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It was not very long before the party, intently on the watch for the approach of the plesiosauri, detected a strong, swirling ripple mingling with that of the yacht's wake, which indicated that at least one of the monsters was at hand, and presently the ripple broke, revealing some six feet of smooth, black, glistening back keeping pace with the little vessel, while occasionally, when the light favoured, an indistinct and momentary glimpse might be caught, through the swirling water, of two enormous, glaring eyes.
Godwin Austin would say comes next, but probably rocks containing more ammonites, and more ichthyosauri and plesiosauri, with a vast number of other things; and under that I should meet with yet older rocks, containing numbers of strange shells and fishes; and in thus passing from the surface to the lowest depths of the earth's crust, the forms of animal life and vegetable life which I should meet with in the successive beds would, looking at them broadly, be the more different the further that I went down.
The choice, however, was not left to him for long; for within five minutes of the discovery of the last arrivals all three of the plesiosauri, as with one consent and at a signal, closed in upon the carcass of their comrade, and, flinging themselves upon it with the utmost fury, gave themselves up to the task of tearing it to pieces, the work being accomplished in the midst of a foaming, splashing turmoil of water that was absolutely terrifying to witness, which caused the little cutter to pitch and roll to such an extent that it was almost impossible to retain a footing upon her heaving deck.
It is quite true that it is, in general, very unsafe to infer the absence of any animal forms during a certain geological period, because no remains of them have as yet been found in the strata then deposited: but in the case of the Cetacea it is safe to do so; for, as Sir Charles Lyell remarks, they are animals, the remains of which are singularly likely to have been preserved had they existed, in the same way that the remains were preserved of the Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, which appear to have represented the Cetacea during the secondary geological period.
Slowly we drifted down the great river toward the sea. About us swarmed the mighty denizens of the primeval deep plesiosauri and ichthyosauria with all their horrid, slimy cousins whose names were as the names of aunts and uncles to Perry, but which I have never been able to recall an hour after having heard them.
To the south and east of this lake are the Everglades, or Grassy Lakes, a region where land and water are mingled, rivers, lakes, dry islands, and wet marshes all jumbled together in confusion, and extending over many hundred square miles, the chosen abode of the alligator, the gar-fish, the snapping-turtle, the moccasin snake, and other hideous and ferocious creatures more or less mythical, and recalling those earlier periods in the earth's history when the great monsters, the Ichthyosauri and the Plesiosauri, wallowed and crawled over the continents.
Escombe shuddered as he reflected that, ignorant as he had hitherto been of the presence of the plesiosauri in the lake, it had only been by a series of fortuitous circumstances or was it the intervention of a merciful Providence? that he had been from time to time prevented from bathing in the lake, ay, and actually swimming out to the distant rock, as he had several times been strongly tempted to do.
I suppose we have all passed through this fair experience, we must all have had our chance of making magic. But to most of us it came in the boring beginning of time, and we wasted our best spells on plesiosauri, and protoplasms, and angels with flaming swords, all of whom knew magic too, and were not impressed. Witches and wizards are now rare, though not so rare as you think.
The conclusion at which Escombe speedily arrived rightly or wrongly was that upon the subsidence of the waters of the Deluge a pair of plesiosauri had found themselves imprisoned in the great basin of the valley, where, the conditions presumably being exceptionally favourable, they had not only survived but had actually contrived to perpetuate their species to a very limited extent.
About a fortnight after Escombe's destruction of the plesiosauri, it pleased Huanacocha, the late chief of the Council of Seven, to entertain a small but select party of his especial friends at a banquet, which he gave in his house, situate on the borders of the lake, the grounds of which adjoined those of the Virgins of the Sun, which, in turn, were contiguous to those of the royal palace.
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