l
incident, which would make such a headline for the old paper, must
still wait its turn in the editorial drawer.

And yet it was all over in a flash, and there was no sequel to it, save
in our own convictions.

What occurred was this. Lord John had shot an ajouti--which is a
small, pig-like animal--and, half of it having been given to the
Indians, we were cooking the other half upon our fire. There is a
chill in the air after dark, and we had all drawn close to the blaze.
The night was moonless, but there were some stars, and one could see
for a little distance across the plain. Well, suddenly out of the
darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like
an aeroplane. The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a
canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long,
snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak,
filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth. The next instant
it was gone--and so was our dinner. A huge black shadow, twenty feet
across, skimmed up into the air; for an instant the monster wings
blotted out the stars, and then it vanished over the brow of the cliff
above us. We all sat in amazed silence round the fire, like the heroes
of Virgil when the Harpies came down upon them. It was Summerlee who
was the first to speak.

"Professor Challenger," said he, in a solemn voice, which quavered with
emotion, "I owe you an apology. Sir, I am very much in the wrong, and
I beg that you will forget what is past."

It was handsomely said, and the two men for the first time shook hands.
So much we have gained by this clear vision of our first pterodactyl.
It was worth a stolen supper to bring two such men together.

But if prehistoric life existed upon the plateau it was not
superabundant, for we had no further glimpse of it during the next
three days. During this time we traversed a barren and forbidding
country, which alternated between stony desert and desolate marshes
full of many wild-fowl, upon the north and east of the cliffs. From
that direction the place is really inaccessible, and, were it not for a
hardish ledge which runs at the very base of the precipice, we should
have had to turn back. Many times we were up to our waists in the
slime and blubber of an old, semi-tropical swamp. To make matters
worse, the place seemed to be a favorite breeding-place of the Jaracaca
snake, the most venomous and aggressive in South