Yes--it was no longer a fossil whose corpse we had raised from the ground in the great cemetery, but a giant capable of guiding and driving these prodigious monsters. His height was above twelve feet. His head, as big as the head of a buffalo, was lost in a mane of matted hair. It was indeed a huge mane, like those which belonged to the elephants of the earlier ages of the world. In his hand was a branch of a tree, which served as a crook for this antediluvian shepherd. We remained profoundly still, speechless with surprise. But we might at any moment be seen by him. Nothing remained for us but instant flight. "Come, come!" I cried, dragging my uncle along; and, for the first time, he made no resistance to my wishes. A quarter of an hour later we were far away from that terrible monster! Now that I think of the matter calmly, and that I reflect upon it dispassionately; now that months, years, have passed since this strange and unnatural adventure befell us--what am I to think, what am I to believe? No, it is utterly impossible! Our ears must have deceived us, and our eyes have cheated us! we have not seen what we believed we had seen. No human being could by any possibility have existed in that subterranean world! No generation of men could inhabit the lower caverns of the globe without taking note of those who peopled the surface, without communication with them. It was folly, folly, folly! nothing else! I am rather inclined to admit the existence of some animal resembling in structure the human race--of some monkey of the first geological epochs, like that discovered by M. Lartet in the ossiferous deposit of Sansan. But this animal, or being, whichsoever it was, surpassed in height all things known to modern science. Never mind. However unlikely it may be, it might have been a monkey--but a man, a living man, and with him a whole generation of gigantic animals, buried in the entrails of the earth--it was too monstrous to be believed! CHAPTER 37 THE MYSTERIOUS DAGGER During this time, we had left the bright and transparent forest far behind us. We were mute with astonishment, overcome by a kind of feeling which was next door to apathy. We kept running in spite of ourselves. It was a perfect Right, which resembled one of those horrible sensations we sometimes meet with in our dreams. Instinctively we made our way towards the Central Sea, and I cannot now tell what wild thoughts passed through my mind, nor of what follies I might have been guilty, but for a very serious preoccupation which brought me back to practical life. Though I was aware that we were treading on a soil quite new to us, I, however, every now and then noticed certain aggregations of rock, the shape of which forcibly reminded me of those near Port Gretchen.