The Lost World

into my head. I rigged up a contraption to hold off those stinking beasts, and I spent a happy day there with a spud. This is what I got." He opened his cigar-box, and tilting it over he poured about twenty or thirty rough stones, varying from the size of beans to that of chestnuts, on the table. "Perhaps you think I should have told you then. Well, so I should, only I know there are a lot of traps for the unwary, and that stones may be of any size and yet of little value where color and consistency are clean off. Therefore, I brought them back, and on the first day at home I took one round to Spink's, and asked him to have it roughly cut and valued." He took a pill-box from his pocket, and spilled out of it a beautiful glittering diamond, one of the finest stones that I have ever seen. "There's the result," said he. "He prices the lot at a minimum of two hundred thousand pounds. Of course it is fair shares between us. I won't hear of anythin' else. Well, Challenger, what will you do with your fifty thousand?" "If you really persist in your generous view," said the Professor, "I should found a private museum, which has long been one of my dreams." "And you, Summerlee?" "I would retire from teaching, and so find time for my final classification of the chalk fossils." "I'll use my own," said Lord John Roxton, "in fitting a well-formed expedition and having another look at the dear old plateau. As to you, young fellah, you, of course, will spend yours in gettin' married." "Not just yet," said I, with a rueful smile. "I think, if you will have me, that I would rather go with you." Lord Roxton said nothing, but a brown hand was stretched out to me across the table.