide head over a meter long, with a pair of goggle eyes on the flat upper surface.
"It's a big stereospondyl!" yelled Ngata. "Hold on, Will, while I study it! It proves that Pangaea:—"
"Study it, hell!" I said and fired. The bullet splashed right over that great head; but the crocamander seemed not to notice. Behind the head I could dimly make out a barrel body, four stout legs with webbed feet, and a long tail flattened for swimming. The animal must have been at least four meters long. You know how a creature like a snake or a newt swims, with undulating curves moving from front to back? Well, this bugger was undulating from back to front. In other words, it was trying to back water, to pull Willard Smith in with it.
"I think it mistook Will's foot for a fish," said Ngata.
Carlyle and I fired again and again, to no apparent effect. One trouble was that the crocamander was under water, and even high-velocity bullets lose their speed fast in water. Besides, a cold-blooded life form like that can take a lot of punishment without fatal effect.
"Grab his arm," I told Carlyle, "and I'll take the other, and we'll pull him up ..."
Then I heard a shriek from inland. When I looked around, Inez Alvarado was legging it toward us. Behind her came Tom Alvarado, and behind him came a dinosaur—and never mind that Ngata claimed there were no such things. This was an unmistakable carnosaur, the same group that includes monsters like Tyrannosaurus and Epanterias.
This one was much smaller but still big enough to kill and eat a man, just as a lion or a tiger could. It must have been about four meters long from nose to tail. When it ran on its hindlegs, with its body horizontal, it came up to about belt height; but when it stood up, bracing itself with its tail like a roo, it towered up to Sir Edred's height of two hundred centimeters.
I got ready to shoot; but I had to make sure neither of the Alvarados was in line with the carnosaur. This was a problem, since both were headed straight for me, and the carnosaur was pursuing them in as straight a line as if it were following a tape laid out on the ground.
While I stood there for some seconds, with my gun raised but unable to shoot, I heard yells and splashing behind me; but I didn't dare turn to look.
Then Tom Alvarado stopped, whipped off his bush jacket, and waved it at the approaching carnosaur in matador style. Just before the creature reached him with jaws agape, he hopped to one side. The carnosaur went right past him.
Any carnosaur, large or small, can work up a fair turn of speed on a straightaway, but they can't make quick turns. In other words, they're not agile; something to do with the structure of their leg joints.
After three or four strides the beggar got it into its little reptilian brain that its prey was no longer before it; and it skidded to a stop, swinging its head this way and that. Seeing Alvarado waving his jacket behind it, it charged him again; and again he stepped nimbly aside. When I got a momentary clear view, I pulled the trigger. I got only a click, because I'd shot off my whole magazine at the stereospondyl.