As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savage
curving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut with
a chisel. This time at least modern weapons prevailed and the great
creature, twelve feet from head to foot--phororachus its name,
according to our panting but exultant Professor--went down before Lord
Roxton's rifle in a flurry of waving feathers and kicking limbs, with
two remorseless yellow eyes glaring up from the midst of it. May I
live to see that flattened vicious skull in its own niche amid the
trophies of the Albany. Finally, I will assuredly give some account of
the toxodon, the giant ten-foot guinea pig, with projecting chisel
teeth, which we killed as it drank in the gray of the morning by the
side of the lake.

All this I shall some day write at fuller length, and amidst these more
stirring days I would tenderly sketch in these lovely summer evenings,
when with the deep blue sky above us we lay in good comradeship among
the long grasses by the wood and marveled at the strange fowl that
swept over us and the quaint new creatures which crept from their
burrows to watch us, while above us the boughs of the bushes were heavy
with luscious fruit, and below us strange and lovely flowers peeped at
us from among the herbage; or those long moonlit nights when we lay out
upon the shimmering surface of the great lake and watched with wonder
and awe the huge circles rippling out from the sudden splash of some
fantastic monster; or the greenish gleam, far down in the deep water,
of some strange creature upon the confines of darkness. These are the
scenes which my mind and my pen will dwell upon in every detail at some
future day.

But, you will ask, why these experiences and why this delay, when you
and your comrades should have been occupied day and night in the
devising of some means by which you could return to the outer world?
My answer is, that there was not one of us who was not working for this
end, but that our work had been in vain. One fact we had very speedily
discovered: The Indians would do nothing to help us. In every other
way they were our friends--one might almost say our devoted slaves--but
when it was suggested that they should help us to make and carry a
plank which would bridge the chasm, or when we wished to get from them
thongs of leather or liana to weave ropes which might help us, we were
met by a good-humored, but an invincible, refusal. They would smile,
tw