The Land That Time Forgot
fact that nothing had ever been attempted that might have improved the
livability of the cavern; nor, should I judge, had it ever been cleaned out.
With considerable difficulty I loosened some of the larger pieces of broken
rock which littered the floor and placed them as a barrier before the doorway.
It was too dark to do more than this. I then gave Lys a piece of dried meat,
and sitting inside the entrance, we dined as must have some of our ancient
forbears at the dawning of the age of man, while far below the open diapason of
the savage night rose weird and horrifying to our ears. In the light of the
great fire still burning we could see huge, skulking forms, and in the blacker
background countless flaming eyes.
Lys shuddered, and I put my arm around her and drew her to me; and thus we sat
throughout the hot night. She told me of her abduction and of the fright she
had undergone, and together we thanked God that she had come through unharmed,
because the great brute had dared not pause along the danger-infested way. She
said that they had but just reached the cliffs when I arrived, for on several
occasions her captor had been forced to take to the trees with her to escape
the clutches of some hungry cave-lion or saber-toothed tiger, and that twice
they had been obliged to remain for considerable periods before the beasts had
retired.
Nobs, by dint of much scrambling and one or two narrow escapes from death, had
managed to follow us up the cliff and was now curled between me and the
doorway, having devoured a piece of the dried meat, which he seemed to relish
immensely. He was the first to fall asleep; but I imagine we must have followed
suit soon, for we were both tired. I had laid aside my ammunition-belt and
rifle, though both were close beside me; but my pistol I kept in my lap beneath
my hand. However, we were not disturbed during the night, and when I awoke, the
sun was shining on the tree-tops in the distance. Lys’ head had drooped to my
breast, and my arm was still about her.
Shortly afterward Lys awoke, and for a moment she could not seem to comprehend
her situation. She looked at me and then turned and glanced at my arm about
her, and then she seemed quite suddenly to realize the scantiness of her
apparel and drew away, covering her face with her palms and blushing furiously.
I drew her back toward me and kissed her, and then she threw her arms about my
neck and wept softly in mute surrender to the inevitable.
It was an hour later before the tribe began to stir about. We watched them from
our “apartment,” as Lys called it. Neither men nor women wore any sort of
clothing or ornaments, and they all seemed to be about of an age; nor were
there any babies or children among them. This was, to us, the strangest and
most inexplicable of facts, but it recalled to us that though we had seen many
of the lesser developed wild people of Caspak, we had never yet seen a child or
an old man or woman.
After a while they became less suspicious of us and then quite friendly in
their brutish way. They picked at the fabric of our clothing, which seemed to
interest them, and examined my rifle and pistol and the ammunition in the belt
around my waist. I showed them the thermos-bottle, and when I poured a little
water from it, they were delighted, thinking that it was a spring which I
carried about with me—a never-failing source of water supply.
One thing we both noticed among their other characteristics: they never laughed
nor smiled; and then we remembered that Ahm had never done so, either. I asked
them if they knew Ahm; but they said they did not.
One of them said: “Back there we may have known him.” And he jerked his head to
the south.
“You came from back there?” I asked. He looked at me in surprise.
“We all come from there,” he said. “After a while we go there.” And this time
he jerked his head toward the north. “Be Galus,” he concluded.
Many times now had we heard this reference to becoming Galus. Ahm had spoken of
it many times. Lys and I decided that it was a sort of original religious
conviction, as much a part of them as their instinct for self-preservation—a
primal acceptance of a hereafter and a holier state. It was a brilliant theory,
but it was all wrong. I know it now, and how far we were from guessing the
wonderful, the miraculous, the gigantic truth which even yet I may only guess
at—the thing that sets Caspak apart from all the rest of the world far more
definitely than her isolated geographical position or her impregnable barrier
of giant cliffs. If I could live to return to civilization, I should have meat
for the clergy and the layman to chew upon for years—and for the evolutionists,
too.
After breakfast the men set out to hunt, while the women went to a large pool
of warm water covered with a green scum and filled with billions of tadpoles.
They waded in to where the water was about a foot deep and lay down in the mud.
They remained there from one to two hours and then returned to the cliff. While
we were with them, we saw this same thing repeated every morning; but though we
asked them why they did it we could get no reply which was intelligible to us.
All they vouchsafed in way of explanation was the single word Ata. They tried
to get Lys to go in with them and could not understand why she refused. After
the first day I went hunting with the men, leaving my pistol and Nobs with Lys,
but she never had to use them, for no reptile or beast ever approached the pool
while the women were there—nor, so far as we know, at other times. There was no
spoor of wild beast in the soft mud along the banks, and the water certainly
didn’t look fit to drink.
This tribe lived largely upon the smaller animals which they bowled over with
their stone hatchets after making a wide circle about their quarry and driving
it so that it had to pass close to one of their number. The little horses and
the smaller antelope they secured in sufficient numbers to support life, and
they also ate numerous varieties of fruits and vegetables. They never brought
in more than sufficient food for their immediate needs; but why bother? The
food problem of Caspak is not one to cause worry to her inhabitants.
The fourth day Lys told me that she thought she felt equal to attempting the
return journey on the morrow, and so I set out for the hunt in high spirits,
for I was anxious to return to the fort and learn if Bradley and his party had
returned and what had been the result of his expedition. I also wanted to
relieve their minds as to Lys and myself, as I knew that they must have already
given us up for dead. It was a cloudy day, though warm, as it always is in
Caspak. It seemed odd to realize that just a few miles away winter lay upon the
storm-tossed ocean, and that snow might be falling all about Caprona; but no
snow could ever penetrate the damp, hot atmosphere of the great crater.
We had to go quite a bit farther than usual before we could surround a little
bunch of antelope, and as I was helping drive them, I saw a fine red deer a
couple of hundred yards behind me. He must have been asleep in the long grass,
for I saw him rise and look about him in a bewildered way, and then I raised my
gun and let him have it. He dropped, and I ran forward to finish him with the
long thin knife, which one of the men had given me; but just as I reached him,
he staggered to his feet and ran on for another two hundred yards—when I
dropped him again. Once more was this repeated before I was able to reach him
and cut his throat; then I looked around for my companions, as I wanted them to
come and carry the meat home; but I could see nothing of them. I called a few
times and waited, but there was no response and no one came. At last I became
disgusted, and cutting off all the meat that I could conveniently carry, I set
off in the direction of the cliffs. I must have gone about a mile before the
truth dawned upon me—I was lost, hopelessly lost.
The entire sky was still completely blotted out by dense clouds; nor was there
any landmark visible by which I might have taken my bearings. I went on in the
direction I thought was south but which I now imagine must have been about due
north, without detecting a single familiar object. In a dense wood I suddenly
stumbled upon a thing which at first filled me with hope and later with the
most utter despair and dejection. It was a little mound of new-turned earth
sprinkled with flowers long since withered, and at one end was a flat slab of
sandstone stuck in the ground. It was a grave, and it meant for me that I had
at last stumbled into a country inhabited by human beings. I would find them;
they would direct me to the cliffs; perhaps they would accompany me and take us
back with them to their abodes—to the abodes of men and women like ourselves.
My hopes and my imagination ran riot in the few yards I had to cover to reach
that lonely grave and stoop that I might read the rude characters scratched
upon the simple headstone. This is what I read:
HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET
ENGLISHMAN
KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS
10 SEPT., A.D. 1916
R. I. P.
Tippet! It seemed incredible. Tippet lying here in this gloomy wood! Tippet
dead! He had been a good man, but the personal loss was not what affected me.
It was the fact that this silent grave gave evidence that Bradley had come this
far upon his expedition and that he too probably was lost, for it was not our
intention that he should be long gone. If I had stumbled upon the grave of one
of the party, was it not within reason to believe that the bones of the others
lay scattered somewhere near?
Chapter 9
As I stood looking down upon that sad and lonely mound, wrapped in the most
dismal of reflections and premonitions, I was suddenly seized from behind and
thrown to earth. As I fell, a warm body fell on top of me, and hands grasped my
arms and legs. When I could look up, I saw a number of giant figures pinioning
me down, while others stood about surveying me. Here again was a new type of
man—a higher type than the primitive tribe I had just quitted. They were a
taller people, too, with better-shaped skulls and more intelligent faces. There
were less of the ape characteristics about their features, and less of the
negroid, too. They carried weapons, stone-shod spears, stone knives, and
hatchets—and they wore ornaments and breech-cloths—the former of feathers worn
in their hair and the latter made of a single snake-skin cured with the head
on, the head depending to their knees.
Of course I did not take in all these details upon the instant of my capture,
for I was busy with other matters. Three of the warriors were sitting upon me,
trying to hold me down by main strength and awkwardness, and they were having
their hands full in the doing, I can tell you. I don’t like to appear
conceited, but I may as well admit that I am proud of my strength and the
science that I have acquired and developed in the directing of it—that and my
horsemanship I always have been proud of. And now, that day, all the long hours
that I had put into careful study, practice and training brought me in two or
three minutes a full return upon my investment. Californians, as a rule, are
familiar with ju-jutsu, and I especially had made a study of it for several
years, both at school and in the gym of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, while
recently I had had, in my employ, a Jap who was a wonder at the art.
It took me just about thirty seconds to break the elbow of one of my
assailants, trip another and send him stumbling backward among his fellows, and
throw the third completely over my head in such a way that when he fell his
neck was broken. In the instant that the others of the party stood in mute and