Produced by Judith Boss.
Out of Time's Abyss
By
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter I
This is the tale of Bradley after he left Fort Dinosaur upon the westcoast of the great lake that is in the center of the island.
Upon the fourth day of September, 1916, he set out with fourcompanions, Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet, to search along thebase of the barrier cliffs for a point at which they might be scaled.
Through the heavy Caspakian air, beneath the swollen sun, the five menmarched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep in lush, junglegrasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now across openmeadow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging into dense forestsof eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous ferns with featheredfronds waving gently a hundred feet above their heads.
About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over themmoved and swung and soared the countless forms of Caspak's teeminglife. Always were they menaced by some frightful thing and seldom weretheir rifles cool, yet even in the brief time they had dwelt uponCaprona they had become callous to danger, so that they swung alonglaughing and chatting like soldiers on a summer hike.
"This reminds me of South Clark Street," remarked Brady, who had onceserved on the traffic squad in Chicago; and as no one asked him why, hevolunteered that it was "because it's no place for an Irishman."
"South Clark Street and heaven have something in common, then,"suggested Sinclair. James and Tippet laughed, and then a hideous growlbroke from a dense thicket ahead and diverted their attention to othermatters.
"One of them behemoths of 'Oly Writ," muttered Tippet as they came to ahalt and with guns ready awaited the almost inevitable charge.
"Hungry lot o' beggars, these," said Bradley; "always trying to eateverything they see."
For a moment no further sound came from the thicket. "He may befeeding now," suggested Bradley. "We'll try to go around him. Can'twaste ammunition. Won't last forever. Follow me." And he set off atright angles to their former course, hoping to avert a charge. Theyhad taken a dozen steps, perhaps, when the thicket moved to the advanceof the thing within it, the leafy branches parted, and the hideous headof a gigantic bear emerged.
"Pick your trees," whispered Bradley. "Can't waste ammunition."
The men looked about them. The bear took a couple of steps forward,still growling menacingly. He was exposed to the shoulders now.Tippet took one look at the monster and bolted for the nearest tree;and then the bear charged. He charged straight for Tippet. The othermen scattered for the various trees they had selected--all exceptBradley. He stood watching Tippet and the bear. The man had a goodstart and the tree was not far away; but the speed of the enormouscreature behind him was something to marvel at, yet Tippet was in afair way to make his sanctuary when his foot caught in a tangle ofroots and down he went, his rifle flying from his hand and fallingseveral yards away. Instantly Bradley's piece was at his shoulder,there was a sharp report answered by a roar of mingled rage and painfrom the carnivore. Tippet attempted to scramble to his feet.
"Lie still!" shouted Bradley. "Can't waste ammunition."
The bear halted in its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley and then backagain toward Tippet. Again the former's rifle spit angrily, and thebear turned again in his direction. Bradley shouted loudly. "Come on,you behemoth of Holy Writ!" he cried. "Come on, you duffer! Can'twaste ammunition." And as he saw the bear apparently upon the verge ofdeciding to charge him, he encouraged the idea by backing rapidly away,knowing that an angry beast will more often charge one who moves thanone who lies still.
And the bear did charge. Like a bolt of lightning he flashed down uponthe Englishman. "Now run!" Bradley called to Tippet and himselfturned in flight toward a nearby tree. The other men, now safelyensconced upon various branches, watched the race with breathlessinterest. Would Bradley make it? It seemed scarce possible. And ifhe didn't! James gasped at the thought. Six feet at the shoulderstood the frightful mountain of blood-mad flesh and bone and sinew thatwas bearing down with the speed of an express train upon the seeminglyslow-moving man.
It all happened in a few seconds; but they were seconds that seemedlike hours to the men who watched. They saw Tippet leap to his feet atBradley's shouted warning. They saw him run, stooping to recover hisrifle as he passed the spot where it had fallen. They saw him glanceback toward Bradley, and then they saw him stop short of the tree thatmight have given him safety and turn back in the direction of the bear.Firing as he ran, Tippet raced after the great cave bear--the monstrousthing that should have been extinct ages before--ran for it and firedeven as the beast was almost upon Bradley. The men in the treesscarcely breathed. It seemed to them such a futile thing for Tippet todo, and Tippet of all men! They had never looked upon Tippet as acoward--there seemed to be no cowards among that strangely assortedcompany that Fate had gathered together from the four corners of theearth--but Tippet was considered a cautious man. Overcautious, somethought him. How futile he and his little pop-gun appeared as hedashed after that living engine of destruction! But, oh, how glorious!It was some such thought as this that ran through Brady's mind, thougharticulated it might have been expressed otherwise, albeit moreforcefully.
Just then it occurred to Brady to fire and he, too, opened upon thebear, but at the same instant the animal stumbled and fell forward,though still growling most fearsomely. Tippet never stopped running orfiring until he stood within a foot of the brute, which lay almosttouching Bradley and was already struggling to regain its feet.Placing the muzzle of his gun against the bear's ear, Tippet pulled thetrigger. The creature sank limply to the ground and Bradley scrambledto his feet.
"Good work, Tippet," he said. "Mightily obliged to you--awful waste ofammunition, really."
And then they resumed the march and in fifteen minutes the encounterhad ceased even to be a topic of conversation.
For two days they continued upon their perilous way. Already thecliffs loomed high and forbidding close ahead without sign of break toencourage hope that somewhere they might be scaled. Late in theafternoon the party crossed a small stream of warm water upon thesluggishly moving surface of which floated countless millions of tinygreen eggs surrounded by a light scum of the same color, though of adarker shade. Their past experience of Caspak had taught them thatthey might expect to come upon a stagnant pool of warm water if theyfollowed the stream to its source; but there they were almost certainto find some of Caspak's grotesque, manlike creatures. Already sincethey had disembarked from the U-33 after its perilous trip through thesubterranean channel beneath the barrier cliffs had brought them intothe inland sea of Caspak, had they encountered what had appeared to bethree distinct types of these creatures. There had been the pureapes--huge, gorillalike beasts--and those who walked, a trifle moreerect and had features with just a shade more of the human cast aboutthem. Then there were men like Ahm, whom they had captured andconfined at the fort--Ahm, the club-man. "Well-known club-man," Tylerhad called him. Ahm and his people had knowledge of a speech. Theyhad a language, in which they were unlike the race just inferior tothem, and they walked much more erect and were less hairy: but it wasprincipally the fact that they possessed a spoken language and carrieda weapon that differentiated them from the others.
All of these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In commonwith the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of nature as theyseemed to understand it was to kill--kill--kill. And so it was thatBradley had no desire to follow up the little stream toward the poolnear which were sure to be the caves of some savage tribe, but fortuneplayed him an unkind trick, for the pool was much closer than heimagined, its southern end reaching fully a mil
e south of the point atwhich they crossed the stream, and so it was that after forcing theirway through a tangle of jungle vegetation they came out upon the edgeof the pool which they had wished to avoid.
Almost simultaneously there appeared south of them a party of naked menarmed with clubs and hatchets. Both parties halted as they caughtsight of one another. The men from the fort saw before them a huntingparty evidently returning to its caves or village laden with meat.They were large men with features closely resembling those of theAfrican Negro though their skins were white. Short hair grew upon alarge portion of their limbs and bodies, which still retained aconsiderable trace of apish progenitors. They were, however, adistinctly higher type than the Bo-lu, or club-men.
Bradley would have been glad to have averted a meeting; but as hedesired to lead his party south around the end of the pool, and as itwas hemmed in by the jungle on one side and the water on the other,there seemed no escape from an encounter.
On the chance that he might avoid a clash, Bradley stepped forward withupraised hand. "We are friends," he called in the tongue of Ahm, theBo-lu, who had been held a prisoner at the fort; "permit us to pass inpeace. We will not harm you."
At this the hatchet-men set up a great jabbering with much laughter,loud and boisterous. "No," shouted one, "you will not harm us, for weshall kill you. Come! We kill! We kill!" And with hideous shoutsthey charged down upon the Europeans.
"Sinclair, you may fire," said Bradley quietly. "Pick off the leader.Can't waste ammunition."
The Englishman raised his piece to his shoulder and took quick aim atthe breast of the yelling savage leaping toward them. Directly behindthe leader came another hatchet-man, and with the report of Sinclair'srifle both warriors lunged forward in the tall grass, pierced by thesame bullet. The effect upon the rest of the band was electrical. Asone man they came to a sudden halt, wheeled to the east and dashed intothe jungle, where the men could hear them forcing their way in aneffort to put as much distance as possible between themselves and theauthors of this new and frightful noise that killed warriors at a greatdistance.
Both the savages were dead when Bradley approached to examine them, andas the Europeans gathered around, other eyes were bent upon them withgreater curiosity than they displayed for the victim of Sinclair'sbullet. When the party again took up the march around the southern endof the pool the owner of the eyes followed them--large, round eyes,almost expressionless except for a certain cold cruelty which glintedmalignly from under their pale gray irises.
All unconscious of the stalker, the men came, late in the afternoon, toa spot which seemed favorable as a campsite. A cold spring bubbledfrom the base of a rocky formation which overhung and partiallyencircled a small inclosure. At Bradley's command, the men took up theduties assigned them--gathering wood, building a cook-fire andpreparing the evening meal. It was while they were thus engaged thatBrady's attention was attracted by the dismal flapping of huge wings.He glanced up, expecting to see one of the great flying reptiles of abygone age, his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. Hehad groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed maniacfrom a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he looked up, hewent white and staggered back.
"Gawd!" he almost screamed. "What is it?"
Attracted by Brady's cry the others seized their rifles as theyfollowed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them that wasnot moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady spoke again inan almost inaudible voice. "Holy Mother protect us--it's a banshee!"
Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of danger, felta strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as slowly, not ahundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself across the sky, itshuge, round eyes glaring down upon them. And until it disappeared overthe tops of the trees of a near-by wood the five men stood as thoughparalyzed, their eyes never leaving the weird shape; nor never one ofthem appearing to recall that he grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.
With the passing of the thing, came the reaction. Tippet sank to theground and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Gord," he moaned. "Tykeme awy from this orful plice." Brady, recovered from the first shock,swore loud and luridly. He called upon all the saints to witness thathe was unafraid and that anybody with half an eye could have seen thatthe creature was nothing more than "one av thim flyin' alligators" thatthey all were familiar with.
"Yes," said Sinclair with fine sarcasm, "we've saw so many of them withwhite shrouds on 'em."
"Shut up, you fool!" growled Brady. "If you know so much, tell us whatit was after bein' then."
Then he turned toward Bradley. "What was it, sir, do you think?" heasked.
Bradley shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "It looked like awinged human being clothed in a flowing white robe. Its face was morehuman than otherwise. That is the way it looked to me; but what itreally was I can't even guess, for such a creature is as far beyond myexperience or knowledge as it is beyond yours. All that I am sure ofis that whatever else it may have been, it was quite material--it wasno ghost; rather just another of the strange forms of life which wehave met here and with which we should be accustomed by this time."
Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. "Yer cawn't tell me," hecried. "Hi seen hit. Blime, Hi seen hit. Hit was ha dead man flyin'through the hair. Didn't Hi see 'is heyes? Oh, Gord! Didn't Hi see'em?"
"It didn't look like any beast or reptile to me," spoke up Sinclair."It was lookin' right down at me when I looked up and I saw its faceplain as I see yours. It had big round eyes that looked all cold anddead, and its cheeks were sunken in deep, and I could see its yellowteeth behind thin, tight-drawn lips--like a man who had been dead along while, sir," he added, turning toward Bradley.
"Yes!" James had not spoken since the apparition had passed over them,and now it was scarce speech which he uttered--rather a series ofarticulate gasps. "Yes--dead--a--long--while. It--means something.It--come--for some--one. For one--of us. One--of us is goin'--to die.I'm goin' to die!" he ended in a wail.
"Come! Come!" snapped Bradley. "Won't do. Won't do at all. Get towork, all of you. Waste of time. Can't waste time."
His authoritative tones brought them all up standing, and presentlyeach was occupied with his own duties; but each worked in silence andthere was no singing and no bantering such as had marked the making ofprevious camps. Not until they had eaten and to each had been issuedthe little ration of smoking tobacco allowed after each evening mealdid any sign of a relaxation of taut nerves appear. It was Brady whoshowed the first signs of returning good spirits. He commenced humming"It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and presently to voice the words, but hewas well into his third song before anyone joined him, and even thenthere seemed a dismal note in even the gayest of tunes.
A huge fire blazed in the opening of their rocky shelter that theprowling carnivora might be kept at bay; and always one man stood onguard, watchfully alert against a sudden rush by some maddened beast ofthe jungle. Beyond the fire, yellow-green spots of flame appeared,moved restlessly about, disappeared and reappeared, accompanied by ahideous chorus of screams and growls and roars as the hungrymeat-eaters hunting through the night were attracted by the light orthe scent of possible prey.
But to such sights and sounds as these the five men had become callous.They sang or talked as unconcernedly as they might have done in thebar-room of some publichouse at home.
Sinclair was standing guard. The others were listening to Brady'sdescription of traffic congestion at the Rush Street bridge during therush hour at night. The fire crackled cheerily. The owners of theyellow-green eyes raised their frightful chorus to the heavens.Conditions seemed again to have returned to normal. And then, asthough the hand of Death had reached out and touched them all, the fivemen tensed into sudden rigidity.
Above the nocturnal diapason of the teeming jungle sounded a dismalflapping of wings and over head, through the thick night, a shadowyform passed across the
diffused light of the flaring camp-fire.Sinclair raised his rifle and fired. An eerie wail floated down fromabove and the apparition, whatever it might have been, was swallowed bythe darkness. For several seconds the listening men heard the sound ofthose dismally flapping wings lessening in the distance until theycould no longer be heard.
Bradley was the first to speak. "Shouldn't have fired, Sinclair," hesaid; "can't waste ammunition." But there was no note of censure inhis tone. It was as though he understood the nervous reaction that hadcompelled the other's act.
"I couldn't help it, sir," said Sinclair. "Lord, it would take an ironman to keep from shootin' at that awful thing. Do you believe inghosts, sir?"
"No," replied Bradley. "No such things."
"I don't know about that," said Brady. "There was a woman murderedover on the prairie near Brighton--her throat was cut from ear to ear,and--"
"Shut up," snapped Bradley.
"My grandaddy used to live down Coppington wy," said Tippet. "Theywere a hold ruined castle on a 'ill near by, hand at midnight they usedto see pale blue lights through the windows an 'ear--"
"Will you close your hatch!" demanded Bradley. "You fools will haveyourselves scared to death in a minute. Now go to sleep."
But there was little sleep in camp that night until utter exhaustionovertook the harassed men toward morning; nor was there any return ofthe weird creature that had set the nerves of each of them on edge.
The following forenoon the party reached the base of the barrier cliffsand for two days marched northward in an effort to discover a break inthe frowning abutment that raised its rocky face almost perpendicularlyabove them, yet nowhere was there the slightest indication that thecliffs were scalable.
Disheartened, Bradley determined to turn back toward the fort, as healready had exceeded the time decided upon by Bowen Tyler and himselffor the expedition. The cliffs for many miles had been trending in anortheasterly direction, indicating to Bradley that they wereapproaching the northern extremity of the island. According to thebest of his calculations they had made sufficient easting during thepast two days to have brought them to a point almost directly north ofFort Dinosaur and as nothing could be gained by retracing their stepsalong the base of the cliffs he decided to strike due south through theunexplored country between them and the fort.
That night (September 9, 1916), they made camp a short distance fromthe cliffs beside one of the numerous cool springs that are to be foundwithin Caspak, oftentimes close beside the still more numerous warm andhot springs which feed the many pools. After supper the men laysmoking and chatting among themselves. Tippet was on guard. Fewernight prowlers threatened them, and the men were commenting upon thefact that the farther north they had traveled the smaller the number ofall species of animals became, though it was still present in whatwould have seemed appalling plenitude in any other part of the world.The diminution in reptilian life was the most noticeable change in thefauna of northern Caspak. Here, however, were forms they had not metelsewhere, several of which were of gigantic proportions.
According to their custom all, with the exception of the man on guard,sought sleep early, nor, once disposed upon the ground for slumber,were they long in finding it. It seemed to Bradley that he hadscarcely closed his eyes when he was brought to his feet, wide awake,by a piercing scream which was punctuated by the sharp report of arifle from the direction of the fire where Tippet stood guard. As heran toward the man, Bradley heard above him the same uncanny wail thathad set every nerve on edge several nights before, and the dismalflapping of huge wings. He did not need to look up at thewhite-shrouded figure winging slowly away into the night to know thattheir grim visitor had returned.
The muscles of his arm, reacting to the sight and sound of the menacingform, carried his hand to the butt of his pistol; but after he haddrawn the weapon, he immediately returned it to its holster with ashrug.
"What for?" he muttered. "Can't waste ammunition." Then he walkedquickly to where Tippet lay sprawled upon his face. By this timeJames, Brady and Sinclair were at his heels, each with his rifle inreadiness.
"Is he dead, sir?" whispered James as Bradley kneeled beside theprostrate form.
Bradley turned Tippet over on his back and pressed an ear close to theother's heart. In a moment he raised his head. "Fainted," heannounced. "Get water. Hurry!" Then he loosened Tippet's shirt atthe throat and when the water was brought, threw a cupful in the man'sface. Slowly Tippet regained consciousness and sat up. At first helooked curiously into the faces of the men about him; then anexpression of terror overspread his features. He shot a startledglance up into the black void above and then burying his face in hisarms began to sob like a child.
"What's wrong, man?" demanded Bradley. "Buck up! Can't play cry-baby.Waste of energy. What happened?"
"Wot 'appened, sir!" wailed Tippet. "Oh, Gord, sir! Hit came back.Hit came for me, sir. Right hit did, sir; strite hat me, sir; handwith long w'ite 'ands it clawed for me. Oh, Gord! Hit almost caughtme, sir. Hi'm has good as dead; Hi'm a marked man; that's wot Hi ham.Hit was a-goin' for to carry me horf, sir."
"Stuff and nonsense," snapped Bradley. "Did you get a good look at it?"
Tippet said that he did--a much better look than he wanted. The thinghad almost clutched him, and he had looked straight into itseyes--"dead heyes in a dead face," he had described them.
"Wot was it after bein', do you think?" inquired Brady.
"Hit was Death," moaned Tippet, shuddering, and again a pall of gloomfell upon the little party.
The following day Tippet walked as one in a trance. He never spokeexcept in reply to a direct question, which more often than not had tobe repeated before it could attract his attention. He insisted that hewas already a dead man, for if the thing didn't come for him during theday he would never live through another night of agonized apprehension,waiting for the frightful end that he was positive was in store forhim. "I'll see to that," he said, and they all knew that Tippet meantto take his own life before darkness set in.
Bradley tried to reason with him, in his short, crisp way, but soon sawthe futility of it; nor could he take the man's weapons from himwithout subjecting him to almost certain death from any of thenumberless dangers that beset their way.
The entire party was moody and glum. There was none of the banteringthat had marked their intercourse before, even in the face of blightinghardships and hideous danger. This was a new menace that threatenedthem, something that they couldn't explain; and so, naturally, itaroused within them superstitious fear which Tippet's attitude onlytended to augment. To add further to their gloom, their way ledthrough a dense forest, where, on account of the underbrush, it wasdifficult to make even a mile an hour. Constant watchfulness wasrequired to avoid the many snakes of various degrees of repulsivenessand enormity that infested the wood; and the only ray of hope they hadto cling to was that the forest would, like the majority of Caspakianforests, prove to be of no considerable extent.
Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque creatureof Titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees, which herecommenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what appeared to be anenormous dragon devouring the carcass of a mammoth. From frightfuljaws to the tip of its long tail it was fully forty feet in length.Its body was covered with plates of thick skin which bore a strikingresemblance to armor-plate. The creature saw Bradley almost at thesame instant that he saw it and reared up on its enormous hind legsuntil its head towered a full twenty-five feet above the ground. Fromthe cavernous jaws issued a hissing sound of a volume equal to theescaping steam from the safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, andthen the creature came for the man.
"Scatter!" shouted Bradley to those behind him; and all but Tippetheeded the warning. The man stood as though dazed, and when Bradleysaw the other's danger, he too stopped and wheeling about sent a bulletinto the massive body forcing its way through the trees toward him.The shot struck the creature in the
belly where there was no protectingarmor, eliciting a new note which rose in a shrill whistle and ended ina wail. It was then that Tippet appeared to come out of his trance,for with a cry of terror he turned and fled to the left. Bradley,seeing that he had as good an opportunity as the others to escape, nowturned his attention to extricating himself; and as the woods seemeddense on the right, he ran in that direction, hoping that the close-setboles would prevent pursuit on the part of the great reptile. Thedragon paid no further attention to him, however, for Tippet's suddenbreak for liberty had attracted its attention; and after Tippet itwent, bowling over small trees, uprooting underbrush and leaving a wakebehind it like that of a small tornado.
Bradley, the moment he had discovered the thing was pursuing Tippet,had followed it. He was afraid to fire for fear of hitting the man,and so it was that he came upon them at the very moment that themonster lunged its great weight forward upon the doomed man. Thesharp, three-toed talons of the forelimbs seized poor Tippet, andBradley saw the unfortunate fellow lifted high above the ground as thecreature again reared up on its hind legs, immediately transferringTippet's body to its gaping jaws, which closed with a sickening,crunching sound as Tippet's bones cracked beneath the great teeth.
Bradley half raised his rifle to fire again and then lowered it with ashake of his head. Tippet was beyond succor--why waste a bullet thatCaspak could never replace? If he could now escape the further noticeof the monster it would be a wiser act than to throw his life away infutile revenge. He saw that the reptile was not looking in hisdirection, and so he slipped noiselessly behind the bole of a largetree and thence quietly faded away in the direction he believed theothers to have taken. At what he considered a safe distance he haltedand looked back. Half hidden by the intervening trees he still couldsee the huge head and the massive jaws from which protruded the limplegs of the dead man. Then, as though struck by the hammer of Thor,the creature collapsed and crumpled to the ground. Bradley's singlebullet, penetrating the body through the soft skin of the belly, hadslain the Titan.
A few minutes later, Bradley found the others of the party. The fourreturned cautiously to the spot where the creature lay and afterconvincing themselves that it was quite dead, came close to it. It wasan arduous and gruesome job extricating Tippet's mangled remains fromthe powerful jaws, the men working for the most part silently.
"It was the work of the banshee all right," muttered Brady. "It warnedpoor Tippet, it did."
"Hit killed him, that's wot hit did, hand hit'll kill some more of us,"said James, his lower lip trembling.
"If it was a ghost," interjected Sinclair, "and I don't say as it was;but if it was, why, it could take on any form it wanted to. It mighthave turned itself into this thing, which ain't no natural thing atall, just to get poor Tippet. If it had of been a lion or somethingelse humanlike it wouldn't look so strange; but this here thing ain'thumanlike. There ain't no such thing an' never was."
"Bullets don't kill ghosts," said Bradley, "so this couldn't have beena ghost. Furthermore, there are no such things. I've been trying toplace this creature. Just succeeded. It's a tyrannosaurus. Sawpicture of skeleton in magazine. There's one in New York NaturalHistory Museum. Seems to me it said it was found in place called HellCreek somewhere in western North America. Supposed to have lived aboutsix million years ago."
"Hell Creek's in Montana," said Sinclair. "I used to punch cows inWyoming, an' I've heard of Hell Creek. Do you s'pose that therething's six million years old?" His tone was skeptical.
"No," replied Bradley; "But it would indicate that the island ofCaprona has stood almost without change for more than six millionyears."
The conversation and Bradley's assurance that the creature was not ofsupernatural origin helped to raise a trifle the spirits of the men;and then came another diversion in the form of ravenous meat-eatersattracted to the spot by the uncanny sense of smell which had apprisedthem of the presence of flesh, killed and ready for the eating.
It was a constant battle while they dug a grave and consigned all thatwas mortal of John Tippet to his last, lonely resting-place. Nor wouldthey leave then; but remained to fashion a rude headstone from acrumbling out-cropping of sandstone and to gather a mass of thegorgeous flowers growing in such great profusion around them and heapthe new-made grave with bright blooms. Upon the headstone Sinclairscratched in rude characters the words:
HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET ENGLISHMAN KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS 10 SEPT. A.D. 1916 R.I.P.
and Bradley repeated a short prayer before they left their comradeforever.
For three days the party marched due south through forests andmeadow-land and great park-like areas where countless herbivorousanimals grazed--deer and antelope and bos and the little ecca, thesmallest species of Caspakian horse, about the size of a rabbit. Therewere other horses too; but all were small, the largest being not aboveeight hands in height. Preying continually upon the herbivora were themeat-eaters, large and small--wolves, hyaenodons, panthers, lions,tigers, and bears as well as several large and ferocious species ofreptilian life.
On September twelfth the party scaled a line of sandstone cliffs whichcrossed their route toward the south; but they crossed them only afteran encounter with the tribe that inhabited the numerous caves whichpitted the face of the escarpment. That night they camped upon a rockyplateau which was sparsely wooded with jarrah, and here once again theywere visited by the weird, nocturnal apparition that had already filledthem with a nameless terror.
As on the night of September ninth the first warning came from thesentinel standing guard over his sleeping companions. Aterror-stricken cry punctuated by the crack of a rifle brought Bradley,Sinclair and Brady to their feet in time to see James, with clubbedrifle, battling with a white-robed figure that hovered on widespreadwings on a level with the Englishman's head. As they ran, shouting,forward, it was obvious to them that the weird and terrible apparitionwas attempting to seize James; but when it saw the others coming to hisrescue, it desisted, flapping rapidly upward and away, its long, raggedwings giving forth the peculiarly dismal notes which alwayscharacterized the sound of its flying.
Bradley fired at the vanishing menacer of their peace and safety; butwhether he scored a hit or not, none could tell, though, following theshot, there was wafted back to them the same piercing wail that had onother occasions frozen their marrow.
Then they turned toward James, who lay face downward upon the ground,trembling as with ague. For a time he could not even speak, but atlast regained sufficient composure to tell them how the thing must haveswooped silently upon him from above and behind as the firstpremonition of danger he had received was when the long, clawlikefingers had clutched him beneath either arm. In the melee his riflehad been discharged and he had broken away at the same instant andturned to defend himself with the butt. The rest they had seen.
From that instant James was an absolutely broken man. He maintainedwith shaking lips that his doom was sealed, that the thing had markedhim for its own, and that he was as good as dead, nor could any amountof argument or raillery convince him to the contrary. He had seenTippet marked and claimed and now he had been marked. Nor were hisconstant reiterations of this belief without effect upon the rest ofthe party. Even Bradley felt depressed, though for the sake of theothers he managed to hide it beneath a show of confidence he was farfrom feeling.
And on the following day William James was killed by a saber-toothtiger--September 13, 1916. Beneath a jarrah tree on the stony plateauon the northern edge of the Sto-lu country in the land that Timeforgot, he lies in a lonely grave marked by a rough headstone.
Southward from his grave marched three grim and silent men. To thebest of Bradley's reckoning they were some twenty-five miles north ofFort Dinosaur, and that they might reach the fort on the following day,they plodded on until darkness overtook them. With comparative safetyfifteen miles away, they made camp at last; but there was no singingnow and no joking. In the bottom o
f his heart each prayed that theymight come safely through just this night, for they knew that duringthe morrow they would make the final stretch, yet the nerves of eachwere taut with strained anticipation of what gruesome thing might flapdown upon them from the black sky, marking another for its own. Whowould be the next?
As was their custom, they took turns at guard, each man doing two hoursand then arousing the next. Brady had gone on from eight to ten,followed by Sinclair from ten to twelve, then Bradley had beenawakened. Brady would stand the last guard from two to four, as theyhad determined to start the moment that it became light enough toinsure comparative safety upon the trail.
The snapping of a twig aroused Brady out of a dead sleep, and as heopened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and that at twentypaces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to his feet, hisrifle ready in his hand, Sinclair awoke and took in the scene in asingle swift glance. The fire was out and Bradley was nowhere insight. For a long moment the lion and the men eyed one another. Thelatter had no mind to fire if the beast minded its own affairs--theywere only too glad to let it go its way if it would; but the lion wasof a different mind.
Suddenly the long tail snapped stiffly erect, and as though it had beenattached to two trigger fingers the two rifles spoke in unison, forboth men knew this signal only too well--the immediate forerunner of adeadly charge. As the brute's head had been raised, his spine had notbeen visible; and so they did what they had learned by long experiencewas best to do. Each covered a front leg, and as the tail snappedaloft, fired. With a hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurchedforward to the ground with both front legs broken. It was an easyaccomplishment in the instant before the beast charged--after, it wouldhave been well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in andfinished him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrificroarings should attract his mate or others of their kind.
Then the two men turned and looked at one another. "Where isLieutenant Bradley?" asked Sinclair. They walked to the fire. Only afew smoking embers remained. A few feet away lay Bradley's rifle.There was no evidence of a struggle. The two men circled about thecamp twice and on the last lap Brady stooped and picked up an objectwhich had lain about ten yards beyond the fire--it was Bradley's cap.Again the two looked questioningly at one another, and then,simultaneously, both pairs of eyes swung upward and searched the sky.A moment later Brady was examining the ground about the spot whereBradley's cap had lain. It was one of those little barren, sandystretches that they had found only upon this stony plateau. Brady'sown footsteps showed as plainly as black ink upon white paper; but hiswas the only foot that had marred the smooth, windswept surface--therewas no sign that Bradley had crossed the spot upon the surface of theground, and yet his cap lay well toward the center of it.
Breakfastless and with shaken nerves the two survivors plunged madlyinto the long day's march. Both were strong, courageous, resourcefulmen; but each had reached the limit of human nerve endurance and eachfelt that he would rather die than spend another night in the hideousopen of that frightful land. Vivid in the mind of each was a pictureof Bradley's end, for though neither had witnessed the tragedy, bothcould imagine almost precisely what had occurred. They did not discussit--they did not even mention it--yet all day long the thing wasuppermost in the mind of each and mingled with it a similar picturewith himself as victim should they fail to make Fort Dinosaur beforedark.
And so they plunged forward at reckless speed, their clothes, theirhands, their faces torn by the retarding underbrush that reached forthto hinder them. Again and again they fell; but be it to their creditthat the one always waited and helped the other and that into the mindof neither entered the thought or the temptation to desert hiscompanion--they would reach the fort together if both survived, orneither would reach it.
They encountered the usual number of savage beasts and reptiles; butthey met them with a courageous recklessness born of desperation, andby virtue of the very madness of the chances they took, they camethrough unscathed and with the minimum of delay.
Shortly after noon they reached the end of the plateau. Before themwas a drop of two hundred feet to the valley beneath. To the left, inthe distance, they could see the waters of the great inland sea thatcovers a considerable portion of the area of the crater island ofCaprona and at a little lesser distance to the south of the cliffs theysaw a thin spiral of smoke arising above the tree-tops.
The landscape was familiar--each recognized it immediately and knewthat that smoky column marked the spot where Dinosaur had stood. Wasthe fort still there, or did the smoke arise from the smoldering embersof the building they had helped to fashion for the housing of theirparty? Who could say!
Thirty precious minutes that seemed as many hours to the impatient menwere consumed in locating a precarious way from the summit to the baseof the cliffs that bounded the plateau upon the south, and then onceagain they struck off upon level ground toward their goal. The closerthey approached the fort the greater became their apprehension that allwould not be well. They pictured the barracks deserted or the smallcompany massacred and the buildings in ashes. It was almost in afrenzy of fear that they broke through the final fringe of jungle andstood at last upon the verge of the open meadow a half-mile from FortDinosaur.
"Lord!" ejaculated Sinclair. "They are still there!" And he fell tohis knees, sobbing.
Brady trembled like a leaf as he crossed himself and gave silentthanks, for there before them stood the sturdy ramparts of Dinosaur andfrom inside the inclosure rose a thin spiral of smoke that marked thelocation of the cook-house. All was well, then, and their comradeswere preparing the evening meal!
Across the clearing they raced as though they had not already coveredin a single day a trackless, primeval country that might easily haverequired two days by fresh and untired men. Within hailing distancethey set up such a loud shouting that presently heads appeared abovethe top of the parapet and soon answering shouts were rising fromwithin Fort Dinosaur. A moment later three men issued from theinclosure and came forward to meet the survivors and listen to thehurried story of the eleven eventful days since they had set out upontheir expedition to the barrier cliffs. They heard of the deaths ofTippet and James and of the disappearance of Lieutenant Bradley, and anew terror settled upon Dinosaur.
Olson, the Irish engineer, with Whitely and Wilson constituted theremnants of Dinosaur's defenders, and to Brady and Sinclair theynarrated the salient events that had transpired since Bradley and hisparty had marched away on September 4th. They told them of theinfamous act of Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and his German crew whohad stolen the U-33, breaking their parole, and steaming away towardthe subterranean opening through the barrier cliffs that carried thewaters of the inland sea into the open Pacific beyond; and of thecowardly shelling of the fort.
They told of the disappearance of Miss La Rue in the night of September11th, and of the departure of Bowen Tyler in search of her, accompaniedonly by his Airedale, Nobs. Thus of the original party of elevenAllies and nine Germans that had constituted the company of the U-33when she left English waters after her capture by the crew of theEnglish tug there were but five now to be accounted for at FortDinosaur. Benson, Tippet, James, and one of the Germans were known tobe dead. It was assumed that Bradley, Tyler and the girl had alreadysuccumbed to some of the savage denizens of Caspak, while the fate ofthe Germans was equally unknown, though it might readily be believedthat they had made good their escape. They had had ample time toprovision the ship and the refining of the crude oil they haddiscovered north of the fort could have insured them an ample supply tocarry them back to Germany.