have only the one, and
we are three in number, boy."

"Only two, now; I'm squelched!" sighed the jester, faintly.

If the professor heard, he heeded not. Still staring with vacant gaze
into the fire, his face bearing a rapt expression curious to see, he
broke into almost unconscious speech:

"An enormous inland sea! Where float the mighty ichthyosaurus, the
megalosaurus, in company with the gigantic plesiosaurus! Upon whose
sloping shores disport the enormous mastodon, the stately megatherium,
the tremendous--eh?"

For Waldo was now afoot, brandishing a great branch broken from a dead
tree, uttering valiant war-whoops, and dealing tremendous blows upon
an imaginary enemy, spouting at the top of his voice a frenzied jargon,
which neither his auditors nor himself could possibly make sense out of.

Bruno, ever sensitive through his affectionate reverence for their
uncle, caught the youngster, and cast him to earth, whereupon Waldo
pantingly cried:

"Go on, please, uncle Phaeton. It's next thing to a museum and menagerie
combined, just to hear--"

"Will you hush, boy?" demanded Bruno, yet unable to wholly smother a
laugh, so ridiculous did it all sound and seem.

But Professor Featherwit declined, his foxy face wrinkling in a bashful
laugh. Whether so intended or not, he had been brought down to earth
from that dizzy flight, and now was fairly himself again.

"Well, my dear boys, I dare say it seems all a matter of jest and sport
to you; yet, after our riding in the centre of a tornado for uncounted
miles, coming forth with hardly a scratch or a bruise to show for it
all, who dare say such things may not be, even yet?"

"But,--those strange creatures are gone; the last one perished thousands
upon thousands of years ago, uncle Phaeton."

"So it is said, and so follows the almost universal belief. Yet I have
seen, felt, cooked, tasted, and ate to its last morsel a steak from a
mammoth. True, the creature was dead; had been preserved for ages, no
doubt, within the glacier which finally cast it forth to human view; yet
who would have credited such a discovery, only fifty years ago? He who
dared to even hint at such a thing would have been derided and laughed
at, pronounced either fool or lunatic. And so,--if we should happen to
discover one or all of those supposedly extinct creatures here in this
terra incognita, I would be overjoyed rather than astounded."

Bruno looked grave at this conclusion, but Waldo was n