wamp of
the pterodactyls. On the side facing me, however, the plateau
presented a very different aspect. There the basalt cliffs of the
outside were reproduced upon the inside, forming an escarpment about
two hundred feet high, with a woody slope beneath it. Along the base
of these red cliffs, some distance above the ground, I could see a
number of dark holes through the glass, which I conjectured to be the
mouths of caves. At the opening of one of these something white was
shimmering, but I was unable to make out what it was. I sat charting
the country until the sun had set and it was so dark that I could no
longer distinguish details. Then I climbed down to my companions
waiting for me so eagerly at the bottom of the great tree. For once I
was the hero of the expedition. Alone I had thought of it, and alone I
had done it; and here was the chart which would save us a month's blind
groping among unknown dangers. Each of them shook me solemnly by the
hand.

But before they discussed the details of my map I had to tell them of
my encounter with the ape-man among the branches.

"He has been there all the time," said I.

"How do you know that?" asked Lord John.

"Because I have never been without that feeling that something
malevolent was watching us. I mentioned it to you, Professor
Challenger."

"Our young friend certainly said something of the kind. He is also the
one among us who is endowed with that Celtic temperament which would
make him sensitive to such impressions."

"The whole theory of telepathy----" began Summerlee, filling his pipe.

"Is too vast to be now discussed," said Challenger, with decision.
"Tell me, now," he added, with the air of a bishop addressing a
Sunday-school, "did you happen to observe whether the creature could
cross its thumb over its palm?"

"No, indeed."

"Had it a tail?"

"No."

"Was the foot prehensile?"

"I do not think it could have made off so fast among the branches if it
could not get a grip with its feet."

"In South America there are, if my memory serves me--you will check the
observation, Professor Summerlee--some thirty-six species of monkeys,
but the anthropoid ape is unknown. It is clear, however, that he
exists in this country, and that he is not the hairy, gorilla-like
variety, which is never seen out of Africa or the East." (I was
inclined to interpolate, as I looked at him, that I had seen his first
cousin in Kensington.) "This is a whiskere