Professor Challenger stopped suddenly and pointed excitedly to the right. As he did so we saw, at the distance of a mile or so, something which appeared to be a huge gray bird took wing, flying very low and straight, until it was lost among the tree-ferns.

“Did you see it?” cried Challenger. “Summerlee, did you see it?”

His colleague was staring at the spot where the creature had disappeared.

“What do you say that it was?” he asked.

“A pterodactyl.”

Summerlee burst into laughter. “Nonsense!” said he. “It was a stork.”

Challenger was too furious to speak. He simply swung his pack upon his back and continued upon his march. Lord John came up to me, with his face grave. He had his binoculars in his hand.

“I focused it before it got over the trees,” said he. “I cannot say what it was, but I’ll risk my reputation as a sportsman that it wasn’t any bird that I have ever seen in my life.”

Are we really just at the edge of the unknown? I give you the incident as it occurred and you will know as much as I do.

When we had crossed the second ridge we saw before us an irregular, palm-studded plain, and then the line of high red cliffs which I have seen in the picture. There it lies, even as I write, and there can be no question that it is the same. Challenger walks about like a peacock, and Summerlee is silent, but still sceptical. Another day should bring some of our doubts to an end. Meanwhile, Jose, whose arm was pierced by a broken bamboo, insists on returning. And I send this letter back in his charge, and only hope that it may eventually come to hand. I will write again.

A dreadful thing has happened to us. Who could have foreseen it? I cannot foresee any end to our troubles. It may be that we are condemned to spend our whole lives in this strange, inaccessible place. I am still so confused that I can hardly think clearly of the facts of the present or of the chances of the future. Still I have as companions three remarkable men, men of great brain-power and of unshaken courage. There lies our one and only hope. It is only when I look on the untroubled faces of my comrades that I see some glimmer through the darkness.

Let me give you, with as much detail as I can, the sequence of events which have led us to this catastrophe. When I finished my last letter I stated that we were within seven miles from an enormous line of ruddy cliffs, which encircled, beyond all doubt, the plateau of which Professor Challenger spoke. Their height, as we approached them, seemed to me in some places to be greater than he had stated. There was no indication of any life that we could see.

That night we pitched our camp immediately under the cliff. Close to us was the high thin rock, the top of it being level with the plateau, but with a great gap between them. On the summit of it there grew one high tree.

“It was on that,” said Professor Challenger, pointing to this tree, “that the pterodactyl was sitting before I shot him. I am inclined to think that a good mountaineer like myself could ascend the rock to the top, though he would, of course, be no nearer to the plateau.”

As Challenger spoke of his pterodactyl I glanced at Professor Summerlee, and for the first time there was no sneer on his lips, but, on the contrary, a look of excitement and amazement. Challenger saw it too.

“Of course,” said he, with his clumsy and ponderous sarcasm, “Professor Summerlee will understand that when I speak of a pterodactyl I mean a stork… only it is the stork which has no feathers, a leathery skin, membranous wings, and teeth in its jaws.” He grinned and blinked and bowed until his colleague turned and walked away.