Page:Baron Trump's marvellous underground journey.pdf/161

Rh sleep on for other ages to come, had not the industrious Formifolk lighted the clusters of burning jets of gas in the monster's bedroom. Gradually the warmth had penetrated the roof of shell made thicker by earth and layers of broken rock, which the tooth of time had dropped upon it, and reached his great heart, and set it beating again slowly, very slowly, but faster and faster, until he really felt that he had awakened from his long sleep.

By a terrible misfortune. Pouting Lip, the gentle Soodopsy, had happened to be left behind when his brother laborers quit work, and the new silver doors of the chamber had been closed upon him.

Oh, it was terrible to think of, but true it must have been—the poor little Soodopsy, shut in by his own eyeless folk in this chamber, which he was helping to beautify by his patient skill, had served to satisfy the hunger of this awful monster, after his long ages of fasting.

But why, you ask, dear friends, was all this not discovered when the Great Circle had been formed, and the search was made for him? Simply because the monster, after devouring the lost Soodopsy, retreated to his nest and drew the dirt and crumbled rock up around him with his gigantic flippers, and went to sleep again, as all gorged reptiles do, so that when the searchers entered the new' chamber all was as they had left it, the mound of rock, as they had supposed it to be, in the corner undisturbed.

With Bulger at my heels I now turned and ran with such mad haste to Barrel Brow's, that the whole city was thrown into the wildest disorder, for, of course, they had felt me fly past them.

With all the quickness I could command, I wrote an account of what I had witnessed, and when Barrel Brow communicated it to the assembled Soodopsies, a thousand hands flew into the air, in token of mingled fright and wonder, and a wild rush was made for Bulger and me, and we were well-nigh smothered with kisses and caresses.