The goatlike eyes fell upon a fallen melon.
It made a sound. Harruunukk. It was a questioning sound.
Then on great round legs, it waded toward the morsel. Logs were bumped out of the way. Waves crashed and slopped on the shore of the great pool.
And the head came down, seized the melon, and gobbled it up after biting through it once with a pulpy sound.
It stood calmly as the neck muscles worked the fragments down into its stomach.
Then, it spied a second mango a little further inland.
From a leafy point high on the escarpment, Nancy watched through field glasses she held in crossed fingers.
"Please, please, see it," she murmured.
The beast seemed to hesitate. It made its curious sound again. Then slowly it stirred out of the pool, coming up onto the mucky ground and sinking its great padded feet deep with squishing-sucking noises.
The head came down and quickly gobbled up the second melon.
In the bush, Ralph Thorpe triggered his flashlight. It spotlighted the third melon.
Through the green gloom, the reptile saw it. He strode forward. And now the high ground shook with each lumbering step.
The Kanda Tract shook for the remainder of the night and far into the dawn of the next day.
They stayed out of sight of it. The natives were especially careful. They told stories of how N'yamala loved to upset river dugouts with his mighty tail.
"Has he ever eaten anyone?" King asked nervously.
"No."
"Good."
"He has never eaten a black man. We do not know if he might enjoy a white man."
And the Bantus smiled their fixed smiles.
The first trouble came just before dawn.
After lumbering along, pausing to snatch up melons and the occasional pile of sodden fronds, the Apatosaur suddenly stopped. It looked around. Its eyes grew rounder.
"What is the blighter up to, Dr. Derringer?" Thorpe asked.
"I don't know," Nancy said slowly. They were crouching in the bush, flat on their stomachs.
A hruuu sound filtered through the stationary predawn air.
"Beggar sounds forlorn."
"It may miss its family. Poor thing."
Slowly, the reptile began to back up. It tried to turn around. But the jungle path was too narrow. Its great tail lifted, swept about, and with a terrible sound, a stand of cedar was reduced to kindling.
The forlorn cry came again.
"It's trying to turn back!" King howled, horror in his voice.
"I'm not letting that happen," Nancy said grimly and disappeared into the bush.
Moments later she was creeping up the trail toward the reptile, a basket of orange toadstools balanced on her head, native fashion.
She dumped them onto the trail, not a dozen yards ahead of the creature. Stamping her foot into them to release their musty fungal scent, she retreated into the bush.
The scent did the trick.
The paint-splatter snout swept back, nostrils quivering.
Then it lurched forward. It fell on the piled toadstools with relish, snatching them up and ingesting them with up and down chewing motions. The pile quickly disappeared.
And up around the next bend in the trail, Nancy upended a smaller pile, stamped hard, and vanished into the bush.
After three basketfuls, they switched back to melons. And the melons got them to the first light and their next crisis. The outer edge of the Kanda Tract.
"Now comes the hard part," Nancy was saying in a hastily convened roadside conference. Thorpe, King, and Tyrone had joined her. The others were working through the bush, out of sight and sowing enticements along the trail.
"The beast will be prone to meander once he gets out into open savanna," Thorpe said. "Might even turn back, if he doesn't take to open spaces."
"Will the grass burn?" King asked.
"We are not igniting the savanna," Nancy fumed. "Even if it is dry enough to take flame, it would burn too quickly. We'd only end up with roast Apatosaurus."
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"
"Everything except how you ever got beyond the 'Do you want fries with that?' phase of your career."
Skip King did a slow burn and said nothing.
Nancy turned to Thorpe.
Thorpe shrugged. "Nothing for it but to let old Jack run."
Nancy blinked. "Old Jack?"
"Reminds one of a bloody jack-o'-lantern, doesn't it?"
"You can't call him Jack," King burst out.
"And why bloody not?"
"I wanted to call him Skip."
"Skip?"
"King Skip, actually."
They looked at him.
"You know, like King Kong."
"Jack it is," Nancy said flatly. She looked to Thorpe. "You think he'll follow our trail of goodies through open savanna?"
"Haven't the foggiest," Thorpe admitted. "But it's either let Jack run or give up."
"I'm in no mood to give up. Get the men deployed."
"Righto." Thorpe crashed off.
"What about me?" King asked.
"It's morning," Nancy said, turning away. "Make yourself useful and brew up some coffee."
"You wouldn't talk to me that way if this weren't Africa!"
The Apatosaur emerged from the Kanda Tract like the final collapse of the burning house. The splintering of brush and nettles was tremendous. Then as if it had lost all substance, it padded serenely into open grassland.
From points of concealment at the edge of the tract, they watched it pause, look around, and swing its long serpentine head in undulant arcs.
It stared back at the sheltering rain forest lovingly, as if homesick.
"Now!" Nancy shouted.
The Bantus had rigged up slingshots large enough to launch the melons. They let fly. Three of the green globes arced high and came crashing down several feet ahead of the creature's path.
The pulpy smell immediately attracted its attention. The head swung back. And like a locomotive building up a head of steam, it started forward.
The melons vanished quickly. The head came up, eyes inquisitive.
And there in its path lay a single golden toadstool. It started toward it. And the toadstool retreated ever so slightly.
Undeterred, the reptile kept moving.
"What's going on?" King muttered.
Nancy looked around. "Where's Thorpe?"
"B'wana Thorpe in bush. Play trick on N'yamala."
"He didn't!"
"He did, Missy Derringer."
"That is one smart limey," Skip King said. "I may not dock him after all."
"You were going to dock him? For what?"
"For mutiny," said King.
"Your superiors are going to hear about every screwup you committed since we left the States."
"I'm going to have some choice words for them, too, Miss Masculine. Or should I say, Dr. Masculine?"
In the grass, the reptile was doggedly pursuing the elusive toadstool. Every time he got close enough to lower his head for the prize, it slipped away.
"He's pushing it," King said.
As if reading King's mind, the toadstool lay waiting when the great saurian head plunged down again. This time it succeeded. The toadstool went into the mouth as the head lifted up like a triumphant crane.
Then another toadstool appeared not far from it. The Apatosaur started for that one. And the stop-and-start game of cat-and-mouse began again.
By this time, it seemed safe to emerge from the rain forest and they filtered out.
They crept forward cautiously, keeping low. Most of the packs had been left behind.
One of the cameramen was creeping ahead of the rest and using his videocam to record a shot of the beast's undulating rump.
Nancy had a microcassette recorder out and was talking into it.
"Locomotion undulant, flexure resembling that of a pachyderm. Tail held off the ground in accordance with current theories. Skin appears semimoist and leathery but smooth in general appearance."