sea, upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like
creatures there were with long necks stretching ten and more feet
above their enormous bodies and whose snake heads were split with
gaping mouths bristling with countless fangs. There were huge
tortoises too, paddling about among these other reptiles, which
Perry said were Plesiosaurs of the Lias. I didn't question his
veracity--they might have been most anything.

Dian told me they were tandorazes, or tandors of the sea, and that
the other, and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from
the deep to do battle with them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths--Perry
called them Ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of
an alligator.

I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school--about
all that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations
of restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined
belief that any man with a pig's shank and a vivid imagination
could "restore" most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit,
and take rank as a first class paleontologist. But when I saw these
sleek, shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged
from the ocean, shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters
roll from their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided
hither and thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I
saw them meet, open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic
and interminable warring I realized how futile is man's poor, weak
imagination by comparison with Nature's incredible genius.

And Perry! He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself.