uch shorter,
sharper and more effective.

Of the six horns, the first pair, set on the tip of the broad snout,
were mere bony points, of no use as weapons, and employed by their
owner for rooting in the turf after the fashion of a tuber-hunting
pig. The second pair, set about the middle of the long face, just over
the eyes, were about eighteen inches in length, and redoubtable enough
to make other weapons seem superfluous.

The third pair, however, were equally formidable, and set far back at
the very base of the skull, like those of an antelope. The eyes, as
has been already stated, were small, deep-set and vindictive. The
sullen black of his coloring added to the portentousness of his swift
appearance around the clump of pea-green bamboo.

For several minutes the two monsters stood eyeing each other, while
the rage of an instinctive hatred mounted slowly in their sluggish
brains. To the King Dinosaur, this stranger was a trespasser on his
domain, where no other creatures, unless of his own kind, had ever
before had the presumption to confront him. The suddenness of the
black apparition, also, exasperated him; and he loathed at once the
sickly sour smell, so unlike the pungent muskiness of his own kindred,
which now for the first time met his sensitive nostrils.

The Dinoceras, on his part, was in a chronic state of rage. He was a
solitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from the
comfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for his
bottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrived
in the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furious
restlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard to it.

He had never, of course, conceived of so terrible an adversary as this
splotched brown and yellow monster before him. But he was in no mood
to calculate odds. For all his blind rage, however, he was a crafty
fighter, always. Seeing that the challenger made no move, he gave
voice to a huge, squealing grunt, like the noise of a herd of raging
pigs. Then he dug his armed snout into the turf and hurled a shower of
sod into the air.

In the eyes of the King Dinosaur this was apparently an intolerable
insult. With a roar he came lumbering forward, at a slow, rolling run
which seemed to jar the earth. Grunting again, and moving at thrice
his speed, the black beast rushed to meet him, head down, like a
charging bison.

They met under the spreading branches of an immens