The Land That Time Forgot
moment later we emerged into sunlit water, and immediately I raised the
periscope and looked about me upon the strangest landscape I had ever seen.
We were in the middle of a broad and now sluggish river the banks of which were
lined by giant, arboraceous ferns, raising their mighty fronds fifty, one
hundred, two hundred feet into the quiet air. Close by us something rose to the
surface of the river and dashed at the periscope. I had a vision of wide,
distended jaws, and then all was blotted out. A shiver ran down into the tower
as the thing closed upon the periscope. A moment later it was gone, and I could
see again. Above the trees there soared into my vision a huge thing on batlike
wings—a creature large as a large whale, but fashioned more after the order of
a lizard. Then again something charged the periscope and blotted out the
mirror. I will confess that I was almost gasping for breath as I gave the
commands to emerge. Into what sort of strange land had fate guided us?
The instant the deck was awash, I opened the conning-tower hatch and stepped
out. In another minute the deck-hatch lifted, and those who were not on duty
below streamed up the ladder, Olson bringing Nobs under one arm. For several
minutes no one spoke; I think they must each have been as overcome by awe as
was I. All about us was a flora and fauna as strange and wonderful to us as
might have been those upon a distant planet had we suddenly been miraculously
transported through ether to an unknown world. Even the grass upon the nearer
bank was unearthly—lush and high it grew, and each blade bore upon its tip a
brilliant flower—violet or yellow or carmine or blue—making as gorgeous a sward
as human imagination might conceive. But the life! It teemed. The tall,
fernlike trees were alive with monkeys, snakes, and lizards. Huge insects
hummed and buzzed hither and thither. Mighty forms could be seen moving upon
the ground in the thick forest, while the bosom of the river wriggled with
living things, and above flapped the wings of gigantic creatures such as we are
taught have been extinct throughout countless ages.
“Look!” cried Olson. “Would you look at the giraffe comin’ up out o’ the bottom
of the say?” We looked in the direction he pointed and saw a long, glossy neck
surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the
back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the water dripped from
it. It turned its eyes upon us, opened its lizard-like mouth, emitted a shrill
hiss and came for us. The thing must have been sixteen or eighteen feet in
length and closely resembled pictures I had seen of restored plesiosaurs of the
lower Jurassic. It charged us as savagely as a mad bull, and one would have
thought it intended to destroy and devour the mighty U-boat, as I verily
believe it did intend.
We were moving slowly up the river as the creature bore down upon us with
distended jaws. The long neck was far outstretched, and the four flippers with
which it swam were working with powerful strokes, carrying it forward at a
rapid pace. When it reached the craft’s side, the jaws closed upon one of the
stanchions of the deck rail and tore it from its socket as though it had been a
toothpick stuck in putty. At this exhibition of titanic strength I think we all
simultaneously stepped backward, and Bradley drew his revolver and fired. The
bullet struck the thing in the neck, just above its body; but instead of
disabling it, merely increased its rage. Its hissing rose to a shrill scream as
it raised half its body out of water onto the sloping sides of the hull of the
_U_-33 and endeavored to scramble upon the deck to devour us. A dozen
shots rang out as we who were armed drew our pistols and fired at the thing;
but though struck several times, it showed no signs of succumbing and only
floundered farther aboard the submarine.
I had noticed that the girl had come on deck and was standing not far behind
me, and when I saw the danger to which we were all exposed, I turned and forced
her toward the hatch. We had not spoken for some days, and we did not speak
now; but she gave me a disdainful look, which was quite as eloquent as words,
and broke loose from my grasp. I saw I could do nothing with her unless I
exerted force, and so I turned with my back toward her that I might be in a
position to shield her from the strange reptile should it really succeed in
reaching the deck; and as I did so I saw the thing raise one flipper over the
rail, dart its head forward and with the quickness of lightning seize upon one
of the boches. I ran forward, discharging my pistol into the creature’s body in
an effort to force it to relinquish its prey; but I might as profitably have
shot at the sun.
Shrieking and screaming, the German was dragged from the deck, and the moment
the reptile was clear of the boat, it dived beneath the surface of the water
with its terrified prey. I think we were all more or less shaken by the
frightfulness of the tragedy—until Olson remarked that the balance of power now
rested where it belonged. Following the death of Benson we had been nine and
nine—nine Germans and nine “Allies,” as we called ourselves, now there were but
eight Germans. We never counted the girl on either side, I suppose because she
was a girl, though we knew well enough now that she was ours.
And so Olson’s remark helped to clear the atmosphere for the Allies at least,
and then our attention was once more directed toward the river, for around us
there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething
caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and
with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us
steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them. There were all
sorts and conditions of horrible things—huge, hideous, grotesque, monstrous—a
veritable Mesozoic nightmare. I saw that the girl was gotten below as quickly
as possible, and she took Nobs with her—poor Nobs had nearly barked his head
off; and I think, too, that for the first time since his littlest puppyhood he
had known fear; nor can I blame him. After the girl I sent Bradley and most of
the Allies and then the Germans who were on deck—von Schoenvorts being still in
irons below.
The creatures were approaching perilously close before I dropped through the
hatchway and slammed down the cover. Then I went into the tower and ordered
full speed ahead, hoping to distance the fearsome things; but it was useless.
Not only could any of them easily outdistance the _U_-33, but the further
upstream we progressed the greater the number of our besiegers, until fearful
of navigating a strange river at high speed, I gave orders to reduce and moved
slowly and majestically through the plunging, hissing mass. I was mighty glad
that our entrance into the interior of Caprona had been inside a submarine
rather than in any other form of vessel. I could readily understand how it
might have been that Caprona had been invaded in the past by venturesome
navigators without word of it ever reaching the outside world, for I can assure
you that only by submarine could man pass up that great sluggish river, alive.
We proceeded up the river for some forty miles before darkness overtook us. I
was afraid to submerge and lie on the bottom overnight for fear that the mud
might be deep enough to hold us, and as we could not hold with the anchor, I
ran in close to shore, and in a brief interim of attack from the reptiles we
made fast to a large tree. We also dipped up some of the river water and found
it, though quite warm, a little sweeter than before. We had food enough, and
with the water we were all quite refreshed; but we missed fresh meat. It had
been weeks, now, since we had tasted it, and the sight of the reptiles gave me
an idea—that a steak or two from one of them might not be bad eating. So I went
on deck with a rifle, twenty of which were aboard the _U_-33. At sight of
me a huge thing charged and climbed to the deck. I retreated to the top of the
conning-tower, and when it had raised its mighty bulk to the level of the
little deck on which I stood, I let it have a bullet right between the eyes.
The thing stopped then and looked at me a moment as much as to say: “Why this
thing has a stinger! I must be careful.” And then it reached out its long neck
and opened its mighty jaws and grabbed for me; but I wasn’t there. I had
tumbled backward into the tower, and I mighty near killed myself doing it. When
I glanced up, that little head on the end of its long neck was coming straight
down on top of me, and once more I tumbled into greater safety, sprawling upon
the floor of the centrale.
Olson was looking up, and seeing what was poking about in the tower, ran for an
ax; nor did he hesitate a moment when he returned with one, but sprang up the
ladder and commenced chopping away at that hideous face. The thing didn’t have
sufficient brainpan to entertain more than a single idea at once. Though
chopped and hacked, and with a bullethole between its eyes, it still persisted
madly in its attempt to get inside the tower and devour Olson, though its body
was many times the diameter of the hatch; nor did it cease its efforts until
after Olson had succeeded in decapitating it. Then the two men went on deck
through the main hatch, and while one kept watch, the other cut a hind quarter
off _Plesiosaurus Olsoni_, as Bradley dubbed the thing. Meantime Olson cut
off the long neck, saying that it would make fine soup. By the time we had
cleared away the blood and refuse in the tower, the cook had juicy steaks and a
steaming broth upon the electric stove, and the aroma arising from P. Olsoni
filled us all with a hitherto unfelt admiration for him and all his kind.
Chapter 5
The steaks we had that night, and they were fine; and the following morning we
tasted the broth. It seemed odd to be eating a creature that should, by all the
laws of paleontology, have been extinct for several million years. It gave one
a feeling of newness that was almost embarrassing, although it didn’t seem to
embarrass our appetites. Olson ate until I thought he would burst.
The girl ate with us that night at the little officers’ mess just back of the
torpedo compartment. The narrow table was unfolded; the four stools were set
out; and for the first time in days we sat down to eat, and for the first time
in weeks we had something to eat other than the monotony of the short rations
of an impoverished U-boat. Nobs sat between the girl and me and was fed with
morsels of the Plesiosaurus steak, at the risk of forever contaminating his
manners. He looked at me sheepishly all the time, for he knew that no well-bred
dog should eat at table; but the poor fellow was so wasted from improper food
that I couldn’t enjoy my own meal had he been denied an immediate share in it;
and anyway Lys wanted to feed him. So there you are.
Lys was coldly polite to me and sweetly gracious to Bradley and Olson. She
wasn’t of the gushing type, I knew; so I didn’t expect much from her and was
duly grateful for the few morsels of attention she threw upon the floor to me.
We had a pleasant meal, with only one unfortunate occurrence—when Olson
suggested that possibly the creature we were eating was the same one that ate
the German. It was some time before we could persuade the girl to continue her
meal, but at last Bradley prevailed upon her, pointing out that we had come
upstream nearly forty miles since the boche had been seized, and that during
that time we had seen literally thousands of these denizens of the river,
indicating that the chances were very remote that this was the same Plesiosaur.
“And anyway,” he concluded, “it was only a scheme of Mr. Olson’s to get all the