These were the only reptiles I had ever seen upon Barsoom, but I knew from their similarity to the fossilized remains of supposedly extinct species I had seen in the museums of Helium that they comprised many of the known prehistoric reptilian genera, as well as others undiscovered.
The simple fact that we had found no reptiles in the corridor through which we had just come was sufficient assurance that they did not venture there.
There were still a few reptiles; but there were fish by the thousands, by the millions.
To land, it would be necessary to run the U-33 close in to the shore, at least as close as we could, for even these waters were infested, though, not so thickly, by savage reptiles. I ordered sufficient water let into the diving-tanks to lower us about a foot, and then I ran the bow slowly toward the shore, confident that should we run aground, we still had sufficient lifting force to free us when the water should be pumped out of the tanks; but the bow nosed its way gently into the reeds and touched the shore with the keel still clear.
Eminent in many things, the professor was great at
reptiles. He left me his Subjects and his Tank.
I could not cope with them all, and so I rose rapidly from among them to the cooler strata wherein they dared not follow; and then I recalled that Bowen's narrative distinctly indicated that the farther north one traveled in Caspak, the fewer were the terrible
reptiles which rendered human life impossible at the southern end of the island.
In the next stage they became fishes or
reptiles, An-Tak was not positive which, and in this form, always developing, they swam far to the south, where, amid the rank and teeming jungles, some of them evolved into amphibians.
But here we were doomed to defeat, at least tempo-rarily; for no sooner had the first of our troops descended into the subterranean avenues than many of them came stumbling and fighting their way back to the surface, half-choked by the fumes of some deadly gas that the
reptiles had liberated upon them.
Like a flash the thought came to me of the marvelous opportunity these sleeping
reptiles offered as a means of eluding the watchfulness of our captors and the Sagoth guards.
There were few
reptiles; the only dangerous kinds were the rattlesnake, and one striped with black, yellow, and white, about four feet long.
To an envious author, who depreciated works which he could never equal, he said that his snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the
reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a sting.
This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our own; and for a little
reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.
"Why, he could be a
reptile; anything that hasn't wings is a
reptile."
I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour and had a shell; it was a crawling kind of
reptile, about eight inches long, and narrowed down from the head, which was about a couple of fingers in width, to the end of the tail, which came to a fine point.
The Alabama doctors declared it a huge
reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus.
