Well, I agree with you; and I'd like to have about a
dozen of our modern skeptical scientists in this cave with me for
about five minutes."
"But what is it? A reptile!" Harry exclaimed. "The thing is as
big as a house!"
"Well, and why not? I should guess that it is about thirty feet
in height and forty or fifty in length. There have been species,
now extinct, several times as large."
"Then you think it is just--just an animal?" put in Desiree.
"What did you think it was?" I nearly smiled. "An infernal
machine?"
"I don't know. Only I have never before known what it was to
fear."
A discussion which led us nowhere, but at least gave us the sound
of one another's voices.
We passed many hours in that manner. Utterly blank and
wearisome, and all but hopeless. I have often wondered at the
strange tenacity with which we clung to life in conditions that
made of it a burden almost insupportable; and with what chance of
relief?
The instinct of self-preservation, it is called by the learned,
but it needs a stronger name. It is more than an instinct. It is
the very essence of life itself.
But soon we were impelled to action by something besides the
desire to escape from the cavern: the pangs of hunger.
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