many serious and doubtless painful wounds, but not one
that seemed in the least degree likely to prove mortal. The result was
the immediate resumption of a struggle so violent that for a breathless
minute or two it really seemed as though the cutter, stout little craft
as she was, would be dragged under water and sunk. And in the very
height of the confusion one of the hunters must needs fall overboard
into the midst of the boiling flurry of bloodstained foam raised by the
struggles of the frantic brute, and was only dragged aboard again by
Harry in the very nick of time to save him from the terrific rush of the
second plesiosaurus. Then the young leader of the party, seeing that
his companions were too completely unnerved to be of any use, and that
the violent struggles of the wounded brute threatened to seriously
injure, if they did not actually destroy, the cutter, stepped forward,
and, raising his rifle, seized the opportunity afforded by a pause of a
fraction of a second in the violent movements of the creature, and sent
a bullet crashing through its right eye into its brain. That settled
the matter. The struggles ceased for a moment or two with startling
suddenness; a convulsive, writhing movement followed; then came a
terrible shudder, and with a final gasping groan the monster yielded up
its life and hung motionless, its body supported, still in an upright
position, by the great hook through its jaw. With the crack of
Escombe's rifle the second monster had suddenly vanished.

The question now was, what was to be done with the carcass of the dead
plesiosaurus. As Harry stood there, contemplatively regarding it, it
was perfectly obvious to him that if the great fish hook were cut out of
the creature's jaw with an axe, the body would at once sink to the
bottom of the lake, and there would be an end of it, so far as he was
concerned, and the party would at once be free to resume their fishing,
although he had his doubts as to whether, after what had already
happened, another of the monsters could be tempted to take the baited
hook. But it suddenly occurred to him that, the plesiosaurus being to
all intents and purposes an extinct and antediluvian animal, the only
remains of it in existence must necessarily consist of such fossilised
fragments as had been accidentally discovered in the course of
excavation, and that the complete skeleton of such a gigantic specimen
as that before him would be regarded as a pr