One day when the sun is bright and the water as warm as it’s likely to get, you take an old skiff and row to Beatty’s Point. You pull your boat up on the rocky shoal that marks the cave. You dive again and again along the rock wall that drops into the depths until you find the entrance. You swim a few feet inside and find you can get up to the surface inside an enormous cavern, most of it filled by an underground lake.

You reach the shore and walk along the lakeside, deeper and deeper into the cavern, which is lit by a mysterious blue light. Then, ahead, you see what you had hoped to find a tunnel that surely must lead to the Cave of Time. Nearby in the sand are three eggs as large as footballs. You pick one up and carry it into the tunnel. After walking awhile, the air becomes hard to breathe. You begin to feel dizzy and fall unconscious to the ground, still clutching the enormous egg.

You are awakened by a fresh breeze blowing toward you. You dizzily get to your feet, pick up the egg, and hurry toward the fresh air-outdoors again in Snake Canyon! Everything is as you remember it and in a few hours you are walking up to the ranch, where your uncle says he is surprised you got back so quickly!

When you tell what has happened to you, no one at the ranch believes it, though they are fasci- nated by your enormous egg.

“Maybe we’ll believe that egg is real, and believe your story, if it will hatch a monster,” your uncle says, “or if you break it open to show us what’s inside.”