eded for it; but, like man, these beasts have
learned the necessities of warfare, and they hunt in pack now and do not
separate their forces.

It was plain they were making for our ship, and Tob, the captain, would
have had me go into the after-castle, and there be secure from their
marauding. He was responsible to the Lord Tatho, he said, for my safe
conduct; it was certain that the beasts would contrive to seize some of
the ship's company before they were satiated; and if the hap came to the
Lord Deucalion, he (the captain) would have to give himself voluntarily
to the beasts then, to escape a very painful death at Tatho's hands
later on.

However, my mind was set. A man can never have too much experience in
fighting enemies, whether human or bestial, and the attack of these
creatures was new to me, and I was fain to learn its method. So I gave
the captain a letter to Tatho, saying how the matter lay (and for which,
it may be mentioned, the rude fellow seemed little enough grateful), and
stayed in my chair under the awning.

The beasts surged up to us with champing jaws, and all the shipmen
stood armed on their defence. They came up alongside, two females (the
smaller) on the flank of the ship, the giant male by himself on the
other. Their great heads swooped about, as high as the yards that held
the sails, and the reek from them gave one physical sickness.

The shipmen faced the monsters with a sturdy courage. Arrows were
useless against the smooth, bull-like hides. Even the throwing fire
could not so much as singe them; nothing but twenty axe blows delivered
on an attacking head together could beat it back, and even these
succeeded only through sheer weight of metal, and did not make so much
as the scratch of a wound.

During all time beasts have disputed with man the mastery of the earth,
and it is only in Atlantis and Egypt and Yucatan that man has dared to
hold his own, and fight them with a mind made strong by many previous
victories. In Europe and mid-Africa the greater beasts hold full
dominion, and man admits his puny number and force, and lives in earth
crannies and the higher tree-tops, as a fugitive confessed. And upon the
great oceans, the beasts are lords, unchecked.

Still here, upon this desolate sea, although the giant lizards were new
to me, it was a pleasure to pit my knowledge of war against their brute
strength and courage. Ever since the first men did their business upon
the great waters,