orn-tipped
spur which armed its clumsy wrist. The victor tore madly at its throat
with tooth and claw, and presently its bellowing subsided to a
hideous, sobbing gurgle.

The diplodocus, meanwhile, had been looking down upon the scene with
half-bewildered apprehension. These creatures were insignificant in
size, to be sure, as compared with his own colossal stature, but the
smaller one had a swift ferocity which struck terror to his dull
heart.

Suddenly a red wrath mounted to his small and sluggish brain. His
tail, as we have seen, was curled in a half-circle at his side. Now he
bent his body with it. For an instant his whole bulk quivered with the
extraordinary tension. Then, like a bow released, the bent body sprang
back. The tail (and it weighed at least a ton) struck the victor and
the victim together with an annihilating shock, and swept them clean
around beneath the visitor's feet.

Down he came upon them at once, with the crushing effect of a hundred
steam pile-drivers; and for the next few minutes his panicky rage
expended itself in treading the two bodies into a shapeless mass. Then
he slowly backed off down into the water where the weedy growths were
thickest, till once more his whole form was concealed except the
insignificant head. This he reared among the swaying tufts of the
"mares' tails," and waited to see what strange thing would happen
next.

He had not long to wait. That hideous, mangled heap there, sweating
blood in the noon sun, seemed to have some way of making its presence
known. Crashing sounds arose in different parts of the forest, and
presently some half-dozen of the leaping, kangaroo-like flesh-eaters
appeared.

They were of varying sizes, from ten or twelve feet in length to
eighteen or twenty, and they eyed each other with jealous hostility.
But one glance at the weltering heap showed them that here was
feasting abundant for them all. With a chorus of hoarse cries they
came hopping forward and fell upon it.

Presently two vast shadows came overhead, hovering a moment, and a
pair of the great bird-lizards dropped upon the middle of the heap.
Hooting savagely, with wings half uplifted, they struck about them
with their terrible beaks till they had secured room for themselves at
the banquet. Other unbidden guests came leaping from among the
thickets; and in a short time there was nothing left of the carcasses
except two naked skeletons, dragged apart and half dismembered by
mighty t