barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance

reveals."

That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's towering

barrier.

"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan the

summit thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would have been

to waste our time in working out details of a plan to surmount those."

And he jerked his thumb toward the cliffs. "It would take weeks,

possibly months, to construct a ladder to the top. I had no

conception of their formidable height. Our mortar would not carry

a line halfway to the crest of the lowest point. There is no use

discussing any plan other than the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find

the beach and get busy."

Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could

discern surf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw

the line of breakers broken by a long sweep of rolling surf upon

a narrow beach. The launch was lowered, and five of us made a

landing, getting a good ducking in the ice-cold waters in the doing

of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the clean-picked

bones of what might have been the skeleton of a high order of ape

or a very low order of man, lying close to the base of the cliff.

Billings was satisfied, as were the rest of us, that this was the

beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further found that there was ample

room to assemble the sea-plane.

Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting,

with the result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the

large boxes marked "_H_" upon the beach, and were busily engaged in

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