Erect! Slow-thinking, but canny, they came to take their place in this
world among the things gigantic. But the gigantic things were no
longer supreme. Nature had made an error, and was busy rectifying it.
The dinosaurs--all the giant reptiles--were now sorely pressed. Brute
strength, giant size and tiny brain could not win this struggle. The
huge unwieldy things were being beaten. The smaller animals, birds and
reptiles were more agile, more resourceful, and began to dominate.
Against the giants, and against all hostility of environment, they
survived. And the giants went down to defeat. Gradually, over
thousands of centuries, they died out and were gone....

We entered 1,000,000 B. C. A movement of Migul, the mechanism,
attracted my attention. He left us at the window and went to his
controls.

"What is it?" I demanded.

"I am retarding us. We have been traveling very fast. One million
years and a few thousand are all which remain before we must stop."

I had noticed once or twice before that Migul had turned to gaze
through the Time-telespectroscope. Now he said:

"We are again followed!"

But he would say no more than that, and he silenced me harshly when I
questioned.

Suddenly, Mary touched me. "That little mirror on the table--look! It
holds an image!"

We saw very briefly on the glowing mirror the image of a Time-cage
like our own, but smaller. It was pursuing us. But why, or who might
be operating it we could not then guess.

* * * * *

My attention went back to the Time-dials, and then to the window. The
Cosmorama now was proceeding with a slowing sweep of change. It was
less blurred; its melting outlines could more readily be perceived.
The line of seashore swept like a gray gash across the vista. The land
stretched back into the haze of distance.

500,000 B. C. Again my fancy pictured what was transpiring upon this
vast stage. The apes roamed the Earth. There is no one to say what was
here in this grayness of the Western Hemisphere stretching around me,
but in Java there was a man-like ape. And then it was an ape-like man!
Mankind, here at last! Man, the Killer! Of all the beasts, this new
thing called man, most relentless of killers, had come here now to
struggle upward and dominate his world! This man-like ape in a quarter
of a million years became an ape-like man.

250,000 B. C. and the Heidelberg man, a little less ape-like, wandered
throughout Europe....