Some millions of millions of years having passed by, we find ourselves,
upon a bright afternoon of Mesozoic times, in the company of that
genial and gigantic Deinosaur, Brontosaurus Excelsus. The monster,
despite pleasant climatic conditions, was ill at ease. He sat upon
his haunches, swayed his enormous neck to the right and left, and
listlessly chewed off the heads of six lofty palm-trees.
There was a crash--a boiling, seething explosion as of a torpedo in the
river at his feet--and forth came the Deinosaur’s bride, an enormous
being, much like himself, though somewhat smaller.
“Ah, my little dear, back again?” he exclaimed, and, smashing off the
palm-trees like cabbage-stumps, sank down beside her.
“You are unhappy, my own Bronto,” she said, with the pretty solicitude
of a young wife.
“Not unhappy, merely thoughtful, my love. This good world--the lakes
and rivers, the trees and groves of club mosses--all; I sometimes think
it can hardly have been created for us.”
“Not for us!”
“Not for us and our friends alone. Perhaps some day something greater,
wiser, better even than Brontosaurus Excelsus may browse here, and swim
these rivers, and lift its head to the sun.”
“This is mere moonshine, my dearest. Greater than you! Is it possible
to be greater than a hundred feet long? Is it possible to be heavier
than fifty tons? And, for the rest, who should know your goodness and
wisdom better than I? No, no; you let your humility run away with you,
my sweet. You are the first and best--Nature’s masterpiece, her joy,
her unutterable delight.”
“There’s Atlantosaurus,” said Bronto dubiously.
His wife frowned, and her huge lizard eyes were clouded.
“There is Atlantosaurus,” she admitted, “the hulking, bloodthirsty,
ignoble wretch! A thing that eats other live creatures--a debased,
degraded, distant relation--a cannibal! Nature blushes when she thinks
of him and his kind; but we, we are upon a plane apart; we eat the
green grass, the juicy cane, the young fronds and ripe fruit of the
palms; we----”
A shadow hid the sun. High above the trees rose a dreadful head with
eyes like bicycle-wheels and teeth that glittered and dropped blood.
“It’s Atlanto--this is no place for us!”
Two simultaneous splashes cast a huge column of water upward as
Brontosaurus and his better half vanished beneath that Mesozoic river.