and to fulfil as well as might be what destiny the jungle offered. To
unravel the meaning of it all is beyond even attempting. The breath of
mist ever clouds the mirror, and only as regards a tiny segment of the
life-history of Guinevere can I say, "There is no need to wipe the
mirror."

VII

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION

Pterodactyl Pups led me to the wonderful Attas--the most astounding of
the jungle labor-unions. We were all sitting on the Mazaruni bank, the
night before the full moon, immediately in front of my British Guiana
laboratory. All the jungle was silent in the white light, with now and
then the splash of a big river fish. On the end of the bench was the
monosyllabic Scot, who ceased the exquisite painting of mora
buttresses and jungle shadows only for the equal fascination of
searching bats for parasites. Then the great physician, who had come
six thousand miles to peer into the eyes of birds and lizards in my
dark-room, working with a gentle hypnotic manner that made the little
beings seem to enjoy the experience. On my right sat an army captain,
who had given more thought to the possible secrets of French
chaffinches than to the approaching barrage. There was also the
artist, who could draw a lizard's head like a Japanese print, but
preferred to depict impressionistic Laocoon roots.

These and others sat with me on the long bench and watched the
moonpath. The conversation had begun with possible former life on the
moon, then shifted to Conan Doyle's _The Lost World_, based on the
great Roraima plateau, a hundred and fifty miles west of where we were
sitting. Then we spoke of the amusing world-wide rumor, which had
started no one knows how, that I had recently discovered a
pterodactyl. One delightful result of this had been a letter from a
little English girl, which would have made a worthy chapter-subject
for _Dream Days_. For years she and her little sister had peopled a
wood near her home with pterodactyls, but had somehow never quite seen
one; and would I tell her a little about them--whether they had
scales, or made nests; so that those in the wood might be a little
easier to recognize.

When strange things are discussed for a long time, in the light of a
tropical moon, at the edge of a dark, whispering jungle, the mind
becomes singularly imaginative and receptive; and, as I looked through
powerful binoculars at the great suspended globe, the dead craters and
precipices became very vivid and n