e that it was still in
working order, and went lumbering off to another portion of the wood,
having apparently forgotten his purpose of taking to the water. As he
went, one of the grim bird-lizards from the cliff swooped down and
hovered, hooting over his path, apparently disappointed at his
triumph.

The watcher in the reeds, on the other hand, was encouraged by the
result of the combat. He began to feel a certain dangerous contempt
for those leaping flesh-eaters, in spite of their swiftness and
ferocity. He himself, though but an eater of weeds, had trodden one
into nothingness, and now he had seen two together overthrown and put
to flight. With growing confidence he came forth from his hiding,
stalked up the beach, coiled his interminable tail beside him, and lay
down to bask his dripping sides in the full blaze of the sun.

The colossus was at last beginning to feel at home in his new
surroundings. In spite of the fact that this bit of open beach,
overlooked by the deep green belt of jungle and the rampart of red
cliffs, appeared to be a sort of arena for titanic combats, he began
to have confidence in his own astounding bulk as a defense against all
foes. What matter his slim neck, small head and feeble teeth, when
that awful engine of his tail could sweep his enemies off their feet,
and he could crush them by falling upon them like a mountain! A pair
of the great bird-lizards flapped over him, hooting malignantly and
staring down upon him with their immense, cold eyes, but he hardly
took the trouble to look up at them.

Warmed and well fed, his eyes half-sheathed in their membraneous lids,
he gazed out vacantly across the waving herbage of the shallows,
across the slow, pale tides whose surface boiled from time to time
above the rush of some unseen giant of a shark or ichthyosaur.

In the heavy heat of the afternoon the young world had become very
still. The bird-lizards, all folded in their wings, sat stiff and
motionless along the ramparts of red cliff. The only sounds were the
hiss of those seething rushes far out on the tide, the sudden droning
hum of some great insect darting overhead, or the occasional soft
clatter of the long, crisp cycad leaves as a faint puff of hot air
lifted them.

At the back of the beach, where the tree-ferns and the calamaries grew
rankest, the foliage parted noiselessly at a height of perhaps twenty
feet from the ground, and a dreadful head looked forth. Its jaws were
both lo