part I determined to allow no Quixotic notions of what was and what was

not sportsmanlike to interfere with my safety. To show what I mean, I may say that my next bag was a Teleosaurus; and I shot him sleeping by the river. His back was turned, his eyes were shut, so that I was enabled to destroy him without the smallest difficulty. He proved to be a crocodilian trifle about twenty feet long; and he died, as it were, smiling. It struck me that this monster might work up into neat cigar-cases for friends.

“And now I knew, as I proceeded onwards, that big game was at hand. Small Deinosaurs, no larger than kangaroos, hopped freely round me, but I reserved my fire, suspecting that I might need it at any moment. My companion had long since completely lost his nerve. Of him it might be said that he was out of harmony with his environment. He figured there merely as a fragment of nourishment for something bigger than himself, and realising this he presently jumped to my shoulder, evidently determined that, if worse came to worst, we would die together.

“Every moment increased the size of the fauna. Presently an armoured Deinosaur--Scelidosaurus by name--put his head out of a ten-foot patch of rushes. He had plates and spines on his monstrous back and a hungry look in his saucer-like eye. The beast, fortunately, did not see us, and feeling now that it would not be well to shoot save in the event of necessity, I stopped quietly where I was till the creature went crashing into the water. Then I visited its lair and was able to solve a problem no palæontologist has ever yet decided. I found a Deinosaur’s nest with four eggs in it and thereby set a great question at rest for ever. Deinosaurs certainly laid eggs. These in question were froglike in texture, but separate each from the other and somewhat larger than big pumpkins. Having noted so much, I heard the mother Deinosaur returning, and hurriedly withdrew, not caring to risk any difference with a creature twelve feet high, covered with armour-plating and full of maternal instinct.

“Hereabout I may note in passing that my black tom at last found something smaller than himself--a hopping Deinosaur not much bigger than a rat. This he destroyed in triumph and partially ate--feeling the better and braver for doing so.

“Of course, I proposed to shoot one of these ‘dragons of the prime’ presently. Only I wanted a big specimen, if possible. I was too late for Anchisaurus--a giant whose footprints and tail-marks have been observed in the New Red Sandstone strata--and too early for Claosaurus, whose simple custom it was to eat off the tops of palms and tree-ferns in Cretaceous times; but I knew that those flesh-eating colossi, the Ceratosaurs, might lurk round any corner; I knew they had horns on their foreheads and took twenty feet of ground at a stride; that their footmark habitually covered a square yard of earth. These reflections made me cautious, and even nervous. Then again I remembered your fearsome Stegosaur, who also shone in Jurassic days. He was wont to take the air upon all fours; Nature had provided him with plates and spikes, a massive frame about thirty feet long, and two sets of brains; one in his head, the other in the region of his tail.

“I had a presentiment that Stegosaur must surely be at hand, and presently, coming round a corner, I found my faithful companion, with his back up, almost in the jaws of such a monster. The Stegosaur was apparently using neither his front brains nor those he kept in the rear. He simply blinked at Peter, but did not move or offer to molest him, being a vegetarian. I hesitated about slaying this great beast, and it was well that I reserved my fire, for, not five minutes after he had gone upon his way, I came face to face with another of Nature’s primeval experiments, quite one of the most terrific, fantastic and short-tempered Deinosaurs she has ever turned out of her workshop. This was Triceratops--a monster with a head six feet long and no brains at all worth mentioning, but a temper like ten demons. It could not control itself, even in the presence of an Archdeacon. Indeed, it lowered its vast horns and charged me passionately; while I stood my ground and kept wonderfully cool and collected--two things I certainly should not have done outside a vision. I gave Triceratops both barrels. I hit him chiefly because I could not miss him. He filled the entire foreground of that thrilling Mesozoic scene. He dropped five yards from me, uttered ferocious expressions, and passed away without a struggle. It was a great moment, and my success inspired both of us (Peter and me) with renewed confidence. We lunched beside that fallen Triceratops, and I found that the bag slung upon my shoulder contained a flask of very passable Irish whisky, a packet of sandwiches, and some cigars. I remember wondering where those sandwiches came from and who had cut them for me, and what they had been cut off. Maybe they were Deinosaur sandwiches, or Ichthyosaur. I had a tidy pie in my wallet too. It tasted like pigeon, but must have been Pterodactyl. Peter liked this better than the sandwiches.

“Then followed perhaps my most remarkable experience. I was resting awhile after lunch, finishing the whisky and smoking a cigar, while the black cat coursed about of his free will, when suddenly the weirdest sound that ever fell on mortal ear saluted mine. I never heard anything distantly approaching it before; I know not how to describe it. The sound was something between the hiss of a serpent and the coo of a dove. The primeval beast responsible for it evidently combined the vocal qualities of bird and reptile. Naturally I marvelled, for birds were still strangers to the world. And yet an element of music in the sound led me to suspect that a creature at least of semi-ornithological nature was making it.

“‘Peter,’ I said, for he was very excited at the noise, ‘we must be in the presence of an Archæopteryx! No other Jurassic concern could make that unutterable burlesque of melody.’ And I was right. A moment later I came across an Archæopteryx sitting on a fallen tree stump and singing, or, at least, under the impression that he was doing so. I stood and listened to the first dawnings of bird music; I, who knew what the lark, and the thrush, and the nightingale could produce at their best, gave ear to that cock Archæopteryx warbling according to his limited lights. It was pathetic to see how he enjoyed it himself, and how his hen enjoyed it. He was the very first thing of his kind that Nature had managed; naturally he could conceive of nothing finer than his primitive self and preposterous voice. He gurgled and hissed, and squeaked, and even tried to trill. Then Peter, who recognised in him a true bird, despite the fact that he had claws on his wings and teeth in his mouth, captured that unfortunate Archæopteryx after a tough struggle, and dragged him to me in some joy.

“Anon we walked the sea-shore, threading in and out amidst prodigious tortoises and sleeping saurians, some of the latter nearly thirty feet in length. And then a misfortune befell me, and I lost my faithful Peter. The silly beast became too venturesome. Familiarity with Jurassic marvels bred contempt in his feline mind, and he went too near the water. Whereupon a hungry Plesiosaurus popped ten feet of neck out of the waves, and Peter’s interest in Mesozoic matters ended. I was extremely sorry. Peter had been, as it were, a link connecting me with the future. He had belonged to my wife, and I could picture her bitter regret at this uncouth termination to his picturesque existence. And then I remembered that I was concerned with a period millions of years before Adam and Eve. This reflection sobered me and made me feel for the first time something lonely and separated from my fellow-men. I knew that I had entered my sixtieth year only a week before, and I felt that it was, humanly speaking, doubtful in the last degree whether I could exist until the dawn of the Christian era. It irritated me also to reflect that I should die twelve millions of years before my wife was born; and what was the good of being an Archdeacon of the Church of England ages and ages prior to the time when ‘Britain first, at Heaven’s command,’ had risen from out the azure main? Two things were transparently clear: there would be no professional work for me, and no salary either, for a considerable number of æons. I distinctly remember worrying about the salary, and also about the unquestionable certainty that I should never see the cathedral again. Why, at the most generous computation, our world had only reached the twentieth verse of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis! Candidly I was discouraged; and, at this moment of depression, I met Brontosaurus Excelsus--almost the largest of the Deinosaurs. He walked on all fours, measured sixty feet, and probably weighed twenty tons. Not that I cared. He passed me by with silent contempt, and I have a recollection of sneering at him, too, as he strode to the water. I said:

“‘You are not as big as Atlantosaurus for all your unwieldy bulk. He stands up on his hind legs, too, and walks about like I do, who am the King of Animals, and an Archdeacon!’

“But he paid no attention. I doubt if he even heard me. These vegetable-eaters were all sleepy, lazy, unambitious brutes. ‘What,’ I said to myself bitterly in my dream, ‘is the good of being sixty feet long if you have no brains and no conversation? I would sooner be a tree or a rock than one of these addle-pated monsters. But Nature is still a baby girl, and these are her clumsy playthings and stupid dolls.’

“And then I came upon the spoor of something which took my breath away. I fancied it must be Ceratosaurus, and I knew that he relied upon animal food and feared nothing. His huge footprints left a deep impression in the damp soil, and between them extended a heavy furrow, as though some great plough had passed that way. This seemed to indicate the impression of a vast tail. The creature was doubtless striding about upon its hind legs, according to custom; and from the mangled remains of various lesser monsters which strewed its path, I doubted not that it was lunching as it roamed on its way.

“The clouds gathered more thickly, rain fell in heavy, solitary drops; there was a volcanic smell in the air, and I heard the giant Deinosaur cracking bones round the next corner. My pulse quickened, I looked to my Remington, and then hastened forward with what courage I could command.

“Round that clump of coniferæ was Ceratosaurus. He had just finished a small crocodile, and was looking round for another when he saw me. Never did I behold such a mighty, towering mass of life. His jaws were open, his head was vast, his teeth truly terrific. His yellow goggle eyes were as large as the wheels of a railway-train, his neck was a tower, his body greater than many elephants. Inexperienced as I was, I felt that a meat-eating Deinosaur, of even larger dimensions than any whose fossil bones have up to the present time been discovered, stood before me. As a matter of fact it did not stand for an instant. It approached with gigantic strides and shot its head forward like a snake. It looked about fifty feet high, but scientific and exact measurements were out of the question. Such indeed was the ungovernable haste of the brute that time did not allow of so much as a shorthand note on my cuff. I had just wondered two things; whether he would show any respect for my cloth, and whether, if he did not, my Remington would stop him, when he was upon me. He swayed his head sideways and came on upon his hind legs. His lips he licked with a black tongue--doubtless in anticipation. I fired my rifle at the right moment, but it made no impression, and in a second he was above me as I turned to fly. My cloth certainly had no respect from him, but he put it to a severe test, for, bending over from his massive haunches, he gripped me like a baby between his front talons, and bore me aloft fully twenty-five feet into the air. How my coat-tails and nether garb stood it I shall never know. Even at that supreme moment I marvelled why no stitch had given. The Deinosaur made a loud, guttural hissing, hugged me to his chest, bent his neck down, rolled his prodigious eyes, and drew back the lips from off his teeth. But I could make no movement, for my senses and muscles seemed alike paralysed. His head played over me, his fetid breath was on my cheek, his yellow eyes glared into my face, his hard nose pressed and poked my ribs. And then the power of action returned in some measure. I fought and kicked and shrieked, while as I struggled, the beast’s awful hug against my chest relaxed a little and his outline grew dim. But the yellow eye glared on brighter every moment. Then by slow stages I awoke, and the outlines of modern things appeared, and I became conscious of a general disorder, and the ceiling of my bedroom, and other familiar sights. But the yellow eye still glared on. I gasped and panted out of that nightmare grip at last, wet with perspiration, shaking with the terror of the Deinosaur’s presence. And dawn was about me and a tumble of bed-clothes, and a conviction that I was nearly standing upon my head, where my feet usually reposed in times of peaceful slumber. But the yellow eye glared on still, and not until I realised that the blazing thing was a big brass knob at my bed-foot did I grasp the facts and find myself back at the beginning of the twentieth century.

“At breakfast on that day Peter begged and implored for a sardine just as usual. But when I said, ‘What about that Pterodactyl, old chap?’ and ‘What was it like inside the Plesiosaurus, old fellow?’ he only blinked his eyes and padded with his front paws and purred as usual. Peter is a big tom-cat really, but what struck me about him that morning, after my jaunt amid Mesozoic fauna, was his ridiculously small size.”

THE BILLS

I

Hear the postman with the bills-- Little bills! What a secret misery the sight of them instils! How they flutter, flutter, flutter In their envelopes of blue, While you open them and mutter, In a whisper or a stutter, “What the deuce am I to do?” Thinking where, where, where Is the money that shall square Every paltry, petty item, that monotonously fills Little bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills? Ah! those saddening little, maddening little bills!

II

Read the lengthy household bills-- Awful bills! Glancing at their totals grim, the brain with horror thrills. From the East and from the West How they echo one request: “A remittance must be sent Without delay.” Food and coals and clothes and rent-- It is hideous to reflect on what is meant By Quarter Day. And, enthroned amidst your cares, Impecuniosity impertinently stares. How it chills! How it kills All the future, how it fills With the haunting fear of ills, Does that pressing and distressing File of bills, bills, bills-- Those offensive, comprehensive household bills!

III

There’s another sort of bills-- Brazen bills! Each its diabolic task effectively fulfils, How all hunger to be paid In that paper cannonade! Will the trouble never end? Still they send and send and send, Day and night, In a clamorous appealing to the debtor’s scanty purse, In a wild and greedy grabbing for the starved and shrunken purse; And you curse, curse, curse, Sinking sure from bad to worse, Till a resolute endeavour Cries, “Now--now flit, or never, And renounce the unequal fight!” Oh, the bills, bills, bills-- They are bitter, bitter pills To digest. Smiling ghosts of pleasures flown, Lo! we greet ye with a groan; Ye will never more return, sweet hours of rest. We shall have no more repose From the stunning And the dunning; For the monster grows and grows, Till it shatters iron wills, Under crushing And unblushing Importunity. It fills With a frantic, maniac anger in the clutches of the bills, Of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills, Of the screeching and beseeching cloud of bills.

IV

Comes the threatening of bills! Cruel bills! Pictures of a ruined home inspire the writers’ quills. ’Tis the last, the sorest strait, And we shrink before the fate That is bellowed in the menace of their tone. Cringing now amongst our friends, See, the humble prayer ascends For a loan! And relations--rich relations-- Will they heed our supplications? They are stone. They’ve no carking, biting, wearing, Tearing trouble of their own; No great horror of despairing Poverty they’ve ever known. Are they fathers? Are they mothers? Have they children, sisters, brothers?-- Have they hearts? Back the message comes from each. God! They preach, preach, preach, Preach A sermon on our bills, Purse-proud opulency thrills With a shudder at the bills, At the bills, Saying, “Go, go, go, Pay the money that you owe. You are blotted from our wills, From our wills, wills, wills. We shall never meet your bills-- Oh dear no, no, no. Ask the hills, hills, hills If they’ll help you in your woe-- Beg the sea to pay your bills, Pay your bills, bills, bills.”

* * * * *

Now the heart-beat slows and stills, Lost in wilderness of ills; Drowned in bills, bills, bills. Oh! the railing of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills; Oh! the wailing of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills; See them patter on his coffin, As they fill a wretch’s grave Full of bills, bills, bills-- Cursèd bills!

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON PLYMOUTH

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.