The Lost Continent
almost within a stone’s throw of the spot where but a brief two
centuries before had stood the greatest city of the world.
They bound me to a small tree that grew in the middle of one of their
crooked streets, but the girl they released as soon as we had entered
the enclosure. The people greeted her with every mark of respect as she
hastened to a large hut near the center of the camp.
Presently she returned with a fine looking, white-haired woman, who
proved to be her mother. The older woman carried herself with a regal
dignity that seemed quite remarkable in a place of such primitive
squalor.
The people fell aside as she approached, making a wide way for her and
her daughter. When they had come near and stopped before me the older
woman addressed me.
“My daughter has told me,” she said, “of the manner in which you
rescued her from the men of the elephant country. If Wettin lived you
would be well treated, but Buckingham has taken me now, and is king.
You can hope for nothing from such a beast as Buckingham.”
The fact that Buckingham stood within a pace of us and was an
interested listener appeared not to temper her expressions in the
slightest.
“Buckingham is a pig,” she continued. “He is a coward. He came upon
Wettin from behind and ran his spear through him. He will not be king
for long. Some one will make a face at him, and he will run away and
jump into the river.”
The people began to titter and clap their hands. Buckingham became red
in the face. It was evident that he was far from popular.
“If he dared,” went on the old lady, “he would kill me now, but he does
not dare. He is too great a coward. If I could help you I should gladly
do so. But I am only queen—the vehicle that has helped carry down,
unsullied, the royal blood from the days when Grabritin was a mighty
country.”
The old queenl’s words had a noticeable effect upon the mob of curious
savages which surrounded me. The moment they discovered that the old
queen was friendly to me and that I had rescued her daughter they
commenced to accord me a more friendly interest, and I heard many words
spoken in my behalf, and demands were made that I not be harmed.
But now Buckingham interfered. He had no intention of being robbed of
his prey. Blustering and storming, he ordered the people back to their
huts, at the same time directing two of his warriors to confine me in a
dugout in one of the trenches close to his own shelter.
Here they threw me upon the ground, binding my ankles together and
trussing them up to my wrists behind. There they left me, lying upon my
stomach—a most uncomfortable and strained position, to which was added
the pain where the cords cut into my flesh.
Just a few days ago my mind had been filled with the anticipation of
the friendly welcome I should find among the cultured Englishmen of
London. Today I should be sitting in the place of honor at the banquet
board of one of Londonl’s most exclusive clubs, feted and lionized.
The actuality! Here I lay, bound hand and foot, doubtless almost upon
the very site of a part of ancient London, yet all about me was a
primeval wilderness, and I was a captive of half-naked wild men.
I wondered what had become of Delcarte and Taylor and Snider. Would
they search for me? They could never find me, I feared, yet if they
did, what could they accomplish against this horde of savage warriors?
Would that I could warn them. I thought of the girl—doubtless she could
get word to them, but how was I to communicate with her? Would she come
to see me before I was killed? It seemed incredible that she should not
make some slight attempt to befriend me; yet, as I recalled, she had
made no effort to speak with me after we had reached the village. She
had hastened to her mother the moment she had been liberated. Though
she had returned with the old queen, she had not spoken to me, even
then. I began to have my doubts.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that I was absolutely friendless
except for the old queen. For some unaccountable reason my rage against
the girl for her ingratitude rose to colossal proportions.
For a long time I waited for some one to come to my prison whom I might
ask to bear word to the queen, but I seemed to have been forgotten. The
strained position in which I lay became unbearable. I wriggled and
twisted until I managed to turn myself partially upon my side, where I
lay half facing the entrance to the dugout.
Presently my attention was attracted by the shadow of something moving
in the trench without, and a moment later the figure of a child
appeared, creeping upon all fours, as, wide-eyed, and prompted by
childish curiosity, a little girl crawled to the entrance of my hut and
peered cautiously and fearfully in.
I did not speak at first for fear of frightening the little one away.
But when I was satisfied that her eyes had become sufficiently
accustomed to the subdued light of the interior, I smiled.
Instantly the expression of fear faded from her eyes to be replaced
with an answering smile.
“Who are you, little girl?” I asked.
“My name is Mary,” she replied. “I am Victoryl’s sister.”
“And who is Victory?”
“You do not know who Victory is?” she asked, in astonishment.
I shook my head in negation.
“You saved her from the elephant country people, and yet you say you do
not know her!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, so she is Victory, and you are her sister! I have not heard her
name before. That is why I did not know whom you meant,” I explained.
Here was just the messenger for me. Fate was becoming more kind.
“Will you do something for me, Mary?” I asked.
“If I can.”
“Go to your mother, the queen, and ask her to come to me,” I said. “I
have a favor to ask.”
She said that she would, and with a parting smile she left me.
For what seemed many hours I awaited her return, chafing with
impatience. The afternoon wore on and night came, and yet no one came
near me. My captors brought me neither food nor water. I was suffering
considerable pain where the rawhide thongs cut into my swollen flesh. I
thought that they had either forgotten me, or that it was their
intention to leave me here to die of starvation.
Once I heard a great uproar in the village. Men were shouting—women
were screaming and moaning. After a time this subsided, and again there
was a long interval of silence.
Half the night must have been spent when I heard a sound in the trench
near the hut. It resembled muffled sobs. Presently a figure appeared,
silhouetted against the lesser darkness beyond the doorway. It crept
inside the hut.
“Are you here?” whispered a childlike voice.
It was Mary! She had returned. The thongs no longer hurt me. The pangs
of hunger and thirst disappeared. I realized that it had been
loneliness from which I suffered most.
“Mary!” I exclaimed. “You are a good girl. You have come back, after
all. I had commenced to think that you would not. Did you give my
message to the queen? Will she come? Where is she?”
The childl’s sobs increased, and she flung herself upon the dirt floor
of the hut, apparently overcome by grief.
“What is it?” I asked. “Why do you cry?”
“The queen, my mother, will not come to you,” she said, between sobs.
“She is dead. Buckingham has killed her. Now he will take Victory, for
Victory is queen. He kept us fastened up in our shelter, for fear that
Victory would escape him, but I dug a hole beneath the back wall and
got out. I came to you, because you saved Victory once before, and I
thought that you might save her again, and me, also. Tell me that you
will.”
“I am bound and helpless, Mary,” I replied. “Otherwise I would do what
I could to save you and your sister.”
“I will set you free!” cried the girl, creeping up to my side. “I will
set you free, and then you may come and slay Buckingham.”
“Gladly!” I assented.
“We must hurry,” she went on, as she fumbled with the hard knots in the
stiffened rawhide, “for Buckingham will be after you soon. He must make
an offering to the lions at dawn before he can take Victory. The taking
of a queen requires a human offering!”
“And I am to be the offering?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, tugging at a knot. “Buckingham has been wanting a
sacrifice ever since he killed Wettin, that he might slay my mother and
take Victory.”
The thought was horrible, not solely because of the hideous fate to
which I was condemned, but from the contemplation it engendered of the
sad decadence of a once enlightened race. To these depths of ignorance,
brutality, and superstition had the vaunted civilization of twentieth
century England been plunged, and by what? War! I felt the structure of
our time-honored militaristic arguments crumbling about me.
Mary labored with the thongs that confined me. They proved
refractory—defying her tender, childish fingers. She assured me,
however, that she would release me, if “they” did not come too soon.
But, alas, they came. We heard them coming down the trench, and I bade
Mary hide in a corner, lest she be discovered and punished. There was
naught else she could do, and so she crawled away into the Stygian
blackness behind me.
Presently two warriors entered. The leader exhibited a unique method of
discovering my whereabouts in the darkness. He advanced slowly, kicking
out viciously before him. Finally he kicked me in the face. Then he
knew where I was.
A moment later I had been jerked roughly to my feet. One of the fellows
stopped and severed the bonds that held my ankles. I could scarcely
stand alone. The two pulled and hauled me through the low doorway and
along the trench. A party of forty or fifty warriors were awaiting us
at the brink of the excavation some hundred yards from the hut.
Hands were lowered to us, and we were dragged to the surface. Then
commenced a long march. We stumbled through the underbrush wet with
dew, our way lighted by a score of torchbearers who surrounded us. But
the torches were not to light the way—that was but incidental. They
were carried to keep off the huge Carnivora that moaned and coughed and
roared about us.
The noises were hideous. The whole country seemed alive with lions.
Yellow-green eyes blazed wickedly at us from out the surrounding
darkness. My escort carried long, heavy spears. These they kept ever
pointed toward the beast of prey, and I learned from snatches of the
conversation I overheard that occasionally there might be a lion who
would brave even the terrors of fire to leap in upon human prey. It was
for such that the spears were always couched.
But nothing of the sort occurred during this hideous death march, and
with the first pale heralding of dawn we reached our goal—an open place
in the midst of a tangled wildwood. Here rose in crumbling grandeur the
first evidences I had seen of the ancient civilization which once had
graced fair Albion—a single, time-worn arch of masonry.
“The entrance to the Camp of the Lions!” murmured one of the party in a
voice husky with awe.
Here the party knelt, while Buckingham recited a weird, prayer-like
chant. It was rather long, and I recall only a portion of it, which
ran, if my memory serves me, somewhat as follows:
Lord of Grabritin, we
Fall on our knees to thee,
This gift to bring.
Greatest of kings are thou!
To thee we humbly bow!
Peace to our camp allow.
God save thee, king!
Then the party rose, and dragging me to the crumbling arch, made me
fast to a huge, corroded, copper ring which was dangling from an
eyebolt imbedded in the masonry.
None of them, not even Buckingham, seemed to feel any personal
animosity toward me. They were naturally rough and brutal, as primitive
men are supposed to have been since the dawn of humanity, but they did
not go out of their way to maltreat me.