h America.

We are, in truth, as far from any human aid as if we were in the moon.
If we are to win through, it is only our own qualities which can save
us. I have as companions three remarkable men, men of great
brain-power and of unshaken courage. There lies our one and only hope.
It is only when I look upon the untroubled faces of my comrades that I
see some glimmer through the darkness. Outwardly I trust that I appear
as unconcerned as they. Inwardly I am filled with apprehension.

Let me give you, with as much detail as I can, the sequence of events
which have led us to this catastrophe.

When I finished my last letter I stated that we were within seven miles
from an enormous line of ruddy cliffs, which encircled, beyond all
doubt, the plateau of which Professor Challenger spoke. Their height,
as we approached them, seemed to me in some places to be greater than
he had stated--running up in parts to at least a thousand feet--and
they were curiously striated, in a manner which is, I believe,
characteristic of basaltic upheavals. Something of the sort is to be
seen in Salisbury Crags at Edinburgh. The summit showed every sign of
a luxuriant vegetation, with bushes near the edge, and farther back
many high trees. There was no indication of any life that we could see.

That night we pitched our camp immediately under the cliff--a most wild
and desolate spot. The crags above us were not merely perpendicular,
but curved outwards at the top, so that ascent was out of the question.
Close to us was the high thin pinnacle of rock which I believe I
mentioned earlier in this narrative. It is like a broad red church
spire, the top of it being level with the plateau, but a great chasm
gaping between. On the summit of it there grew one high tree. Both
pinnacle and cliff were comparatively low--some five or six hundred
feet, I should think.

"It was on that," said Professor Challenger, pointing to this tree,
"that the pterodactyl was perched. I climbed half-way up the rock
before I shot him. I am inclined to think that a good mountaineer like
myself could ascend the rock to the top, though he would, of course, be
no nearer to the plateau when he had done so."

As Challenger spoke of his pterodactyl I glanced at Professor
Summerlee, and for the first time I seemed to see some signs of a
dawning credulity and repentance. There was no sneer upon his thin
lips, but, on the contrary, a gray, drawn look of excitemen