s that London has seen for a considerable time."

So far my friend Macdona; and it may be taken as a fairly accurate, if
florid, account of the proceedings. As to the main incident, it was a
bewildering surprise to the audience, but not, I need hardly say, to
us. The reader will remember how I met Lord John Roxton upon the very
occasion when, in his protective crinoline, he had gone to bring the
"Devil's chick" as he called it, for Professor Challenger. I have
hinted also at the trouble which the Professor's baggage gave us when
we left the plateau, and had I described our voyage I might have said a
good deal of the worry we had to coax with putrid fish the appetite of
our filthy companion. If I have not said much about it before, it was,
of course, that the Professor's earnest desire was that no possible
rumor of the unanswerable argument which we carried should be allowed
to leak out until the moment came when his enemies were to be confuted.

One word as to the fate of the London pterodactyl. Nothing can be said
to be certain upon this point. There is the evidence of two frightened
women that it perched upon the roof of the Queen's Hall and remained
there like a diabolical statue for some hours. The next day it came
out in the evening papers that Private Miles, of the Coldstream Guards,
on duty outside Marlborough House, had deserted his post without leave,
and was therefore courtmartialed. Private Miles' account, that he
dropped his rifle and took to his heels down the Mall because on
looking up he had suddenly seen the devil between him and the moon, was
not accepted by the Court, and yet it may have a direct bearing upon
the point at issue. The only other evidence which I can adduce is from
the log of the SS. Friesland, a Dutch-American liner, which asserts
that at nine next morning, Start Point being at the time ten miles upon
their starboard quarter, they were passed by something between a flying
goat and a monstrous bat, which was heading at a prodigious pace south
and west. If its homing instinct led it upon the right line, there can
be no doubt that somewhere out in the wastes of the Atlantic the last
European pterodactyl found its end.

And Gladys--oh, my Gladys!--Gladys of the mystic lake, now to be
re-named the Central, for never shall she have immortality through me.
Did I not always see some hard fiber in her nature? Did I not, even at
the time when I was proud to obey her behest, feel that i