t's bones," remarked Jalap
Coombs. "I were jest thinking as how this one had a look of ivory about
it."

"They may be," assented Phil, dubiously, "but they must have belonged to
pretty huge old elephants; for I don't believe Jumbo's bones would look
like more than toothpicks alongside some of these. It is more likely
that they belonged to hairy mammoths, or mastodons, or megatheriums, or
plesiosauruses, or fellows like that."

"I don't know as I ever met up with any of them, nor yet heerd tell of
'em," replied Jalap Coombs, simply, "onless what you've just said is the
Latin names of rhinocerosses or hoponthomases or giraffees, of which my
old friend Kite Roberson useter speak quite frequent. He allus said
consarning 'em, though, that they'd best be let alone, for lions nor yet
taggers warn't a sarcumstance to 'em. Now if these here bones belonged
to any sich critters as them, he sartainly knowed what he were talking
about, and I for one are well pleased that they all went dead afore we
hove in sight."

"I don't know but what I am too," assented Phil, "for at close range I
expect it would be safer to meet one of Mr. Robinson's taggers. Still, I
would like to have seen them from a safe place, like the top of Groton
Monument or behind the bars of a bank vault. Where are you going,
Serge?"

"Going for some wood that isn't quite so prehistoric and will blaze,"
answered the other lad, who had picked up an axe and was stepping toward
the entrance to the cavern.

"That's a scheme! Come on, Mr. Coombs. Let's help him tackle that
up-to-date log outside, and see if we can't get a modern illumination
out of it," suggested Phil.

So they chopped vigorously at the ice-bound drift-log that had induced
them to halt at that point, and half an hour later the gloom of their
cavern was dispelled by a roaring, snapping, up-to-date blaze. By its
cheerful light they examined with intense interest the great fossil
bones that lay scattered about them.

"I should think a whole herd of mammoths must have perished at once,"
said Phil. "Probably they were being hunted by some antediluvian Siwash
and got bogged in a quicksand. How I wish we could see a whole one! But,
great Scott! Now we have gone and done it!"

Phil's final exclamation was caused by a crackling sound overhead. The
sloping moss roof had caught fire from the leaping blaze, and for a
moment the dismayed spectators of this catastrophe imagined that their
snug camping-place w