Read Ebook: The monster-hunters by Rolt Wheeler Francis

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Ebook has 1523 lines and 60394 words, and 31 pages

"Terns," the other answered. "Very much like gulls, only that they are slenderer and have forked tails."

"I don't see anything wrong there," continued Perry after he had observed the merry bustle and excitement. "They seem rather jolly little chaps."

The other pointed a long accusing finger a little to the right of the flock.

There, flying as straight as an arrow shot from a bow, with a steady swift flight came a dark and resolute-looking bird. Into that flock of terns he plunged, like a rakish pirate schooner cutting her path amid a fleet of white-sailed pleasure boats.

In the center of the flock of birds he stopped, poised. The whirling of the terns had become more agitated and their hoarse shrieks betrayed their terror. Then, it seemed that the intruder had picked out a victim, for with a sudden swirl he darted at a tern that had wheeled up from the surface of the ocean a minute before. The tern, light and agile, dodged and sped hither and hither, gliding, mounting, doubling, with the dark stranger ever behind him, apparently eager to tear him to pieces. At last, believing that the vengeful creature behind him could not be shaken off, in one last final effort to escape, the tern lightened his flight by disgorging the contents of his gullet.

Instantly, with a movement so quick that Perry was hard set to follow it, the pirate caught in midair the fish that the tern had dropped. Pouncing upon it from above, like a falling thunderbolt, his powerful bill seized the fish. A quick upward jerk of the head sent the silver thing gleaming above him, and, as it whirled, he caught it in the proper position for swallowing, head first. Then, gliding back toward the middle of the flock, the frigatebird poised, ready to pounce upon the meal that the next tern would catch.

"The grafter!" exclaimed Perry, when the whole plan was clear to him. "Why doesn't he catch fish for himself?"

"He cannot, he cannot," Antoine answered. "He is made to live that way. He cannot dive, no, nor can he plunge into the water. Some one else must catch fish for him, or he will die."

"That's the limit!"

Antoine shrugged his shoulders.

"Man is just as bad," he said. "The cow makes milk for the calf, Man takes it; the bee makes honey, Man takes it; what's the difference?"

"I suppose it's so, when you put it that way, we do manage to sneak a lot of stuff that animals have planned for their own little savings. It seems a shame, somehow, and yet it seems right, too."

"It is Nature's law, yes," the young Belgian replied, "always the more powerful creature preys upon the less."

"It's a good thing," said Perry, thoughtfully, "that the frigate-bird isn't any bigger. A five-foot span is big enough, anyway. Suppose he were as big as an albatross, Antoine, why, the terns would never get anything to eat at all."

"If he were as big as an albatross," retorted the other, "the little birds could dodge him."

"Isn't the albatross about the biggest thing that ever flew?" asked the boy.

Antoine made a gesture of negation.

"No, no," he said, "he is the biggest bird, the biggest thing with feathers that has ever been, but the Pteranodon--the Pteranodon was more than half as big again and would look twice as big."

"Pteranodon," said the boy thoughtfully. "Let's see, Antoine, that was some kind of lizardbird, wasn't it?"

"Not a bird, not a bird," replied the other, "but it was a lizard that flew."

"Didn't it have wings?"

"No, no, it had a?roplanes," was the astonishing answer. "Hold out your hand!"

Wondering what was coming, the boy did so.

"Double your thumb under, put the three fingers close together but not quite touching, and spread the little finger out," ordered his friend.

Perry obeyed.

"Now, imagine you have claws on the three fingers, and make your little finger four feet long. Next picture to yourself a skin like a bat's stretched from the tip of the finger to your feet and you have a Pteranodon."

"Just like a big bat!"

"No, no. The bat has five fingers. The bat's thumb is a claw, and the membrane that makes the wing is like a big web between the long, long fingers. Quite different. Then the bat is a mammal. The Pteranodon, like all the flying lizards, was a reptile. The first bat was not born until thousands of years after the last pterodactyl or flying lizard died. There were lots of different kinds, but all their flying planes, or wings, were stretched from one finger. That's the reason of the name, Perry, ptero--dactyl, wing--finger. Some were smaller than a sparrow, others were big. The Pteranodon was the biggest. Some had teeth, some had beaks like birds. There was the Ramphorhyncus--"

"Oh, I know him," said the boy eagerly, "he had a tremendous long tail with a rudder at the tip."

"Yes, yes," agreed his friend. "And do you know the Dimorphodon Macronyx?"

"Big-headed thing, looks like a nightmare, with a rat's tail, teeth sticking up on the outside, and eyes that look as if he'd been in a fight? Is that the one?"

Antoine laughed at the description.

"It is not quite scientific, worded that way," he answered, "but you have the idea. That is 'him,' as you say. None of these really flew. They a?roplaned."

"I don't quite understand," said the boy. "How do you mean they a?roplaned?"

"See," said his friend, "a bird flaps his wings and rises. Some birds can glide for hours and hardly ever flap their wings. But many of the flying lizards could not flap their wings at all. They had to climb up a tree or a cliff with their claws and then throw themselves into space. Then, with the start they thus got, they could swoop and glide and swirl for quite a long time. When the spurt was over, they would have to find some new place up which to climb. Some of them, if they were on a flat plain, would die."

"Even the Pteranodon?"

"No, no," his friend answered. "Pteranodon was so big. From tip to tip of the planes or wings was nearly twenty feet. And his body was very small. Even the bones were tiny. A Pteranodon bone over two feet long and two inches in diameter, was like a piece of heavy cardboard rolled into a tube."

"Hollow?"

"Quite, quite hollow. And he had very little weight to carry. We know he could not have flapped his wings very much."

"How can you find that out?" queried Perry. "No one was there to see him."

"No, no. But it takes muscle strength to flap wings, and it needs a strong breastbone to attach the muscles. The flying lizards did not have this. Then, too, the bones were too thin to flap such big wings. It was nearly all gliding. So you can see why the birds were the winners in the fight."

"I surely do," the boy answered. "But if the bird plan won out, and the pterodactyl didn't, why has the bat plan worked?"

"The bat's wings are four times as strong as the pterodactyl's, because all four fingers are there," was the reply. "Then, too, the bat is a mammal and warm-blooded. Besides which, most bats are small. The big bats fly slowly, flapping their wings like a crow."

"Were there any birds to set up in competition with the flying lizards?" asked the boy.

"Not at first," the other said. "But when the pterodactyl failed, Nature had to start on something else. So she tried birds. Still, the first ones were more than half reptiles. They even had teeth."

"Birds with teeth?"

"Great long teeth," said his friend. "I suppose, Perry, in all the history of fossil discoveries in the rocks, one of the greatest events was the day when the first bird was discovered in a rock in Bavaria which was being quarried for lithograph stone. That rock is made from a fine kind of mud, which was laid down in the Jurassic Period. One of the very first birds in the world had evidently got stuck in that mud, hundreds of thousands of years ago, and although he had struggled to get away, he was stuck fast. He had drowned and died there.

"Then, day by day, week by week, the mud settled around him, until finally it reached his body and his head, and entombed him absolutely. The mud must have been coming down quite fast, for all his body was covered even before the feathers had rotted. For years and years, for centuries and centuries, mud had been deposited on top of him, thousands and tens of thousands of years had put other rock strata above the mud and then, in a later age, there had been a rising of the earth and it was all dry land once more.

"Still more hundreds of thousands of years passed, and then Man came. A workman, digging out stone, saw this dead bird, even the marks of his feathers on the stone. Even then, no one could believe it was really a bird, and the jaw, which was lying a few feet away from the marks of the feathers, was thought to be the jaw of a fish.

"Some day, perhaps, Perry, you may be lucky enough to find one still earlier! Think of a Triassic reptile heralding a bird! That would be a triumph, for there must have been some small leaping dinosaur which gave signs of bird-like development. Just think, Perry, if you should be the one to make the grand discovery!"

"It would be great," cried the boy.

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