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head buried in the grass of the plain,
quietly eating. It was an apatosaurus. It was a young apatosaurus. It was Banty!
    Quickly he flew toward her and hovered above her.
    â€œT. rex! T. rex! Run, Banty!” he squealed.
    Banty did not even look up.
    â€œNot now, Nosy,” she said. “Not while I’m having my lunch. Anyway, I’m a bit bored with playing Cry T. Rex! We’ll have to think of another game to play.”
    â€œBut this isn’t a game, Banty, this is real!” squeaked Nosy. “Can’t you hear him? Look, you can see him now, and he’s coming straight for you!”
    At this Banty raised her head, stretched her neck, and saw Hack.
    He was no more than ten apatosaurus-lengths away, and the lake was about the same distance from Banty. She would never reach it in time; he was
so much faster on his two legs than she was on her four. At the sight of her, Hack roared even louder.
    If only Mom were here, thought Nosy, she could fly at him and scratch his snout like she did before. There’s only one thing for it—I’ll have to try to do the same.
    But at that moment, he saw his father come flying from the woods, across the lake, and over the fleeing apatosaurus.
    â€œDaddy, Daddy!” he squealed. “It’s T. rex! He’s going to kill Banty! Can you do something? Please!”
    Clawed may have been slow-witted, but now he showed how quick he could be in action.
    â€œOut of the way, boy!” he cried, and he dived upon the fast-approaching Hack the Ripper.
    Then, spreading his great wings wide, he hovered directly in front of the tyrannosaurus so as to obscure the creature’s view of the way ahead.
    Snap and snarl as he might, Hack could not shift Clawed out of his path. So he didn’t see Banty reach the lake, splosh into it, and submerge.

    As Clawed wheeled away, Hack dashed on down to the water’s edge, but there was nothing to be seen except, some way out, a small pair of nostrils. These, of course, Hack the Ripper did not notice, as he stood knee-deep, cursing the pterodactyl that had blocked his view of the prey.
    â€œGosh, Daddy!” said Nosy as they circled above. “You were amazing!”

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    Hack the Ripper was furious. Roaring and snarling, he strode back to the body of the stegosaurus, hacking at it to stuff himself full of meat. All the dinosaurs on that part of the Great Plain moved as hastily as they could out of sight of the angry tyrannosaurus. Once again, had they known it, they were in fact quite safe for a while. He would not hunt till he was hungry again.
    Gargantua and Titanic had been out in the
lake, gathering their daily ration of waterweed, and had seen the drama of Banty’s escape.
    â€œAgain!” cried Gargantua. “Again our friends the pterodactyls have saved our Banty!”
    â€œOld Clawed,” said Titanic, “was pretty good, wasn’t he, Gargy?”
    Â 
    Later that afternoon, Nosy and his parents were hanging from a favorite branch when they heard a lot of noise in the distance. It sounded like branches breaking, which it was.
    Banty could have walked among the trees without damaging them, but Titanic and Gargantua, who were much of a size—enormous—could not.
    As they neared the pterodactyls’ roost, Titanic attempted to make his way between two very large trees that were growing close together, too close for an apatosaurus to pass. He became stuck.

    â€œI’m stuck, Gargy!” he called. “What shall I do?”
    â€œUse your brains,” Gargantua called back.
    Titanic thought about this advice for a while, with no result. Then, growing annoyed, he began to lean sideways, first against one tree, then against the other, until, with a tremendous crash, first one and then the other tree fell, torn up by the roots.
    Titanic walked on till he caught up with his wife and his daughter, and all three dinosaurs stood below the high branch from which the