第67章 Terrific Saurian Combat(2)

All day my thoughts were bent upon these speculations,and my imagination scarcely regained a degree of calmness and power of reflection until after a sleep of many hours.

This day,as on other Sundays,we observed as a day of rest and pious meditation.

Monday,August 17th.I have been trying to realize from memory the particular instincts of those antediluvian animals of the secondary period,which succeeding to the mollusca,to the crustacea,and to the fish,preceded the appearance of the race of mammifers.The generation of reptiles then reigned supreme upon the earth.These hideous monsters ruled everything in the seas of the secondary period,which formed the strata of which the Jura mountains are composed.Nature had endowed them with perfect organization.What a gigantic structure was theirs;what vast and prodigious strength they possessed!

The existing saurians,which include all such reptiles as lizards,crocodiles,and alligators,even the largest and most formidable of their class,are but feeble imitations of their mighty sires,the animals of ages long ago.If there were giants in the days of old,there were also gigantic animals.

I shuddered as I evolved from my mind the idea and recollection of these awful monsters.No eye of man had seen them in the flesh.They took their walks abroad upon the face of the earth thousands of ages before man came into existence,and their fossil bones,discovered in the limestone,have allowed us to reconstruct them anatomically,and thus to get some faint idea of their colossal formation.

I recollect once seeing in the great Museum of Hamburg the skeleton of one of these wonderful saurians.It measured no less than thirty feet from the nose to the tail.Am I,then,an inhabitant of the earth of the present day,destined to find myself face to face with a representative of this antediluvian family?Ican scarcely believe it possible;I can hardly believe it true.And yet these marks of powerful teeth upon the bar of iron!Can there be a doubt from their shape that the bite is the bite of a crocodile?

My eyes stare wildly and with terror upon the subterranean sea.

Every moment I expect one of these monsters to rise from its vast cavernous depths.

I fancy that the worthy Professor in some measure shares my notions,if not my fears,for,after an attentive examination of the crowbar,he cast his eyes rapidly over the mighty and mysterious ocean.

"What could possess him to leave the land,"I thought,"as if the depth of this water was of any importance to us.No doubt he has disturbed some terrible monster in his watery home,and perhaps we may pay dearly for our temerity."Anxious to be prepared for the worst,I examined our weapons,and saw that they were in a fit state for use.My uncle looked on at me and nodded his head approvingly.He,too,has noticed what we have to fear.

Already the uplifting of the waters on the surface indicates that something is in motion below.The danger approaches.It comes nearer and nearer.It behooves us to be on the watch.

Tuesday,August 18th.Evening came at last,the hour when the desire for sleep caused our eyelids to be heavy.Night there is not,properly speaking,in this place,any more than there is in summer in the arctic regions.Hans,however,is immovable at the rudder.When he snatches a moment of rest I really cannot say.I take advantage of his vigilance to take some little repose.

But two hours after I was awakened from a heavy sleep by an awful shock.The raft appeared to have struck upon a sunken rock.It was lifted right out of the water by some wondrous and mysterious power,and then started off twenty fathoms distant.

"Eh,what is it?"cried my uncle starting up."Are we shipwrecked,or what?"Hans raised his hand and pointed to where,about two hundred yards off,a large black mass was moving up and down.

I looked with awe.My worst fears were realized.

"It is a colossal monster!"I cried,clasping my hands.

"Yes,"cried the agitated Professor,"and there yonder is a huge sea lizard of terrible size and shape.""And farther on behold a prodigious crocodile.Look at his hideous jaws,and that row of monstrous teeth.Ha!he has gone.""A whale!a whale!"shouted the Professor,"I can see her enormous fins.See,see,how she blows air and water!"Two liquid columns rose to a vast height above the level of the sea,into which they fell with a terrific crash,waking up the echoes of that awful place.We stood still-surprised,stupefied,terror-stricken at the sight of this group of fearful marine monsters,more hideous in the reality than in my dream.They were of supernatural dimensions;the very smallest of the whole party could with ease have crushed our raft and ourselves with a single bite.

Hans,seizing the rudder which had flown out of his hand,puts it hard aweather in order to escape from such dangerous vicinity;but no sooner does he do so,than he finds he is flying from Scylla to Charybdis.To leeward is a turtle about forty feet wide,and a serpent quite as long,with an enormous and hideous head peering from out the waters.

Look which way we will,it is impossible for us to fly.The fearful reptiles advanced upon us;they turned and twisted about the raft with awful rapidity.They formed around our devoted vessel a series of concentric circles.I took up my rifle in desperation.But what effect can a rifle ball produce upon the armor scales with which the bodies of these horrid monsters are covered?