II
Some millions of millions of years having passed by, we find ourselves, upon a bright afternoon of Mesozoic times, in the company of that genial and gigantic Deinosaur, Brontosaurus Excelsus. The monster, despite pleasant climatic conditions, was ill at ease. He sat upon his haunches, swayed his enormous neck to the right and left, and listlessly chewed off the heads of six lofty palm-trees.
There was a crash—a boiling, seething explosion as of a torpedo in the river at his feet—and forth came the Deinosaur’s bride, an enormous being, much like himself, though somewhat smaller.
“Ah, my little dear, back again?” he exclaimed, and, smashing off the palm-trees like cabbage-stumps, sank down beside her.
“You are unhappy, my own Bronto,” she said, with the pretty solicitude of a young wife.
“Not unhappy, merely thoughtful, my love. This good world—the lakes and rivers, the trees and groves of club mosses—all; I sometimes think it can hardly have been created for us.”
“Not for us!”
“Not for us and our friends alone. Perhaps some day something greater, wiser, better even than Brontosaurus Excelsus may browse here, and swim these rivers, and lift its head to the sun.”
“This is mere moonshine, my dearest. Greater than you! Is it possible to be greater than a hundred feet long? Is it possible to be heavier than fifty tons? And, for the rest, who should know your goodness and wisdom better than I? No, no; you let your humility run away with you, my sweet. You are the first and best—Nature’s masterpiece, her joy, her unutterable delight.”
“There’s Atlantosaurus,” said Bronto dubiously.
His wife frowned, and her huge lizard eyes were clouded.
“There is Atlantosaurus,” she admitted, “the hulking, bloodthirsty, ignoble wretch! A thing that eats other live creatures—a debased, degraded, distant relation—a cannibal! Nature blushes when she thinks of him and his kind; but we, we are upon a plane apart; we eat the green grass, the juicy cane, the young fronds and ripe fruit of the palms; we——”
A shadow hid the sun. High above the trees rose a dreadful head with eyes like bicycle-wheels and teeth that glittered and dropped blood.
“It’s Atlanto—this is no place for us!”
Two simultaneous splashes cast a huge column of water upward as Brontosaurus and his better half vanished beneath that Mesozoic river.