Changes

"You'd better get out of the way." And with that, while holding onto the ropes, he undid the latching mechanism on the side of the cage. He then threw it out onto the sand. The cage exploded outward with the scavengers[[scavenger]]s' frantic attempts to escape their confines. I barely had time to wonder how [[Burroughs ]] had been able to get the collars (that the ropes were attached to) around the scavengers' necks before the vicious beasts had burrowed into the soft ground.

With absolutely no warning, the [[dune thresher ]] violently broke the surface, all three scavengers caught in his horrifying maw. There was a massive explosion of sand as the thresher dove back into the ground with its prize. The ropes immediately snapped taut, and I thought Burroughs would be pulled to his death. I didn't understand how he thought he could reel in a monster that huge, but he wasn't even trying – just holding on.

A few more moments of this strangeness passed, and the thrashing of the ropes became less and less. Finally, he began to haul his catch in. When it was partially on the rocks, I could see what had happened. The [[thresher ]] had swallowed the scavengers [[scavenger]]s whole, and they, in turn, had begun eating their way out of the thresher's stomach before the beast's digestive juices had killed them. One scavenger still clung to life, but barely. It had actually dug itself halfway out of the thresher, clawing at the air as its skin was slowly eaten away. I vomited.