? But unsociable! Nasty rude ways
with strangers, as you may remember. So I rigged this framework which
keeps them from bein' too pressin' in their attentions."

"But what do you want in the swamp?"

He looked at me with a very questioning eye, and I read hesitation in
his face.

"Don't you think other people besides Professors can want to know
things?" he said at last. "I'm studyin' the pretty dears. That's
enough for you."

"No offense," said I.

His good-humor returned and he laughed.

"No offense, young fellah. I'm goin' to get a young devil chick for
Challenger. That's one of my jobs. No, I don't want your company.
I'm safe in this cage, and you are not. So long, and I'll be back in
camp by night-fall."

He turned away and I left him wandering on through the wood with his
extraordinary cage around him.

If Lord John's behavior at this time was strange, that of Challenger
was more so. I may say that he seemed to possess an extraordinary
fascination for the Indian women, and that he always carried a large
spreading palm branch with which he beat them off as if they were
flies, when their attentions became too pressing. To see him walking
like a comic opera Sultan, with this badge of authority in his hand,
his black beard bristling in front of him, his toes pointing at each
step, and a train of wide-eyed Indian girls behind him, clad in their
slender drapery of bark cloth, is one of the most grotesque of all the
pictures which I will carry back with me. As to Summerlee, he was
absorbed in the insect and bird life of the plateau, and spent his
whole time (save that considerable portion which was devoted to abusing
Challenger for not getting us out of our difficulties) in cleaning and
mounting his specimens.

Challenger had been in the habit of walking off by himself every
morning and returning from time to time with looks of portentous
solemnity, as one who bears the full weight of a great enterprise upon
his shoulders. One day, palm branch in hand, and his crowd of adoring
devotees behind him, he led us down to his hidden work-shop and took us
into the secret of his plans.

The place was a small clearing in the center of a palm grove. In this
was one of those boiling mud geysers which I have already described.
Around its edge were scattered a number of leathern thongs cut from
iguanodon hide, and a large collapsed membrane which proved to be the
dried and scraped stomach of one of the great