“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.
III
Again some odd millions upon millions of years have swept by in the eternal procession of Time, and we find Professor Jebbway, F.R.S., etc., etc., sitting disconsolate at his desk, with a review of his last monumental work in his hands.
The reviewer was absolutely uninformed concerning Professor Jebbway’s recondite subject; he had therefore been wise enough simply to gush and gloat through four columns of his journal, and declare that no such achievement of the human brain could be recorded since the stupendous life-work of Darwin.
Mrs. Jebbway brought in a cup of tea and rated the Professor.
“I’m sure that’s nothing to be so precious glum about,” she said. “The man’s all butter, from start to finish. If his blessed paper mattered, it might do you some good. I read it yesterday.”
“It isn’t that. From this gentleman, praise or blame are equally unimportant. I’m a little overburdened with my own limitations to-day. I wish I’d come later, when the world knew more.”