Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 36).djvu/89

Rh rocky ravine. The sun was setting. Lying by the fire we let our eyes wander over the glittering expanse of marsh which we had just traversed.

The tea was boiling and everyone was preparing to dip his tin cup into the pot, when suddenly a noise of rolling stones and a strange, harsh, and frightful roar made us all spring to our feet.

The beast for which we had been looking—a black, gigantic form, the corners of his mouth filled with blood-stained slime, his jaws munching something, I know not what—was slowly and heavily climbing the opposite side of the ravine, making the large boulders roll into the valley as he went!

Struck with terror, Father Lavagneux, Leemore, and myself tried to utter a cry of fright, but no sound issued from our parched throats. Unconsciously we had seized each other’s arms. The five Indians were crouching down with their faces against the ground, trembling like leaves shaken by the wind. Buttler was already rushing down the hill.

“The dinosaurus!—it is the dinosaurus of the Arctic Circle!” muttered Father Lavvagneux, with chattering teeth.

The monster had stopped scarcely twenty paces from us, and, resting upon his huge belly, was staring, motionless, at the red sun, which was bathing all the landscape in a weird light.

For a full ten minutes, riveted to the spot by some strange force which we could not overcome, did we contemplate this terrible apparition.



We were, however, in full possession of all our senses. There was not, and never will be, in our minds the least doubt as to the reality of what we saw. It was indeed a living creature, and not an illusion, which we had before us.

The dinosaurus then turned his immense neck, but did not seem to see us. His withers were at least eighteen feet above the ground. His entire body from the extremity of his yawning jaws—which were surmounted by a horn like that of a rhinoceros—to the end of the tail must have measured at least fifty feet. His hide was like that of a wild boar, garnished with thick bristles, in colour a greyish-black. His belly was plastered with thick mud.

At this moment Buttler returned to us. He told us that he thought the animal weighed about thirty tons.

Suddenly the dinosaurus moved his jaws, visibly chewing some thick viscid kind of food, and we heard a sound like that of the crunching of small bones. Then, with a sudden movement, he raised himself on his hind legs, and giving utterance to a roar—a hollow, indescribable, frightful sound—and wheeling round with surprising agility, with movements resembling those of a kangaroo, he sprang with a prodigious bound into the ravine.

On the 24th, Buttler and myself, having taken two days’ rest, started for Dawson City, for the purpose of demanding from the Governor fifty armed men and mules.

Here my story ends. For a month we were the laughing-stock of the Golden City, and the Dawson Daily Nugget published an article about me, which was at the same time flattering and satirical, entitled "A Rival of Poe.”