Time closed up like a fan before him.He saw himself at one extremity of the years,face to face with the beginning and all the intermediate centuries simultaneously.Fierce men,clothed in the hides of beasts,and carrying,for defence and attack,huge clubs and pointed spears,rose from the rock,like the phantoms before the doomed Macbeth.They lived in hollows,woods,and mud huts--perhaps in caves of the neighbouring rocks.Behind them stood an earlier band.No man was there.Huge elephantine forms,the mastodon,the hippopotamus,the tapir,antelopes of monstrous size,the megatherium,and the myledon--all,for the moment,in juxtaposition.Further back,and overlapped by these,were perched huge-billed birds and swinish creatures as large as horses.Still more shadowy were the sinister crocodilian outlines--alligators and other uncouth shapes,culminating in the colossal lizard,the iguanodon.Folded behind were dragon forms and clouds of flying reptiles:still underneath were fishy beings of lower development;and so on,till the lifetime scenes of the fossil confronting him were a present and modern condition of things.These images passed before Knights inner eye in less than half a minute,and he was again considering the actual present.Was he to die?The mental picture of Elfride in the world,without himself to cherish her,smote his heart like a whip.He had hoped for deliverance,but what could a girl do?He dared not move an inch.Was Death really stretching out his hand?
The previous sensation,that it was improbable he would die,was fainter now.
However,Knight still clung to the cliff.