sufficient area to insure safety. I was flying pretty low by this

time, not only looking for landing places but watching the myriad

life beneath me. I was down pretty well toward the south end

of the island, where an arm of the lake reaches far inland, and I

could see the surface of the water literally black with creatures

of some sort. I was too far up to recognize individuals, but the

general impression was of a vast army of amphibious monsters. The

land was almost equally alive with crawling, leaping, running,

flying things. It was one of the latter which nearly did for me

while my attention was fixed upon the weird scene below.

The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of

the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most

terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have been fully

eighty feet long from the end of its long, hideous beak to the tip

of its thick, short tail, with an equal spread of wings. It was

coming straight for me and hissing frightfully--I could hear it

above the whir of the propeller. It was coming straight down toward

the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it have it right in the

breast; but still it came for me, so that I had to dive and turn,

though I was dangerously close to earth.

The thing didn't miss me by a dozen feet, and when I rose, it wheeled

and followed me, but only to the cooler air close to the level of

the cliff-tops; there it turned again and dropped. Something--man's

natural love of battle and the chase, I presume--impelled me to

pursue it, and so I too circled and dived. The moment I came down

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