• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I’d have thought that would be obvious, old fellow,” he stated frankly. “And I’d hardly describe them as saviours. We’re being kept alive for a practical purpose.”

“You sound as if you already know these men,” Lord Roxton couldn’t quite hide the hint of skepticism in his voice.

Holmes withdrew the blade with a snap, letting a shapeless dull grey lump, about the size of a grape, drop into his hand.

“I suspect Watson does, too,” he offered me the artifact.

I scraped its surface with my thumbnail, leaving a mark. It was made of lead.

“A soft-nosed rifle bullet,” I mused aloud, when an incredible idea struck me. “My God — Holmes! But it can’t be. He’s dead.”

“Are you so sure? I highly doubt it. This entire mystery is falling into place.”

Without another word Holmes returned to the footprints, with the rest of us, again, breathlessly on his heels. He was utterly inexhaustible, racing and weaving through the thick undergrowth, on the scent of the almost invisible trail of our trio of stalkers. Less than five minutes later, we were investigating two more murders.

Holmes examined the corpses hastily, and with difficulty, as they were being devoured before our eyes by a fearlessly scampering flock of crow-sized winged reptiles.

“It’s the young pair … dead about four hours,” Holmes specifically pointed out their square-toed boots, which were barely intact. “However, they weren’t killed by these little fiends. It appears that a stone-tipped spear and a heavy club were used against them, quite efficiently, too.”

Lord Roxton eyed the upper tree boughs.

“Looks like we’d best find the other one quickly.”

Sherlock Holmes indicted the single pair of continuing tracks, leading deeper into the swamp.

“Unless I am entirely mistaken,” he motioned for us to follow. “I highly suspect that it is he who will find us.”

The swamp was crawling with an unimaginable multitude of vermin and parasites. Anemic-hued needle-toothed lampreys plagued us, biting through our clothing. Dragonflies as huge as hawks swooped over our heads, the droning of their wings almost deafening. Extremely bizarre coin-sized arthropods — Jessica identified them as trilobites — attached themselves to us like armored leeches, oozing even into our boots.

The sticky mist surrounded us, swirling in dense steaming ribbons. Every step we took was a calculated risk. None of us, not even Sherlock Holmes, could see more than twenty feet away in any direction. Abruptly, and with no small alarm, we discovered our path blocked by two huge saurians, each easily heavy as elephants, and at least thirty feet long. Their ponderous faces, vaguely horse-like despite the thick scaly hide, seemed unimpressed by our diminutive stature.

“It’s only a couple Iguanodons,” Jessica’s educated tone was in contrast to her expression of wonder. “They’re harmlessly herbivorous, unless we get stepped on.”

Almost as if on cue, the hulking dinosaurs became visibly agitated and galloped away, narrowly missing us. A series of tremors, each growing stronger, vibrated through the soles of our boots. A tremendous splashing followed, as if a barrage of boulders were being plummeted deep into the swamp. The creature that began to emerge from the mist was so immense, so utterly colossal, that it seemed to eclipse the sun.

The long serpentine neck arched slightly downward, its lizard-like head bowing toward us suspiciously. Even standing there in its regal presence, it was difficult to comprehend how something so enormous could actually be alive.

“A Diplodocus!” Jessica breathed. “I saw some egg casings along the edge of the swamp. She thinks we’re invading her nesting ground. We’ve got to get away from here quickly — without panicking her.”

Without warning, the hundred foot long behemoth began a rhinoceros-like charge at us, a living avalanche of muscle, scale, and bone. There was nowhere for us to run.

Then, quite rapidly, before our astonished eyes, the monster began to explode into pieces.