He was aroused hours later by wild cries of
DINOSAUR STAMPEDE 159
fear. Tom leaped from his cot, still groggy with sleep, and rushed from his tent. What he saw jolted him like an electric shock.
Monsters of nightmarish size were surging forward out of the darkness, plunging among the tents and scattering the sleepers!
Tom glimpsed a huge lizardlike creature that might have been a tyrannosaurus, scuttling on two legs. Other behemoths, resembling brontosauruses or brachiosauruses, with long, swaying necks and serpentlike heads, were crowding close behind.
“Good night!” Tom gasped. “A dinosaur stampede!”
The camp was in panic.
“Run for it!” Auber shouted again and again.
Men were fleeing in every direction-anywhere to escape the trampling titans. Tom turned as he felt his arm clutched from behind. It was Bud.
“Don’t just stand there, pal!” Bud shouted above the din. “Let’s get out of here!”
There was no time to argue. The boys plunged into the bush. The next moment they felt themselves seized in a grip of steel. A giant figure had materialized out of the darkness!
Tom sensed that it was the same native who had knocked him unconscious on the night of the old white man’s visit!
CHAPTER XIX
THE MONSTER MAKER
TOM and Bud struggled frantically against their assailant, but the giant stunned them by banging their heads together. He bound the boys’ arms to their bodies, using a single long rope.
Suddenly the man gave a blood-chilling yell, which jarred Tom back to semiconsciousness. What followed was so unbelievable that Tom felt as if he were dreaming. Several dinosaurs came smashing through the undergrowth!