Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Behind him, stealthy and sinuous, moved his great mate. Before them the ranks of the watchers opened with marvelous rapidity, until a broad line was formed through which moved the king and queen out into the night toward their wild realm. For a long time their cries could be heard, diminishing in the distance.

  Immediately that they had departed, Colonel Vivier did what he could for Azîz. Toward morning the lion-man fell into a natural slumber, and then at last relief came to the suffering Nakhla, for she hoped that he would awaken well once more.

  The clatter of the preparation for breaking camp aroused him. As he opened his eyes he saw Nakhla, sitting beside him looking down into his face. Behind her were Colonel Vivier and Sheik Ali-Es-Hadji.

  Azîz came slowly to his feet. He saw those about him, but beyond them he saw a wondrous vision. His head no longer hurt. His brain had never been more clear.

  He saw a stateroom in a rolling ship. He saw a grey, old man burst in - his grizzled, upturned mustache bristling and warlike as his indomitable eagle eyes. He heard his words as distinctly as though no long years had intervened since they were spoken: “Quick, your Highness! Come on deck - there is no time to bother about clothes.”

  And beyond the ship, far, far away, he saw a stately pile of ancient masonry, set in a great park of linden trees and ash and oak. There were broad, formal gardens and great expanses of level sward. There were gleaming marble fountains throwing their shimmering waters into the warm sunlight. There were men in uniform standing guard — tall, splendid fellows. And there was a little boy who walked beside a sad-faced man, and when they passed the soldiers snapped their burnished pieces smartly in salute.

  The Frenchman and the Arab and the girl stood watching the expression of the man’s face. They knew that some great change had been wrought within him; but what, they could not guess.

  At last he turned his eyes upon them. He saw the desert sheik and the descendant of the famous Count de Vivier of the reign of Louis XIV, and he smiled.

  Nakhla took a step toward him. His eyes met hers. No longer was he a dog or a pig. Now he knew precisely what he was and what awaited his coming upon another continent if he chose to come.

  For a long moment he gazed into the eyes of the girl, and then he raised her slim, brown hand to his lips.

  “We shall be very happy in the douar of Sheik Ali-Es-Hadji, our father,” he said.

  CHAPTER 25

  Magazines from civilization seep into many far corners of the world. One such, an illustrated weekly of international renown, found its way into the douar of an Arab sheik. The son-in-law of Ali-Es-Hadji was reading therein an account of the strange happenings in a far-off kingdom. He read of the assassination of King Ferdinand and Hilda de Groot, and he examined with interest their pictures and pictures of the palace and the palace gardens. There was a full page picture of General Count Sarnya, the new Dictator. There was also a picture of an elderly, scholarly looking man, named Andresy, who had been shot with many others by order of Sarnya, because they had attempted to launch a counter-revolution.

  One day General Count Sarnya received a cablegram.

  It was from Sidi Bel Abbes. All it said was, “Congratulations! You have my sympathy,” and it was signed,

  “Michael.”

  THE END

  The Caspak Series

  The ‘Caspak’ trilogy consists of three ‘lost world’ novels: The Land That Time Forgot (1918), The People That Time Forgot (1918) and Out of Time’s Abyss (1918). The three novels appeared as instalments in a linked series which ran through the September, October and November 1918 issues of Blue Book Magazine.

  All three novels take place on the mysterious island of Caprona, near Antarctica. Caprona is known by its inhabitants as ‘Caspak’ — hence the trilogy’s title. The island is an evolutionary enclave, where cavemen, dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna still roam. Over the course of the three novels, it is revealed that evolution happens more slowly on the island, where it is recapitulated as an individual metamorphosis.

  Set during World War I, the first novels relate how a submarine crew become stranded upon the island. The other two parts of the trilogy continue their adventures.

  Cover of the first edition, which collected all three volumes in the series

  The popular film adaptation from 1975

  First separate book edition of ‘The People That Time Forgot’

  THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1918)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 1

  It must have been a little after three o’clock in the afternoon that it happened — the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that all that I have passed through — all those weird and terrifying experiences — should have been encompassed within so short a span as three brief months. Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time - things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.

  After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I had come to Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician, and was slowly being bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter. Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I was now risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the southernmost extremity of Greenland.

  Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke — but my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.

  The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the natives, waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and while the evening meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro along the rocky, shattered shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove the worn granite, or whatever the rocks of Cape Farewell may be composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one of these soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more surprised than was I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the surf of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I was soaked above the knees doing it; and then I sat down in the sand and opened it, and in the long twilight read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly folded, which was its contents.

  You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting quotation marks — which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.

  My home is in Santa Monica. I am, or was, junior member of my father’s firm. We are ship-builders. Of recent years we have specialized on submarines, which we have built for Germany, England, France and the United States. I know a sub as a mother knows her baby’s face, and have commanded a score of them on their trial runs. Yet my inclinations were all toward aviation. I graduated under Curtiss, and after a long siege with my father obtained his permission to try for the Lafayette Escadrille. As a stepping-stone I obtained an appointment in the American ambulance service and was on my way to France when three shrill whistles altered, in as many seconds, my entire scheme of life.

  I was sitting on deck with some of the fellows
who were going into the American ambulance service with me, my Airedale, Crown Prince Nobbler, asleep at my feet, when the first blast of the whistle shattered the peace and security of the ship. Ever since entering the U-boat zone we had been on the lookout for periscopes, and children that we were, bemoaning the unkind fate that was to see us safely into France on the morrow without a glimpse of the dread marauders. We were young; we craved thrills, and God knows we got them that day; yet by comparison with that through which I have since passed they were as tame as a Punch-and-Judy show.

  I shall never forget the ashy faces of the passengers as they stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship’s side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship — which, of course, was not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we were being torpedoed.

  I stood rigid, spellbound, watching the white wake of the torpedo. It struck us on the starboard side almost amidships. The vessel rocked as though the sea beneath it had been uptorn by a mighty volcano. We were thrown to the decks, bruised and stunned, and then above the ship, carrying with it fragments of steel and wood and dismembered human bodies, rose a column of water hundreds of feet into the air.

  The silence which followed the detonation of the exploding torpedo was almost equally horrifying. It lasted for perhaps two seconds, to be followed by the screams and moans of the wounded, the cursing of the men and the hoarse commands of the ship’s officers. They were splendid — they and their crew. Never before had I been so proud of my nationality as I was that moment. In all the chaos which followed the torpedoing of the liner no officer or member of the crew lost his head or showed in the slightest any degree of panic or fear.

  While we were attempting to lower boats, the submarine emerged and trained guns on us. The officer in command ordered us to lower our flag, but this the captain of the liner refused to do. The ship was listing frightfully to starboard, rendering the port boats useless, while half the starboard boats had been demolished by the explosion. Even while the passengers were crowding the starboard rail and scrambling into the few boats left to us, the submarine commenced shelling the ship. I saw one shell burst in a group of women and children, and then I turned my head and covered my eyes.

  When I looked again to horror was added chagrin, for with the emerging of the U-boat I had recognized her as a product of our own shipyard. I knew her to a rivet. I had superintended her construction. I had sat in that very conning- tower and directed the efforts of the sweating crew below when first her prow clove the sunny summer waters of the Pacific; and now this creature of my brain and hand had turned Frankenstein, bent upon pursuing me to my death.

  A second shell exploded upon the deck. One of the lifeboats, frightfully overcrowded, swung at a dangerous angle from its davits. A fragment of the shell shattered the bow tackle, and I saw the women and children and the men vomited into the sea beneath, while the boat dangled stern up for a moment from its single davit, and at last with increasing momentum dived into the midst of the struggling victims screaming upon the face of the waters.

  Now I saw men spring to the rail and leap into the ocean. The deck was tilting to an impossible angle. Nobs braced himself with all four feet to keep from slipping into the scuppers and looked up into my face with a questioning whine. I stooped and stroked his head.

  “Come on, boy!” I cried, and running to the side of the ship, dived headforemost over the rail. When I came up, the first thing I saw was Nobs swimming about in a bewildered sort of way a few yards from me. At sight of me his ears went flat, and his lips parted in a characteristic grin.

  The submarine was withdrawing toward the north, but all the time it was shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target, which, combined with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm; and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon and the U-boat submerged and disappeared.

  All the time the lifeboats has been pulling away from the danger of the sinking liner, and now, though I yelled at the top of my lungs, they either did not hear my appeals for help or else did not dare return to succor me. Nobs and I had gained some little distance from the ship when it rolled completely over and sank. We were caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few yards, neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced hurriedly about for something to which to cling. My eyes were directed toward the point at which the liner had disappeared when there came from the depths of the ocean the muffled reverberation of an explosion, and almost simultaneously a geyser of water in which were shattered lifeboats, human bodies, steam, coal, oil, and the flotsam of a liner’s deck leaped high above the surface of the sea — a watery column momentarily marking the grave of another ship in this greatest cemetery of the seas.

  When the turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it. In no other way can I account for its having leaped so far out of the water — a beneficent circumstance to which I doubtless owe my life, and that of another far dearer to me than my own. I say beneficent circumstance even in the face of the fact that a fate far more hideous confronts us than that which we escaped that day; for because of that circumstance I have met her whom otherwise I never should have known; I have met and loved her. At least I have had that great happiness in life; nor can Caspak, with all her horrors, expunge that which has been.

  So for the thousandth time I thank the strange fate which sent that lifeboat hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to which it had been dragged — sent it far up above the surface, emptying its water as it rose above the waves, and dropping it upon the surface of the sea, buoyant and safe.

  It did not take me long to clamber over its side and drag Nobs in to comparative safety, and then I glanced around upon the scene of death and desolation which surrounded us. The sea was littered with wreckage among which floated the pitiful forms of women and children, buoyed up by their useless lifebelts. Some were torn and mangled; others lay rolling quietly to the motion of the sea, their countenances composed and peaceful; others were set in hideous lines of agony or horror. Close to the boat’s side floated the figure of a girl. Her face was turned upward, held above the surface by her life-belt, and was framed in a floating mass of dark and waving hair. She was very beautiful. I had never looked upon such perfect features, such a divine molding which was at the same time human — intensely human. It was a face filled with character and strength and femininity — the face of one who was created to love and to be loved. The cheeks were flushed to the hue of life and health and vitality, and yet she lay there upon the bosom of the sea, dead. I felt something rise in my throat as I looked down upon that radiant vision, and I swore that I should live to avenge her murder.

  And then I let my eyes drop once more to the face upon the water, and what I saw nearly tumbled me backward into the sea, for the eyes in the dead face had opened; the lips had parted; and one hand was raised toward me in a mute appeal for succor. She lived! She was not dead! I leaned over the boat’s side and drew her quickly in to the comparative safety which God had given me. I removed her life-belt and my soggy coat and made a pillow for her head. I chafed her hands and arms and feet. I worked over her for an hour, and at last I was rewarded by a deep sigh, and again those great eyes opened and looked into mine.

  At that I was all em
barrassment. I have never been a ladies’ man; at Leland-Stanford I was the butt of the class because of my hopeless imbecility in the presence of a pretty girl; but the men liked me, nevertheless. I was rubbing one of her hands when she opened her eyes, and I dropped it as though it were a red-hot rivet. Those eyes took me in slowly from head to foot; then they wandered slowly around the horizon marked by the rising and falling gunwales of the lifeboat. They looked at Nobs and softened, and then came back to me filled with questioning.

  “I — I—” I stammered, moving away and stumbling over the next thwart. The vision smiled wanly.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” she replied faintly, and again her lips drooped, and her long lashes swept the firm, fair texture of her skin.

  “I hope that you are feeling better,” I finally managed to say.

  “Do you know,” she said after a moment of silence, “I have been awake for a long time! But I did not dare open my eyes. I thought I must be dead, and I was afraid to look, for fear that I should see nothing but blackness about me. I am afraid to die! Tell me what happened after the ship went down. I remember all that happened before — oh, but I wish that I might forget it!” A sob broke her voice. “The beasts!” she went on after a moment. “And to think that I was to have married one of them — a lieutenant in the German navy.”