“Triceratops!” gasped Garth and the baronet in a breath.
“Triceratops!” repeated Mervyn triumphantly; “one of the first inhabitants of the globe! It seems too good to be true. That it has been permitted for us to discover the monster here, in these wilds, when the whole species was thought to be extinct eras ago, is a slice of luck which we cannot too highly appreciate.”
“What a monstrous brute!” Seymour exclaimed. “Of course, I have often read of the creature, but never, in the wildest stretch of my imagination, did I dream of a monster so vast. Why, the brute must be thirty-five feet long if it’s an inch!”
“And look at the armour plates along its back,” Garth added; “nothing less than a six-inch shell would penetrate that hide!”
The professor, note-book in hand, was busily scribbling down a description of the monster.
“Total length,” he murmured as he wrote, “thirty-five feet. I think that is what you said, Seymour?”
“About that,” replied the baronet.
“Length of skull, eight feet,” Mervyn went on, standing perilously close to the edge of the ridge, and leaning far over in his eagerness to obtain a good view of the Triceratops.
“Take care!” Seymour cried sharply, “or you’ll fall.”
Scarcely had he spoken when the catastrophe he feared happened.