The Land That Time Forgot
lies from her nearest neighbor.
As Nobs and I approached the recumbent figure farther up the beach, I was
appraised by my nose that whether man or not, the thing had once been organic
and alive, but that for some time it had been dead. Nobs halted, sniffed and
growled. A little later he sat down upon his haunches, raised his muzzle to the
heavens and bayed forth a most dismal howl. I shied a small stone at him and
bade him shut up—his uncanny noise made me nervous. When I had come quite close
to the thing, I still could not say whether it had been man or beast. The
carcass was badly swollen and partly decomposed. There was no sign of clothing
upon or about it. A fine, brownish hair covered the chest and abdomen, and the
face, the palms of the hands, the feet, the shoulders and back were practically
hairless. The creature must have been about the height of a fair sized man; its
features were similar to those of a man; yet had it been a man?
I could not say, for it resembled an ape no more than it did a man. Its large
toes protruded laterally as do those of the semiarboreal peoples of Borneo, the
Philippines and other remote regions where low types still persist. The
countenance might have been that of a cross between _Pithecanthropus_, the
Java ape-man, and a daughter of the Piltdown race of prehistoric Sussex. A
wooden cudgel lay beside the corpse.
Now this fact set me thinking. There was no wood of any description in sight.
There was nothing about the beach to suggest a wrecked mariner. There was
absolutely nothing about the body to suggest that it might possibly in life
have known a maritime experience. It was the body of a low type of man or a
high type of beast. In neither instance would it have been of a seafaring race.
Therefore I deduced that it was native to Caprona—that it lived inland, and
that it had fallen or been hurled from the cliffs above. Such being the case,
Caprona was inhabitable, if not inhabited, by man; but how to reach the
inhabitable interior! That was the question. A closer view of the cliffs than
had been afforded me from the deck of the _U_-33 only confirmed my
conviction that no mortal man could scale those perpendicular heights; there
was not a finger-hold, not a toe-hold, upon them. I turned away baffled.
Nobs and I met with no sharks upon our return journey to the submarine. My
report filled everyone with theories and speculations, and with renewed hope
and determination. They all reasoned along the same lines that I had
reasoned—the conclusions were obvious, but not the water. We were now thirstier
than ever.
The balance of that day we spent in continuing a minute and fruitless
exploration of the monotonous coast. There was not another break in the
frowning cliffs—not even another minute patch of pebbly beach. As the sun fell,
so did our spirits. I had tried to make advances to the girl again; but she
would have none of me, and so I was not only thirsty but otherwise sad and
downhearted. I was glad when the new day broke the hideous spell of a sleepless
night.
The morning’s search brought us no shred of hope. Caprona was impregnable—that
was the decision of all; yet we kept on. It must have been about two bells of
the afternoon watch that Bradley called my attention to the branch of a tree,
with leaves upon it, floating on the sea. “It may have been carried down to the
ocean by a river,” he suggested.
“Yes,” I replied, “it may have; it may have tumbled or been thrown off the top
of one of these cliffs.”
Bradley’s face fell. “I thought of that, too,” he replied, “but I wanted to
believe the other.”
“Right you are!” I cried. “We must believe the other until we prove it false.
We can’t afford to give up heart now, when we need heart most. The branch was
carried down by a river, and we are going to find that river.” I smote my open
palm with a clenched fist, to emphasize a determination unsupported by hope.
“There!” I cried suddenly. “See that, Bradley?” And I pointed at a spot closer
to shore. “See that, man!” Some flowers and grasses and another leafy branch
floated toward us. We both scanned the water and the coastline. Bradley
evidently discovered something, or at least thought that he had. He called down
for a bucket and a rope, and when they were passed up to him, he lowered the
former into the sea and drew it in filled with water. Of this he took a taste,
and straightening up, looked into my eyes with an expression of elation—as much
as to say “I told you so!”
“This water is warm,” he announced, “and fresh!”
I grabbed the bucket and tasted its contents. The water was very warm, and it
was fresh, but there was a most unpleasant taste to it.
“Did you ever taste water from a stagnant pool full of tadpoles?” Bradley
asked.
“That’s it,” I exclaimed, “—that’s just the taste exactly, though I haven’t
experienced it since boyhood; but how can water from a flowing stream, taste
thus, and what the dickens makes it so warm? It must be at least 70 or 80
Fahrenheit, possibly higher.”
“Yes,” agreed Bradley, “I should say higher; but where does it come from?”
“That is easily discovered now that we have found it,” I answered. “It can’t
come from the ocean; so it must come from the land. All that we have to do is
follow it, and sooner or later we shall come upon its source.”
We were already rather close in; but I ordered the _U_-33’s prow turned
inshore and we crept slowly along, constantly dipping up the water and tasting
it to assure ourselves that we didn’t get outside the fresh-water current.
There was a very light off-shore wind and scarcely any breakers, so that the
approach to the shore was continued without finding bottom; yet though we were
already quite close, we saw no indication of any indention in the coast from
which even a tiny brooklet might issue, and certainly no mouth of a large river
such as this must necessarily be to freshen the ocean even two hundred yards
from shore. The tide was running out, and this, together with the strong flow
of the freshwater current, would have prevented our going against the cliffs
even had we not been under power; as it was we had to buck the combined forces
in order to hold our position at all. We came up to within twenty-five feet of
the sheer wall, which loomed high above us. There was no break in its
forbidding face. As we watched the face of the waters and searched the cliff’s
high face, Olson suggested that the fresh water might come from a submarine
geyser. This, he said, would account for its heat; but even as he spoke a bush,
covered thickly with leaves and flowers, bubbled to the surface and floated off
astern.
“Flowering shrubs don’t thrive in the subterranean caverns from which geysers
spring,” suggested Bradley.
Olson shook his head. “It beats me,” he said.
“I’ve got it!” I exclaimed suddenly. “Look there!” And I pointed at the base of
the cliff ahead of us, which the receding tide was gradually exposing to our
view. They all looked, and all saw what I had seen—the top of a dark opening in
the rock, through which water was pouring out into the sea. “It’s the
subterranean channel of an inland river,” I cried. “It flows through a land
covered with vegetation—and therefore a land upon which the sun shines. No
subterranean caverns produce any order of plant life even remotely resembling
what we have seen disgorged by this river. Beyond those cliffs lie fertile
lands and fresh water—perhaps, game!”
“Yis, sir,” said Olson, “behoind the cliffs! Ye spoke a true word,
sir—behoind!”
Bradley laughed—a rather sorry laugh, though. “You might as well call our
attention to the fact, sir,” he said, “that science has indicated that there is
fresh water and vegetation on Mars.”
“Not at all,” I rejoined. “A U-boat isn’t constructed to navigate space, but it
is designed to travel below the surface of the water.”
“You’d be after sailin’ into that blank pocket?” asked Olson.
“I would, Olson,” I replied. “We haven’t one chance for life in a hundred
thousand if we don’t find food and water upon Caprona. This water coming out of
the cliff is not salt; but neither is it fit to drink, though each of us has
drunk. It is fair to assume that inland the river is fed by pure streams, that
there are fruits and herbs and game. Shall we lie out here and die of thirst
and starvation with a land of plenty possibly only a few hundred yards away? We
have the means for navigating a subterranean river. Are we too cowardly to
utilize this means?”
“Be afther goin’ to it,” said Olson.
“I’m willing to see it through,” agreed Bradley.
“Then under the bottom, wi’ the best o’ luck an’ give ’em hell!” cried a young
fellow who had been in the trenches.
“To the diving-stations!” I commanded, and in less than a minute the deck was
deserted, the conning-tower covers had slammed to and the _U_-33 was
submerging—possibly for the last time. I know that I had this feeling, and I
think that most of the others did.
As we went down, I sat in the tower with the searchlight projecting its
seemingly feeble rays ahead. We submerged very slowly and without headway more
than sufficient to keep her nose in the right direction, and as we went down, I
saw outlined ahead of us the black opening in the great cliff. It was an
opening that would have admitted a half-dozen U-boats at one and the same time,
roughly cylindrical in contour—and dark as the pit of perdition.
As I gave the command which sent the _U_-33 slowly ahead, I could not but
feel a certain uncanny presentiment of evil. Where were we going? What lay at
the end of this great sewer? Had we bidden farewell forever to the sunlight and
life, or were there before us dangers even greater than those which we now
faced? I tried to keep my mind from vain imagining by calling everything which
I observed to the eager ears below. I was the eyes of the whole company, and I
did my best not to fail them. We had advanced a hundred yards, perhaps, when
our first danger confronted us. Just ahead was a sharp right-angle turn in the
tunnel. I could see the river’s flotsam hurtling against the rocky wall upon
the left as it was driven on by the mighty current, and I feared for the safety
of the _U_-33 in making so sharp a turn under such adverse conditions; but
there was nothing for it but to try. I didn’t warn my fellows of the danger—it
could have but caused them useless apprehension, for if we were to be smashed
against the rocky wall, no power on earth could avert the quick end that would
come to us. I gave the command full speed ahead and went charging toward the
menace. I was forced to approach the dangerous left-hand wall in order to make
the turn, and I depended upon the power of the motors to carry us through the
surging waters in safety. Well, we made it; but it was a narrow squeak. As we
swung around, the full force of the current caught us and drove the stern
against the rocks; there was a thud which sent a tremor through the whole
craft, and then a moment of nasty grinding as the steel hull scraped the rock
wall. I expected momentarily the inrush of waters that would seal our doom; but
presently from below came the welcome word that all was well.
In another fifty yards there was a second turn, this time toward the left! but
it was more of a gentle curve, and we took it without trouble. After that it
was plain sailing, though as far as I could know, there might be most anything
ahead of us, and my nerves strained to the snapping-point every instant. After
the second turn the channel ran comparatively straight for between one hundred
and fifty and two hundred yards. The waters grew suddenly lighter, and my
spirits rose accordingly. I shouted down to those below that I saw daylight
ahead, and a great shout of thanksgiving reverberated through the ship. A