rived in the tepid and teeming waters of this estuary, and
the creatures which he had already seen about him were both unknown
and menacing. But the inshore shallows were full of water-weeds of a
rankness and succulence far beyond anything he had enjoyed in his old
habitat, and he was determined to secure himself a place here.

From time to time, as some new monster came in sight, the ungainly
head would shoot up amazingly to a distance of five or ten, or even
fifteen feet, on a swaying pillar of a neck, in order to get a better
view of the stranger. Then it would slowly sink back again to its
repose on the water.

The water at this point was almost fresh, because the estuary, though
fully two miles wide, was filled with the tide of the great river
rolling slowly down from the heart of the continent. The further shore
was so flat that nothing could be seen of it but an endless, pale
green forest of giant reeds. But the nearer shore was skirted, at a
distance of perhaps half a mile from the water, by a rampart of
abrupt, bright, rust-red cliffs. The flat land between the waterside
and the cliffs, except for the wide strip of beach, was clothed with
an enormous and riotous growth of calamaries, tree-ferns, cane and
palm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarers
were pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffs
sat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some species
of bird conceived in a nightmare.

Far out across the water one of these creatures was flapping slowly in
from the sea. Its wings--eighteen feet across from tip to tip--were
not the wings of a bird, but of a bat or a hobgoblin. It had dreadful,
hand-like claws on its wing-elbows; and its feet were those of a
lizard.

As this startling shape came flapping shoreward, the head afloat upon
the water eyed it with interest, but not, as it seemed, with any great
apprehension. Yet it certainly looked formidable enough to excite
misgivings in most creatures. Its flight was not the steady, even
winging of a bird, but spasmodic and violent. It came on at a height
of perhaps twenty feet above the sluggish tide, and its immense,
circular eyes appeared to take no notice of the strange head that
watched it from the water's surface. It seemed about to pass a little
to one side, when suddenly, with a hoarse, hooting cry, it swerved and
swooped, and struck at the floating head with open jaws.

Swift as was that une