Out of Time's Abyss
paces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to his feet, his
rifle ready in his hand, Sinclair awoke and took in the scene in a
single swift glance. The fire was out and Bradley was nowhere in
sight. For a long moment the lion and the men eyed one another. The
latter had no mind to fire if the beast minded its own affairs--they
were only too glad to let it go its way if it would; but the lion was
of a different mind.
Suddenly the long tail snapped stiffly erect, and as though it had been
attached to two trigger fingers the two rifles spoke in unison, for
both men knew this signal only too well--the immediate forerunner of a
deadly charge. As the brute's head had been raised, his spine had not
been visible; and so they did what they had learned by long experience
was best to do. Each covered a front leg, and as the tail snapped
aloft, fired. With a hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurched
forward to the ground with both front legs broken. It was an easy
accomplishment in the instant before the beast charged--after, it would
have been well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in and
finished him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrific
roarings should attract his mate or others of their kind.
Then the two men turned and looked at one another. "Where is
Lieutenant Bradley?" asked Sinclair. They walked to the fire. Only a
few smoking embers remained. A few feet away lay Bradley's rifle.
There was no evidence of a struggle. The two men circled about the
camp twice and on the last lap Brady stooped and picked up an object
which 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 where
Bradley's cap had lain. It was one of those little barren, sandy
stretches that they had found only upon this stony plateau. Brady's
own footsteps showed as plainly as black ink upon white paper; but his
was the only foot that had marred the smooth, windswept surface--there
was no sign that Bradley had crossed the spot upon the surface of the
ground, and yet his cap lay well toward the center of it.
Breakfastless and with shaken nerves the two survivors plunged madly
into the long day's march. Both were strong, courageous, resourceful
men; but each had reached the limit of human nerve endurance and each
felt that he would rather die than spend another night in the hideous
open of that frightful land. Vivid in the mind of each was a picture
of Bradley's end, for though neither had witnessed the tragedy, both
could imagine almost precisely what had occurred. They did not discuss
it--they did not even mention it--yet all day long the thing was
uppermost in the mind of each and mingled with it a similar picture
with himself as victim should they fail to make Fort Dinosaur before
dark.
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. Was
the fort still there, or did the smoke arise from the smoldering embers
of the building they had helped to fashion for the housing of their
party? Who could say!
Thirty precious minutes that seemed as many hours to the impatient men
were consumed in locating a precarious way from the summit to the base
of the cliffs that bounded the plateau upon the south, and then once
again they struck off upon level ground toward their goal. The closer
they approached the fort the greater became their apprehension that all
would not be well. They pictured the barracks deserted or the small
company massacred and the buildings in ashes. It was almost in a
frenzy of fear that they broke through the final fringe of jungle and
stood at last upon the verge of the open meadow a half-mile from Fort
Dinosaur.
"Lord!" ejaculated Sinclair. "They are still there!" And he fell to
his knees, sobbing.
Brady trembled like a leaf as he crossed himself and gave silent
thanks, for there before them stood the sturdy ramparts of Dinosaur and
from inside the inclosure rose a thin spiral of smoke that marked the
location of the cook-house. All was well, then, and their comrades
were preparing the evening meal!
Across the clearing they raced as though they had not already covered
in a single day a trackless, primeval country that might easily have
required two days by fresh and untired men. Within hailing distance
they set up such a loud shouting that presently heads appeared above
the top of the parapet and soon answering shouts were rising from
within Fort Dinosaur. A moment later three men issued from the
inclosure and came forward to meet the survivors and listen to the
hurried story of the eleven eventful days since they had set out upon
their expedition to the barrier cliffs. They heard of the deaths of
Tippet and James and of the disappearance of Lieutenant Bradley, and a
new terror settled upon Dinosaur.
Olson, the Irish engineer, with Whitely and Wilson constituted the
remnants of Dinosaur's defenders, and to Brady and Sinclair they
narrated the salient events that had transpired since Bradley and his
party had marched away on September 4th. They told them of the
infamous act of Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and his German crew who
had stolen the U-33, breaking their parole, and steaming away toward
the subterranean opening through the barrier cliffs that carried the
waters of the inland sea into the open Pacific beyond; and of the
cowardly shelling of the fort.
They told of the disappearance of Miss La Rue in the night of September
11th, and of the departure of Bowen Tyler in search of her, accompanied
only by his Airedale, Nobs. Thus of the original party of eleven
Allies and nine Germans that had constituted the company of the U-33
when she left English waters after her capture by the crew of the
English tug there were but five now to be accounted for at Fort
Dinosaur. Benson, Tippet, James, and one of the Germans were known to
be dead. It was assumed that Bradley, Tyler and the girl had already
succumbed to some of the savage denizens of Caspak, while the fate of
the Germans was equally unknown, though it might readily be believed
that they had made good their escape. They had had ample time to
provision the ship and the refining of the crude oil they had
discovered north of the fort could have insured them an ample supply to
carry them back to Germany.
Chapter 2
When Bradley went on guard at midnight, September 14th, his thoughts
were largely occupied with rejoicing that the night was almost spent
without serious mishap and that the morrow would doubtless see them all
safely returned to Fort Dinosaur. The hopefulness of his mood was
tinged with sorrow by recollection of the two members of his party who
lay back there in the savage wilderness and for whom there would never
again be a homecoming.
No premonition of impending ill cast gloom over his anticipations for
the coming day, for Bradley was a man who, while taking every
precaution against possible danger, permitted no gloomy forebodings to
weigh down his spirit. When danger threatened, he was prepared; but he
was not forever courting disaster, and so it was that when about one
o'clock in the morning of the fifteenth, he heard the dismal flapping
of giant wings overhead, he was neither surprised nor frightened but
idly prepared for an attack he had known might reasonably be expected.
The sound seemed to come from the south, and presently, low above the
trees in that direction, the man made out a dim, shadowy form circling
slowly about. Bradley was a brave man, yet so keen was the feeling of
revulsion engendered by the sight and sound of that grim, uncanny shape
that he distinctly felt the gooseflesh rise over the surface of his
body, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from following an
instinctive urge to fire upon the nocturnal intruder. Better, far
better would it have been had he given in to the insistent demand of
his subconscious mentor; but his almost fanatical obsession to save
ammunition proved now his undoing, for while his attention was riveted
upon the thing circling before him and while his ears were filled with
the beating of its wings, there swooped silently out of the black night
behind him another weird and ghostly shape. With its huge wings partly
closed for the dive and its white robe fluttering in its wake, the
apparition swooped down upon the Englishman.
So great was the force of the impact when the thing struck Bradley
between the shoulders that the man was half stunned. His rifle flew
from his grasp; he felt clawlike talons of great strength seize him
beneath his arms and sweep him off his feet; and then the thing rose
swiftly with him, so swiftly that his cap was blown from his head by
the rush of air as he was borne rapidly upward into the inky sky and
the cry of warning to his companions was forced back into his lungs.
The creature wheeled immediately toward the east and was at once joined
by its fellow, who circled them once and then fell in behind them.
Bradley now realized the strategy that the pair had used to capture him
and at once concluded that he was in the power of reasoning beings
closely related to the human race if not actually of it.
Past experience suggested that the great wings were a part of some
ingenious mechanical device, for the limitations of the human mind,
which is always loath to accept aught beyond its own little experience,
would not permit him to entertain the idea that the creatures might be
naturally winged and at the same time of human origin. From his
position Bradley could not see the wings of his captor, nor in the
darkness had he been able to examine those of the second creature
closely when it circled before him. He listened for the puff of a
motor or some other telltale sound that would prove the correctness of
his theory. However, he was rewarded with nothing more than the
constant flap-flap.
Presently, far below and ahead, he saw the waters of the inland sea,
and a moment later he was borne over them. Then his captor did that
which proved beyond doubt to Bradley that he was in the hands of human
beings who had devised an almost perfect scheme of duplicating,
mechanically, the wings of a bird--the thing spoke to its companion and
in a language that Bradley partially understood, since he recognized
words that he had learned from the savage races of Caspak. From this
he judged that they were human, and being human, he knew that they
could have no natural wings--for who had ever seen a human being so