The People That Time Forgot

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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
to place Bowen Tyler's manuscript in the hands of his father,
I was still a trifle skeptical as to its sincerity, since I could
not but recall that it had not been many years since Bowen had been
one of the most notorious practical jokers of his alma mater. The
truth was that as I sat in the Tyler library at Santa Monica I
commenced to feel a trifle foolish and to wish that I had merely
forwarded the manuscript by express instead of bearing it personally,
for I confess that I do not enjoy being laughed at. I have a
well-developed sense of humor--when the joke is not on me.

Mr. Tyler, Sr., was expected almost hourly. The last steamer in
from Honolulu had brought information of the date of the expected
sailing of his yacht _Toreador_, which was now twenty-four hours
overdue. Mr. Tyler's assistant secretary, who had been left
at home, assured me that there was no doubt but that the _Toreador_
had sailed as promised, since he knew his employer well enough to
be positive that nothing short of an act of God would prevent his
doing what he had planned to do. I was also aware of the fact
that the sending apparatus of the _Toreador's_ wireless equipment was
sealed, and that it would only be used in event of dire necessity.
There was, therefore, nothing to do but wait, and we waited.

We discussed the manuscript and hazarded guesses concerning it and
the strange events it narrated. The torpedoing of the liner upon
which Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., had taken passage for France to join
the American Ambulance was a well-known fact, and I had further
substantiated by wire to the New York office of the owners, that
a Miss La Rue had been booked for passage. Further, neither she
nor Bowen had been mentioned among the list of survivors; nor had
the body of either of them been recovered.

Their rescue by the English tug was entirely probable; the capture
of the enemy U-33 by the tug's crew was not beyond the range
of possibility; and their adventures during the perilous cruise
which the treachery and deceit of Benson extended until they found
themselves in the waters of the far South Pacific with depleted
stores and poisoned water-casks, while bordering upon the
fantastic, appeared logical enough as narrated, event by event, in
the manuscript.

Caprona has always been considered a more or less mythical land,
though it is vouched for by an eminent navigator of the eighteenth
century; but Bowen's narrative made it seem very real, however many
miles of trackless ocean lay between us and it. Yes, the narrative
had us guessing. We were agreed that it was most improbable; but
neither of us could say that anything which it contained was beyond
the range of possibility. The weird flora and fauna of Caspak were
as possible under the thick, warm atmospheric conditions of the
super-heated crater as they were in the Mesozoic era under almost
exactly similar conditions, which were then probably world-wide.
The assistant secretary had heard of Caproni and his discoveries,
but admitted that he never had taken much stock in the one nor the
other. We were agreed that the one statement most difficult of
explanation was that which reported the entire absence of human
young among the various tribes which Tyler had had intercourse.
This was the one irreconcilable statement of the manuscript. A
world of adults! It was impossible.

We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party of
English sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them; how
many more might have perished! And Miss La Rue--could a young
girl long have survived the horrors of Caspak after having been
separated from all of her own kind? The assistant secretary wondered
if Nobs still was with her, and then we both smiled at this tacit
acceptance of the truth of the whole uncanny tale:

"I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but by
George, I can't help believing it, and I can see that girl now,
with the big Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors
of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene--the apelike
Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactyls
soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty
dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of
preglacial forests--the dragons which we considered myths until
science taught us that they were the true recollections of the
first man, handed down through countless ages by word of mouth from
father to son out of the unrecorded dawn of humanity."

"It is stupendous--if true," I replied. "And to think that possibly
they are still there--Tyler and Miss La Rue--surrounded by hideous
dangers, 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 the others; the last Bowen knew of them, there were six
left, all told--the mate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson,
Whitely, Brady and Sinclair. 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!
Bowen should have had better judgment than to have trusted them at
all. The chances are von Schoenvorts succeeded in getting safely
back to Kiel and is strutting around with an Iron Cross this very
minute. With a large supply of oil from the wells they discovered
in Caspak, with plenty of water and ample provisions, there is
no reason why they couldn't have negotiated the submerged tunnel
beneath the barrier cliffs and made good their escape."

"I don't like 'em," said the assistant secretary; "but sometimes
you got to hand it to 'em."

"Yes," I growled, "and there's nothing I'd enjoy more than _handing
it to them!_" And then the telephone-bell rang.

The assistant secretary answered, and as I watched him, I saw his
jaw drop and his face go white. "My God!" he exclaimed as he hung
up the receiver 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.,
and arranging plans for the succor of his son. Mr. Tom Billings,
the late Mr. Tyler's secretary, did it all. He is force, energy,
initiative and good judgment combined and personified. I never
have beheld a more dynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts
and executors as a sculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed,
fashioned and forced them to his will. He had been a classmate of
Bowen Tyler at college, and a fraternity brother, and before, that
he had been an impoverished and improvident cow-puncher on one of the
great Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had picked him out of thousands
of employees and made him; or rather Tyler had given him the
opportunity, and then Billings had made himself. Tyler, Jr., as
good a judge of men as his father, had taken him into his friendship,
and between the two of them they had turned out a man who would
have died for a Tyler as quickly as he would have for his flag. Yet
there was none of the sycophant or fawner in Billings; ordinarily
I do not wax enthusiastic about men, but this man Billings comes
as close to my conception of what a regular man should be as any
I have ever met. I venture to say that before Bowen J. Tyler sent
him to college he had never heard the word _ethics_, and yet I am
equally sure that in all his life he never has transgressed a single
tenet of the code of ethics of an American gentleman.

Ten days after they brought Mr. Tyler's body off the _Toreador_,
we steamed out into the Pacific in search of Caprona. There were
forty in the party, including the master and crew of the _Toreador_;
and Billings the indomitable was in command. We had a long and
uninteresting search for Caprona, for the old map upon which the
assistant secretary had finally located it was most inaccurate.
When its grim walls finally rose out of the ocean's mists before
us, we were so far south that it was a question as to whether we
were in the South Pacific or the Antarctic. Bergs were numerous,
and it was very cold.

All during the trip Billings had steadfastly evaded questions as
to how we were to enter Caspak after we had found Caprona. Bowen
Tyler's manuscript had made it perfectly evident to all that the
subterranean outlet of the Caspakian River was the only means of
ingress or egress to the crater world beyond the impregnable cliffs.
Tyler's party had been able to navigate this channel because their
craft had been a submarine; but the _Toreador_ could as easily have
flown over the cliffs as sailed under them. Jimmy Hollis and Colin
Short whiled away many an hour inventing schemes for surmounting
the obstacle presented by the barrier cliffs, and making ridiculous
wagers as to which one Tom Billings had in mind; but immediately
we were all assured that we had raised Caprona, Billings called us
together.

"There was no use in talking about these things," he said, "until
we found the island. At best it can be but conjecture on our part
until we have been able to scrutinize the coast closely. Each
of us has formed a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast from
Bowen's manuscript, and it is not likely that any two of these
pictures resemble each other, or that any of them resemble the
coast as we shall presently 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 an electric drill with plenty of waterproof
cable to reach from the ship's dynamos to the cliff-top when the
_Toreador_ is anchored at a safe distance from shore, and there is
sufficient half-inch iron rod to build a ladder from the base to
the top of the cliff. It would be a long, arduous and dangerous
work to bore the holes and insert the rungs of 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
throw a line over the summit of the cliffs; but this plan would
necessitate one of us climbing to the top with the chances more
than even that the line 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
of large, heavy boxes lowered into the hold before we sailed. I
know you did, because you asked me what they contained and commented
upon the large letter '_H_' which was painted upon each box. These
boxes contain the various parts of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose
assembling this upon the strip of beach described in Bowen's
manuscript--the beach where he found the dead body of the apelike
man--provided there is sufficient space above high water; otherwise
we shall have to assemble it on deck and lower it over the side.
After it is assembled, I shall carry tackle and ropes to the
cliff-top, and then it will be comparatively simple to hoist the
search-party and its supplies in safety. Or I can make a sufficient
number of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the
barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance
reveals."

That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's towering
barrier.

"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan the
summit thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would have been
to waste our time in working out details of a plan to surmount those."
And he jerked his thumb toward the cliffs. "It would take weeks,
possibly months, to construct a ladder to the top. I had no
conception of their formidable height. Our mortar would not carry
a line halfway to the crest of the lowest point. There is no use
discussing any plan other than the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find
the beach and get busy."

Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could
discern surf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw
the line of breakers 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 good ducking in the ice-cold waters in the doing
of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the clean-picked
bones of what might have been the skeleton of a high order of ape
or a very low order of man, lying close to the base of the cliff.
Billings was satisfied, as were the rest of us, that this was the
beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further found that there was ample
room to assemble the sea-plane.

Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting,
with the result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the
large boxes marked "_H_" upon the beach, and were busily engaged in
opening them. Two days later the plane was assembled and tuned.
We loaded tackles and ropes, water, food and ammunition in it, and
then we each implored Billings to let us be the one to accompany
him. But he would take no one. That was Billings; if there was
any especially difficult or dangerous work to be done, that one man
could do, Billings always did it himself. If he needed assistance,
he never called for volunteers--just selected the man or men he
considered best qualified for the duty. He said that he considered
the principles underlying all volunteer service fundamentally wrong,
and that it seemed to him that calling for volunteers reflected
upon the courage and loyalty of the entire command.

We rolled the plane down to the water's edge, and Billings mounted
the pilot's seat. There was a moment's delay as he assured
himself that he had everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over
his armament and ammunition to see that nothing had been omitted.
Besides pistol and rifle, 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 Caspak had impressed us all with the
necessity for proper means of defense.

At last all was ready. The motor was started, and we pushed the
plane out into the surf. A moment later, and she was skimming
seaward. Gently she rose from the surface of the water, executed
a wide spiral as she mounted rapidly, circled once far above us
and then disappeared over the crest of the cliffs. We all stood
silent and expectant, our eyes glued upon the towering summit above
us. Hollis, who was now in command, 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," he
announced.

"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 as helpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand miles away!
We can't do a thing. We don't know what's happening. Why didn't
he let one of us go with him?"

Yes, it was the machine-gun. We would hear it distinctly for at
least a minute. Then came silence. That was two weeks ago. We
have had no sign nor signal from Tom Billings since.





Chapter 2




I'll never forget my first impressions of Caspak as I circled in,
high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked down
through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me. The hot,
humid atmosphere of Caspak condenses as it is fanned by the cold
Antarctic air-currents which sweep across the crater's top, sending
a tenuous ribbon of vapor far out across the Pacific. Through this
the picture gave one the suggestion of a colossal impressionistic
canvas in greens and browns and scarlets and yellows surrounding
the deep blue of the inland sea--just blobs of color taking form
through the tumbling mist.

I dived close to the cliffs and skirted them for several miles
without finding the least indication of a suitable landing-place;
and then I swung back at a lower level, looking for a clearing close
to the bottom of the mighty escarpment; but I could find none of
sufficient area to insure safety. I was flying pretty low by this
time, not only looking for landing places but watching the myriad
life beneath me. I was down pretty well toward the south end
of the island, where an arm of the lake reaches far inland, and I
could see the surface of the water literally black with creatures
of some sort. I was too far up to recognize individuals, but the
general impression was of a vast army of amphibious monsters. The
land was almost equally alive with crawling, leaping, running,
flying things. It was one of the latter which nearly did for me
while my attention was fixed upon the weird scene below.

The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of
the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most
terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have been fully
eighty feet long from the end of its long, hideous beak to the tip
of its thick, short tail, with an equal spread of wings. It was
coming straight for me and hissing frightfully--I could hear it
above the whir of the propeller. It was coming straight down toward
the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it have it right in the
breast; but still it came for me, so that I had to dive and turn,
though I was dangerously close to earth.

The thing didn't miss me by a dozen feet, and when I rose, it wheeled
and followed me, but only to the cooler air close to the level of
the cliff-tops; there it turned again and dropped. Something--man's
natural love of battle and the chase, I presume--impelled me to
pursue it, and so I too circled and dived. The moment I came down
into the warm atmosphere of Caspak, the creature came for me again,
rising above me so that it might swoop down upon me. Nothing could
better have suited my armament, since my machine-gun was pointed
upward at an angle of about 45 degrees and could not be either
depressed or elevated by the pilot. If I had brought someone along
with me, we could have raked the great reptile from almost any
position, but as the creature's mode of attack was always from above,
he always found me ready with a hail of bullets. The battle must have
lasted a minute or more before the thing suddenly turned completely
over in the air and fell to the ground.

Bowen and I roomed together at college, and I learned a lot from
him outside my regular course. He was a pretty good scholar despite
his love of fun, and his particular hobby was paleontology. He
used to tell me about the various forms of animal and vegetable life
which had covered the globe during former eras, and so I was pretty
well acquainted with the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals
of paleolithic times. I knew that the thing that had attacked me
was some sort of pterodactyl which should have been extinct millions
of years ago. It was all that I needed to realize that Bowen had
exaggerated nothing in his manuscript.

Having disposed of my first foe, I set myself once more to search
for a landing-place near to the base of the cliffs beyond which my
party awaited me. I knew how anxious they would be for word from
me, and I was equally anxious to relieve their minds and also to
get them and our supplies well within Caspak, so that we might set
off about our business of finding and rescuing Bowen Tyler; but the
pterodactyl's carcass had scarcely fallen before I was surrounded
by at least a dozen of the hideous things, some large, some small,
but all bent upon my destruction. I could not cope with them all,
and so I rose rapidly from among them to the cooler strata wherein
they dared not follow; and then I recalled that Bowen's narrative
distinctly indicated that the farther north one traveled in Caspak,
the fewer were the terrible reptiles which rendered human life
impossible at the southern end of the island.

There seemed nothing now but to search out a more northerly
landing-place and then return to the _Toreador_ and transport my
companions, two by two, over the cliffs and deposit them at the
rendezvous. As I flew north, the temptation to explore overcame
me. I knew that I could easily cover Caspak and return to the
beach with less petrol than I had in my tanks; and there was the
hope, too, that I might find Bowen or some of his party. The broad
expanse of the inland sea lured me out over its waters, and as I
crossed, I saw at either extremity of the great body of water an
island--one to the south and one to the north; but I did not alter
my course to examine either closely, leaving that to a later time.

The further shore of the sea revealed a much narrower strip of
land between the cliffs and the water than upon the western side;
but it was a hillier and more open country. There were splendid
landing-places, and in the distance, toward the north, I thought
I descried a village; but of that I was not positive. However, as
I approached the land, I saw a number of human figures apparently
pursuing one who fled across a broad expanse of meadow. As I
dropped lower to have a better look at these people, they caught
the whirring of my propellers and looked aloft. They paused an
instant--pursuers and pursued; and then they broke and raced for
the shelter of the nearest wood. Almost instantaneously a huge
bulk swooped down upon me, and as I looked up, I realized that there
were flying reptiles even in this part of Caspak. The creature
dived for my right wing so quickly that nothing but a sheer drop
could have saved me. I was already close to the ground, so that
my maneuver was extremely dangerous; but I was in a fair way of
making it successfully when I saw that I was too closely approaching
a large tree. My effort to dodge the tree and the pterodactyl at
the same time resulted disastrously. One wing touched an upper
branch; the plane tipped and swung around, and then, out of control,
dashed into the branches of the tree, where it came to rest, battered
and torn, forty feet above the ground.

Hissing loudly, the huge reptile swept close above the tree in
which my plane had lodged, circled twice over me and then flapped
away toward the south. As I guessed then and was to learn later,
forests are the surest sanctuary from these hideous creatures,
which, with their enormous spread of wing and their great weight,
are as much out of place among trees as is a seaplane.

For a minute or so I clung there to my battered flyer, now useless
beyond redemption, my brain numbed by the frightful catastrophe
that had befallen me. All my plans for the succor of Bowen and
Miss La Rue had depended upon this craft, and in a few brief minutes
my own selfish love of adventure had wrecked their hopes and mine.
And what effect it might have upon the future of the balance of
the rescuing expedition I could not even guess. Their lives, too,
might be sacrificed to my suicidal foolishness. That I was doomed
seemed inevitable; but I can honestly say that the fate of my
friends concerned me more greatly than did my own.

Beyond the barrier cliffs my party was even now nervously awaiting
my return. Presently apprehension and fear would claim them--and
they would never know! They would attempt to scale the cliffs--of
that I was sure; but I was not so positive that they would succeed; and
after a while they would turn back, what there were left of them,
and go sadly and mournfully upon their return journey to home.
Home! I set my jaws and tried to forget the word, for I knew that
I should never again see home.

And what of Bowen and his girl? I had doomed them too. They would
never even know that an attempt had been made to rescue them. If
they still lived, they might some day come upon the ruined remnants
of this great plane hanging in its lofty sepulcher and hazard vain
guesses and be filled with wonder; but they would never know; and
I could not but be glad that they would not know that Tom Billings
had sealed their death-warrants by his criminal selfishness.

All these useless regrets were getting me in a bad way; but at last
I shook myself and tried to put such things out of my mind and take
hold of conditions as they existed and do my level best to wrest
victory from defeat. I was badly shaken up and bruised, but
considered myself mighty lucky to escape with my life. The plane
hung at a precarious angle, so that it was with difficulty and
considerable danger that I climbed from it into the tree and then
to the ground.

My predicament was grave. Between me and my friends lay an
inland sea fully sixty miles wide at this point and an estimated
land-distance of some three hundred miles around the northern end
of the sea, through such hideous dangers as I am perfectly free
to admit had me pretty well buffaloed. I had seen quite enough of
Caspak this day to assure me that Bowen had in no way exaggerated
its perils. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to believe that
he had become so accustomed to them before he started upon his
manuscript that he rather slighted them. As I stood there beneath
that tree--a tree which should have been part of a coal-bed countless
ages since--and looked out across a sea teeming with frightful
life--life which should have been fossil before God conceived of
Adam--I would not have given a minim of stale beer for my chances
of ever seeing my friends or the outside world again; yet then
and there I swore to fight my way as far through this hideous land
as circumstances would permit. I had plenty of ammunition, an
automatic pistol and a heavy rifle--the latter one of twenty added
to our equipment on the strength of Bowen's description of the
huge beasts of prey which ravaged Caspak. My greatest danger lay
in the hideous reptilia whose low nervous organizations permitted
their carnivorous instincts to function for several minutes after
they had ceased to live.