, and
was seated smoking upon the trunk of a fallen tree, when Lord John
strolled over in my direction.

"I say, Malone," said he, "do you remember that place where those
beasts were?"

"Very clearly."

"A sort of volcanic pit, was it not?"

"Exactly," said I.

"Did you notice the soil?"

"Rocks."

"But round the water--where the reeds were?"

"It was a bluish soil. It looked like clay."

"Exactly. A volcanic tube full of blue clay."

"What of that?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," said he, and strolled back to where the voices
of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high,
strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of
Challenger. I should have thought no more of Lord John's remark were
it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself: "Blue
clay--clay in a volcanic tube!" They were the last words I heard before
I dropped into an exhausted sleep.

CHAPTER XI

"For once I was the Hero"

Lord John Roxton was right when he thought that some specially toxic
quality might lie in the bite of the horrible creatures which had
attacked us. On the morning after our first adventure upon the
plateau, both Summerlee and I were in great pain and fever, while
Challenger's knee was so bruised that he could hardly limp. We kept to
our camp all day, therefore, Lord John busying himself, with such help
as we could give him, in raising the height and thickness of the thorny
walls which were our only defense. I remember that during the whole
long day I was haunted by the feeling that we were closely observed,
though by whom or whence I could give no guess.

So strong was the impression that I told Professor Challenger of it,
who put it down to the cerebral excitement caused by my fever. Again
and again I glanced round swiftly, with the conviction that I was about
to see something, but only to meet the dark tangle of our hedge or the
solemn and cavernous gloom of the great trees which arched above our
heads. And yet the feeling grew ever stronger in my own mind that
something observant and something malevolent was at our very elbow. I
thought of the Indian superstition of the Curupuri--the dreadful,
lurking spirit of the woods--and I could have imagined that his
terrible presence haunted those who had invaded his most remote and
sacred retreat.

That night (our third in Maple White Land) we had