The stupendous duel had two interested spectators. On the top of the
next tree sat an extraordinary-looking bird, about the size of a
pheasant, colored blue and rose like a macaw. Its tail was like a
lizard's, long and fully-vertebrated, with a pair of flat feathers
standing out opposite each other at right angles from each joint, for
all the world like an immense acacia-frond done in red. At the tips of
its wing-elbows it carried clutching, hand-like claws, resembling
those of the flying reptiles; and its straight, strong beak was armed
with pointed teeth. It kept opening and shutting its beak excitedly
and uttering sharp cries, as if calling everyone to come and see the
fight.
The other spectator was not excited at all. He was a large, ape-like
man--one would have said, rather, a manlike ape, had it not been for
the look in his eyes.
This enigmatic figure sat on a branch immediately over the combatants,
and held on with one powerful, hairy hand to the branch just above
him. He was covered with thick, brown hair, like fur, from head to
foot, but that on his head was true hair, long and waving. His
shoulders were massive, his chest of great depth, his arms so long
that if he had been standing erect they would have hung to his knees,
his legs short, massive and much bowed. His hands were furred to the
second joint of the fingers, but they were the hands of a man, not
those of an ape, for the huge thumb was opposed to the fingers instead
of being set parallel with them like another finger. His head was low
in the arch of the skull, low and narrow in the forehead, with a small
facial angle and hardly any bridge to the broad, flat, wide-nostriled
nose; and the jaws were heavy and thrust forward brutishly. But the
eyes, under the roof of the heavy, bony brows, held an expression
profoundly unlike the cold, mechanical stare of the giant Dinosaur or
the twinkling, vindictive glare of the black stranger. They gazed down
at the battle with a sort of superiority, considerate, a little
scornful, in spite of the obvious fact that either of the two, as far
as mere physical bulk and prowess were concerned, could have
obliterated him by simply setting foot upon him. In his free hand he
grasped a branch of acacia set with immense thorns, the needle-like
points of which he touched contemplatively from time to time, as if
pondering what use he could put them to. He had no marked prejudice,
for the moment, in favor of either side in the battle below him. Both
monsters were his foes, and the ideal result, in his eyes, would have
been for the two to destroy each other. But if he had any preference,
it was for the black mammalian beast, the lizard monster appearing to
him the more alien, the more incomprehensible and the more impregnable
to any strategy that he might devise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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