“One of these sharks, who has been christened the Carchadodon Megalodon, or the great-toothed shark, may have been over a hundred feet long, and certainly was not less than seventy-five, and his teeth were three times as big and as long as the teeth of the biggest man-eating shark in the seas to-day. They had a few score of these teeth each.”
“I should think they would have made it hot for the Zeuglodons.”
“They probably did. Those shark teeth are found everywhere. They must have made the seas a terror during Miocene times.”
“And then what happened?”
“Who knows? Probably, like the Kilkenny cats, after they had eaten everything else in sight they started to eat each other up, and either were eaten or perished for lack of food. At least it is sure that after the Miocene sharks came on the scene the Zeuglodons disappeared. And their greatest burying-ground is here.”
“I’ll take a bunch of their teeth home,” said Perry, filling his pockets, “but what are you going to do about full-sized specimens, Uncle George?”
“I shall not try to take any,” the scientist answered him. “This is a difficult place from which to transport a large complete skeleton. There is no need. The National Museum at Washington has a very perfect example of Zeuglodon. We’ve already got a few score tons of fossil material imbedded in plaster and strongly boxed for shipment at the camp, and I hardly feel like bringing a caravan here to try to transport an entire Zeuglodon away. I shall be satisfied to make sure that there is not some species showing up above the ground, heretofore unknown to science.”
For three long hours in the very midmost heat of the day, in that broiling valley, the scientist and his young follower worked hard examining the thousands of skeletons that littered the expanse, and then Dr. Hunt gave the word to return. Perry was tired, the heat had made him dizzy, and his back felt as if he had a sore on each and every vertebra, but his pockets were full of Zeuglodon teeth, and he gloated over the fact that he had been one of the very few people in the world to visit the great Zeuglodon Valley where the bones of ancestral whales lie buried, and he was well content. Exactly three hours after the halt, the party started home for the camp.
Back they went over those sand dunes, with the camels slipping and sprawling in every direction, back against the hot flying sand; back with the perspiration oozing at every pore and the tongue so parched that it licked up greedily such sweat as ran into the corners of the mouth; back with the lungs aching and the breath coming in quick, short gasps; back through the hot afternoon and until the great globe of fire dipped below the horizon, and darkness and coolness had come. On, then, still over the rough and stony approach to the Gar el Gehannem, or Hell Butte, using a slightly different route, until at last came camp, near the village of Qasr Qurun, where water, indifferent but possible to drink, was to be had.
A score of village dogs barked as though each had a score of throats, yowled in loud welcome, and bayed the whole night through. It mattered little to Perry. He was tired to exhaustion, and lay asleep completely happy, while in the pockets of the coat that lay beside him in the tent, were a couple of dozen Zeuglodon teeth, that he had brought from Zeuglodon Valley with his own hands.