d
closed upon a large bone. Up above me there was a circle of starlit
sky, which showed me that I was lying at the bottom of a deep pit.
Slowly I staggered to my feet and felt myself all over. I was stiff
and sore from head to foot, but there was no limb which would not move,
no joint which would not bend. As the circumstances of my fall came
back into my confused brain, I looked up in terror, expecting to see
that dreadful head silhouetted against the paling sky. There was no
sign of the monster, however, nor could I hear any sound from above. I
began to walk slowly round, therefore, feeling in every direction to
find out what this strange place could be into which I had been so
opportunely precipitated.

It was, as I have said, a pit, with sharply-sloping walls and a level
bottom about twenty feet across. This bottom was littered with great
gobbets of flesh, most of which was in the last state of putridity.
The atmosphere was poisonous and horrible. After tripping and
stumbling over these lumps of decay, I came suddenly against something
hard, and I found that an upright post was firmly fixed in the center
of the hollow. It was so high that I could not reach the top of it
with my hand, and it appeared to be covered with grease.

Suddenly I remembered that I had a tin box of wax-vestas in my pocket.
Striking one of them, I was able at last to form some opinion of this
place into which I had fallen. There could be no question as to its
nature. It was a trap--made by the hand of man. The post in the
center, some nine feet long, was sharpened at the upper end, and was
black with the stale blood of the creatures who had been impaled upon
it. The remains scattered about were fragments of the victims, which
had been cut away in order to clear the stake for the next who might
blunder in. I remembered that Challenger had declared that man could
not exist upon the plateau, since with his feeble weapons he could not
hold his own against the monsters who roamed over it. But now it was
clear enough how it could be done. In their narrow-mouthed caves the
natives, whoever they might be, had refuges into which the huge
saurians could not penetrate, while with their developed brains they
were capable of setting such traps, covered with branches, across the
paths which marked the run of the animals as would destroy them in
spite of all their strength and activity. Man was always the master.

The sloping wall of the p