had been shattered into matchwood, and one of the brass shells lay shredded into pieces beside it.  Again the feeling of vague horror came upon our souls, and we gazed round with frightened eyes at the dark shadows which lay around us, in all of which some fearsome shape might be lurking.  How good it was when we were hailed by the voice of Zambo, and, going to the edge of the plateau, saw him sitting grinning at us upon the top of the opposite pinnacle.

“All well, Massa Challenger, all well!” he cried.  “Me stay here.  No fear.  You always find me when you want.”

His honest black face, and the immense view before us, which carried us half-way back to the affluent of the Amazon, helped us to remember that we really were upon this earth in the twentieth century, and had not by some magic been conveyed to some raw planet in its earliest and wildest state.  How difficult it was to realize that the violet line upon the far horizon was well advanced to that great river upon which huge steamers ran, and folk talked of the small affairs of life, while we, marooned among the creatures of a bygone age, could but gaze towards it and yearn for all that it meant!

One other memory remains with me of this wonderful day, and with it I will close this letter.  The two professors, their tempers aggravated no doubt by their injuries, had fallen out as to whether our assailants were of the genus pterodactylus or dimorphodon, and high words had ensued.  To avoid their wrangling I moved some little way apart, and was seated smoking upon the trunk of a fallen tree, when Lord John strolled over in my direction.

“I say, Malone,” said he, “do you remember that place where those beasts were?”

“Very clearly.”

“A sort of volcanic pit, was it not?”

“Exactly,” said I.

“Did you notice the soil?”

“Rocks.”

“But round the water—­where the reeds were?”

“It was a bluish soil.  It looked like clay.”

“Exactly.  A volcanic tube full of blue clay.”

“What of that?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” said he, and strolled back to where the voices of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high, strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of Challenger.  I should have thought no more of Lord John’s remark were it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself:  “Blue clay—­clay in a volcanic tube!” They were the last words I heard before I dropped into an exhausted sleep.

CHAPTER XI

“For once I was the Hero”

Lord John Roxton was right when he thought that some specially toxic quality might lie in the bite of the horrible creatures which had attacked us.  On the morning after our first adventure upon the plateau, both Summerlee and I were in great pain and fever, while Challenger’s knee was so bruised that he could hardly limp.  We kept to our camp all day, therefore, Lord John busying himself, with such help as we could give him, in raising the height and thickness of the thorny walls which were our only defense.  I remember that during the whole long day I was haunted by the feeling that we were closely observed, though by whom or whence I could give no guess.