other. We were agreed that the one statement most difficult of

explanation was that which reported the entire absence of human

young among the various tribes which Tyler had had intercourse.

This was the one irreconcilable statement of the manuscript. A

world of adults! It was impossible.

We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party of

English sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them; how

many more might have perished! And Miss La Rue--could a young

girl long have survived the horrors of Caspak after having been

separated from all of her own kind? The assistant secretary wondered

if Nobs still was with her, and then we both smiled at this tacit

acceptance of the truth of the whole uncanny tale:

"I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but by

George, I can't help believing it, and I can see that girl now,

with the big Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors

of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene--the apelike

Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactyls

soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty

dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of

preglacial forests--the dragons which we considered myths until

science taught us that they were the true recollections of the

first man, handed down through countless ages by word of mouth from

father to son out of the unrecorded dawn of humanity."

"It is stupendous--if true," I replied. "And to think that possibly

they are still there--Tyler and Miss La Rue--surrounded by hideous

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