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The Lost World

by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #139 · 443,353 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lost World

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle


        
Release date: June 1, 1994 [eBook #139]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/139

Credits: Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST WORLD ***

                          THE LOST WORLD

                   I have wrought my simple plan
                    If I give one hour of joy
                  To the boy who's half a man,
                    Or the man who's half a boy.



                          The Lost World


                                By

                     SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

                         COPYRIGHT, 1912



                             Foreword

            Mr. E. D. Malone desires to state that
          both the injunction for restraint and the
          libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly
          by Professor G. E. Challenger, who, being
          satisfied that no criticism or comment in
          this book is meant in an offensive spirit,
          has guaranteed that he will place no
          impediment to its publication and circulation.





                             Contents

CHAPTER

    I.  "THERE ARE HEROISMS ALL ROUND US"
   II.  "TRY YOUR LUCK WITH PROFESSOR CHALLENGER"
  III.  "HE IS A PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE PERSON"
   IV.  "IT'S JUST THE VERY BIGGEST THING IN THE WORLD"
    V.  "QUESTION!"
   VI.  "I WAS THE FLAIL OF THE LORD"
  VII.  "TO-MORROW WE DISAPPEAR INTO THE UNKNOWN"
 VIII.  "THE OUTLYING PICKETS OF THE NEW WORLD"
   IX.  "WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN IT?"
    X.  "THE MOST WONDERFUL THINGS HAVE HAPPENED"
   XI.  "FOR ONCE I WAS THE HERO"
  XII.  "IT WAS DREADFUL IN THE FOREST"
 XIII.  "A SIGHT I SHALL NEVER FORGET"
  XIV.  "THOSE WERE THE REAL CONQUESTS"
   XV.  "OUR EYES HAVE SEEN GREAT WONDERS"
  XVI.  "A PROCESSION!  A PROCESSION!"




                          THE LOST WORLD




                          The Lost World

                            CHAPTER I

                "There Are Heroisms All Round Us"

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon
earth,--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly
good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self.  If
anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the
thought of such a father-in-law.  I am convinced that he really
believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a
week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his
views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an
authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup
about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the
depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the
world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted
upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon
which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity,
which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in
my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic
meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come!  All
that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which
will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse
alternating in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the
red curtain.  How beautiful she was!  And yet how aloof!  We had been
friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same
comradeship which I might have established with one of my
fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectly frank, perfectly kindly,
and perfectly unsexual.  My instincts are all against a woman being too
frank and at her ease with me.  It is no compliment to a man.  Where
the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions,
heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in
hand.  The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing
figure--these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the
true signals of passion.  Even in my short life I had learned as much
as that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality.  Some judged her to be cold
and hard; but such a thought was treason.  That delicately bronzed
skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair, the large
liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,--all the stigmata of passion
were there.  But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found
the secret of drawing it forth.  However, come what might, I should
have done with suspense and bring matters to a head to-night.  She
could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed lover than an accepted
brother.

So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long
and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me,
and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof.  "I have a
presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned.  I do wish you
wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are."

I drew my chair a little nearer.  "Now, how did you know that I was
going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.

"Don't women always know?  Do you suppose any woman in the world was
ever taken unawares?  But--oh, Ned, our friendship has been so good and
so pleasant!  What a pity to spoil it!  Don't you feel how splendid it
is that a young man and a young woman should be able to talk face to
face as we have talked?"

"I don't know, Gladys.  You see, I can talk face to face with--with the
station-master."  I can't imagine how that official came into the
matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing.  "That does not
satisfy me in the least.  I want my arms round you, and your head on my
breast, and--oh, Gladys, I want----"

She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed to
demonstrate some of my wants.  "You've spoiled everything, Ned," she
said.  "It's all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing
comes in!  It is such a pity!  Why can't you control yourself?"

"I didn't invent it," I pleaded.  "It's nature.  It's love."

"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different.  I have never felt
it."

"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul!  Oh, Gladys, you
were made for love!  You must love!"

"One must wait till it comes."

"But why can't you love me, Gladys?  Is it my appearance, or what?"

She did unbend a little.  She put forward a hand--such a gracious,
stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head.  Then she
looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.

"No it isn't that," she said at last.  "You're not a conceited boy by
nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that.  It's deeper."

"My character?"

She nodded severely.

"What can I do to mend it?  Do sit down and talk it over.  No, really,
I won't if you'll only sit down!"

She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to my
mind than her whole-hearted confidence.  How primitive and bestial it
looks when you put it down in black and white!--and perhaps after all
it is only a feeling peculiar to myself.  Anyhow, she sat down.

"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"

"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.

It was my turn to jump out of my chair.

"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the expression
of my face: "only an ideal.  I've never met the kind of man I mean."

"Tell me about him.  What does he look like?"

"Oh, he might look very much like you."

"How dear of you to say that!  Well, what is it that he does that I
don't do?  Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,
theosophist, superman.  I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only
give me an idea what would please you."

She laughed at the elasticity of my character.  "Well, in the first
place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she.  "He
would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a
silly girl's whim.  But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who
could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a
man of great deeds and strange experiences.  It is never a man that I
should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be
reflected upon me.  Think of Richard Burton!  When I read his wife's
life of him I could so understand her love!  And Lady Stanley!  Did you
ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband?
These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul,
and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honored
by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds."

She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought down
the whole level of the interview.  I gripped myself hard, and went on
with the argument.

"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons," said I; "besides, we don't get
the chance,--at least, I never had the chance.  If I did, I should try
to take it."

"But chances are all around you.  It is the mark of the kind of man I
mean that he makes his own chances.  You can't hold him back.  I've
never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well.  There are heroisms
all round us waiting to be done.  It's for men to do them, and for
women to reserve their love as a reward for such men.  Look at that
young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon.  It was blowing a
gale of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted on
starting.  The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-four
hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia.  That was the kind of man I
mean.  Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have
envied her!  That's what I should like to be,--envied for my man."

"I'd have done it to please you."

"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me.  You should do it because
you can't help yourself, because it's natural to you, because the man
in you is crying out for heroic expression.  Now, when you described
the Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone down and
helped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?"

"I did."

"You never said so."

"There was nothing worth bucking about."

"I didn't know."  She looked at me with rather more interest.  "That
was brave of you."

"I had to.  If you want to write good copy, you must be where the
things are."

"What a prosaic motive!  It seems to take all the romance out of it.
But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down that
mine."  She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness and dignity that
I could only stoop and kiss it.  "I dare say I am merely a foolish
woman with a young girl's fancies.  And yet it is so real with me, so
entirely part of my very self, that I cannot help acting upon it.  If I
marry, I do want to marry a famous man!"

"Why should you not?" I cried.  "It is women like you who brace men up.
Give me a chance, and see if I will take it!  Besides, as you say, men
ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until they are given.
Look at Clive--just a clerk, and he conquered India!  By George!  I'll
do something in the world yet!"

She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence.  "Why not?" she said.
"You have everything a man could have,--youth, health, strength,
education, energy.  I was sorry you spoke.  And now I am glad--so
glad--if it wakens these thoughts in you!"

"And if I do----"

Her dear hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips.  "Not another word,
Sir!  You should have been at the office for evening duty half an hour
ago; only I hadn't the heart to remind you.  Some day, perhaps, when
you have won your place in the world, we shall talk it over again."

And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing
the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with the eager
determination that not another day should elapse before I should find
some deed which was worthy of my lady.  But who--who in all this wide
world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that deed was
to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing of it?

And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have
nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have been no
narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the world
with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the
desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight
of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and
ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the
great adventures and the great rewards.  Behold me, then, at the office
of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant
unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to
find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys!  Was it hardness,
was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own
glorification?  Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to
ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.




                            CHAPTER II

            "Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger"

I always liked McArdle, the crabbed, old, round-backed, red-headed news
editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me.  Of course, Beaumont was
the real boss; but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian
height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller than an
international crisis or a split in the Cabinet.  Sometimes we saw him
passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring
vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf.  He
was above and beyond us.  But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and it
was he that we knew.  The old man nodded as I entered the room, and he
pushed his spectacles far up on his bald forehead.

"Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very well,"
said he in his kindly Scotch accent.

I thanked him.

"The colliery explosion was excellent.  So was the Southwark fire.  You
have the true descreeptive touch.  What did you want to see me about?"

"To ask a favor."

He looked alarmed, and his eyes shunned mine. "Tut, tut!  What is it?"

"Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some mission for
the paper?  I would do my best to put it through and get you some good
copy."

"What sort of meesion had you in your mind, Mr. Malone?"

"Well, Sir, anything that had adventure and danger in it.  I really
would do my very best.  The more difficult it was, the better it would
suit me."

"You seem very anxious to lose your life."

"To justify my life, Sir."

"Dear me, Mr. Malone, this is very--very exalted.  I'm afraid the day
for this sort of thing is rather past.  The expense of the 'special
meesion' business hardly justifies the result, and, of course, in any
case it would only be an experienced man with a name that would command
public confidence who would get such an order.  The big blank spaces in
the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for romance
anywhere.  Wait a bit, though!" he added, with a sudden smile upon his
face.  "Talking of the blank spaces of the map gives me an idea.  What
about exposing a fraud--a modern Munchausen--and making him
rideeculous?  You could show him up as the liar that he is!  Eh, man,
it would be fine.  How does it appeal to you?"

"Anything--anywhere--I care nothing."

McArdle was plunged in thought for some minutes.

"I wonder whether you could get on friendly--or at least on talking
terms with the fellow," he said, at last.  "You seem to have a sort of
genius for establishing relations with people--seempathy, I suppose, or
animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something.  I am conscious
of it myself."

"You are very good, sir."

"So why should you not try your luck with Professor Challenger, of
Enmore Park?"

I dare say I looked a little startled.

"Challenger!" I cried.  "Professor Challenger, the famous zoologist!
Wasn't he the man who broke the skull of Blundell, of the Telegraph?"

The news editor smiled grimly.

"Do you mind?  Didn't you say it was adventures you were after?"

"It is all in the way of business, sir," I answered.

"Exactly.  I don't suppose he can always be so violent as that.  I'm
thinking that Blundell got him at the wrong moment, maybe, or in the
wrong fashion.  You may have better luck, or more tact in handling him.
There's something in your line there, I am sure, and the Gazette should
work it."

"I really know nothing about him," said I.  "I only remember his name
in connection with the police-court proceedings, for striking Blundell."

"I have a few notes for your guidance, Mr. Malone.  I've had my eye on
the Professor for some little time."  He took a paper from a drawer.
"Here is a summary of his record.  I give it you briefly:--

"'Challenger, George Edward.  Born: Largs, N. B., 1863.  Educ.: Largs
Academy; Edinburgh University.  British Museum Assistant, 1892.
Assistant-Keeper of Comparative Anthropology Department, 1893.
Resigned after acrimonious correspondence same year.  Winner of
Crayston Medal for Zoological Research.  Foreign Member of'--well,
quite a lot of things, about two inches of small type--'Societe Belge,
American Academy of Sciences, La Plata, etc., etc.  Ex-President
Palaeontological Society.  Section H, British Association'--so on, so
on!--'Publications: "Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuck
Skulls"; "Outlines of Vertebrate Evolution"; and numerous papers,
including "The underlying fallacy of Weissmannism," which caused heated
discussion at the Zoological Congress of Vienna.  Recreations: Walking,
Alpine climbing.  Address: Enmore Park, Kensington, W.'

"There, take it with you.  I've nothing more for you to-night."

I pocketed the slip of paper.

"One moment, sir," I said, as I realized that it was a pink bald head,
and not a red face, which was fronting me.  "I am not very clear yet
why I am to interview this gentleman.  What has he done?"

The face flashed back again.

"Went to South America on a solitary expedeetion two years ago.  Came
back last year.  Had undoubtedly been to South America, but refused to
say exactly where.  Began to tell his adventures in a vague way, but
somebody started to pick holes, and he just shut up like an oyster.
Something wonderful happened--or the man's a champion liar, which is
the more probable supposeetion.  Had some damaged photographs, said to
be fakes.  Got so touchy that he assaults anyone who asks questions,
and heaves reporters down the stairs.  In my opinion he's just a
homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science.  That's your man, Mr.
Malone.  Now, off you run, and see what you can make of him.  You're
big enough to look after yourself.  Anyway, you are all safe.
Employers' Liability Act, you know."

A grinning red face turned once more into a pink oval, fringed with
gingery fluff; the interview was at an end.

I walked across to the Savage Club, but instead of turning into it I
leaned upon the railings of Adelphi Terrace and gazed thoughtfully for
a long time at the brown, oily river.  I can always think most sanely
and clearly in the open air.  I took out the list of Professor
Challenger's exploits, and I read it over under the electric lamp.
Then I had what I can only regard as an inspiration.  As a Pressman, I
felt sure from what I had been told that I could never hope to get into
touch with this cantankerous Professor.  But these recriminations,
twice mentioned in his skeleton biography, could only mean that he was
a fanatic in science.  Was there not an exposed margin there upon which
he might be accessible?  I would try.

I entered the club.  It was just after eleven, and the big room was
fairly full, though the rush had not yet set in.  I noticed a tall,
thin, angular man seated in an arm-chair by the fire.  He turned as I
drew my chair up to him.  It was the man of all others whom I should
have chosen--Tarp Henry, of the staff of Nature, a thin, dry, leathery
creature, who was full, to those who knew him, of kindly humanity.  I
plunged instantly into my subject.

"What do you know of Professor Challenger?"

"Challenger?" He gathered his brows in scientific disapproval.
"Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from
South America."

"What story?"

"Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had discovered.
I believe he has retracted since.  Anyhow, he has suppressed it all.
He gave an interview to Reuter's, and there was such a howl that he saw
it wouldn't do.  It was a discreditable business.  There were one or
two folk who were inclined to take him seriously, but he soon choked
them off."

"How?"

"Well, by his insufferable rudeness and impossible behavior.  There was
poor old Wadley, of the Zoological Institute.  Wadley sent a message:
'The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to
Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would
do them the honor to come to their next meeting.'  The answer was
unprintable."

"You don't say?"

"Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run:  'Professor Challenger
presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute,
and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.'"

"Good Lord!"

"Yes, I expect that's what old Wadley said.  I remember his wail at the
meeting, which began:  'In fifty years experience of scientific
intercourse----'  It quite broke the old man up."

"Anything more about Challenger?"

"Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know.  I live in a
nine-hundred-diameter microscope.  I can hardly claim to take serious
notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.  I'm a
frontiersman from the extreme edge of the Knowable, and I feel quite
out of place when I leave my study and come into touch with all you
great, rough, hulking creatures.  I'm too detached to talk scandal, and
yet at scientific conversaziones I HAVE heard something of Challenger,
for he is one of those men whom nobody can ignore.  He's as clever as
they make 'em--a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a
quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that.  He had
gone the length of faking some photographs over the South American
business."

"You say he is a faddist.  What is his particular fad?"

"He has a thousand, but the latest is something about Weissmann and
Evolution.  He had a fearful row about it in Vienna, I believe."

"Can't you tell me the point?"

"Not at the moment, but a translation of the proceedings exists.  We
have it filed at the office.  Would you care to come?"

"It's just what I want.  I have to interview the fellow, and I need
some lead up to him.  It's really awfully good of you to give me a
lift.  I'll go with you now, if it is not too late."


Half an hour later I was seated in the newspaper office with a huge
tome in front of me, which had been opened at the article "Weissmann
versus Darwin," with the sub heading, "Spirited Protest at Vienna.
Lively Proceedings."  My scientific education having been somewhat
neglected, I was unable to follow the whole argument, but it was
evident that the English Professor had handled his subject in a very
aggressive fashion, and had thoroughly annoyed his Continental
colleagues.  "Protests," "Uproar," and "General appeal to the Chairman"
were three of the first brackets which caught my eye.  Most of the
matter might have been written in Chinese for any definite meaning that
it conveyed to my brain.

"I wish you could translate it into English for me," I said,
pathetically, to my help-mate.

"Well, it is a translation."

"Then I'd better try my luck with the original."

"It is certainly rather deep for a layman."

"If I could only get a single good, meaty sentence which seemed to
convey some sort of definite human idea, it would serve my turn.  Ah,
yes, this one will do.  I seem in a vague way almost to understand it.
I'll copy it out.  This shall be my link with the terrible Professor."

"Nothing else I can do?"

"Well, yes; I propose to write to him.  If I could frame the letter
here, and use your address it would give atmosphere."

"We'll have the fellow round here making a row and breaking the
furniture."

"No, no; you'll see the letter--nothing contentious, I assure you."

"Well, that's my chair and desk.  You'll find paper there.  I'd like to
censor it before it goes."

It took some doing, but I flatter myself that it wasn't such a bad job
when it was finished.  I read it aloud to the critical bacteriologist
with some pride in my handiwork.


"DEAR PROFESSOR CHALLENGER," it said, "As a humble student of Nature, I
have always taken the most profound interest in your speculations as to
the differences between Darwin and Weissmann.  I have recently had
occasion to refresh my memory by re-reading----"


"You infernal liar!" murmured Tarp Henry.


--"by re-reading your masterly address at Vienna.  That lucid and
admirable statement seems to be the last word in the matter.  There is
one sentence in it, however--namely:  'I protest strongly against the
insufferable and entirely dogmatic assertion that each separate id is a
microcosm possessed of an historical architecture elaborated slowly
through the series of generations.' Have you no desire, in view of
later research, to modify this statement?  Do you not think that it is
over-accentuated?  With your permission, I would ask the favor of an
interview, as I feel strongly upon the subject, and have certain
suggestions which I could only elaborate in a personal conversation.
With your consent, I trust to have the honor of calling at eleven
o'clock the day after to-morrow (Wednesday) morning.

"I remain, Sir, with assurances of profound respect, yours very truly,

EDWARD D. MALONE."


"How's that?" I asked, triumphantly.

"Well if your conscience can stand it----"

"It has never failed me yet."

"But what do you mean to do?"

"To get there.  Once I am in his room I may see some opening.  I may
even go the length of open confession.  If he is a sportsman he will be
tickled."

"Tickled, indeed!  He's much more likely to do the tickling.  Chain
mail, or an American football suit--that's what you'll want.  Well,
good-bye.  I'll have the answer for you here on Wednesday morning--if
he ever deigns to answer you.  He is a violent, dangerous, cantankerous
character, hated by everyone who comes across him, and the butt of the
students, so far as they dare take a liberty with him.  Perhaps it
would be best for you if you never heard from the fellow at all."




                           CHAPTER III

              "He is a Perfectly Impossible Person"

My friend's fear or hope was not destined to be realized.  When I
called on Wednesday there was a letter with the West Kensington
postmark upon it, and my name scrawled across the envelope in a
handwriting which looked like a barbed-wire railing.  The contents were
as follows:--


                              "ENMORE PARK, W.

"SIR,--I have duly received your note, in which you claim to endorse my
views, although I am not aware that they are dependent upon endorsement
either from you or anyone else.  You have ventured to use the word
'speculation' with regard to my statement upon the subject of
Darwinism, and I would call your attention to the fact that such a word
in such a connection is offensive to a degree.  The context convinces
me, however, that you have sinned rather through ignorance and
tactlessness than through malice, so I am content to pass the matter
by.  You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have
some difficulty in understanding it.  I should have thought that only a
sub-human intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it
really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour
named, though visits and visitors of every sort are exceeding
distasteful to me.  As to your suggestion that I may modify my opinion,
I would have you know that it is not my habit to do so after a
deliberate expression of my mature views.  You will kindly show the
envelope of this letter to my man, Austin, when you call, as he has to
take every precaution to shield me from the intrusive rascals who call
themselves 'journalists.'

                          "Yours faithfully,
                            "GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER."


This was the letter that I read aloud to Tarp Henry, who had come down
early to hear the result of my venture.  His only remark was, "There's
some new stuff, cuticura or something, which is better than arnica."
Some people have such extraordinary notions of humor.

It was nearly half-past ten before I had received my message, but a
taxicab took me round in good time for my appointment.  It was an
imposing porticoed house at which we stopped, and the heavily-curtained
windows gave every indication of wealth upon the part of this
formidable Professor.  The door was opened by an odd, swarthy, dried-up
person of uncertain age, with a dark pilot jacket and brown leather
gaiters.  I found afterwards that he was the chauffeur, who filled the
gaps left by a succession of fugitive butlers.  He looked me up and
down with a searching light blue eye.

"Expected?" he asked.

"An appointment."

"Got your letter?"

I produced the envelope.

"Right!"  He seemed to be a person of few words.  Following him down
the passage I was suddenly interrupted by a small woman, who stepped
out from what proved to be the dining-room door.  She was a bright,
vivacious, dark-eyed lady, more French than English in her type.

"One moment," she said.  "You can wait, Austin.  Step in here, sir.
May I ask if you have met my husband before?"

"No, madam, I have not had the honor."

"Then I apologize to you in advance.  I must tell you that he is a
perfectly impossible person--absolutely impossible.  If you are
forewarned you will be the more ready to make allowances."

"It is most considerate of you, madam."

"Get quickly out of the room if he seems inclined to be violent.  Don't
wait to argue with him.  Several people have been injured through doing
that.  Afterwards there is a public scandal and it reflects upon me and
all of us.  I suppose it wasn't about South America you wanted to see
him?"

I could not lie to a lady.

"Dear me!  That is his most dangerous subject.  You won't believe a
word he says--I'm sure I don't wonder.  But don't tell him so, for it
makes him very violent.  Pretend to believe him, and you may get
through all right.  Remember he believes it himself.  Of that you may
be assured.  A more honest man never lived.  Don't wait any longer or
he may suspect.  If you find him dangerous--really dangerous--ring the
bell and hold him off until I come.  Even at his worst I can usually
control him."

With these encouraging words the lady handed me over to the taciturn
Austin, who had waited like a bronze statue of discretion during our
short interview, and I was conducted to the end of the passage.  There
was a tap at a door, a bull's bellow from within, and I was face to
face with the Professor.

He sat in a rotating chair behind a broad table, which was covered with
books, maps, and diagrams.  As I entered, his seat spun round to face
me.  His appearance made me gasp.  I was prepared for something
strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this.  It was his
size which took one's breath away--his size and his imposing presence.
His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being.
I am sure that his top-hat, had I ever ventured to don it, would have
slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders.  He had the face
and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid,
the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped
and rippling down over his chest.  The hair was peculiar, plastered
down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead.  The
eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical,
and very masterful.  A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a
barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save
for two enormous hands covered with long black hair.  This and a
bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the
notorious Professor Challenger.

"Well?" said he, with a most insolent stare.  "What now?"

I must keep up my deception for at least a little time longer,
otherwise here was evidently an end of the interview.

"You were good enough to give me an appointment, sir," said I, humbly,
producing his envelope.

He took my letter from his desk and laid it out before him.

"Oh, you are the young person who cannot understand plain English, are
you?  My general conclusions you are good enough to approve, as I
understand?"

"Entirely, sir--entirely!"  I was very emphatic.

"Dear me!  That strengthens my position very much, does it not?  Your
age and appearance make your support doubly valuable.  Well, at least
you are better than that herd of swine in Vienna, whose gregarious
grunt is, however, not more offensive than the isolated effort of the
British hog."  He glared at me as the present representative of the
beast.

"They seem to have behaved abominably," said I.

"I assure you that I can fight my own battles, and that I have no
possible need of your sympathy.  Put me alone, sir, and with my back to
the wall.  G. E. C. is happiest then.  Well, sir, let us do what we can
to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is
inexpressibly irksome to me.  You had, as I have been led to believe,
some comments to make upon the proposition which I advanced in my
thesis."

There was a brutal directness about his methods which made evasion
difficult.  I must still make play and wait for a better opening.  It
had seemed simple enough at a distance.  Oh, my Irish wits, could they
not help me now, when I needed help so sorely?  He transfixed me with
two sharp, steely eyes.  "Come, come!" he rumbled.

"I am, of course, a mere student," said I, with a fatuous smile,
"hardly more, I might say, than an earnest inquirer.  At the same time,
it seemed to me that you were a little severe upon Weissmann in this
matter.  Has not the general evidence since that date tended to--well,
to strengthen his position?"

"What evidence?"  He spoke with a menacing calm.

"Well, of course, I am aware that there is not any what you might call
DEFINITE evidence.  I alluded merely to the trend of modern thought and
the general scientific point of view, if I might so express it."

He leaned forward with great earnestness.

"I suppose you are aware," said he, checking off points upon his
fingers, "that the cranial index is a constant factor?"

"Naturally," said I.

"And that telegony is still sub judice?"

"Undoubtedly."

"And that the germ plasm is different from the parthenogenetic egg?"

"Why, surely!" I cried, and gloried in my own audacity.

"But what does that prove?" he asked, in a gentle, persuasive voice.

"Ah, what indeed?" I murmured.  "What does it prove?"

"Shall I tell you?" he cooed.

"Pray do."

"It proves," he roared, with a sudden blast of fury, "that you are the
damnedest imposter in London--a vile, crawling journalist, who has no
more science than he has decency in his composition!"

He had sprung to his feet with a mad rage in his eyes.  Even at that
moment of tension I found time for amazement at the discovery that he
was quite a short man, his head not higher than my shoulder--a stunted
Hercules whose tremendous vitality had all run to depth, breadth, and
brain.

"Gibberish!" he cried, leaning forward, with his fingers on the table
and his face projecting.  "That's what I have been talking to you,
sir--scientific gibberish!  Did you think you could match cunning with
me--you with your walnut of a brain?  You think you are omnipotent, you
infernal scribblers, don't you?  That your praise can make a man and
your blame can break him?  We must all bow to you, and try to get a
favorable word, must we?  This man shall have a leg up, and this man
shall have a dressing down!  Creeping vermin, I know you!  You've got
out of your station.  Time was when your ears were clipped.  You've
lost your sense of proportion.  Swollen gas-bags!  I'll keep you in
your proper place.  Yes, sir, you haven't got over G. E. C.  There's
one man who is still your master.  He warned you off, but if you WILL
come, by the Lord you do it at your own risk.  Forfeit, my good Mr.
Malone, I claim forfeit!  You have played a rather dangerous game, and
it strikes me that you have lost it."

"Look here, sir," said I, backing to the door and opening it; "you can
be as abusive as you like.  But there is a limit.  You shall not
assault me."

"Shall I not?"  He was slowly advancing in a peculiarly menacing way,
but he stopped now and put his big hands into the side-pockets of a
rather boyish short jacket which he wore.  "I have thrown several of
you out of the house.  You will be the fourth or fifth.  Three pound
fifteen each--that is how it averaged.  Expensive, but very necessary.
Now, sir, why should you not follow your brethren?  I rather think you
must."  He resumed his unpleasant and stealthy advance, pointing his
toes as he walked, like a dancing master.

I could have bolted for the hall door, but it would have been too
ignominious.  Besides, a little glow of righteous anger was springing
up within me.  I had been hopelessly in the wrong before, but this
man's menaces were putting me in the right.

"I'll trouble you to keep your hands off, sir.  I'll not stand it."

"Dear me!"  His black moustache lifted and a white fang twinkled in a
sneer.  "You won't stand it, eh?"

"Don't be such a fool, Professor!" I cried.  "What can you hope for?
I'm fifteen stone, as hard as nails, and play center three-quarter
every Saturday for the London Irish.  I'm not the man----"

It was at that moment that he rushed me.  It was lucky that I had
opened the door, or we should have gone through it.  We did a
Catharine-wheel together down the passage.  Somehow we gathered up a
chair upon our way, and bounded on with it towards the street.  My
mouth was full of  his beard, our arms were locked, our bodies
intertwined, and that infernal chair radiated its legs all round us.
The watchful Austin had thrown open the hall door.  We went with a back
somersault down the front steps.  I have seen the two Macs attempt
something of the kind at the halls, but it appears to take some
practise to do it without hurting oneself.  The chair went to matchwood
at the bottom, and we rolled apart into the gutter.  He sprang to his
feet, waving his fists and wheezing like an asthmatic.

"Had enough?" he panted.

"You infernal bully!" I cried, as I gathered myself together.

Then and there we should have tried the thing out, for he was
effervescing with fight, but fortunately I was rescued from an odious
situation.  A policeman was beside us, his notebook in his hand.

"What's all this?  You ought to be ashamed" said the policeman.  It was
the most rational remark which I had heard in Enmore Park.  "Well," he
insisted, turning to me, "what is it, then?"

"This man attacked me," said I.

"Did you attack him?" asked the policeman.

The Professor breathed hard and said nothing.

"It's not the first time, either," said the policeman, severely,
shaking his head.  "You were in trouble last month for the same thing.
You've blackened this young man's eye.  Do you give him in charge, sir?"

I relented.

"No," said I, "I do not."

"What's that?" said the policeman.

"I was to blame myself.  I intruded upon him.  He gave me fair warning."

The policeman snapped up his notebook.

"Don't let us have any more such goings-on," said he.  "Now, then!
Move on, there, move on!"  This to a butcher's boy, a maid, and one or
two loafers who had collected.  He clumped heavily down the street,
driving this little flock before him.  The Professor looked at me, and
there was something humorous at the back of his eyes.

"Come in!" said he.  "I've not done with you yet."

The speech had a sinister sound, but I followed him none the less into
the house.  The man-servant, Austin, like a wooden image, closed the
door behind us.




                            CHAPTER IV

         "It's Just the very Biggest Thing in the World"

Hardly was it shut when Mrs. Challenger darted out from the
dining-room.  The small woman was in a furious temper.  She barred her
husband's way like an enraged chicken in front of a bulldog.  It was
evident that she had seen my exit, but had not observed my return.

"You brute, George!" she screamed.  "You've hurt that nice young man."

He jerked backwards with his thumb.

"Here he is, safe and sound behind me."

She was confused, but not unduly so.

"I am so sorry, I didn't see you."

"I assure you, madam, that it is all right."

"He has marked your poor face!  Oh, George, what a brute you are!
Nothing but scandals from one end of the week to the other.  Everyone
hating and making fun of you.  You've finished my patience.  This ends
it."

"Dirty linen," he rumbled.

"It's not a secret," she cried.  "Do you suppose that the whole
street--the whole of London, for that matter----  Get away, Austin, we
don't want you here.  Do you suppose they don't all talk about you?
Where is your dignity?  You, a man who should have been Regius
Professor at a great University with a thousand students all revering
you.  Where is your dignity, George?"

"How about yours, my dear?"

"You try me too much.  A ruffian--a common brawling ruffian--that's
what you have become."

"Be good, Jessie."

"A roaring, raging bully!"

"That's done it!  Stool of penance!" said he.

To my amazement he stooped, picked her up, and placed her sitting upon
a high pedestal of black marble in the angle of the hall.  It was at
least seven feet high, and so thin that she could hardly balance upon
it.  A more absurd object than she presented cocked up there with her
face convulsed with anger, her feet dangling, and her body rigid for
fear of an upset, I could not imagine.

"Let me down!" she wailed.

"Say 'please.'"

"You brute, George!  Let me down this instant!"

"Come into the study, Mr. Malone."

"Really, sir----!" said I, looking at the lady.

"Here's Mr. Malone pleading for you, Jessie.  Say 'please,' and down
you come."

"Oh, you brute!  Please! please!"

He took her down as if she had been a canary.

"You must behave yourself, dear.  Mr. Malone is a Pressman.  He will
have it all in his rag to-morrow, and sell an extra dozen among our
neighbors.  'Strange story of high life'--you felt fairly high on that
pedestal, did you not?  Then a sub-title, 'Glimpse of a singular
menage.'  He's a foul feeder, is Mr. Malone, a carrion eater, like all
of his kind--porcus ex grege diaboli--a swine from the devil's herd.
That's it, Malone--what?"

"You are really intolerable!" said I, hotly.

He bellowed with laughter.

"We shall have a coalition presently," he boomed, looking from his wife
to me and puffing out his enormous chest.  Then, suddenly altering his
tone, "Excuse this frivolous family badinage, Mr. Malone.  I called you
back for some more serious purpose than to mix you up with our little
domestic pleasantries.  Run away, little woman, and don't fret."  He
placed a huge hand upon each of her shoulders.  "All that you say is
perfectly true.  I should be a better man if I did what you advise, but
I shouldn't be quite George Edward Challenger.  There are plenty of
better men, my dear, but only one G. E. C.  So make the best of him."
He suddenly gave her a resounding kiss, which embarrassed me even more
than his violence had done.  "Now, Mr. Malone," he continued, with a
great accession of dignity, "this way, if YOU please."

We re-entered the room which we had left so tumultuously ten minutes
before.  The Professor closed the door carefully behind us, motioned me
into an arm-chair, and pushed a cigar-box under my nose.

"Real San Juan Colorado," he said.  "Excitable people like you are the
better for narcotics.  Heavens! don't bite it!  Cut--and cut with
reverence!  Now lean back, and listen attentively to whatever I may
care to say to you.  If any remark should occur to you, you can reserve
it for some more opportune time.

"First of all, as to your return to my house after your most
justifiable expulsion"--he protruded his beard, and stared at me as one
who challenges and invites contradiction--"after, as I say, your
well-merited expulsion.  The reason lay in your answer to that most
officious policeman, in which I seemed to discern some glimmering of
good feeling upon your part--more, at any rate, than I am accustomed to
associate with your profession.  In admitting that the fault of the
incident lay with you, you gave some evidence of a certain mental
detachment and breadth of view which attracted my favorable notice.
The sub-species of the human race to which you unfortunately belong has
always been below my mental horizon.  Your words brought you suddenly
above it.  You swam up into my serious notice.  For this reason I asked
you to return with me, as I was minded to make your further
acquaintance.  You will kindly deposit your ash in the small Japanese
tray on the bamboo table which stands at your left elbow."

All this he boomed forth like a professor addressing his class.  He had
swung round his revolving chair so as to face me, and he sat all puffed
out like an enormous bull-frog, his head laid back and his eyes
half-covered by supercilious lids.  Now he suddenly turned himself
sideways, and all I could see of him was tangled hair with a red,
protruding ear.  He was scratching about among the litter of papers
upon his desk.  He faced me presently with what looked like a very
tattered sketch-book in his hand.

"I am going to talk to you about South America," said he.  "No comments
if you please.  First of all, I wish you to understand that nothing I
tell you now is to be repeated in any public way unless you have my
express permission.  That permission will, in all human probability,
never be given.  Is that clear?"

"It is very hard," said I. "Surely a judicious account----"

He replaced the notebook upon the table.

"That ends it," said he.  "I wish you a very good morning."

"No, no!" I cried.  "I submit to any conditions.  So far as I can see,
I have no choice."

"None in the world," said he.

"Well, then, I promise."

"Word of honor?"

"Word of honor."

He looked at me with doubt in his insolent eyes.

"After all, what do I know about your honor?" said he.

"Upon my word, sir," I cried, angrily, "you take very great liberties!
I have never been so insulted in my life."

He seemed more interested than annoyed at my outbreak.

"Round-headed," he muttered.  "Brachycephalic, gray-eyed, black-haired,
with suggestion of the negroid.  Celtic, I presume?"

"I am an Irishman, sir."

"Irish Irish?"

"Yes, sir."

"That, of course, explains it.  Let me see; you have given me your
promise that my confidence will be respected?  That confidence, I may
say, will be far from complete.  But I am prepared to give you a few
indications which will be of interest.  In the first place, you are
probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South
America--one which will be classical in the scientific history of the
world?  The object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of
Wallace and of Bates, which could only be done by observing their
reported facts under the same conditions in which they had themselves
noted them.  If my expedition had no other results it would still have
been noteworthy, but a curious incident occurred to me while there
which opened up an entirely fresh line of inquiry.

"You are aware--or probably, in this half-educated age, you are not
aware--that the country round some parts of the Amazon is still only
partially explored, and that a great number of tributaries, some of
them entirely uncharted, run into the main river.  It was my business
to visit this little-known back-country and to examine its fauna, which
furnished me with the materials for several chapters for that great and
monumental work upon zoology which will be my life's justification.  I
was returning, my work accomplished, when I had occasion to spend a
night at a small Indian village at a point where a certain
tributary--the name and position of which I withhold--opens into the
main river.  The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable but degraded
race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner.  I
had effected some cures among them upon my way up the river, and had
impressed them considerably with my personality, so that I was not
surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return.  I gathered
from their signs that someone had urgent need of my medical services,
and I followed the chief to one of his huts.  When I entered I found
that the sufferer to whose aid I had been summoned had that instant
expired.  He was, to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man; indeed, I
may say a very white man, for he was flaxen-haired and had some
characteristics of an albino.  He was clad in rags, was very emaciated,
and bore every trace of prolonged hardship.  So far as I could
understand the account of the natives, he was a complete stranger to
them, and had come upon their village through the woods alone and in
the last stage of exhaustion.

"The man's knapsack lay beside the couch, and I examined the contents.
His name was written upon a tab within it--Maple White, Lake Avenue,
Detroit, Michigan.  It is a name to which I am prepared always to lift
my hat.  It is not too much to say that it will rank level with my own
when the final credit of this business comes to be apportioned.

"From the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man had
been an artist and poet in search of effects.  There were scraps of
verse.  I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they
appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit.  There were also some
rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of
colored chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my
inkstand, a volume of Baxter's 'Moths and Butterflies,' a cheap
revolver, and a few cartridges.  Of personal equipment he either had
none or he had lost it in his journey.  Such were the total effects of
this strange American Bohemian.

"I was turning away from him when I observed that something projected
from the front of his ragged jacket.  It was this sketch-book, which
was as dilapidated then as you see it now.  Indeed, I can assure you
that a first folio of Shakespeare could not be treated with greater
reverence than this relic has been since it came into my possession.  I
hand it to you now, and I ask you to take it page by page and to
examine the contents."

He helped himself to a cigar and leaned back with a fiercely critical
pair of eyes, taking note of the effect which this document would
produce.

I had opened the volume with some expectation of a revelation, though
of what nature I could not imagine.  The first page was disappointing,
however, as it contained nothing but the picture of a very fat man in a
pea-jacket, with the legend, "Jimmy Colver on the Mail-boat," written
beneath it.  There followed several pages which were filled with small
sketches of Indians and their ways.  Then came a picture of a cheerful
and corpulent ecclesiastic in a shovel hat, sitting opposite a very
thin European, and the inscription:  "Lunch with Fra Cristofero at
Rosario."  Studies of women and babies accounted for several more
pages, and then there was an unbroken series of animal drawings with
such explanations as "Manatee upon Sandbank," "Turtles and Their Eggs,"
"Black Ajouti under a Miriti Palm"--the matter disclosing some sort of
pig-like animal; and finally came a double page of studies of
long-snouted and very unpleasant saurians.  I could make nothing of it,
and said so to the Professor.

"Surely these are only crocodiles?"

"Alligators!  Alligators!  There is hardly such a thing as a true
crocodile in South America.  The distinction between them----"

"I meant that I could see nothing unusual--nothing to justify what you
have said."

He smiled serenely.

"Try the next page," said he.

I was still unable to sympathize.  It was a full-page sketch of a
landscape roughly tinted in color--the kind of painting which an
open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort.
There was a pale-green foreground of feathery vegetation, which sloped
upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in color, and curiously
ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen.  They extended
in an unbroken wall right across the background.  At one point was an
isolated pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree, which appeared to be
separated by a cleft from the main crag.  Behind it all, a blue
tropical sky.  A thin green line of vegetation fringed the summit of
the ruddy cliff.

"Well?" he asked.

"It is no doubt a curious formation," said I "but I am not geologist
enough to say that it is wonderful."

"Wonderful!" he repeated.  "It is unique.  It is incredible.  No one on
earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility.  Now the next."

I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise.  There was a
full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever
seen.  It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of delirium.
The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated lizard,
the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and the
curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked like a
dozen cocks' wattles placed behind each other.  In front of this
creature was an absurd mannikin, or dwarf, in human form, who stood
staring at it.

"Well, what do you think of that?" cried the Professor, rubbing his
hands with an air of triumph.

"It is monstrous--grotesque."

"But what made him draw such an animal?"

"Trade gin, I should think."

"Oh, that's the best explanation you can give, is it?"

"Well, sir, what is yours?"

"The obvious one that the creature exists.  That is actually sketched
from the life."

I should have laughed only that I had a vision of our doing another
Catharine-wheel down the passage.

"No doubt," said I, "no doubt," as one humors an imbecile.  "I confess,
however," I added, "that this tiny human figure puzzles me.  If it were
an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in
America, but it appears to be a European in a sun-hat."

The Professor snorted like an angry buffalo.  "You really touch the
limit," said he.  "You enlarge my view of the possible.  Cerebral
paresis!  Mental inertia!  Wonderful!"

He was too absurd to make me angry.  Indeed, it was a waste of energy,
for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be angry all
the time.  I contented myself with smiling wearily.  "It struck me that
the man was small," said I.

"Look here!" he cried, leaning forward and dabbing a great hairy
sausage of a finger on to the picture.  "You see that plant behind the
animal; I suppose you thought it was a dandelion or a Brussels
sprout--what?  Well, it is a vegetable ivory palm, and they run to
about fifty or sixty feet.  Don't you see that the man is put in for a
purpose?  He couldn't really have stood in front of that brute and
lived to draw it.  He sketched himself in to give a scale of heights.
He was, we will say, over five feet high.  The tree is ten times
bigger, which is what one would expect."

"Good heavens!" I cried.  "Then you think the beast was---- Why,
Charing Cross station would hardly make a kennel for such a brute!"

"Apart from exaggeration, he is certainly a well-grown specimen," said
the Professor, complacently.

"But," I cried, "surely the whole experience of the human race is not
to be set aside on account of a single sketch"--I had turned over the
leaves and ascertained that there was nothing more in the book--"a
single sketch by a wandering American artist who may have done it under
hashish, or in the delirium of fever, or simply in order to gratify a
freakish imagination.  You can't, as a man of science, defend such a
position as that."

For answer the Professor took a book down from a shelf.

"This is an excellent monograph by my gifted friend, Ray Lankester!"
said he.  "There is an illustration here which would interest you.  Ah,
yes, here it is!  The inscription beneath it runs:  'Probable
appearance in life of the Jurassic Dinosaur Stegosaurus.  The hind leg
alone is twice as tall as a full-grown man.'  Well, what do you make of
that?"

He handed me the open book.  I started as I looked at the picture.  In
this reconstructed animal of a dead world there was certainly a very
great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist.

"That is certainly remarkable," said I.

"But you won't admit that it is final?"

"Surely it might be a coincidence, or this American may have seen a
picture of the kind and carried it in his memory.  It would be likely
to recur to a man in a delirium."

"Very good," said the Professor, indulgently; "we leave it at that.  I
will now ask you to look at this bone." He handed over the one which he
had already described as part of the dead man's possessions.  It was
about six inches long, and thicker than my thumb, with some indications
of dried cartilage at one end of it.

"To what known creature does that bone belong?" asked the Professor.

I examined it with care and tried to recall some half-forgotten
knowledge.

"It might be a very thick human collar-bone," I said.

My companion waved his hand in contemptuous deprecation.

"The human collar-bone is curved.  This is straight.  There is a groove
upon its surface showing that a great tendon played across it, which
could not be the case with a clavicle."

"Then I must confess that I don't know what it is."

"You need not be ashamed to expose your ignorance, for I don't suppose
the whole South Kensington staff could give a name to it." He took a
little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box.  "So far as I am a
judge this human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your
hand.  That will give you some idea of the size of the creature.  You
will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil specimen, but
recent.  What do you say to that?"

"Surely in an elephant----"

He winced as if in pain.

"Don't!  Don't talk of elephants in South America.  Even in these days
of Board schools----"

"Well," I interrupted, "any large South American animal--a tapir, for
example."

"You may take it, young man, that I am versed in the elements of my
business.  This is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or of any
other creature known to zoology.  It belongs to a very large, a very
strong, and, by all analogy, a very fierce animal which exists upon the
face of the earth, but has not yet come under the notice of science.
You are still unconvinced?"

"I am at least deeply interested."

"Then your case is not hopeless.  I feel that there is reason lurking
in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.  We will now
leave the dead American and proceed with my narrative.  You can imagine
that I could hardly come away from the Amazon without probing deeper
into the matter.  There were indications as to the direction from which
the dead traveler had come.  Indian legends would alone have been my
guide, for I found that rumors of a strange land were common among all
the riverine tribes.  You have heard, no doubt, of Curupuri?"

"Never."

"Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something
malevolent, something to be avoided.  None can describe its shape or
nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon.  Now all tribes
agree as to the direction in which Curupuri lives.  It was the same
direction from which the American had come.  Something terrible lay
that way.  It was my business to find out what it was."

"What did you do?"  My flippancy was all gone.  This massive man
compelled one's attention and respect.

"I overcame the extreme reluctance of the natives--a reluctance which
extends even to talk upon the subject--and by judicious persuasion and
gifts, aided, I will admit, by some threats of coercion, I got two of
them to act as guides.  After many adventures which I need not
describe, and after traveling a distance which I will not mention, in a
direction which I withhold, we came at last to a tract of country which
has never been described, nor, indeed, visited save by my unfortunate
predecessor.  Would you kindly look at this?"

He handed me a photograph--half-plate size.

"The unsatisfactory appearance of it is due to the fact," said he,
"that on descending the river the boat was upset and the case which
contained the undeveloped films was broken, with disastrous results.
Nearly all of them were totally ruined--an irreparable loss.  This is
one of the few which partially escaped.  This explanation of
deficiencies or abnormalities you will kindly accept.  There was talk
of faking.  I am not in a mood to argue such a point."

The photograph was certainly very off-colored.  An unkind critic might
easily have misinterpreted that dim surface.  It was a dull gray
landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized
that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly
like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping,
tree-clad plain in the foreground.

"I believe it is the same place as the painted picture," said I.

"It is the same place," the Professor answered.  "I found traces of the
fellow's camp.  Now look at this."

It was a nearer view of the same scene, though the photograph was
extremely defective.  I could distinctly see the isolated, tree-crowned
pinnacle of rock which was detached from the crag.

"I have no doubt of it at all," said I.

"Well, that is something gained," said he.  "We progress, do we not?
Now, will you please look at the top of that rocky pinnacle?  Do you
observe something there?"

"An enormous tree."

"But on the tree?"

"A large bird," said I.

He handed me a lens.

"Yes," I said, peering through it, "a large bird stands on the tree.
It appears to have a considerable beak.  I should say it was a pelican."

"I cannot congratulate you upon your eyesight," said the Professor.
"It is not a pelican, nor, indeed, is it a bird.  It may interest you
to know that I succeeded in shooting that particular specimen.  It was
the only absolute proof of my experiences which I was able to bring
away with me."

"You have it, then?"  Here at last was tangible corroboration.

"I had it.  It was unfortunately lost with so much else in the same
boat accident which ruined my photographs.  I clutched at it as it
disappeared in the swirl of the rapids, and part of its wing was left
in my hand.  I was insensible when washed ashore, but the miserable
remnant of my superb specimen was still intact; I now lay it before
you."

From a drawer he produced what seemed to me to be the upper portion of
the wing of a large bat.  It was at least two feet in length, a curved
bone, with a membranous veil beneath it.

"A monstrous bat!" I suggested.

"Nothing of the sort," said the Professor, severely.  "Living, as I do,
in an educated and scientific atmosphere, I could not have conceived
that the first principles of zoology were so little known.  Is it
possible that you do not know the elementary fact in comparative
anatomy, that the wing of a bird is really the forearm, while the wing
of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between?
Now, in this case, the bone is certainly not the forearm, and you can
see for yourself that this is a single membrane hanging upon a single
bone, and therefore that it cannot belong to a bat.  But if it is
neither bird nor bat, what is it?"

My small stock of knowledge was exhausted.

"I really do not know," said I.

He opened the standard work to which he had already referred me.

"Here," said he, pointing to the picture of an extraordinary flying
monster, "is an excellent reproduction of the dimorphodon, or
pterodactyl, a flying reptile of the Jurassic period.  On the next page
is a diagram of the mechanism of its wing.  Kindly compare it with the
specimen in your hand."

A wave of amazement passed over me as I looked.  I was convinced.
There could be no getting away from it.  The cumulative proof was
overwhelming.  The sketch, the photographs, the narrative, and now the
actual specimen--the evidence was complete.  I said so--I said so
warmly, for I felt that the Professor was an ill-used man.  He leaned
back in his chair with drooping eyelids and a tolerant smile, basking
in this sudden gleam of sunshine.

"It's just the very biggest thing that I ever heard of!" said I, though
it was my journalistic rather than my scientific enthusiasm that was
roused.  "It is colossal.  You are a Columbus of science who has
discovered a lost world.  I'm awfully sorry if I seemed to doubt you.
It was all so unthinkable.  But I understand evidence when I see it,
and this should be good enough for anyone."

The Professor purred with satisfaction.

"And then, sir, what did you do next?"

"It was the wet season, Mr. Malone, and my stores were exhausted.  I
explored some portion of this huge cliff, but I was unable to find any
way to scale it.  The pyramidal rock upon which I saw and shot the
pterodactyl was more accessible.  Being something of a cragsman, I did
manage to get half way to the top of that.  From that height I had a
better idea of the plateau upon the top of the crags.  It appeared to
be very large; neither to east nor to west could I see any end to the
vista of green-capped cliffs.  Below, it is a swampy, jungly region,
full of snakes, insects, and fever.  It is a natural protection to this
singular country."

"Did you see any other trace of life?"

"No, sir, I did not; but during the week that we lay encamped at the
base of the cliff we heard some very strange noises from above."

"But the creature that the American drew?  How do you account for that?"

"We can only suppose that he must have made his way to the summit and
seen it there.  We know, therefore, that there is a way up.  We know
equally that it must be a very difficult one, otherwise the creatures
would have come down and overrun the surrounding country.  Surely that
is clear?"

"But how did they come to be there?"

"I do not think that the problem is a very obscure one," said the
Professor; "there can only be one explanation.  South America is, as
you may have heard, a granite continent.  At this single point in the
interior there has been, in some far distant age, a great, sudden
volcanic upheaval.  These cliffs, I may remark, are basaltic, and
therefore plutonic.  An area, as large perhaps as Sussex, has been
lifted up en bloc with all its living contents, and cut off by
perpendicular precipices of a hardness which defies erosion from all
the rest of the continent.  What is the result?  Why, the ordinary laws
of Nature are suspended.  The various checks which influence the
struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or
altered.  Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear.  You will
observe that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are Jurassic, and
therefore of a great age in the order of life.  They have been
artificially conserved by those strange accidental conditions."

"But surely your evidence is conclusive.  You have only to lay it
before the proper authorities."

"So in my simplicity, I had imagined," said the Professor, bitterly.
"I can only tell you that it was not so, that I was met at every turn
by incredulity, born partly of stupidity and partly of jealousy.  It is
not my nature, sir, to cringe to any man, or to seek to prove a fact if
my word has been doubted.  After the first I have not condescended to
show such corroborative proofs as I possess.  The subject became
hateful to me--I would not speak of it.  When men like yourself, who
represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to disturb my
privacy I was unable to meet them with dignified reserve.  By nature I
am, I admit, somewhat fiery, and under provocation I am inclined to be
violent.  I fear you may have remarked it."

I nursed my eye and was silent.

"My wife has frequently remonstrated with me upon the subject, and yet
I fancy that any man of honor would feel the same.  To-night, however,
I propose to give an extreme example of the control of the will over
the emotions.  I invite you to be present at the exhibition."  He
handed me a card from his desk.  "You will perceive that Mr. Percival
Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is announced to lecture
at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute's Hall upon 'The Record of
the Ages.' I have been specially invited to be present upon the
platform, and to move a vote of thanks to the lecturer.  While doing
so, I shall make it my business, with infinite tact and delicacy, to
throw out a few remarks which may arouse the interest of the audience
and cause some of them to desire to go more deeply into the matter.
Nothing contentious, you understand, but only an indication that there
are greater deeps beyond.  I shall hold myself strongly in leash, and
see whether by this self-restraint I attain a more favorable result."

"And I may come?" I asked eagerly.

"Why, surely," he answered, cordially.  He had an enormously massive
genial manner, which was almost as overpowering as his violence.  His
smile of benevolence was a wonderful thing, when his cheeks would
suddenly bunch into two red apples, between his half-closed eyes and
his great black beard.  "By all means, come.  It will be a comfort to
me to know that I have one ally in the hall, however inefficient and
ignorant of the subject he may be.  I fancy there will be a large
audience, for Waldron, though an absolute charlatan, has a considerable
popular following.  Now, Mr. Malone, I have given you rather more of my
time than I had intended.  The individual must not monopolize what is
meant for the world.  I shall be pleased to see you at the lecture
to-night.  In the meantime, you will understand that no public use is
to be made of any of the material that I have given you."

"But Mr. McArdle--my news editor, you know--will want to know what I
have done."

"Tell him what you like.  You can say, among other things, that if he
sends anyone else to intrude upon me I shall call upon him with a
riding-whip.  But I leave it to you that nothing of all this appears in
print.  Very good.  Then the Zoological Institute's Hall at
eight-thirty to-night."  I had a last impression of red cheeks, blue
rippling beard, and intolerant eyes, as he waved me out of the room.




                            CHAPTER V

                           "Question!"

What with the physical shocks incidental to my first interview with
Professor Challenger and the mental ones which accompanied the second,
I was a somewhat demoralized journalist by the time I found myself in
Enmore Park once more.  In my aching head the one thought was throbbing
that there really was truth in this man's story, that it was of
tremendous consequence, and that it would work up into inconceivable
copy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to use it.  A
taxicab was waiting at the end of the road, so I sprang into it and
drove down to the office.  McArdle was at his post as usual.

"Well," he cried, expectantly, "what may it run to?  I'm thinking,
young man, you have been in the wars.  Don't tell me that he assaulted
you."

"We had a little difference at first."

"What a man it is!  What did you do?"

"Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat.  But I got nothing
out of him--nothing for publication."

"I'm not so sure about that.  You got a black eye out of him, and
that's for publication.  We can't have this reign of terror, Mr.
Malone.  We must bring the man to his bearings.  I'll have a leaderette
on him to-morrow that will raise a blister.  Just give me the material
and I will engage to brand the fellow for ever.  Professor
Munchausen--how's that for an inset headline?  Sir John Mandeville
redivivus--Cagliostro--all the imposters and bullies in history.  I'll
show him up for the fraud he is."

"I wouldn't do that, sir."

"Why not?"

"Because he is not a fraud at all."

"What!" roared McArdle.  "You don't mean to say you really believe this
stuff of his about mammoths and mastodons and great sea sairpents?"

"Well, I don't know about that.  I don't think he makes any claims of
that kind.  But I do believe he has got something new."

"Then for Heaven's sake, man, write it up!"

"I'm longing to, but all I know he gave me in confidence and on
condition that I didn't."  I condensed into a few sentences the
Professor's narrative.  "That's how it stands."

McArdle looked deeply incredulous.

"Well, Mr. Malone," he said at last, "about this scientific meeting
to-night; there can be no privacy about that, anyhow.  I don't suppose
any paper will want to report it, for Waldron has been reported already
a dozen times, and no one is aware that Challenger will speak.  We may
get a scoop, if we are lucky.  You'll be there in any case, so you'll
just give us a pretty full report.  I'll keep space up to midnight."

My day was a busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage Club
with Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures.  He
listened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared with
laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.

"My dear chap, things don't happen like that in real life.  People
don't stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence.
Leave that to the novelists.  The fellow is as full of tricks as the
monkey-house at the Zoo.  It's all bosh."

"But the American poet?"

"He never existed."

"I saw his sketch-book."

"Challenger's sketch-book."

"You think he drew that animal?"

"Of course he did.  Who else?"

"Well, then, the photographs?"

"There was nothing in the photographs.  By your own admission you only
saw a bird."

"A pterodactyl."

"That's what HE says.  He put the pterodactyl into your head."

"Well, then, the bones?"

"First one out of an Irish stew.  Second one vamped up for the
occasion.  If you are clever and know your business you can fake a bone
as easily as you can a photograph."

I began to feel uneasy.  Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in my
acquiescence.  Then I had a sudden happy thought.

"Will you come to the meeting?" I asked.

Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.

"He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger," said he.  "A lot
of people have accounts to settle with him.  I should say he is about
the best-hated man in London.  If the medical students turn out there
will be no end of a rag.  I don't want to get into a bear-garden."

"You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own case."

"Well, perhaps it's only fair.  All right.  I'm your man for the
evening."

When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than I
had expected.  A line of electric broughams discharged their little
cargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humbler
pedestrians, who crowded through the arched door-way, showed that the
audience would be popular as well as scientific.  Indeed, it became
evident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful and
even boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions of
the hall.  Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiar
medical student type.  Apparently the great hospitals had each sent
down their contingent.  The behavior of the audience at present was
good-humored, but mischievous.  Scraps of popular songs were chorused
with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture,
and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised a
jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to the
recipients of these dubious honors.

Thus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmed
opera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal query
of "Where DID you get that tile?" that he hurriedly removed it, and
concealed it furtively under his chair.  When gouty Professor Wadley
limped down to his seat there were general affectionate inquiries from
all parts of the hall as to the exact state of his poor toe, which
caused him obvious embarrassment.  The greatest demonstration of all,
however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, Professor
Challenger, when he passed down to take his place at the extreme end of
the front row of the platform.  Such a yell of welcome broke forth when
his black beard first protruded round the corner that I began to
suspect Tarp Henry was right in his surmise, and that this assemblage
was there not merely for the sake of the lecture, but because it had
got rumored abroad that the famous Professor would take part in the
proceedings.

There was some sympathetic laughter on his entrance among the front
benches of well-dressed spectators, as though the demonstration of the
students in this instance was not unwelcome to them.  That greeting
was, indeed, a frightful outburst of sound, the uproar of the carnivora
cage when the step of the bucket-bearing keeper is heard in the
distance.  There was an offensive tone in it, perhaps, and yet in the
main it struck me as mere riotous outcry, the noisy reception of one
who amused and interested them, rather than of one they disliked or
despised.  Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as a
kindly man would meet the yapping of a litter of puppies.  He sat
slowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand caressingly down his
beard, and looked with drooping eyelids and supercilious eyes at the
crowded hall before him.  The uproar of his advent had not yet died
away when Professor Ronald Murray, the chairman, and Mr. Waldron, the
lecturer, threaded their way to the front, and the proceedings began.

Professor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has the
common fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible.  Why on earth
people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take
the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange
mysteries of modern life.  Their methods are as reasonable as to try to
pour some precious stuff from the spring to the reservoir through a
non-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be opened.
Professor Murray made several profound remarks to his white tie and to
the water-carafe upon the table, with a humorous, twinkling aside to
the silver candlestick upon his right.  Then he sat down, and Mr.
Waldron, the famous popular lecturer, rose amid a general murmur of
applause.  He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an
aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate
the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was
intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack
of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession
of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly
humorous process as treated by him.

It was a bird's-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science, which,
in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded before
us.  He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas, flaring
through the heavens.  Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling,
the wrinkling which formed the mountains, the steam which turned to
water, the slow preparation of the stage upon which was to be played
the inexplicable drama of life.  On the origin of life itself he was
discreetly vague.  That the germs of it could hardly have survived the
original roasting was, he declared, fairly certain.  Therefore it had
come later.  Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elements
of the globe?  Very likely.  Had the germs of it arrived from outside
upon a meteor?  It was hardly conceivable.  On the whole, the wisest
man was the least dogmatic upon the point.  We could not--or at least
we had not succeeded up to date in making organic life in our
laboratories out of inorganic materials.  The gulf between the dead and
the living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge.
But there was a higher and subtler chemistry of Nature, which, working
with great forces over long epochs, might well produce results which
were impossible for us.  There the matter must be left.

This brought the lecturer to the great ladder of animal life, beginning
low down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rung
through reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, a
creature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor of
all mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience.
("No, no," from a sceptical student in the back row.)  If the young
gentleman in the red tie who cried "No, no," and who presumably claimed
to have been hatched out of an egg, would wait upon him after the
lecture, he would be glad to see such a curiosity.  (Laughter.)  It was
strange to think that the climax of all the age-long process of Nature
had been the creation of that gentleman in the red tie.  But had the
process stopped?  Was this gentleman to be taken as the final type--the
be-all and end-all of development?  He hoped that he would not hurt the
feelings of the gentleman in the red tie if he maintained that,
whatever virtues that gentleman might possess in private life, still
the vast processes of the universe were not fully justified if they
were to end entirely in his production.  Evolution was not a spent
force, but one still working, and even greater achievements were in
store.

Having thus, amid a general titter, played very prettily with his
interrupter, the lecturer went back to his picture of the past, the
drying of the seas, the emergence of the sand-bank, the sluggish,
viscous life which lay upon their margins, the overcrowded lagoons, the
tendency of the sea creatures to take refuge upon the mud-flats, the
abundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth.
"Hence, ladies and gentlemen," he added, "that frightful brood of
saurians which still affright our eyes when seen in the Wealden or in
the Solenhofen slates, but which were fortunately extinct long before
the first appearance of mankind upon this planet."

"Question!" boomed a voice from the platform.

Mr. Waldron was a strict disciplinarian with a gift of acid humor, as
exemplified upon the gentleman with the red tie, which made it perilous
to interrupt him.  But this interjection appeared to him so absurd that
he was at a loss how to deal with it.  So looks the Shakespearean who
is confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the astronomer who is assailed
by a flat-earth fanatic.  He paused for a moment, and then, raising his
voice, repeated slowly the words:  "Which were extinct before the
coming of man."

"Question!" boomed the voice once more.

Waldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon the
platform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leaned
back in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if he
were smiling in his sleep.

"I see!" said Waldron, with a shrug.  "It is my friend Professor
Challenger," and amid laughter he renewed his lecture as if this was a
final explanation and no more need be said.

But the incident was far from being closed.  Whatever path the lecturer
took amid the wilds of the past seemed invariably to lead him to some
assertion as to extinct or prehistoric life which instantly brought the
same bulls' bellow from the Professor.  The audience began to
anticipate it and to roar with delight when it came.  The packed
benches of students joined in, and every time Challenger's beard
opened, before any sound could come forth, there was a yell of
"Question!" from a hundred voices, and an answering counter cry of
"Order!" and "Shame!" from as many more.  Waldron, though a hardened
lecturer and a strong man, became rattled.  He hesitated, stammered,
repeated himself, got snarled in a long sentence, and finally turned
furiously upon the cause of his troubles.

"This is really intolerable!" he cried, glaring across the platform.
"I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to cease these ignorant and
unmannerly interruptions."

There was a hush over the hall, the students rigid with delight at
seeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves.
Challenger levered his bulky figure slowly out of his chair.

"I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron," he said, "to cease to make
assertions which are not in strict accordance with scientific fact."

The words unloosed a tempest.  "Shame!  Shame!"  "Give him a hearing!"
"Put him out!"  "Shove him off the platform!"  "Fair play!" emerged
from a general roar of amusement or execration.  The chairman was on
his feet flapping both his hands and bleating excitedly.  "Professor
Challenger--personal--views--later," were the solid peaks above his
clouds of inaudible mutter.  The interrupter bowed, smiled, stroked his
beard, and relapsed into his chair.  Waldron, very flushed and warlike,
continued his observations.  Now and then, as he made an assertion, he
shot a venomous glance at his opponent, who seemed to be slumbering
deeply, with the same broad, happy smile upon his face.

At last the lecture came to an end--I am inclined to think that it was
a premature one, as the peroration was hurried and disconnected.  The
thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience was
restless and expectant.  Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup from
the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and advanced to the edge of the
platform.  In the interests of my paper I took down his speech verbatim.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, amid a sustained interruption from
the back.  "I beg pardon--Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children--I must
apologize, I had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of this
audience" (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one hand
raised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he were
bestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), "I have been selected
to move a vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and
imaginative address to which we have just listened.  There are points
in it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to indicate them
as they arose, but, none the less, Mr. Waldron has accomplished his
object well, that object being to give a simple and interesting account
of what he conceives to have been the history of our planet.  Popular
lectures are the easiest to listen to, but Mr. Waldron" (here he beamed
and blinked at the lecturer) "will excuse me when I say that they are
necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be
graded to the comprehension of an ignorant audience."  (Ironical
cheering.)  "Popular lecturers are in their nature parasitic."  (Angry
gesture of protest from Mr. Waldron.)  "They exploit for fame or cash
the work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren.
One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory, one brick built into
the temple of science, far outweighs any second-hand exposition which
passes an idle hour, but can leave no useful result behind it.  I put
forward this obvious reflection, not out of any desire to disparage Mr.
Waldron in particular, but that you may not lose your sense of
proportion and mistake the acolyte for the high priest." (At this point
Mr. Waldron whispered to the chairman, who half rose and said something
severely to his water-carafe.)  "But enough of this!"  (Loud and
prolonged cheers.)  "Let me pass to some subject of wider interest.
What is the particular point upon which I, as an original investigator,
have challenged our lecturer's accuracy?  It is upon the permanence of
certain types of animal life upon the earth.  I do not speak upon this
subject as an amateur, nor, I may add, as a popular lecturer, but I
speak as one whose scientific conscience compels him to adhere closely
to facts, when I say that Mr. Waldron is very wrong in supposing that
because he has never himself seen a so-called prehistoric animal,
therefore these creatures no longer exist.  They are indeed, as he has
said, our ancestors, but they are, if I may use the expression, our
contemporary ancestors, who can still be found with all their hideous
and formidable characteristics if one has but the energy and hardihood
to seek their haunts.  Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic,
monsters who would hunt down and devour our largest and fiercest
mammals, still exist." (Cries of "Bosh!" "Prove it!" "How do YOU know?"
"Question!") "How do I know, you ask me? I know because I have visited
their secret haunts.  I know because I have seen some of them."
(Applause, uproar, and a voice, "Liar!")  "Am I a liar?" (General
hearty and noisy assent.)  "Did I hear someone say that I was a liar?
Will the person who called me a liar kindly stand up that I may know
him?"  (A voice, "Here he is, sir!" and an inoffensive little person in
spectacles, struggling violently, was held up among a group of
students.)  "Did you venture to call me a liar?"  ("No, sir, no!"
shouted the accused, and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box.)  "If any
person in this hall dares to doubt my veracity, I shall be glad to have
a few words with him after the lecture."  ("Liar!")  "Who said that?"
(Again the inoffensive one plunging desperately, was elevated high into
the air.) "If I come down among you----" (General chorus of "Come,
love, come!" which interrupted the proceedings for some moments, while
the chairman, standing up and waving both his arms, seemed to be
conducting the music.  The Professor, with his face flushed, his
nostrils dilated, and his beard bristling, was now in a proper Berserk
mood.)  "Every great discoverer has been met with the same
incredulity--the sure brand of a generation of fools.  When great facts
are laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination which
would help you to understand them.  You can only throw mud at the men
who have risked their lives to open new fields to science.  You
persecute the prophets!  Galileo!  Darwin, and I----" (Prolonged
cheering and complete interruption.)

All this is from my hurried notes taken at the time, which give little
notion of the absolute chaos to which the assembly had by this time
been reduced.  So terrific was the uproar that several ladies had
already beaten a hurried retreat.  Grave and reverend seniors seemed to
have caught the prevailing spirit as badly as the students, and I saw
white-bearded men rising and shaking their fists at the obdurate
Professor.  The whole great audience seethed and simmered like a
boiling pot.  The Professor took a step forward and raised both his
hands.  There was something so big and arresting and virile in the man
that the clatter and shouting died gradually away before his commanding
gesture and his masterful eyes.  He seemed to have a definite message.
They hushed to hear it.

"I will not detain you," he said.  "It is not worth it.  Truth is
truth, and the noise of a number of foolish young men--and, I fear I
must add, of their equally foolish seniors--cannot affect the matter.
I claim that I have opened a new field of science.  You dispute it."
(Cheers.)  "Then I put you to the test.  Will you accredit one or more
of your own number to go out as your representatives and test my
statement in your name?"

Mr. Summerlee, the veteran Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose among
the audience, a tall, thin, bitter man, with the withered aspect of a
theologian.  He wished, he said, to ask Professor Challenger whether
the results to which he had alluded in his remarks had been obtained
during a journey to the headwaters of the Amazon made by him two years
before.

Professor Challenger answered that they had.

Mr. Summerlee desired to know how it was that Professor Challenger
claimed to have made discoveries in those regions which had been
overlooked by Wallace, Bates, and other previous explorers of
established scientific repute.

Professor Challenger answered that Mr. Summerlee appeared to be
confusing the Amazon with the Thames; that it was in reality a somewhat
larger river; that Mr. Summerlee might be interested to know that with
the Orinoco, which communicated with it, some fifty thousand miles of
country were opened up, and that in so vast a space it was not
impossible for one person to find what another had missed.

Mr. Summerlee declared, with an acid smile, that he fully appreciated
the difference between the Thames and the Amazon, which lay in the fact
that any assertion about the former could be tested, while about the
latter it could not.  He would be obliged if Professor Challenger would
give the latitude and the longitude of the country in which prehistoric
animals were to be found.

Professor Challenger replied that he reserved such information for good
reasons of his own, but would be prepared to give it with proper
precautions to a committee chosen from the audience.  Would Mr.
Summerlee serve on such a committee and test his story in person?

Mr. Summerlee:  "Yes, I will."  (Great cheering.)

Professor Challenger:  "Then I guarantee that I will place in your
hands such material as will enable you to find your way.  It is only
right, however, since Mr. Summerlee goes to check my statement that I
should have one or more with him who may check his.  I will not
disguise from you that there are difficulties and dangers.  Mr.
Summerlee will need a younger colleague.  May I ask for volunteers?"

It is thus that the great crisis of a man's life springs out at him.
Could I have imagined when I entered that hall that I was about to
pledge myself to a wilder adventure than had ever come to me in my
dreams?  But Gladys--was it not the very opportunity of which she
spoke?  Gladys would have told me to go.  I had sprung to my feet.  I
was speaking, and yet I had prepared no words.  Tarp Henry, my
companion, was plucking at my skirts and I heard him whispering, "Sit
down, Malone! Don't make a public ass of yourself."  At the same time I
was aware that a tall, thin man, with dark gingery hair, a few seats in
front of me, was also upon his feet.  He glared back at me with hard
angry eyes, but I refused to give way.

"I will go, Mr. Chairman," I kept repeating over and over again.

"Name!  Name!" cried the audience.

"My name is Edward Dunn Malone.  I am the reporter of the Daily
Gazette.  I claim to be an absolutely unprejudiced witness."

"What is YOUR name, sir?" the chairman asked of my tall rival.

"I am Lord John Roxton.  I have already been up the Amazon, I know all
the ground, and have special qualifications for this investigation."

"Lord John Roxton's reputation as a sportsman and a traveler is, of
course, world-famous," said the chairman; "at the same time it would
certainly be as well to have a member of the Press upon such an
expedition."

"Then I move," said Professor Challenger, "that both these gentlemen be
elected, as representatives of this meeting, to accompany Professor
Summerlee upon his journey to investigate and to report upon the truth
of my statements."

And so, amid shouting and cheering, our fate was decided, and I found
myself borne away in the human current which swirled towards the door,
with my mind half stunned by the vast new project which had risen so
suddenly before it.  As I emerged from the hall I was conscious for a
moment of a rush of laughing students--down the pavement, and of an arm
wielding a heavy umbrella, which rose and fell in the midst of them.
Then, amid a mixture of groans and cheers, Professor Challenger's
electric brougham slid from the curb, and I found myself walking under
the silvery lights of Regent Street, full of thoughts of Gladys and of
wonder as to my future.

Suddenly there was a touch at my elbow.  I turned, and found myself
looking into the humorous, masterful eyes of the tall, thin man who had
volunteered to be my companion on this strange quest.

"Mr. Malone, I understand," said he.  "We are to be companions--what?
My rooms are just over the road, in the Albany.  Perhaps you would have
the kindness to spare me half an hour, for there are one or two things
that I badly want to say to you."




                            CHAPTER VI

                  "I was the Flail of the Lord"

Lord John Roxton and I turned down Vigo Street together and through the
dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery.  At the end of a long
drab passage my new acquaintance pushed open a door and turned on an
electric switch.  A number of lamps shining through tinted shades
bathed the whole great room before us in a ruddy radiance.  Standing in
the doorway and glancing round me, I had a general impression of
extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of
masculine virility.  Everywhere there were mingled the luxury of the
wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of the bachelor.  Rich
furs and strange iridescent mats from some Oriental bazaar were
scattered upon the floor.  Pictures and prints which even my
unpractised eyes could recognize as being of great price and rarity
hung thick upon the walls.  Sketches of boxers, of ballet-girls, and of
racehorses alternated with a sensuous Fragonard, a martial Girardet,
and a dreamy Turner.  But amid these varied ornaments there were
scattered the trophies which brought back strongly to my recollection
the fact that Lord John Roxton was one of the great all-round sportsmen
and athletes of his day.  A dark-blue oar crossed with a cherry-pink
one above his mantel-piece spoke of the old Oxonian and Leander man,
while the foils and boxing-gloves above and below them were the tools
of a man who had won supremacy with each.  Like a dado round the room
was the jutting line of splendid heavy game-heads, the best of their
sort from every quarter of the world, with the rare white rhinoceros of
the Lado Enclave drooping its supercilious lip above them all.

In the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze
table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of
glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps.  On it stood a silver tray of
smokables and a burnished spirit-stand, from which and an adjacent
siphon my silent host proceeded to charge two high glasses.  Having
indicated an arm-chair to me and placed my refreshment near it, he
handed me a long, smooth Havana.  Then, seating himself opposite to me,
he looked at me long and fixedly with his strange, twinkling, reckless
eyes--eyes of a cold light blue, the color of a glacier lake.

Through the thin haze of my cigar-smoke I noted the details of a face
which was already familiar to me from many photographs--the
strongly-curved nose, the hollow, worn cheeks, the dark, ruddy hair,
thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small, aggressive
tuft upon his projecting chin.  Something there was of Napoleon III.,
something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence
of the English country gentleman, the keen, alert, open-air lover of
dogs and of horses.  His skin was of a rich flower-pot red from sun and
wind.  His eyebrows were tufted and overhanging, which gave those
naturally cold eyes an almost ferocious aspect, an impression which was
increased by his strong and furrowed brow.  In figure he was spare, but
very strongly built--indeed, he had often proved that there were few
men in England capable of such sustained exertions.  His height was a
little over six feet, but he seemed shorter on account of a peculiar
rounding of the shoulders.  Such was the famous Lord John Roxton as he
sat opposite to me, biting hard upon his cigar and watching me steadily
in a long and embarrassing silence.

"Well," said he, at last, "we've gone and done it, young fellah my
lad."  (This curious phrase he pronounced as if it were all one
word--"young-fellah-me-lad.")  "Yes, we've taken a jump, you an' me.  I
suppose, now, when you went into that room there was no such notion in
your head--what?"

"No thought of it."

"The same here.  No thought of it.  And here we are, up to our necks in
the tureen.  Why, I've only been back three weeks from Uganda, and
taken a place in Scotland, and signed the lease and all.  Pretty goin's
on--what?  How does it hit you?"

"Well, it is all in the main line of my business.  I am a journalist on
the Gazette."

"Of course--you said so when you took it on.  By the way, I've got a
small job for you, if you'll help me."

"With pleasure."

"Don't mind takin' a risk, do you?"

"What is the risk?"

"Well, it's Ballinger--he's the risk.  You've heard of him?"

"No."

"Why, young fellah, where HAVE you lived?  Sir John Ballinger is the
best gentleman jock in the north country.  I could hold him on the flat
at my best, but over jumps he's my master.  Well, it's an open secret
that when he's out of trainin' he drinks hard--strikin' an average, he
calls it.  He got delirium on Toosday, and has been ragin' like a devil
ever since.  His room is above this.  The doctors say that it is all up
with the old dear unless some food is got into him, but as he lies in
bed with a revolver on his coverlet, and swears he will put six of the
best through anyone that comes near him, there's been a bit of a strike
among the serving-men.  He's a hard nail, is Jack, and a dead shot,
too, but you can't leave a Grand National winner to die like
that--what?"

"What do you mean to do, then?" I asked.

"Well, my idea was that you and I could rush him.  He may be dozin',
and at the worst he can only wing one of us, and the other should have
him.  If we can get his bolster-cover round his arms and then 'phone up
a stomach-pump, we'll give the old dear the supper of his life."

It was a rather desperate business to come suddenly into one's day's
work.  I don't think that I am a particularly brave man.  I have an
Irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible
than they are.  On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of
cowardice and with a terror of such a stigma.  I dare say that I could
throw myself over a precipice, like the Hun in the history books, if my
courage to do it were questioned, and yet it would surely be pride and
fear, rather than courage, which would be my inspiration.  Therefore,
although every nerve in my body shrank from the whisky-maddened figure
which I pictured in the room above, I still answered, in as careless a
voice as I could command, that I was ready to go.  Some further remark
of Lord Roxton's about the danger only made me irritable.

"Talking won't make it any better," said I. "Come on."

I rose from my chair and he from his.  Then with a little confidential
chuckle of laughter, he patted me two or three times on the chest,
finally pushing me back into my chair.

"All right, sonny my lad--you'll do," said he.  I looked up in surprise.

"I saw after Jack Ballinger myself this mornin'.  He blew a hole in the
skirt of my kimono, bless his shaky old hand, but we got a jacket on
him, and he's to be all right in a week.  I say, young fellah, I hope
you don't mind--what?  You see, between you an' me close-tiled, I look
on this South American business as a mighty serious thing, and if I
have a pal with me I want a man I can bank on.  So I sized you down,
and I'm bound to say that you came well out of it.  You see, it's all
up to you and me, for this old Summerlee man will want dry-nursin' from
the first.  By the way, are you by any chance the Malone who is
expected to get his Rugby cap for Ireland?"

"A reserve, perhaps."

"I thought I remembered your face.  Why, I was there when you got that
try against Richmond--as fine a swervin' run as I saw the whole season.
I never miss a Rugby match if I can help it, for it is the manliest
game we have left.  Well, I didn't ask you in here just to talk sport.
We've got to fix our business.  Here are the sailin's, on the first
page of the Times.  There's a Booth boat for Para next Wednesday week,
and if the Professor and you can work it, I think we should take
it--what?  Very good, I'll fix it with him.  What about your outfit?"

"My paper will see to that."

"Can you shoot?"

"About average Territorial standard."

"Good Lord! as bad as that?  It's the last thing you young fellahs
think of learnin'.  You're all bees without stings, so far as lookin'
after the hive goes.  You'll look silly, some o' these days, when
someone comes along an' sneaks the honey.  But you'll need to hold your
gun straight in South America, for, unless our friend the Professor is
a madman or a liar, we may see some queer things before we get back.
What gun have you?"

He crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I caught a
glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels, like the pipes of an
organ.

"I'll see what I can spare you out of my own battery," said he.

One by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles, opening and
shutting them with a snap and a clang, and then patting them as he put
them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her
children.

"This is a Bland's .577 axite express," said he.  "I got that big
fellow with it."  He glanced up at the white rhinoceros.  "Ten more
yards, and he'd would have added me to HIS collection.

         'On that conical bullet his one chance hangs,
         'Tis the weak one's advantage fair.'

Hope you know your Gordon, for he's the poet of the horse and the gun
and the man that handles both.  Now, here's a useful tool--.470,
telescopic sight, double ejector, point-blank up to three-fifty.
That's the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years
ago.  I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts, I may tell you,
though you won't find it in any Blue-book.  There are times, young
fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and
justice, or you never feel clean again.  That's why I made a little war
on my own.  Declared it myself, waged it myself, ended it myself.  Each
of those nicks is for a slave murderer--a good row of them--what?  That
big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed in a
backwater of the Putomayo River.  Now, here's something that would do
for you."  He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle.  "Well
rubbered at the stock, sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip.
You can trust your life to that."  He handed it to me and closed the
door of his oak cabinet.

"By the way," he continued, coming back to his chair, "what do you know
of this Professor Challenger?"

"I never saw him till to-day."

"Well, neither did I.  It's funny we should both sail under sealed
orders from a man we don't know.  He seemed an uppish old bird.  His
brothers of science don't seem too fond of him, either.  How came you
to take an interest in the affair?"

I told him shortly my experiences of the morning, and he listened
intently.  Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the
table.

"I believe every single word he said to you was the truth," said he,
earnestly, "and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like
that.  South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it
right through from Darien to Fuego, it's the grandest, richest, most
wonderful bit of earth upon this planet.  People don't know it yet, and
don't realize what it may become.  I've been up an' down it from end to
end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I
spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers.  Well, when I was up
there I heard some yarns of the same kind--traditions of Indians and
the like, but with somethin' behind them, no doubt.  The more you knew
of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that
anythin' was possible--ANYTHIN'!  There are just some narrow
water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all
darkness.  Now, down here in the Matto Grande"--he swept his cigar over
a part of the map--"or up in this corner where three countries meet,
nothin' would surprise me.  As that chap said to-night, there are
fifty-thousand miles of water-way runnin' through a forest that is very
near the size of Europe.  You and I could be as far away from each
other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be in the
same great Brazilian forest.  Man has just made a track here and a
scrape there in the maze.  Why, the river rises and falls the best part
of forty feet, and half the country is a morass that you can't pass
over.  Why shouldn't somethin' new and wonderful lie in such a country?
And why shouldn't we be the men to find it out?  Besides," he added,
his queer, gaunt face shining with delight, "there's a sportin' risk in
every mile of it.  I'm like an old golf-ball--I've had all the white
paint knocked off me long ago.  Life can whack me about now, and it
can't leave a mark.  But a sportin' risk, young fellah, that's the salt
of existence.  Then it's worth livin' again.  We're all gettin' a deal
too soft and dull and comfy.  Give me the great waste lands and the
wide spaces, with a gun in my fist and somethin' to look for that's
worth findin'.  I've tried war and steeplechasin' and aeroplanes, but
this huntin' of beasts that look like a lobster-supper dream is a
brand-new sensation." He chuckled with glee at the prospect.

Perhaps I have dwelt too long upon this new acquaintance, but he is to
be my comrade for many a day, and so I have tried to set him down as I
first saw him, with his quaint personality and his queer little tricks
of speech and of thought.  It was only the need of getting in the
account of my meeting which drew me at last from his company.  I left
him seated amid his pink radiance, oiling the lock of his favorite
rifle, while he still chuckled to himself at the thought of the
adventures which awaited us.  It was very clear to me that if dangers
lay before us I could not in all England have found a cooler head or a
braver spirit with which to share them.

That night, wearied as I was after the wonderful happenings of the day,
I sat late with McArdle, the news editor, explaining to him the whole
situation, which he thought important enough to bring next morning
before the notice of Sir George Beaumont, the chief.  It was agreed
that I should write home full accounts of my adventures in the shape of
successive letters to McArdle, and that these should either be edited
for the Gazette as they arrived, or held back to be published later,
according to the wishes of Professor Challenger, since we could not yet
know what conditions he might attach to those directions which should
guide us to the unknown land.  In response to a telephone inquiry, we
received nothing more definite than a fulmination against the Press,
ending up with the remark that if we would notify our boat he would
hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the
moment of starting.  A second question from us failed to elicit any
answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that
her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we
would do nothing to make it worse.  A third attempt, later in the day,
provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message from the Central
Exchange that Professor Challenger's receiver had been shattered.
After that we abandoned all attempt at communication.

And now my patient readers, I can address you directly no longer.  From
now onwards (if, indeed, any continuation of this narrative should ever
reach you) it can only be through the paper which I represent.  In the
hands of the editor I leave this account of the events which have led
up to one of the most remarkable expeditions of all time, so that if I
never return to England there shall be some record as to how the affair
came about.  I am writing these last lines in the saloon of the Booth
liner Francisca, and they will go back by the pilot to the keeping of
Mr. McArdle.  Let me draw one last picture before I close the
notebook--a picture which is the last memory of the old country which I
bear away with me.  It is a wet, foggy morning in the late spring; a
thin, cold rain is falling.  Three shining mackintoshed figures are
walking down the quay, making for the gang-plank of the great liner
from which the blue-peter is flying.  In front of them a porter pushes
a trolley piled high with trunks, wraps, and gun-cases.  Professor
Summerlee, a long, melancholy figure, walks with dragging steps and
drooping head, as one who is already profoundly sorry for himself.
Lord John Roxton steps briskly, and his thin, eager face beams forth
between his hunting-cap and his muffler.  As for myself, I am glad to
have got the bustling days of preparation and the pangs of leave-taking
behind me, and I have no doubt that I show it in my bearing.  Suddenly,
just as we reach the vessel, there is a shout behind us.  It is
Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off.  He runs after
us, a puffing, red-faced, irascible figure.

"No thank you," says he; "I should much prefer not to go aboard.  I
have only a few words to say to you, and they can very well be said
where we are.  I beg you not to imagine that I am in any way indebted
to you for making this journey.  I would have you to understand that it
is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and I refuse to entertain
the most remote sense of personal obligation.  Truth is truth, and
nothing which you can report can affect it in any way, though it may
excite the emotions and allay the curiosity of a number of very
ineffectual people.  My directions for your instruction and guidance
are in this sealed envelope.  You will open it when you reach a town
upon the Amazon which is called Manaos, but not until the date and hour
which is marked upon the outside.  Have I made myself clear?  I leave
the strict observance of my conditions entirely to your honor.  No, Mr.
Malone, I will place no restriction upon your correspondence, since the
ventilation of the facts is the object of your journey; but I demand
that you shall give no particulars as to your exact destination, and
that nothing be actually published until your return.  Good-bye, sir.
You have done something to mitigate my feelings for the loathsome
profession to which you unhappily belong.  Good-bye, Lord John.
Science is, as I understand, a sealed book to you; but you may
congratulate yourself upon the hunting-field which awaits you.  You
will, no doubt, have the opportunity of describing in the Field how you
brought down the rocketing dimorphodon.  And good-bye to you also,
Professor Summerlee.  If you are still capable of self-improvement, of
which I am frankly unconvinced, you will surely return to London a
wiser man."

So he turned upon his heel, and a minute later from the deck I could
see his short, squat figure bobbing about in the distance as he made
his way back to his train.  Well, we are well down Channel now.
There's the last bell for letters, and it's good-bye to the pilot.
We'll be "down, hull-down, on the old trail" from now on.  God bless
all we leave behind us, and send us safely back.




                           CHAPTER VII

            "To-morrow we Disappear into the Unknown"

I will not bore those whom this narrative may reach by an account of
our luxurious voyage upon the Booth liner, nor will I tell of our
week's stay at Para (save that I should wish to acknowledge the great
kindness of the Pereira da Pinta Company in helping us to get together
our equipment).  I will also allude very briefly to our river journey,
up a wide, slow-moving, clay-tinted stream, in a steamer which was
little smaller than that which had carried us across the Atlantic.
Eventually we found ourselves through the narrows of Obidos and reached
the town of Manaos.  Here we were rescued from the limited attractions
of the local inn by Mr. Shortman, the representative of the British and
Brazilian Trading Company.  In his hospitable Fazenda we spent our time
until the day when we were empowered to open the letter of instructions
given to us by Professor Challenger.  Before I reach the surprising
events of that date I would desire to give a clearer sketch of my
comrades in this enterprise, and of the associates whom we had already
gathered together in South America.  I speak freely, and I leave the
use of my material to your own discretion, Mr. McArdle, since it is
through your hands that this report must pass before it reaches the
world.

The scientific attainments of Professor Summerlee are too well known
for me to trouble to recapitulate them.  He is better equipped for a
rough expedition of this sort than one would imagine at first sight.
His tall, gaunt, stringy figure is insensible to fatigue, and his dry,
half-sarcastic, and often wholly unsympathetic manner is uninfluenced
by any change in his surroundings.  Though in his sixty-sixth year, I
have never heard him express any dissatisfaction at the occasional
hardships which we have had to encounter.  I had regarded his presence
as an encumbrance to the expedition, but, as a matter of fact, I am now
well convinced that his power of endurance is as great as my own.  In
temper he is naturally acid and sceptical.  From the beginning he has
never concealed his belief that Professor Challenger is an absolute
fraud, that we are all embarked upon an absurd wild-goose chase and
that we are likely to reap nothing but disappointment and danger in
South America, and corresponding ridicule in England.  Such are the
views which, with much passionate distortion of his thin features and
wagging of his thin, goat-like beard, he poured into our ears all the
way from Southampton to Manaos.  Since landing from the boat he has
obtained some consolation from the beauty and variety of the insect and
bird life around him, for he is absolutely whole-hearted in his
devotion to science.  He spends his days flitting through the woods
with his shot-gun and his butterfly-net, and his evenings in mounting
the many specimens he has acquired.  Among his minor peculiarities are
that he is careless as to his attire, unclean in his person,
exceedingly absent-minded in his habits, and addicted to smoking a
short briar pipe, which is seldom out of his mouth.  He has been upon
several scientific expeditions in his youth (he was with Robertson in
Papua), and the life of the camp and the canoe is nothing fresh to him.

Lord John Roxton has some points in common with Professor Summerlee,
and others in which they are the very antithesis to each other.  He is
twenty years younger, but has something of the same spare, scraggy
physique.  As to his appearance, I have, as I recollect, described it
in that portion of my narrative which I have left behind me in London.
He is exceedingly neat and prim in his ways, dresses always with great
care in white drill suits and high brown mosquito-boots, and shaves at
least once a day.  Like most men of action, he is laconic in speech,
and sinks readily into his own thoughts, but he is always quick to
answer a question or join in a conversation, talking in a queer, jerky,
half-humorous fashion.  His knowledge of the world, and very especially
of South America, is surprising, and he has a whole-hearted belief in
the possibilities of our journey which is not to be dashed by the
sneers of Professor Summerlee.  He has a gentle voice and a quiet
manner, but behind his twinkling blue eyes there lurks a capacity for
furious wrath and implacable resolution, the more dangerous because
they are held in leash.  He spoke little of his own exploits in Brazil
and Peru, but it was a revelation to me to find the excitement which
was caused by his presence among the riverine natives, who looked upon
him as their champion and protector.  The exploits of the Red Chief, as
they called him, had become legends among them, but the real facts, as
far as I could learn them, were amazing enough.

These were that Lord John had found himself some years before in that
no-man's-land which is formed by the half-defined frontiers between
Peru, Brazil, and Columbia.  In this great district the wild rubber
tree flourishes, and has become, as in the Congo, a curse to the
natives which can only be compared to their forced labor under the
Spaniards upon the old silver mines of Darien.  A handful of villainous
half-breeds dominated the country, armed such Indians as would support
them, and turned the rest into slaves, terrorizing them with the most
inhuman tortures in order to force them to gather the india-rubber,
which was then floated down the river to Para.  Lord John Roxton
expostulated on behalf of the wretched victims, and received nothing
but threats and insults for his pains.  He then formally declared war
against Pedro Lopez, the leader of the slave-drivers, enrolled a band
of runaway slaves in his service, armed them, and conducted a campaign,
which ended by his killing with his own hands the notorious half-breed
and breaking down the system which he represented.

No wonder that the ginger-headed man with the silky voice and the free
and easy manners was now looked upon with deep interest upon the banks
of the great South American river, though the feelings he inspired were
naturally mixed, since the gratitude of the natives was equaled by the
resentment of those who desired to exploit them.  One useful result of
his former experiences was that he could talk fluently in the Lingoa
Geral, which is the peculiar talk, one-third Portuguese and two-thirds
Indian, which is current all over Brazil.

I have said before that Lord John Roxton was a South Americomaniac.  He
could not speak of that great country without ardor, and this ardor was
infectious, for, ignorant as I was, he fixed my attention and
stimulated my curiosity.  How I wish I could reproduce the glamour of
his discourses, the peculiar mixture of accurate knowledge and of racy
imagination which gave them their fascination, until even the
Professor's cynical and sceptical smile would gradually vanish from his
thin face as he listened.  He would tell the history of the mighty
river so rapidly explored (for some of the first conquerors of Peru
actually crossed the entire continent upon its waters), and yet so
unknown in regard to all that lay behind its ever-changing banks.

"What is there?" he would cry, pointing to the north.  "Wood and marsh
and unpenetrated jungle.  Who knows what it may shelter?  And there to
the south?  A wilderness of swampy forest, where no white man has ever
been.  The unknown is up against us on every side.  Outside the narrow
lines of the rivers what does anyone know?  Who will say what is
possible in such a country?  Why should old man Challenger not be
right?"  At which direct defiance the stubborn sneer would reappear
upon Professor Summerlee's face, and he would sit, shaking his sardonic
head in unsympathetic silence, behind the cloud of his briar-root pipe.


So much, for the moment, for my two white companions, whose characters
and limitations will be further exposed, as surely as my own, as this
narrative proceeds.  But already we have enrolled certain retainers who
may play no small part in what is to come.  The first is a gigantic
negro named Zambo, who is a black Hercules, as willing as any horse,
and about as intelligent.  Him we enlisted at Para, on the
recommendation of the steamship company, on whose vessels he had
learned to speak a halting English.

It was at Para also that we engaged Gomez and Manuel, two half-breeds
from up the river, just come down with a cargo of redwood.  They were
swarthy fellows, bearded and fierce, as active and wiry as panthers.
Both of them had spent their lives in those upper waters of the Amazon
which we were about to explore, and it was this recommendation which
had caused Lord John to engage them.  One of them, Gomez, had the
further advantage that he could speak excellent English.  These men
were willing to act as our personal servants, to cook, to row, or to
make themselves useful in any way at a payment of fifteen dollars a
month.  Besides these, we had engaged three Mojo Indians from Bolivia,
who are the most skilful at fishing and boat work of all the river
tribes.  The chief of these we called Mojo, after his tribe, and the
others are known as Jose and Fernando.  Three white men, then, two
half-breeds, one negro, and three Indians made up the personnel of the
little expedition which lay waiting for its instructions at Manaos
before starting upon its singular quest.

At last, after a weary week, the day had come and the hour.  I ask you
to picture the shaded sitting-room of the Fazenda St.  Ignatio, two
miles inland from the town of Manaos.  Outside lay the yellow, brassy
glare of the sunshine, with the shadows of the palm trees as black and
definite as the trees themselves.  The air was calm, full of the
eternal hum of insects, a tropical chorus of many octaves, from the
deep drone of the bee to the high, keen pipe of the mosquito.  Beyond
the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and
adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue
butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in
crescents of sparkling light.  Within we were seated round the cane
table, on which lay a sealed envelope.  Inscribed upon it, in the
jagged handwriting of Professor Challenger, were the words:--


"Instructions to Lord John Roxton and party.  To be opened at Manaos
upon July 15th, at 12 o'clock precisely."


Lord John had placed his watch upon the table beside him.

"We have seven more minutes," said he.  "The old dear is very precise."

Professor Summerlee gave an acid smile as he picked up the envelope in
his gaunt hand.

"What can it possibly matter whether we open it now or in seven
minutes?" said he.  "It is all part and parcel of the same system of
quackery and nonsense, for which I regret to say that the writer is
notorious."

"Oh, come, we must play the game accordin' to rules," said Lord John.
"It's old man Challenger's show and we are here by his good will, so it
would be rotten bad form if we didn't follow his instructions to the
letter."

"A pretty business it is!" cried the Professor, bitterly.  "It struck
me as preposterous in London, but I'm bound to say that it seems even
more so upon closer acquaintance.  I don't know what is inside this
envelope, but, unless it is something pretty definite, I shall be much
tempted to take the next down-river boat and catch the Bolivia at Para.
After all, I have some more responsible work in the world than to run
about disproving the assertions of a lunatic.  Now, Roxton, surely it
is time."

"Time it is," said Lord John.  "You can blow the whistle." He took up
the envelope and cut it with his penknife.  From it he drew a folded
sheet of paper.  This he carefully opened out and flattened on the
table.  It was a blank sheet.  He turned it over.  Again it was blank.
We looked at each other in a bewildered silence, which was broken by a
discordant burst of derisive laughter from Professor Summerlee.

"It is an open admission," he cried.  "What more do you want?  The
fellow is a self-confessed humbug.  We have only to return home and
report him as the brazen imposter that he is."

"Invisible ink!" I suggested.

"I don't think!" said Lord Roxton, holding the paper to the light.
"No, young fellah my lad, there is no use deceiving yourself.  I'll go
bail for it that nothing has ever been written upon this paper."

"May I come in?" boomed a voice from the veranda.

The shadow of a squat figure had stolen across the patch of sunlight.
That voice!  That monstrous breadth of shoulder!  We sprang to our feet
with a gasp of astonishment as Challenger, in a round, boyish straw-hat
with a colored ribbon--Challenger, with his hands in his jacket-pockets
and his canvas shoes daintily pointing as he walked--appeared in the
open space before us.  He threw back his head, and there he stood in
the golden glow with all his old Assyrian luxuriance of beard, all his
native insolence of drooping eyelids and intolerant eyes.

"I fear," said he, taking out his watch, "that I am a few minutes too
late.  When I gave you this envelope I must confess that I had never
intended that you should open it, for it had been my fixed intention to
be with you before the hour.  The unfortunate delay can be apportioned
between a blundering pilot and an intrusive sandbank.  I fear that it
has given my colleague, Professor Summerlee, occasion to blaspheme."

"I am bound to say, sir," said Lord John, with some sternness of voice,
"that your turning up is a considerable relief to us, for our mission
seemed to have come to a premature end.  Even now I can't for the life
of me understand why you should have worked it in so extraordinary a
manner."

Instead of answering, Professor Challenger entered, shook hands with
myself and Lord John, bowed with ponderous insolence to Professor
Summerlee, and sank back into a basket-chair, which creaked and swayed
beneath his weight.

"Is all ready for your journey?" he asked.

"We can start to-morrow."

"Then so you shall.  You need no chart of directions now, since you
will have the inestimable advantage of my own guidance.  From the first
I had determined that I would myself preside over your investigation.
The most elaborate charts would, as you will readily admit, be a poor
substitute for my own intelligence and advice.  As to the small ruse
which I played upon you in the matter of the envelope, it is clear
that, had I told you all my intentions, I should have been forced to
resist unwelcome pressure to travel out with you."

"Not from me, sir!" exclaimed Professor Summerlee, heartily.  "So long
as there was another ship upon the Atlantic."

Challenger waved him away with his great hairy hand.

"Your common sense will, I am sure, sustain my objection and realize
that it was better that I should direct my own movements and appear
only at the exact moment when my presence was needed.  That moment has
now arrived.  You are in safe hands.  You will not now fail to reach
your destination.  From henceforth I take command of this expedition,
and I must ask you to complete your preparations to-night, so that we
may be able to make an early start in the morning.  My time is of
value, and the same thing may be said, no doubt, in a lesser degree of
your own.  I propose, therefore, that we push on as rapidly as
possible, until I have demonstrated what you have come to see."

Lord John Roxton has chartered a large steam launch, the Esmeralda,
which was to carry us up the river.  So far as climate goes, it was
immaterial what time we chose for our expedition, as the temperature
ranges from seventy-five to ninety degrees both summer and winter, with
no appreciable difference in heat.  In moisture, however, it is
otherwise; from December to May is the period of the rains, and during
this time the river slowly rises until it attains a height of nearly
forty feet above its low-water mark.  It floods the banks, extends in
great lagoons over a monstrous waste of country, and forms a huge
district, called locally the Gapo, which is for the most part too
marshy for foot-travel and too shallow for boating.  About June the
waters begin to fall, and are at their lowest at October or November.
Thus our expedition was at the time of the dry season, when the great
river and its tributaries were more or less in a normal condition.

The current of the river is a slight one, the drop being not greater
than eight inches in a mile.  No stream could be more convenient for
navigation, since the prevailing wind is south-east, and sailing boats
may make a continuous progress to the Peruvian frontier, dropping down
again with the current.  In our own case the excellent engines of the
Esmeralda could disregard the sluggish flow of the stream, and we made
as rapid progress as if we were navigating a stagnant lake.  For three
days we steamed north-westwards up a stream which even here, a thousand
miles from its mouth, was still so enormous that from its center the
two banks were mere shadows upon the distant skyline.  On the fourth
day after leaving Manaos we turned into a tributary which at its mouth
was little smaller than the main stream.  It narrowed rapidly, however,
and after two more days' steaming we reached an Indian village, where
the Professor insisted that we should land, and that the Esmeralda
should be sent back to Manaos.  We should soon come upon rapids, he
explained, which would make its further use impossible.  He added
privately that we were now approaching the door of the unknown country,
and that the fewer whom we took into our confidence the better it would
be.  To this end also he made each of us give our word of honor that we
would publish or say nothing which would give any exact clue as to the
whereabouts of our travels, while the servants were all solemnly sworn
to the same effect.  It is for this reason that I am compelled to be
vague in my narrative, and I would warn my readers that in any map or
diagram which I may give the relation of places to each other may be
correct, but the points of the compass are carefully confused, so that
in no way can it be taken as an actual guide to the country.  Professor
Challenger's reasons for secrecy may be valid or not, but we had no
choice but to adopt them, for he was prepared to abandon the whole
expedition rather than modify the conditions upon which he would guide
us.

It was August 2nd when we snapped our last link with the outer world by
bidding farewell to the Esmeralda.  Since then four days have passed,
during which we have engaged two large canoes from the Indians, made of
so light a material (skins over a bamboo framework) that we should be
able to carry them round any obstacle.  These we have loaded with all
our effects, and have engaged two additional Indians to help us in the
navigation.  I understand that they are the very two--Ataca and Ipetu
by name--who accompanied Professor Challenger upon his previous
journey.  They appeared to be terrified at the prospect of repeating
it, but the chief has patriarchal powers in these countries, and if the
bargain is good in his eyes the clansman has little choice in the
matter.

So to-morrow we disappear into the unknown.  This account I am
transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to
those who are interested in our fate.  I have, according to our
arrangement, addressed it to you, my dear Mr. McArdle, and I leave it
to your discretion to delete, alter, or do what you like with it.  From
the assurance of Professor Challenger's manner--and in spite of the
continued scepticism of Professor Summerlee--I have no doubt that our
leader will make good his statement, and that we are really on the eve
of some most remarkable experiences.




                           CHAPTER VIII

             "The Outlying Pickets of the New World"

Our friends at home may well rejoice with us, for we are at our goal,
and up to a point, at least, we have shown that the statement of
Professor Challenger can be verified.  We have not, it is true,
ascended the plateau, but it lies before us, and even Professor
Summerlee is in a more chastened mood.  Not that he will for an instant
admit that his rival could be right, but he is less persistent in his
incessant objections, and has sunk for the most part into an observant
silence.  I must hark back, however, and continue my narrative from
where I dropped it.  We are sending home one of our local Indians who
is injured, and I am committing this letter to his charge, with
considerable doubts in my mind as to whether it will ever come to hand.

When I wrote last we were about to leave the Indian village where we
had been deposited by the Esmeralda.  I have to begin my report by bad
news, for the first serious personal trouble (I pass over the incessant
bickerings between the Professors) occurred this evening, and might
have had a tragic ending.  I have spoken of our English-speaking
half-breed, Gomez--a fine worker and a willing fellow, but afflicted, I
fancy, with the vice of curiosity, which is common enough among such
men.  On the last evening he seems to have hid himself near the hut in
which we were discussing our plans, and, being observed by our huge
negro Zambo, who is as faithful as a dog and has the hatred which all
his race bear to the half-breeds, he was dragged out and carried into
our presence.  Gomez whipped out his knife, however, and but for the
huge strength of his captor, which enabled him to disarm him with one
hand, he would certainly have stabbed him.  The matter has ended in
reprimands, the opponents have been compelled to shake hands, and there
is every hope that all will be well.  As to the feuds of the two
learned men, they are continuous and bitter.  It must be admitted that
Challenger is provocative in the last degree, but Summerlee has an acid
tongue, which makes matters worse.  Last night Challenger said that he
never cared to walk on the Thames Embankment and look up the river, as
it was always sad to see one's own eventual goal.  He is convinced, of
course, that he is destined for Westminster Abbey.  Summerlee rejoined,
however, with a sour smile, by saying that he understood that Millbank
Prison had been pulled down.  Challenger's conceit is too colossal to
allow him to be really annoyed.  He only smiled in his beard and
repeated "Really!  Really!" in the pitying tone one would use to a
child.  Indeed, they are children both--the one wizened and
cantankerous, the other formidable and overbearing, yet each with a
brain which has put him in the front rank of his scientific age.
Brain, character, soul--only as one sees more of life does one
understand how distinct is each.

The very next day we did actually make our start upon this remarkable
expedition.  We found that all our possessions fitted very easily into
the two canoes, and we divided our personnel, six in each, taking the
obvious precaution in the interests of peace of putting one Professor
into each canoe.  Personally, I was with Challenger, who was in a
beatific humor, moving about as one in a silent ecstasy and beaming
benevolence from every feature.  I have had some experience of him in
other moods, however, and shall be the less surprised when the
thunderstorms suddenly come up amidst the sunshine.  If it is
impossible to be at your ease, it is equally impossible to be dull in
his company, for one is always in a state of half-tremulous doubt as to
what sudden turn his formidable temper may take.

For two days we made our way up a good-sized river some hundreds of
yards broad, and dark in color, but transparent, so that one could
usually see the bottom.  The affluents of the Amazon are, half of them,
of this nature, while the other half are whitish and opaque, the
difference depending upon the class of country through which they have
flowed.  The dark indicate vegetable decay, while the others point to
clayey soil.  Twice we came across rapids, and in each case made a
portage of half a mile or so to avoid them.  The woods on either side
were primeval, which are more easily penetrated than woods of the
second growth, and we had no great difficulty in carrying our canoes
through them.  How shall I ever forget the solemn mystery of it?  The
height of the trees and the thickness of the boles exceeded anything
which I in my town-bred life could have imagined, shooting upwards in
magnificent columns until, at an enormous distance above our heads, we
could dimly discern the spot where they threw out their side-branches
into Gothic upward curves which coalesced to form one great matted roof
of verdure, through which only an occasional golden ray of sunshine
shot downwards to trace a thin dazzling line of light amidst the
majestic obscurity.  As we walked noiselessly amid the thick, soft
carpet of decaying vegetation the hush fell upon our souls which comes
upon us in the twilight of the Abbey, and even Professor Challenger's
full-chested notes sank into a whisper.  Alone, I should have been
ignorant of the names of these giant growths, but our men of science
pointed out the cedars, the great silk cotton trees, and the redwood
trees, with all that profusion of various plants which has made this
continent the chief supplier to the human race of those gifts of Nature
which depend upon the vegetable world, while it is the most backward in
those products which come from animal life.  Vivid orchids and
wonderful colored lichens smoldered upon the swarthy tree-trunks and
where a wandering shaft of light fell full upon the golden allamanda,
the scarlet star-clusters of the tacsonia, or the rich deep blue of
ipomaea, the effect was as a dream of fairyland.  In these great wastes
of forest, life, which abhors darkness, struggles ever upwards to the
light.  Every plant, even the smaller ones, curls and writhes to the
green surface, twining itself round its stronger and taller brethren in
the effort.  Climbing plants are monstrous and luxuriant, but others
which have never been known to climb elsewhere learn the art as an
escape from that somber shadow, so that the common nettle, the jasmine,
and even the jacitara palm tree can be seen circling the stems of the
cedars and striving to reach their crowns.  Of animal life there was no
movement amid the majestic vaulted aisles which stretched from us as we
walked, but a constant movement far above our heads told of that
multitudinous world of snake and monkey, bird and sloth, which lived in
the sunshine, and looked down in wonder at our tiny, dark, stumbling
figures in the obscure depths immeasurably below them.  At dawn and at
sunset the howler monkeys screamed together and the parrakeets broke
into shrill chatter, but during the hot hours of the day only the full
drone of insects, like the beat of a distant surf, filled the ear,
while nothing moved amid the solemn vistas of stupendous trunks, fading
away into the darkness which held us in.  Once some bandy-legged,
lurching creature, an ant-eater or a bear, scuttled clumsily amid the
shadows.  It was the only sign of earth life which I saw in this great
Amazonian forest.

And yet there were indications that even human life itself was not far
from us in those mysterious recesses.  On the third day out we were
aware of a singular deep throbbing in the air, rhythmic and solemn,
coming and going fitfully throughout the morning.  The two boats were
paddling within a few yards of each other when first we heard it, and
our Indians remained motionless, as if they had been turned to bronze,
listening intently with expressions of terror upon their faces.

"What is it, then?" I asked.

"Drums," said Lord John, carelessly; "war drums.  I have heard them
before."

"Yes, sir, war drums," said Gomez, the half-breed.  "Wild Indians,
bravos, not mansos; they watch us every mile of the way; kill us if
they can."

"How can they watch us?" I asked, gazing into the dark, motionless void.

The half-breed shrugged his broad shoulders.

"The Indians know.  They have their own way.  They watch us.  They talk
the drum talk to each other.  Kill us if they can."

By the afternoon of that day--my pocket diary shows me that it was
Tuesday, August 18th--at least six or seven drums were throbbing from
various points.  Sometimes they beat quickly, sometimes slowly,
sometimes in obvious question and answer, one far to the east breaking
out in a high staccato rattle, and being followed after a pause by a
deep roll from the north.  There was something indescribably
nerve-shaking and menacing in that constant mutter, which seemed to
shape itself into the very syllables of the half-breed, endlessly
repeated, "We will kill you if we can.  We will kill you if we can."
No one ever moved in the silent woods.  All the peace and soothing of
quiet Nature lay in that dark curtain of vegetation, but away from
behind there came ever the one message from our fellow-man.  "We will
kill you if we can," said the men in the east.  "We will kill you if we
can," said the men in the north.

All day the drums rumbled and whispered, while their menace reflected
itself in the faces of our colored companions.  Even the hardy,
swaggering half-breed seemed cowed.  I learned, however, that day once
for all that both Summerlee and Challenger possessed that highest type
of bravery, the bravery of the scientific mind.  Theirs was the spirit
which upheld Darwin among the gauchos of the Argentine or Wallace among
the head-hunters of Malaya.  It is decreed by a merciful Nature that
the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if
it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely
personal considerations.  All day amid that incessant and mysterious
menace our two Professors watched every bird upon the wing, and every
shrub upon the bank, with many a sharp wordy contention, when the snarl
of Summerlee came quick upon the deep growl of Challenger, but with no
more sense of danger and no more reference to drum-beating Indians than
if they were seated together in the smoking-room of the Royal Society's
Club in St.  James's Street.  Once only did they condescend to discuss
them.

"Miranha or Amajuaca cannibals," said Challenger, jerking his thumb
towards the reverberating wood.

"No doubt, sir," Summerlee answered.  "Like all such tribes, I shall
expect to find them of poly-synthetic speech and of Mongolian type."

"Polysynthetic certainly," said Challenger, indulgently.  "I am not
aware that any other type of language exists in this continent, and I
have notes of more than a hundred.  The Mongolian theory I regard with
deep suspicion."

"I should have thought that even a limited knowledge of comparative
anatomy would have helped to verify it," said Summerlee, bitterly.

Challenger thrust out his aggressive chin until he was all beard and
hat-rim.  "No doubt, sir, a limited knowledge would have that effect.
When one's knowledge is exhaustive, one comes to other conclusions."
They glared at each other in mutual defiance, while all round rose the
distant whisper, "We will kill you--we will kill you if we can."

That night we moored our canoes with heavy stones for anchors in the
center of the stream, and made every preparation for a possible attack.
Nothing came, however, and with the dawn we pushed upon our way, the
drum-beating dying out behind us.  About three o'clock in the afternoon
we came to a very steep rapid, more than a mile long--the very one in
which Professor Challenger had suffered disaster upon his first
journey.  I confess that the sight of it consoled me, for it was really
the first direct corroboration, slight as it was, of the truth of his
story.  The Indians carried first our canoes and then our stores
through the brushwood, which is very thick at this point, while we four
whites, our rifles on our shoulders, walked between them and any danger
coming from the woods.  Before evening we had successfully passed the
rapids, and made our way some ten miles above them, where we anchored
for the night.  At this point I reckoned that we had come not less than
a hundred miles up the tributary from the main stream.

It was in the early forenoon of the next day that we made the great
departure.  Since dawn Professor Challenger had been acutely uneasy,
continually scanning each bank of the river.  Suddenly he gave an
exclamation of satisfaction and pointed to a single tree, which
projected at a peculiar angle over the side of the stream.

"What do you make of that?" he asked.

"It is surely an Assai palm," said Summerlee.

"Exactly.  It was an Assai palm which I took for my landmark.  The
secret opening is half a mile onwards upon the other side of the river.
There is no break in the trees.  That is the wonder and the mystery of
it.  There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green
undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private
gate into the unknown.  Push through, and you will understand."

It was indeed a wonderful place.  Having reached the spot marked by a
line of light-green rushes, we poled out two canoes through them for
some hundreds of yards, and eventually emerged into a placid and
shallow stream, running clear and transparent over a sandy bottom.  It
may have been twenty yards across, and was banked in on each side by
most luxuriant vegetation.  No one who had not observed that for a
short distance reeds had taken the place of shrubs, could possibly have
guessed the existence of such a stream or dreamed of the fairyland
beyond.

For a fairyland it was--the most wonderful that the imagination of man
could conceive.  The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a
natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden
twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but
marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above
filtered and tempered in its fall.  Clear as crystal, motionless as a
sheet of glass, green as the edge of an iceberg, it stretched in front
of us under its leafy archway, every stroke of our paddles sending a
thousand ripples across its shining surface.  It was a fitting avenue
to a land of wonders.  All sign of the Indians had passed away, but
animal life was more frequent, and the tameness of the creatures showed
that they knew nothing of the hunter.  Fuzzy little black-velvet
monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming, mocking eyes, chattered at
us as we passed.  With a dull, heavy splash an occasional cayman
plunged in from the bank.  Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from
a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once,
too, the yellow, sinuous form of a great puma whisked amid the
brushwood, and its green, baleful eyes glared hatred at us over its
tawny shoulder.  Bird life was abundant, especially the wading birds,
stork, heron, and ibis gathering in little groups, blue, scarlet, and
white, upon every log which jutted from the bank, while beneath us the
crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.

For three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine.
On the longer stretches one could hardly tell as one looked ahead where
the distant green water ended and the distant green archway began.  The
deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.

"No Indian here.  Too much afraid.  Curupuri," said Gomez.

"Curupuri is the spirit of the woods," Lord John explained.  "It's a
name for any kind of devil.  The poor beggars think that there is
something fearsome in this direction, and therefore they avoid it."

On the third day it became evident that our journey in the canoes could
not last much longer, for the stream was rapidly growing more shallow.
Twice in as many hours we stuck upon the bottom.  Finally we pulled the
boats up among the brushwood and spent the night on the bank of the
river.  In the morning Lord John and I made our way for a couple of
miles through the forest, keeping parallel with the stream; but as it
grew ever shallower we returned and reported, what Professor Challenger
had already suspected, that we had reached the highest point to which
the canoes could be brought.  We drew them up, therefore, and concealed
them among the bushes, blazing a tree with our axes, so that we should
find them again.  Then we distributed the various burdens among
us--guns, ammunition, food, a tent, blankets, and the rest--and,
shouldering our packages, we set forth upon the more laborious stage of
our journey.

An unfortunate quarrel between our pepper-pots marked the outset of our
new stage.  Challenger had from the moment of joining us issued
directions to the whole party, much to the evident discontent of
Summerlee.  Now, upon his assigning some duty to his fellow-Professor
(it was only the carrying of an aneroid barometer), the matter suddenly
came to a head.

"May I ask, sir," said Summerlee, with vicious calm, "in what capacity
you take it upon yourself to issue these orders?"

Challenger glared and bristled.

"I do it, Professor Summerlee, as leader of this expedition."

"I am compelled to tell you, sir, that I do not recognize you in that
capacity."

"Indeed!" Challenger bowed with unwieldy sarcasm.  "Perhaps you would
define my exact position."

"Yes, sir.  You are a man whose veracity is upon trial, and this
committee is here to try it.  You walk, sir, with your judges."

"Dear me!" said Challenger, seating himself on the side of one of the
canoes.  "In that case you will, of course, go on your way, and I will
follow at my leisure.  If I am not the leader you cannot expect me to
lead."

Thank heaven that there were two sane men--Lord John Roxton and
myself--to prevent the petulance and folly of our learned Professors
from sending us back empty-handed to London.  Such arguing and pleading
and explaining before we could get them mollified!  Then at last
Summerlee, with his sneer and his pipe, would move forwards, and
Challenger would come rolling and grumbling after.  By some good
fortune we discovered about this time that both our savants had the
very poorest opinion of Dr. Illingworth of Edinburgh.  Thenceforward
that was our one safety, and every strained situation was relieved by
our introducing the name of the Scotch zoologist, when both our
Professors would form a temporary alliance and friendship in their
detestation and abuse of this common rival.

Advancing in single file along the bank of the stream, we soon found
that it narrowed down to a mere brook, and finally that it lost itself
in a great green morass of sponge-like mosses, into which we sank up to
our knees.  The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and
every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again
and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank
this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so
loud was it with insect life.

On the second day after leaving our canoes we found that the whole
character of the country changed.  Our road was persistently upwards,
and as we ascended the woods became thinner and lost their tropical
luxuriance.  The huge trees of the alluvial Amazonian plain gave place
to the Phoenix and coco palms, growing in scattered clumps, with thick
brushwood between.  In the damper hollows the Mauritia palms threw out
their graceful drooping fronds.  We traveled entirely by compass, and
once or twice there were differences of opinion between Challenger and
the two Indians, when, to quote the Professor's indignant words, the
whole party agreed to "trust the fallacious instincts of undeveloped
savages rather than the highest product of modern European culture."
That we were justified in doing so was shown upon the third day, when
Challenger admitted that he recognized several landmarks of his former
journey, and in one spot we actually came upon four fire-blackened
stones, which must have marked a camping-place.

The road still ascended, and we crossed a rock-studded slope which took
two days to traverse.  The vegetation had again changed, and only the
vegetable ivory tree remained, with a great profusion of wonderful
orchids, among which I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia
Vexillaria and the glorious pink and scarlet blossoms of Cattleya and
odontoglossum.  Occasional brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped
banks gurgled down the shallow gorges in the hill, and offered good
camping-grounds every evening on the banks of some rock-studded pool,
where swarms of little blue-backed fish, about the size and shape of
English trout, gave us a delicious supper.

On the ninth day after leaving the canoes, having done, as I reckon,
about a hundred and twenty miles, we began to emerge from the trees,
which had grown smaller until they were mere shrubs.  Their place was
taken by an immense wilderness of bamboo, which grew so thickly that we
could only penetrate it by cutting a pathway with the machetes and
billhooks of the Indians.  It took us a long day, traveling from seven
in the morning till eight at night, with only two breaks of one hour
each, to get through this obstacle.  Anything more monotonous and
wearying could not be imagined, for, even at the most open places, I
could not see more than ten or twelve yards, while usually my vision
was limited to the back of Lord John's cotton jacket in front of me,
and to the yellow wall within a foot of me on either side.  From above
came one thin knife-edge of sunshine, and fifteen feet over our heads
one saw the tops of the reeds swaying against the deep blue sky.  I do
not know what kind of creatures inhabit such a thicket, but several
times we heard the plunging of large, heavy animals quite close to us.
From their sounds Lord John judged them to be some form of wild cattle.
Just as night fell we cleared the belt of bamboos, and at once formed
our camp, exhausted by the interminable day.

Early next morning we were again afoot, and found that the character of
the country had changed once again.  Behind us was the wall of bamboo,
as definite as if it marked the course of a river.  In front was an
open plain, sloping slightly upwards and dotted with clumps of
tree-ferns, the whole curving before us until it ended in a long,
whale-backed ridge.  This we reached about midday, only to find a
shallow valley beyond, rising once again into a gentle incline which
led to a low, rounded sky-line.  It was here, while we crossed the
first of these hills, that an incident occurred which may or may not
have been important.

Professor Challenger, who with the two local Indians was in the van of
the party, stopped suddenly and pointed excitedly to the right.  As he
did so we saw, at the distance of a mile or so, something which
appeared to be a huge gray bird flap slowly up from the ground and skim
smoothly off, flying very low and straight, until it was lost among the
tree-ferns.

"Did you see it?" cried Challenger, in exultation.  "Summerlee, did you
see it?"

His colleague was staring at the spot where the creature had
disappeared.

"What do you claim that it was?" he asked.

"To the best of my belief, a pterodactyl."

Summerlee burst into derisive laughter "A pter-fiddlestick!" said he.
"It was a stork, if ever I saw one."

Challenger was too furious to speak.  He simply swung his pack upon his
back and continued upon his march.  Lord John came abreast of me,
however, and his face was more grave than was his wont.  He had his
Zeiss glasses in his hand.

"I focused it before it got over the trees," said he. "I won't
undertake to say what it was, but I'll risk my reputation as a
sportsman that it wasn't any bird that ever I clapped eyes on in my
life."

So there the matter stands.  Are we really just at the edge of the
unknown, encountering the outlying pickets of this lost world of which
our leader speaks?  I give you the incident as it occurred and you will
know as much as I do.  It stands alone, for we saw nothing more which
could be called remarkable.

And now, my readers, if ever I have any, I have brought you up the
broad river, and through the screen of rushes, and down the green
tunnel, and up the long slope of palm trees, and through the bamboo
brake, and across the plain of tree-ferns.  At last our destination lay
in full sight of us.  When we had crossed the second ridge we saw
before us an irregular, palm-studded plain, and then the line of high
red cliffs which I have seen in the picture.  There it lies, even as I
write, and there can be no question that it is the same.  At the
nearest point it is about seven miles from our present camp, and it
curves away, stretching as far as I can see.  Challenger struts about
like a prize peacock, and Summerlee is silent, but still sceptical.
Another day should bring some of our doubts to an end.  Meanwhile, as
Jose, whose arm was pierced by a broken bamboo, insists upon returning,
I send this letter back in his charge, and only hope that it may
eventually come to hand.  I will write again as the occasion serves.  I
have enclosed with this a rough chart of our journey, which may have
the effect of making the account rather easier to understand.




                            CHAPTER IX

                  "Who could have Foreseen it?"

A dreadful thing has happened to us.  Who could have foreseen it?  I
cannot foresee any end to our troubles.  It may be that we are
condemned to spend our whole lives in this strange, inaccessible place.
I am still so confused that I can hardly think clearly of the facts of
the present or of the chances of the future.  To my astounded senses
the one seems most terrible and the other as black as night.

No men have ever found themselves in a worse position; nor is there any
use in disclosing to you our exact geographical situation and asking
our friends for a relief party.  Even if they could send one, our fate
will in all human probability be decided long before it could arrive in
South America.

We are, in truth, as far from any human aid as if we were in the moon.
If we are to win through, it is only our own qualities which can save
us.  I have as companions three remarkable men, men of great
brain-power and of unshaken courage.  There lies our one and only hope.
It is only when I look upon the untroubled faces of my comrades that I
see some glimmer through the darkness.  Outwardly I trust that I appear
as unconcerned as they.  Inwardly I am filled with apprehension.

Let me give you, with as much detail as I can, the sequence of events
which have led us to this catastrophe.

When I finished my last letter I stated that we were within seven miles
from an enormous line of ruddy cliffs, which encircled, beyond all
doubt, the plateau of which Professor Challenger spoke.  Their height,
as we approached them, seemed to me in some places to be greater than
he had stated--running up in parts to at least a thousand feet--and
they were curiously striated, in a manner which is, I believe,
characteristic of basaltic upheavals.  Something of the sort is to be
seen in Salisbury Crags at Edinburgh.  The summit showed every sign of
a luxuriant vegetation, with bushes near the edge, and farther back
many high trees.  There was no indication of any life that we could see.

That night we pitched our camp immediately under the cliff--a most wild
and desolate spot.  The crags above us were not merely perpendicular,
but curved outwards at the top, so that ascent was out of the question.
Close to us was the high thin pinnacle of rock which I believe I
mentioned earlier in this narrative.  It is like a broad red church
spire, the top of it being level with the plateau, but a great chasm
gaping between.  On the summit of it there grew one high tree.  Both
pinnacle and cliff were comparatively low--some five or six hundred
feet, I should think.

"It was on that," said Professor Challenger, pointing to this tree,
"that the pterodactyl was perched.  I climbed half-way up the rock
before I shot him.  I am inclined to think that a good mountaineer like
myself could ascend the rock to the top, though he would, of course, be
no nearer to the plateau when he had done so."

As Challenger spoke of his pterodactyl I glanced at Professor
Summerlee, and for the first time I seemed to see some signs of a
dawning credulity and repentance.  There was no sneer upon his thin
lips, but, on the contrary, a gray, drawn look of excitement and
amazement.  Challenger saw it, too, and reveled in the first taste of
victory.

"Of course," said he,  with his clumsy and ponderous sarcasm,
"Professor Summerlee will understand that when I speak of a pterodactyl
I mean a stork--only it is the kind of stork which has no feathers, a
leathery skin, membranous wings, and teeth in its jaws."  He grinned
and blinked and bowed until his colleague turned and walked away.

In the morning, after a frugal breakfast of coffee and manioc--we had
to be economical of our stores--we held a council of war as to the best
method of ascending to the plateau above us.

Challenger presided with a solemnity as if he were the Lord Chief
Justice on the Bench.  Picture him seated upon a rock, his absurd
boyish straw hat tilted on the back of his head, his supercilious eyes
dominating us from under his drooping lids, his great black beard
wagging as he slowly defined our present situation and our future
movements.

Beneath him you might have seen the three of us--myself, sunburnt,
young, and vigorous after our open-air tramp; Summerlee, solemn but
still critical, behind his eternal pipe; Lord John, as keen as a
razor-edge, with his supple, alert figure leaning upon his rifle, and
his eager eyes fixed eagerly upon the speaker.  Behind us were grouped
the two swarthy half-breeds and the little knot of Indians, while in
front and above us towered those huge, ruddy ribs of rocks which kept
us from our goal.

"I need not say," said our leader, "that on the occasion of my last
visit I exhausted every means of climbing the cliff, and where I failed
I do not think that anyone else is likely to succeed, for I am
something of a mountaineer.  I had none of the appliances of a
rock-climber with me, but I have taken the precaution to bring them
now.  With their aid I am positive I could climb that detached pinnacle
to the summit; but so long as the main cliff overhangs, it is vain to
attempt ascending that.  I was hurried upon my last visit by the
approach of the rainy season and by the exhaustion of my supplies.
These considerations limited my time, and I can only claim that I have
surveyed about six miles of the cliff to the east of us, finding no
possible way up.  What, then, shall we now do?"

"There seems to be only one reasonable course," said Professor
Summerlee.  "If you have explored the east, we should travel along the
base of the cliff to the west, and seek for a practicable point for our
ascent."

"That's it," said Lord John.  "The odds are that this plateau is of no
great size, and we shall travel round it until we either find an easy
way up it, or come back to the point from which we started."

"I have already explained to our young friend here," said Challenger
(he has a way of alluding to me as if I were a school child ten years
old), "that it is quite impossible that there should be an easy way up
anywhere, for the simple reason that if there were the summit would not
be isolated, and those conditions would not obtain which have effected
so singular an interference with the general laws of survival.  Yet I
admit that there may very well be places where an expert human climber
may reach the summit, and yet a cumbrous and heavy animal be unable to
descend.  It is certain that there is a point where an ascent is
possible."

"How do you know that, sir?" asked Summerlee, sharply.

"Because my predecessor, the American Maple White, actually made such
an ascent.  How otherwise could he have seen the monster which he
sketched in his notebook?"

"There you reason somewhat ahead of the proved facts," said the
stubborn Summerlee.  "I admit your plateau, because I have seen it; but
I have not as yet satisfied myself that it contains any form of life
whatever."

"What you admit, sir, or what you do not admit, is really of
inconceivably small importance.  I am glad to perceive that the plateau
itself has actually obtruded itself upon your intelligence." He glanced
up at it, and then, to our amazement, he sprang from his rock, and,
seizing Summerlee by the neck, he tilted his face into the air.  "Now
sir!" he shouted, hoarse with excitement.  "Do I help you to realize
that the plateau contains some animal life?"

I have said that a thick fringe of green overhung the edge of the
cliff.  Out of this there had emerged a black, glistening object.  As
it came slowly forth and overhung the chasm, we saw that it was a very
large snake with a peculiar flat, spade-like head.  It wavered and
quivered above us for a minute, the morning sun gleaming upon its
sleek, sinuous coils.  Then it slowly drew inwards and disappeared.

Summerlee had been so interested that he had stood unresisting while
Challenger tilted his head into the air.  Now he shook his colleague
off and came back to his dignity.

"I should be glad, Professor Challenger," said he, "if you could see
your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me
by the chin.  Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does
not appear to justify such a liberty."

"But there is life upon the plateau all the same," his colleague
replied in triumph.  "And now, having demonstrated this important
conclusion so that it is clear to anyone, however prejudiced or obtuse,
I am of opinion that we cannot do better than break up our camp and
travel to westward until we find some means of ascent."

The ground at the foot of the cliff was rocky and broken so that the
going was slow and difficult.  Suddenly we came, however, upon
something which cheered our hearts.  It was the site of an old
encampment, with several empty Chicago meat tins, a bottle labeled
"Brandy," a broken tin-opener, and a quantity of other travelers'
debris.  A crumpled, disintegrated newspaper revealed itself as the
Chicago Democrat, though the date had been obliterated.

"Not mine," said Challenger.  "It must be Maple White's."

Lord John had been gazing curiously at a great tree-fern which
overshadowed the encampment.  "I say, look at this," said he.  "I
believe it is meant for a sign-post."

A slip of hard wood had been nailed to the tree in such a way as to
point to the westward.

"Most certainly a sign-post," said Challenger.  "What else?  Finding
himself upon a dangerous errand, our pioneer has left this sign so that
any party which follows him may know the way he has taken.  Perhaps we
shall come upon some other indications as we proceed."

We did indeed, but they were of a terrible and most unexpected nature.
Immediately beneath the cliff there grew a considerable patch of high
bamboo, like that which we had traversed in our journey.  Many of these
stems were twenty feet high, with sharp, strong tops, so that even as
they stood they made formidable spears.  We were passing along the edge
of this cover when my eye was caught by the gleam of something white
within it.  Thrusting in my head between the stems, I found myself
gazing at a fleshless skull.  The whole skeleton was there, but the
skull had detached itself and lay some feet nearer to the open.

With a few blows from the machetes of our Indians we cleared the spot
and were able to study the details of this old tragedy.  Only a few
shreds of clothes could still be distinguished, but there were the
remains of boots upon the bony feet, and it was very clear that the
dead man was a European.  A gold watch by Hudson, of New York, and a
chain which held a stylographic pen, lay among the bones.  There was
also a silver cigarette-case, with "J. C., from A. E. S.," upon the
lid.  The state of the metal seemed to show that the catastrophe had
occurred no great time before.

"Who can he be?" asked Lord John.  "Poor devil! every bone in his body
seems to be broken."

"And the bamboo grows through his smashed ribs," said Summerlee.  "It
is a fast-growing plant, but it is surely inconceivable that this body
could have been here while the canes grew to be twenty feet in length."

"As to the man's identity," said Professor Challenger, "I have no doubt
whatever upon that point.  As I made my way up the river before I
reached you at the fazenda I instituted very particular inquiries about
Maple White.  At Para they knew nothing.  Fortunately, I had a definite
clew, for there was a particular picture in his sketch-book which
showed him taking lunch with a certain ecclesiastic at Rosario.  This
priest I was able to find, and though he proved a very argumentative
fellow, who took it absurdly amiss that I should point out to him the
corrosive effect which modern science must have upon his beliefs, he
none the less gave me some positive information.  Maple White passed
Rosario four years ago, or two years before I saw his dead body.  He
was not alone at the time, but there was a friend, an American named
James Colver, who remained in the boat and did not meet this
ecclesiastic.  I think, therefore, that there can be no doubt that we
are now looking upon the remains of this James Colver."

"Nor," said Lord John, "is there much doubt as to how he met his death.
He has fallen or been chucked from the top, and so been impaled.  How
else could he come by his broken bones, and how could he have been
stuck through by these canes with their points so high above our heads?"

A hush came over us as we stood round these shattered remains and
realized the truth of Lord John Roxton's words.  The beetling head of
the cliff projected over the cane-brake.  Undoubtedly he had fallen
from above.  But had he fallen?  Had it been an accident?  Or--already
ominous and terrible possibilities began to form round that unknown
land.

We moved off in silence, and continued to coast round the line of
cliffs, which were as even and unbroken as some of those monstrous
Antarctic ice-fields which I have seen depicted as stretching from
horizon to horizon and towering high above the mast-heads of the
exploring vessel.

In five miles we saw no rift or break.  And then suddenly we perceived
something which filled us with new hope.  In a hollow of the rock,
protected from rain, there was drawn a rough arrow in chalk, pointing
still to the westwards.

"Maple White again," said Professor Challenger.  "He had some
presentiment that worthy footsteps would follow close behind him."

"He had chalk, then?"

"A box of colored chalks was among the effects I found in his knapsack.
I remember that the white one was worn to a stump."

"That is certainly good evidence," said Summerlee.  "We can only accept
his guidance and follow on to the westward."

We had proceeded some five more miles when again we saw a white arrow
upon the rocks.  It was at a point where the face of the cliff was for
the first time split into a narrow cleft.  Inside the cleft was a
second guidance mark, which pointed right up it with the tip somewhat
elevated, as if the spot indicated were above the level of the ground.

It was a solemn place, for the walls were so gigantic and the slit of
blue sky so narrow and so obscured by a double fringe of verdure, that
only a dim and shadowy light penetrated to the bottom.  We had had no
food for many hours, and were very weary with the stony and irregular
journey, but our nerves were too strung to allow us to halt.  We
ordered the camp to be pitched, however, and, leaving the Indians to
arrange it, we four, with the two half-breeds, proceeded up the narrow
gorge.

It was not more than forty feet across at the mouth, but it rapidly
closed until it ended in an acute angle, too straight and smooth for an
ascent.  Certainly it was not this which our pioneer had attempted to
indicate.  We made our way back--the whole gorge was not more than a
quarter of a mile deep--and then suddenly the quick eyes of Lord John
fell upon what we were seeking.  High up above our heads, amid the dark
shadows, there was one circle of deeper gloom.  Surely it could only be
the opening of a cave.

The base of the cliff was heaped with loose stones at the spot, and it
was not difficult to clamber up.  When we reached it, all doubt was
removed.  Not only was it an opening into the rock, but on the side of
it there was marked once again the sign of the arrow.  Here was the
point, and this the means by which Maple White and his ill-fated
comrade had made their ascent.

We were too excited to return to the camp, but must make our first
exploration at once.  Lord John had an electric torch in his knapsack,
and this had to serve us as light.  He advanced, throwing his little
clear circlet of yellow radiance before him, while in single file we
followed at his heels.

The cave had evidently been water-worn, the sides being smooth and the
floor covered with rounded stones.  It was of such a size that a single
man could just fit through by stooping.  For fifty yards it ran almost
straight into the rock, and then it ascended at an angle of forty-five.
Presently this incline became even steeper, and we found ourselves
climbing upon hands and knees among loose rubble which slid from
beneath us.  Suddenly an exclamation broke from Lord Roxton.

"It's blocked!" said he.

Clustering behind him we saw in the yellow field of light a wall of
broken basalt which extended to the ceiling.

"The roof has fallen in!"

In vain we dragged out some of the pieces.  The only effect was that
the larger ones became detached and threatened to roll down the
gradient and crush us.  It was evident that the obstacle was far beyond
any efforts which we could make to remove it.  The road by which Maple
White had ascended was no longer available.

Too much cast down to speak, we stumbled down the dark tunnel and made
our way back to the camp.

One incident occurred, however, before we left the gorge, which is of
importance in view of what came afterwards.

We had gathered in a little group at the bottom of the chasm, some
forty feet beneath the mouth of the cave, when a huge rock rolled
suddenly downwards--and shot past us with tremendous force.  It was the
narrowest escape for one or all of us.  We could not ourselves see
whence the rock had come, but our half-breed servants, who were still
at the opening of the cave, said that it had flown past them, and must
therefore have fallen from the summit.  Looking upwards, we could see
no sign of movement above us amidst the green jungle which topped the
cliff.  There could be little doubt, however, that the stone was aimed
at us, so the incident surely pointed to humanity--and malevolent
humanity--upon the plateau.

We withdrew hurriedly from the chasm, our minds full of this new
development and its bearing upon our plans.  The situation was
difficult enough before, but if the obstructions of Nature were
increased by the deliberate opposition of man, then our case was indeed
a hopeless one.  And yet, as we looked up at that beautiful fringe of
verdure only a few hundreds of feet above our heads, there was not one
of us who could conceive the idea of returning to London until we had
explored it to its depths.

On discussing the situation, we determined that our best course was to
continue to coast round the plateau in the hope of finding some other
means of reaching the top.  The line of cliffs, which had decreased
considerably in height, had already begun to trend from west to north,
and if we could take this as representing the arc of a circle, the
whole circumference could not be very great.  At the worst, then, we
should be back in a few days at our starting-point.

We made a march that day which totaled some two-and-twenty miles,
without any change in our prospects.  I may mention that our aneroid
shows us that in the continual incline which we have ascended since we
abandoned our canoes we have risen to no less than three thousand feet
above sea-level.  Hence there is a considerable change both in the
temperature and in the vegetation.  We have shaken off some of that
horrible insect life which is the bane of tropical travel.  A few palms
still survive, and many tree-ferns, but the Amazonian trees have been
all left behind.  It was pleasant to see the convolvulus, the
passion-flower, and the begonia, all reminding me of home, here among
these inhospitable rocks.  There was a red begonia just the same color
as one that is kept in a pot in the window of a certain villa in
Streatham--but I am drifting into private reminiscence.

That night--I am still speaking of the first day of our
circumnavigation of the plateau--a great experience awaited us, and one
which for ever set at rest any doubt which we could have had as to the
wonders so near us.

You will realize as you read it, my dear Mr. McArdle, and possibly for
the first time that the paper has not sent me on a wild-goose chase,
and that there is inconceivably fine copy waiting for the world
whenever we have the Professor's leave to make use of it.  I shall not
dare to publish these articles unless I can bring back my proofs to
England, or I shall be hailed as the journalistic Munchausen of all
time.  I have no doubt that you feel the same way yourself, and that
you would not care to stake the whole credit of the Gazette upon this
adventure until we can meet the chorus of criticism and scepticism
which such articles must of necessity elicit.  So this wonderful
incident, which would make such a headline for the old paper, must
still wait its turn in the editorial drawer.

And yet it was all over in a flash, and there was no sequel to it, save
in our own convictions.

What occurred was this.  Lord John had shot an ajouti--which is a
small, pig-like animal--and, half of it having been given to the
Indians, we were cooking the other half upon our fire.  There is a
chill in the  air after dark, and we had all drawn close to the blaze.
The night was moonless, but there were some stars, and one could see
for a little distance across the plain.  Well, suddenly out of the
darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like
an aeroplane.  The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a
canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long,
snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak,
filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth.  The next instant
it was gone--and so was our dinner.  A huge black shadow, twenty feet
across, skimmed up into the air; for an instant the monster wings
blotted out the stars, and then it vanished over the brow of the cliff
above us.  We all sat in amazed silence round the fire, like the heroes
of Virgil when the Harpies came down upon them.  It was Summerlee who
was the first to speak.

"Professor Challenger," said he, in a solemn voice, which quavered with
emotion, "I owe you an apology.  Sir, I am very much in the wrong, and
I beg that you will forget what is past."

It was handsomely said, and the two men for the first time shook hands.
So much we have gained by this clear vision of our first pterodactyl.
It was worth a stolen supper to bring two such men together.

But if prehistoric life existed upon the plateau it was not
superabundant, for we had no further glimpse of it during the next
three days.  During this time we traversed a barren and forbidding
country, which alternated between stony desert and desolate marshes
full of many wild-fowl, upon the north and east of the cliffs.  From
that direction the place is really inaccessible, and, were it not for a
hardish ledge which runs at the very base of the precipice, we should
have had to turn back.  Many times we were up to our waists in the
slime and blubber of an old, semi-tropical swamp.  To make matters
worse, the place seemed to be a favorite breeding-place of the Jaracaca
snake, the most venomous and aggressive in South America.  Again and
again these horrible creatures came writhing and springing towards us
across the surface of this putrid bog, and it was only by keeping our
shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them.  One
funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from
some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare
memory in my mind.  It seems to have been a special nest of these
vermins, and the slopes were alive with them, all writhing in our
direction, for it is a peculiarity of the Jaracaca that he will always
attack man at first sight.  There were too many for us to shoot, so we
fairly took to our heels and ran until we were exhausted.  I shall
always remember as we looked back how far behind we could see the heads
and necks of our horrible pursuers rising and falling amid the reeds.
Jaracaca Swamp we named it in the map which we are constructing.

The cliffs upon the farther side had lost their ruddy tint, being
chocolate-brown in color; the vegetation was more scattered along the
top of them, and they had sunk to three or four hundred feet in height,
but in no place did we find any point where they could be ascended.  If
anything, they were more impossible than at the first point where we
had met them.  Their absolute steepness is indicated in the photograph
which I took over the stony desert.

"Surely," said I, as we discussed the situation, "the rain must find
its way down somehow.  There are bound to be water-channels in the
rocks."

"Our young friend has glimpses of lucidity," said Professor Challenger,
patting me upon the shoulder.

"The rain must go somewhere," I repeated.

"He keeps a firm grip upon actuality.  The only drawback is that we
have conclusively proved by ocular demonstration that there are no
water channels down the rocks."

"Where, then, does it go?" I persisted.

"I think it may be fairly assumed that if it does not come outwards it
must run inwards."

"Then there is a lake in the center."

"So I should suppose."

"It is more than likely that the lake may be an old crater," said
Summerlee.  "The whole formation is, of course, highly volcanic.  But,
however that may be, I should expect to find the surface of the plateau
slope inwards with a considerable sheet of water in the center, which
may drain off, by some subterranean channel, into the marshes of the
Jaracaca Swamp."

"Or evaporation might preserve an equilibrium," remarked Challenger,
and the two learned men wandered off into one of their usual scientific
arguments, which were as comprehensible as Chinese to the layman.

On the sixth day we completed our first circuit of the cliffs, and
found ourselves back at the first camp, beside the isolated pinnacle of
rock.  We were a disconsolate party, for nothing could have been more
minute than our investigation, and it was absolutely certain that there
was no single point where the most active human being could possibly
hope to scale the cliff.  The place which Maple White's chalk-marks had
indicated as his own means of access was now entirely impassable.

What were we to do now?  Our stores of provisions, supplemented by our
guns, were holding out well, but the day must come when they would need
replenishment.  In a couple of months the rains might be expected, and
we should be washed out of our camp.  The rock was harder than marble,
and any attempt at cutting a path for so great a height was more than
our time or resources would admit.  No wonder that we looked gloomily
at each other that night, and sought our blankets with hardly a word
exchanged.  I remember that as I dropped off to sleep my last
recollection was that Challenger was squatting, like a monstrous
bull-frog, by the fire, his huge head in his hands, sunk apparently in
the deepest thought, and entirely oblivious to the good-night which I
wished him.

But it was a very different Challenger who greeted us in the morning--a
Challenger with contentment and self-congratulation shining from his
whole person.  He faced us as we assembled for breakfast with a
deprecating false modesty in his eyes, as who should say, "I know that
I deserve all that you can say, but I pray you to spare my blushes by
not saying it."  His beard bristled exultantly, his chest was thrown
out, and his hand was thrust into the front of his jacket.  So, in his
fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the vacant pedestal in
Trafalgar Square, and adding one more to the horrors of the London
streets.

"Eureka!" he cried, his teeth shining through his beard.  "Gentlemen,
you may congratulate me and we may congratulate each other.  The
problem is solved."

"You have found a way up?"

"I venture to think so."

"And where?"

For answer he pointed to the spire-like pinnacle upon our right.

Our faces--or mine, at least--fell as we surveyed it.  That it could be
climbed we had our companion's assurance.  But a horrible abyss lay
between it and the plateau.

"We can never get across," I gasped.

"We can at least all reach the summit," said he.  "When we are up I may
be able to show you that the resources of an inventive mind are not yet
exhausted."

After breakfast we unpacked the bundle in which our leader had brought
his climbing accessories.  From it he took a coil of the strongest and
lightest rope, a hundred and fifty feet in length, with climbing irons,
clamps, and other devices.  Lord John was an experienced mountaineer,
and Summerlee had done some rough climbing at various times, so that I
was really the novice at rock-work of the party; but my strength and
activity may have made up for my want of experience.

It was not in reality a very stiff task, though there were moments
which made my hair bristle upon my head.  The first half was perfectly
easy, but from there upwards it became continually steeper until, for
the last fifty feet, we were literally clinging with our fingers and
toes to tiny ledges and crevices in the rock.  I could not have
accomplished it, nor could Summerlee, if Challenger had not gained the
summit (it was extraordinary to see such activity in so unwieldy a
creature) and there fixed the rope round the trunk of the considerable
tree which grew there.  With this as our support, we were soon able to
scramble up the jagged wall until we found ourselves upon the small
grassy platform, some twenty-five feet each way, which formed the
summit.

The first impression which I received when I had recovered my breath
was of the extraordinary view over the country which we had traversed.
The whole Brazilian plain seemed to lie beneath us, extending away and
away until it ended in dim blue mists upon the farthest sky-line.  In
the foreground was the long slope, strewn with rocks and dotted with
tree-ferns; farther off in the middle distance, looking over the
saddle-back hill, I could just see the yellow and green mass of bamboos
through which we had passed; and then, gradually, the vegetation
increased until it formed the huge forest which extended as far as the
eyes could reach, and for a good two thousand miles beyond.

I was still drinking in this wonderful panorama when the heavy hand of
the Professor fell upon my shoulder.

"This way, my young friend," said he; "vestigia nulla retrorsum.  Never
look rearwards, but always to our glorious goal."

The level of the plateau, when I turned, was exactly that on which we
stood, and the green bank of bushes, with occasional trees, was so near
that it was difficult to realize how inaccessible it remained.  At a
rough guess the gulf was forty feet across, but, so far as I could see,
it might as well have been forty miles.  I placed one arm round the
trunk of the tree and leaned over the abyss.  Far down were the small
dark figures of our servants, looking up at us.  The wall was
absolutely precipitous, as was that which faced me.

"This is indeed curious," said the creaking voice of Professor
Summerlee.

I turned, and found that he was examining with great interest the tree
to which I clung.  That smooth bark and those small, ribbed leaves
seemed familiar to my eyes.  "Why," I cried, "it's a beech!"

"Exactly," said Summerlee.  "A fellow-countryman in a far land."

"Not only a fellow-countryman, my good sir," said Challenger, "but
also, if I may be allowed to enlarge your simile, an ally of the first
value.  This beech tree will be our saviour."

"By George!" cried Lord John, "a bridge!"

"Exactly, my friends, a bridge!  It is not for nothing that I expended
an hour last night in focusing my mind upon the situation.  I have some
recollection of once remarking to our young friend here that G. E. C.
is at his best when his back is to the wall.  Last night you will admit
that all our backs were to the wall.  But where will-power and
intellect go together, there is always a way out.  A drawbridge had to
be found which could be dropped across the abyss.  Behold it!"

It was certainly a brilliant idea.  The tree was a good sixty feet in
height, and if it only fell the right way it would easily cross the
chasm.  Challenger had slung the camp axe over his shoulder when he
ascended.  Now he handed it to me.

"Our young friend has the thews and sinews," said he.  "I think he will
be the most useful at this task.  I must beg, however, that you will
kindly refrain from thinking for yourself, and that you will do exactly
what you are told."

Under his direction I cut such gashes in the sides of the trees as
would ensure that it should fall as we desired.  It had already a
strong, natural tilt in the direction of the plateau, so that the
matter was not difficult.  Finally I set to work in earnest upon the
trunk, taking turn and turn with Lord John.  In a little over an hour
there was a loud crack, the tree swayed forward, and then crashed over,
burying its branches among the bushes on the farther side.  The severed
trunk rolled to the very edge of our platform, and for one terrible
second we all thought it was over.  It balanced itself, however, a few
inches from the edge, and there was our bridge to the unknown.

All of us, without a word, shook hands with Professor Challenger, who
raised his straw hat and bowed deeply to each in turn.

"I claim the honor," said he, "to be the first to cross to the unknown
land--a fitting subject, no doubt, for some future historical painting."

He had approached the bridge when Lord John laid his hand upon his coat.

"My dear chap," said he, "I really cannot allow it."

"Cannot allow it, sir!"  The head went back and the beard forward.

"When it is a matter of science, don't you know, I follow your lead
because you are by way of bein' a man of science.  But it's up to you
to follow me when you come into my department."

"Your department, sir?"

"We all have our professions, and soldierin' is mine.  We are,
accordin' to my ideas, invadin' a new country, which may or may not be
chock-full of enemies of sorts.  To barge blindly into it for want of a
little common sense and patience isn't my notion of management."

The remonstrance was too reasonable to be disregarded.  Challenger
tossed his head and shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"Well, sir, what do you propose?"

"For all I know there may be a tribe of cannibals waitin' for
lunch-time among those very bushes," said Lord John, looking across the
bridge.  "It's better to learn wisdom before you get into a
cookin'-pot; so we will content ourselves with hopin' that there is no
trouble waitin' for us, and at the same time we will act as if there
were.  Malone and I will go down again, therefore, and we will fetch up
the four rifles, together with Gomez and the other.  One man can then
go across and the rest will cover him with guns, until he sees that it
is safe for the whole crowd to come along."

Challenger sat down upon the cut stump and groaned his impatience; but
Summerlee and I were of one mind that Lord John was our leader when
such practical details were in question.  The climb was a more simple
thing now that the rope dangled down the face of the worst part of the
ascent.  Within an hour we had brought up the rifles and a shot-gun.
The half-breeds had ascended also, and under Lord John's orders they
had carried up a bale of provisions in case our first exploration
should be a long one.  We had each bandoliers of cartridges.

"Now, Challenger, if you really insist upon being the first man in,"
said Lord John, when every preparation was complete.

"I am much indebted to you for your gracious permission," said the
angry Professor; for never was a man so intolerant of every form of
authority.  "Since you are good enough to allow it, I shall most
certainly take it upon myself to act as pioneer upon this occasion."

Seating himself with a leg overhanging the abyss on each side, and his
hatchet slung upon his back, Challenger hopped his way across the trunk
and was soon at the other side.  He clambered up and waved his arms in
the air.

"At last!" he cried; "at last!"

I gazed anxiously at him, with a vague expectation that some terrible
fate would dart at him from the curtain of green behind him.  But all
was quiet, save that a strange, many-colored bird flew up from under
his feet and vanished among the trees.

Summerlee was the second.  His wiry energy is wonderful in so frail a
frame.  He insisted upon having two rifles slung upon his back, so that
both Professors were armed when he had made his transit.  I came next,
and tried hard not to look down into the horrible gulf over which I was
passing.  Summerlee held out the butt-end of his rifle, and an instant
later I was able to grasp his hand.  As to Lord John, he walked
across--actually walked without support!  He must have nerves of iron.

And there we were, the four of us, upon the dreamland, the lost world,
of Maple White.  To all of us it seemed the moment of our supreme
triumph.  Who could have guessed that it was the prelude to our supreme
disaster?  Let me say in a few words how the crushing blow fell upon us.

We had turned away from the edge, and had penetrated about fifty yards
of close brushwood, when there came a frightful rending crash from
behind us.  With one impulse we rushed back the way that we had come.
The bridge was gone!

Far down at the base of the cliff I saw, as I looked over, a tangled
mass of branches and splintered trunk.  It was our beech tree.  Had the
edge of the platform crumbled and let it through?  For a moment this
explanation was in all our minds.  The next, from the farther side of
the rocky pinnacle before us a swarthy face, the face of Gomez the
half-breed, was slowly protruded.  Yes, it was Gomez, but no longer the
Gomez of the demure smile and the mask-like expression.  Here was a
face with flashing eyes and distorted features, a face convulsed with
hatred and with the mad joy of gratified revenge.

"Lord Roxton!" he shouted.  "Lord John Roxton!"

"Well," said our companion, "here I am."

A shriek of laughter came across the abyss.

"Yes, there you are, you English dog, and there you will remain!  I
have waited and waited, and now has come my chance.  You found it hard
to get up; you will find it harder to get down.  You cursed fools, you
are trapped, every one of you!"

We were too astounded to speak.  We could only stand there staring in
amazement.  A great broken bough upon the grass showed whence he had
gained his leverage to tilt over our bridge.  The face had vanished,
but presently it was up again, more frantic than before.

"We nearly killed you with a stone at the cave," he cried; "but this is
better.  It is slower and more terrible.  Your bones will whiten up
there, and none will know where you lie or come to cover them.  As you
lie dying, think of Lopez, whom you shot five years ago on the Putomayo
River.  I am his brother, and, come what will I will die happy now, for
his memory has been avenged." A furious hand was shaken at us, and then
all was qu

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