“Great Scott, there’s the whole family,” muttered Gazen between his teeth, at the same time bringing his rifle to the shoulder, and firing in quick succession.

The foremost of the crew, which had already flung itself upon the prey, was seen to spring head over heels into the air, and fall back dead; another lay writhing in agony upon the ground, and uttering strangely human shrieks; whilst the others, terrified by the noise, turned and fled back helter-skelter to the cave.

The old one, roused to anger by the injury done to his offspring, snarled ferociously at his enemies and, drawing himself to his full height, made a furious dash for Gazen.

Our rifles cracked again and again; the monster started as he felt the shots, and halted, glaring from one to another of us like a man irresolute.  Purple streams were gushing from his head and sides; he attempted to fly, and ran towards the brink of the ledge; but ere he could gain sufficient impetus to launch himself into the air, he staggered and fell heavily to the ground, with his broken wings beneath him.

Gazen, quicker than her father, flew towards Miss Carmichael, and bent over her.

“Is she alive?” enquired Carmichael, in breathless and trembling accents.

“Yes, thank God,” responded Gazen fervently; as he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

There were tears of joy in his eyes, and I knew then what I had long suspected, that he loved her.

Suddenly a loud croak in the distance caused us to look up, and we beheld another dragon on the wing, coining rapidly towards us from a pass among the mountains.  There was not a moment to be lost, and Gazen, taking Miss Carmichael in his arms, we all hurried on board the car, eager to escape from this revolting spot.

CHAPTER XII

SUNWARD HO!

“By the way,” said Gazen to me, “I’ve got a new theory for the rising and sinking of the sun behind the cliffs at Womla—­a theory that will simply explode Professor Possil, and shake the Royal Astronomical Society to its foundations.”

The astronomer and I were together in the observatory, where he was adjusting his telescope to look at the sun.  After our misadventure with the flying ape, we had returned to our former station on the summit of the mountain, to pick up the drawing materials of Miss Carmichael; but as Gazen was anxious to get as near the sun as possible, and being disgusted with the infernal scenery as well as the foetid, malarial atmosphere of Mercury, we left as soon as we had replenished our cistern from the pools in the rock.

“Another theory?” I responded.  “Thought you had settled that question.”

“Alas, my friend, theories, like political treatises, are made to be broken.”

“Well, what do you think of it now?”

“You remember how we came to the conclusion that Schiaparelli was right, and that the planet Venus, by rotating about her own axis in the same time as she takes to revolve around the sun, always keeps the same face turned to the sun, one hemisphere being in perpetual light and summer, whilst the other is in perpetual darkness and winter?”