Produced by Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.
The People That Time Forgot
By
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter 1
I am forced to admit that even though I had traveled a long distance toplace Bowen Tyler's manuscript in the hands of his father, I was stilla trifle skeptical as to its sincerity, since I could not but recallthat it had not been many years since Bowen had been one of the mostnotorious practical jokers of his alma mater. The truth was that as Isat in the Tyler library at Santa Monica I commenced to feel a triflefoolish and to wish that I had merely forwarded the manuscript byexpress instead of bearing it personally, for I confess that I do notenjoy being laughed at. I have a well-developed sense of humor--whenthe joke is not on me.
Mr. Tyler, Sr., was expected almost hourly. The last steamer in fromHonolulu had brought information of the date of the expected sailing ofhis yacht _Toreador_, which was now twenty-four hours overdue. Mr.Tyler's assistant secretary, who had been left at home, assured me thatthere was no doubt but that the _Toreador_ had sailed as promised, sincehe knew his employer well enough to be positive that nothing short ofan act of God would prevent his doing what he had planned to do. I wasalso aware of the fact that the sending apparatus of the _Toreador_'swireless equipment was sealed, and that it would only be used in eventof dire necessity. There was, therefore, nothing to do but wait, andwe waited.
We discussed the manuscript and hazarded guesses concerning it and thestrange events it narrated. The torpedoing of the liner upon whichBowen J. Tyler, Jr., had taken passage for France to join the AmericanAmbulance was a well-known fact, and I had further substantiated bywire to the New York office of the owners, that a Miss La Rue had beenbooked for passage. Further, neither she nor Bowen had been mentionedamong the list of survivors; nor had the body of either of them beenrecovered.
Their rescue by the English tug was entirely probable; the capture ofthe enemy _U-33_ by the tug's crew was not beyond the range ofpossibility; and their adventures during the perilous cruise which thetreachery and deceit of Benson extended until they found themselves inthe waters of the far South Pacific with depleted stores and poisonedwater-casks, while bordering upon the fantastic, appeared logicalenough as narrated, event by event, in the manuscript.
Caprona has always been considered a more or less mythical land, thoughit is vouched for by an eminent navigator of the eighteenth century;but Bowen's narrative made it seem very real, however many miles oftrackless ocean lay between us and it. Yes, the narrative had usguessing. We were agreed that it was most improbable; but neither ofus could say that anything which it contained was beyond the range ofpossibility. The weird flora and fauna of Caspak were as possibleunder the thick, warm atmospheric conditions of the super-heated crateras they were in the Mesozoic era under almost exactly similarconditions, which were then probably world-wide. The assistantsecretary had heard of Caproni and his discoveries, but admitted thathe never had taken much stock in the one nor the other. We were agreedthat the one statement most difficult of explanation was that whichreported the entire absence of human young among the various tribeswith which Tyler had had intercourse. This was the one irreconcilablestatement of the manuscript. A world of adults! It was impossible.
We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party ofEnglish sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them; how manymore might have perished! And Miss La Rue--could a young girl longhave survived the horrors of Caspak after having been separated fromall of her own kind? The assistant secretary wondered if Nobs stillwas with her, and then we both smiled at this tacit acceptance of thetruth of the whole uncanny tale:
"I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but byGeorge, I can't help believing it, and I can see that girl now, withthe big Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors of amillion years ago. I can visualize the entire scene--the apelikeGrimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactylssoaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mightydinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows ofpreglacial forests--the dragons which we considered myths until sciencetaught us that they were the true recollections of the first man,handed down through countless ages by word of mouth from father to sonout of the unrecorded dawn of humanity."
"It is stupendous--if true," I replied. "And to think that possiblythey are still there--Tyler and Miss La Rue--surrounded by hideousdangers, and that possibly Bradley still lives, and some of his party!I can't help hoping all the time that Bowen and the girl have found theothers; the last Bowen knew of them, there were six left, all told--themate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson, Whitely, Brady andSinclair. There might be some hope for them if they could join forces;but separated, I'm afraid they couldn't last long."
"If only they hadn't let the German prisoners capture the _U-33_! Bowenshould have had better judgment than to have trusted them at all. Thechances are von Schoenvorts succeeded in getting safely back to Kieland is strutting around with an Iron Cross this very minute. With alarge supply of oil from the wells they discovered in Caspak, withplenty of water and ample provisions, there is no reason why theycouldn't have negotiated the submerged tunnel beneath the barriercliffs and made good their escape."
"I don't like 'em," said the assistant secretary; "but sometimes yougot to hand it to 'em."
"Yes," I growled, "and there's nothing I'd enjoy more than _handing itto them_!" And then the telephone-bell rang.
The assistant secretary answered, and as I watched him, I saw his jawdrop and his face go white. "My God!" he exclaimed as he hung up thereceiver as one in a trance. "It can't be!"
"What?" I asked.
"Mr. Tyler is dead," he answered in a dull voice. "He died at sea,suddenly, yesterday."
The next ten days were occupied in burying Mr. Bowen J. Tyler, Sr., andarranging plans for the succor of his son. Mr. Tom Billings, the lateMr. Tyler's secretary, did it all. He is force, energy, initiative andgood judgment combined and personified. I never have beheld a moredynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts and executors as asculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed, fashioned and forcedthem to his will. He had been a classmate of Bowen Tyler at college,and a fraternity brother, and before that he had been an impoverishedand improvident cow-puncher on one of the great Tyler ranches. Tyler,Sr., had picked him out of thousands of employees and made him; orrather Tyler had given him the opportunity, and then Billings had madehimself. Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of men as his father, had takenhim into his friendship, and between the two of them they had turnedout a man who would have died for a Tyler as quickly as he would havefor his flag. Yet there was none of the sycophant or fawner inBillings; ordinarily I do not wax enthusiastic about men, but this manBillings comes as close to my conception of what a regular man shouldbe as any I have ever met. I venture to say that before Bowen J. Tylersent him to college he had never heard the word _ethics_, and yet I amequally sure that in all his life he never has transgressed a singletenet of the code of ethics of an American gentleman.
Ten days after they brought Mr. Tyler's body off the _Toreador_, westeamed out into the Pacific in search of Caprona. There were forty inthe party, including the master and crew of the _Toreador_; and Billingsthe indomitable was in command. We had a long and uninteresting searchfor Caprona, for the old map upon which the assistant secretary hadfinally located it was most inaccurate. When its grim walls finallyrose out of the ocean's mists before us, we were so far south that itwas a question as to whether we were in the South Pacific or theAntarctic. Bergs were numerous, and it was very cold.
All during the trip Billings had steadfastly evaded question
s as to howwe were to enter Caspak after we had found Caprona. Bowen Tyler'smanuscript had made it perfectly evident to all that the subterraneanoutlet of the Caspakian River was the only means of ingress or egressto the crater world beyond the impregnable cliffs. Tyler's party hadbeen able to navigate this channel because their craft had been asubmarine; but the _Toreador_ could as easily have flown over the cliffsas sailed under them. Jimmy Hollis and Colin Short whiled away many anhour inventing schemes for surmounting the obstacle presented by thebarrier cliffs, and making ridiculous wagers as to which one TomBillings had in mind; but immediately we were all assured that we hadraised Caprona, Billings called us together.
"There was no use in talking about these things," he said, "until wefound the island. At best it can be but conjecture on our part untilwe have been able to scrutinize the coast closely. Each of us hasformed a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast from Bowen'smanuscript, and it is not likely that any two of these picturesresemble each other, or that any of them resemble the coast as we shallpresently find it. I have in view three plans for scaling the cliffs,and the means for carrying out each is in the hold. There is anelectric drill with plenty of waterproof cable to reach from the ship'sdynamos to the cliff-top when the _Toreador_ is anchored at a safedistance from shore, and there is sufficient half-inch iron rod tobuild a ladder from the base to the top of the cliff. It would be along, arduous and dangerous work to bore the holes and insert the rungsof the ladder from the bottom upward; yet it can be done.
"I also have a life-saving mortar with which we might be able to throwa line over the summit of the cliffs; but this plan would necessitateone of us climbing to the top with the chances more than even that theline would cut at the summit, or the hooks at the upper end would slip.
"My third plan seems to me the most feasible. You all saw a number oflarge, heavy boxes lowered into the hold before we sailed. I know youdid, because you asked me what they contained and commented upon thelarge letter 'H' which was painted upon each box. These boxes containthe various parts of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose assembling this uponthe strip of beach described in Bowen's manuscript--the beach where hefound the dead body of the apelike man--provided there is sufficientspace above high water; otherwise we shall have to assemble it on deckand lower it over the side. After it is assembled, I shall carrytackle and ropes to the cliff-top, and then it will be comparativelysimple to hoist the search-party and its supplies in safety. Or I canmake a sufficient number of trips to land the entire party in thevalley beyond the barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what myfirst reconnaissance reveals."
That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's toweringbarrier.
"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan thesummit thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would have been towaste our time in working out details of a plan to surmount those." Andhe jerked his thumb toward the cliffs. "It would take weeks, possiblymonths, to construct a ladder to the top. I had no conception of theirformidable height. Our mortar would not carry a line halfway to thecrest of the lowest point. There is no use discussing any plan otherthan the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find the beach and get busy."
Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could discernsurf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw the line ofbreakers broken by a long sweep of rolling surf upon a narrow beach.The launch was lowered, and five of us made a landing, getting a goodducking in the ice-cold waters in the doing of it; but we were rewardedby the finding of the clean-picked bones of what might have been theskeleton of a high order of ape or a very low order of man, lying closeto the base of the cliff. Billings was satisfied, as were the rest ofus, that this was the beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further foundthat there was ample room to assemble the sea-plane.
Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting, withthe result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the large boxesmarked "H" upon the beach, and were busily engaged in opening them.Two days later the plane was assembled and tuned. We loaded tacklesand ropes, water, food and ammunition in it, and then we each imploredBillings to let us be the one to accompany him. But he would take noone. That was Billings; if there was any especially difficult ordangerous work to be done, that one man could do, Billings always didit himself. If he needed assistance, he never called forvolunteers--just selected the man or men he considered best qualifiedfor the duty. He said that he considered the principles underlying allvolunteer service fundamentally wrong, and that it seemed to him thatcalling for volunteers reflected upon the courage and loyalty of theentire command.
We rolled the plane down to the water's edge, and Billings mounted thepilot's seat. There was a moment's delay as he assured himself that hehad everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over his armament andammunition to see that nothing had been omitted. Besides pistol andrifle, there was the machine-gun mounted in front of him on the plane,and ammunition for all three. Bowen's account of the terrors of Caspakhad impressed us all with the necessity for proper means of defense.
At last all was ready. The motor was started, and we pushed the planeout into the surf. A moment later, and she was skimming seaward.Gently she rose from the surface of the water, executed a wide spiralas she mounted rapidly, circled once far above us and then disappearedover the crest of the cliffs. We all stood silent and expectant, oureyes glued upon the towering summit above us. Hollis, who was now incommand, consulted his wrist-watch at frequent intervals.
"Gad," exclaimed Short, "we ought to be hearing from him pretty soon!"
Hollis laughed nervously. "He's been gone only ten minutes," heannounced.
"Seems like an hour," snapped Short. "What's that? Did you hear that?He's firing! It's the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and here we are ashelpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand miles away! We can't do athing. We don't know what's happening. Why didn't he let one of us gowith him?"
Yes, it was the machine-gun. We would hear it distinctly for at leasta minute. Then came silence. That was two weeks ago. We have had nosign nor signal from Tom Billings since.