The People the Time forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs (best free ereader .TXT) 📖

These
boxes contain the various parts of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose
assembling this upon the strip of beach described in Bowen's
manuscript--the beach where he found the dead body of the apelike
man--provided there is sufficient space above high water; otherwise
we shall have to assemble it on deck and lower it over the side.
After it is assembled, I shall carry tackle and ropes to the
cliff-top, and then it will be comparatively simple to hoist the
search-party and its supplies in safety. Or I can make a sufficient
number of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the
barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance
reveals."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gad," exclaimed Short, "we ought to be hearing from him pretty
soon!"

Hollis laughed nervously. "He's been gone only ten minutes," he
announced.

"Seems like an hour," snapped Short. "What's that? Did you hear
that? He's firing! It's the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and here we
are as helpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand miles away!
We can't do a thing. We don't know what's happening. Why didn't
he let one of us go with him?"

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


Chapter 2


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The further shore of the sea revealed a much narrower strip of
land between the cliffs and the water than upon the western side;
but it was a hillier and more open country. There were splendid
landing-places, and in the distance, toward the north, I thought
I descried a village; but of that I was not positive. However, as
I approached the land, I saw a number of human figures apparently
pursuing one who fled across a broad expanse of meadow. As I
dropped lower to have a better look at these people, they caught
the whirring of my propellers and looked aloft. They paused an
instant--pursuers and pursued; and then they broke and raced for
the shelter of the nearest wood. Almost instantaneously a huge
bulk swooped down