He slept like a dead thing for the best part of that day. But soon after three they were away again: no use for Rhoda to raise objections; the unrest of an intense excitement was in her bones as in his, and he knew it.
It had been a cloudless day, the veil of mist fainter than usual, the sky bluer.
As they left the bicycle and cut across the rough foreshore the sun beat down upon them with an almost unbearable fierceness. There was a shimmer like a mirage across the marshes: the sea was the colour of burnt steel.
They dog-trotted half the way, arguing as they ran; Hector, still fixed, pivoting upon his sabre-toothed tiger, and yet insistent that this was a man—a real man—contemporary with it: the first absolute proof of human existence anterior to the First Glacial age.
“An ape—a sort of ape—nearish to a man, but—well, look at his hair.” She’d give him his tiger, but not his man.
“By Gad, you’d grow hair, running wild as he did—a man——”
“Hector, what rot! Why, anyone—anyone could see—” She thought of her father, the smooth curate, the rubicund farmers.... A man!
“Well, stick to it—stick to it! But I bet you anything—anything....”
Hector’s words were jerked out of him as he padded on:
“We’ll get hundreds and hundreds of pounds for him! Travel—see the world—go to Java, where that other chap—what’s his name—was found. Why, he’s older than the Heidelberg Johnny—a thousand thousand times great-grandfather to that Pitcairn thing—older—older—oh, older than any!”