noon
And so they plunged forward at reckless speed , their clothes , their hands , their faces torn by the retarding underbrush that reached forth to hinder them . Again and again they fell ; but be it to their credit that the one always waited and helped the other and that into the mind of neither entered the thought or the temptation to desert his companion -- they would reach the fort together if both survived , or neither would reach it . They encountered the usual number of savage beasts and reptiles ; but they met them with a courageous recklessness born of desperation , and by virtue of the very madness of the chances they took , they came through unscathed and with the minimum of delay . Shortly after noon they reached the end of the plateau . Before them was a drop of two hundred feet to the valley beneath . To the left , in the distance , they could see the waters of the great inland sea that covers a considerable portion of the area of the crater island of Caprona and at a little lesser distance to the south of the cliffs they saw a thin spiral of smoke arising above the tree-tops . The landscape was familiar -- each recognized it immediately and knew that that smoky column marked the spot where Dinosaur had stood .