iss La Rue had been
booked for passage. Further, neither she nor Bowen had been mentioned
among the list of survivors; nor had the body of either of them been
recovered.

Their rescue by the English tug was entirely probable; the capture of
the enemy U-33 by the tug's crew was not beyond the range of
possibility; and their adventures during the perilous cruise which the
treachery and deceit of Benson extended until they found themselves in
the waters of the far South Pacific with depleted stores and poisoned
water-casks, while bordering upon the fantastic, appeared logical
enough as narrated, event by event, in the manuscript.

Caprona has always been considered a more or less mythical land, though
it is vouched for by an eminent navigator of the eighteenth century;
but Bowen's narrative made it seem very real, however many miles of
trackless ocean lay between us and it. Yes, the narrative had us
guessing. We were agreed that it was most improbable; but neither of
us could say that anything which it contained was beyond the range of
possibility. The weird flora and fauna of Caspak were as possible
under the thick, warm atmospheric conditions of the super-heated crater
as they were in the Mesozoic era under almost exactly similar
conditions, which were then probably world-wide. The assistant
secretary had heard of Caproni and his discoveries, but admitted that
he never had taken much stock in the one nor the other. We were agreed
that the one statement most difficult of explanation was that which
reported the entire absence of human young among the various tribes
which Tyler had had intercourse. This was the one irreconcilable
statement of the manuscript. A world of adults! It was impossible.

We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party of
English sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them; how many
more might have perished! And Miss La Rue--could a young girl long
have survived the horrors of Caspak after having been separated from
all of her own kind? The assistant secretary wondered if Nobs still
was with her, and then we both smiled at this tacit acceptance of the
truth of the whole uncanny tale:

"I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but by
George, I can't help believing it, and I can see that girl now, with
the big Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors of a
million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene--the apelike
Grimaldi men hu