Chapter I

Out of Time's Abyss

by Edgar R. Burroughs

CHAPTER I, OUT OF TIME'S ABYSS by Edgar R. Burroughs
An eText from LiteratureClassics.com.

Please see the eText readme for important copyright information (available from the options menu above if you are browsing online or as a separate file in the archive if you are browsing offline.)




This is the tale of Bradley after he left Fort Dinosaur upon the
west coast of the great lake that is in the center of the island.

Upon the fourth day of September, 1916, he set out with four
companions, Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet, to search along
the base of the barrier cliffs for a point at which they might
be scaled.

Through the heavy Caspakian air, beneath the swollen sun, the
five men marched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep
in lush, jungle grasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now
across open meadow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging
into dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous
ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above
their heads.

About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over
them moved and swung and soared the countless forms of Caspak's
teeming life. Always were they menaced by some frightful thing
and seldom were their rifles cool, yet even in the brief time
they had dwelt upon Caprona they had become callous to danger,
so that they swung along laughing and chatting like soldiers on
a summer hike.

"This reminds me of South Clark Street," remarked Brady, who had
once served on the traffic squad in Chicago; and as no one asked
him why, he volunteered that it was "because it's no place for
an Irishman."

"South Clark Street and heaven have something in common, then,"
suggested Sinclair. James and Tippet laughed, and then a hideous
growl broke from a dense thicket ahead and diverted their
attention to other matters.

"One of them behemoths of 'Oly Writ," muttered Tippet as they came
to a halt and with guns ready awaited the almost inevitable charge.

"Hungry lot o' beggars, these," said Bradley; "always trying to
eat everything they see."

For a moment no further sound came from the thicket. "He may be
feeding now," suggested Bradley. "We'll try to go around him.
Can't waste ammunition. Won't last forever. Follow me." And he
set off at right angles to their former course, hoping to avert
a charge. They had taken a dozen steps, perhaps, when the
thicket moved to the advance of the thing within it, the leafy
branches parted, and the hideous head of a gigantic bear emerged.

"Pick your trees," whispered Bradley. "Can't waste ammunition."

The men looked about them. The bear took a couple of steps
forward, still growling menacingly. He was exposed to the
shoulders now. Tippet took one look at the monster and bolted
for the nearest tree; and then the bear charged. He charged
straight for Tippet. The other men scattered for the various
trees they had selected--all except Bradley. He stood watching
Tippet and the bear. The man had a good start and the tree was
not far away; but the speed of the enormous creature behind him
was something to marvel at, yet Tippet was in a fair way to make
his sanctuary when his foot caught in a tangle of roots and down
he went, his rifle flying from his hand and falling several
yards away. Instantly Bradley's piece was at his shoulder, there
was a sharp report answered by a roar of mingled rage and pain
from the carnivore. Tippet attempted to scramble to his feet.

"Lie still!" shouted Bradley. "Can't waste ammunition."

The bear halted in its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley and then
back again toward Tippet. Again the former's rifle spit angrily,
and the bear turned again in his direction. Bradley shouted
loudly. "Come on, you behemoth of Holy Writ!" he cried. "Come on,
you duffer! Can't waste ammunition." And as he saw the bear
apparently upon the verge of deciding to charge him, he
encouraged the idea by backing rapidly away, knowing that an
angry beast will more often charge one who moves than one who
lies still.

And the bear did charge. Like a bolt of lightning he flashed
down upon the Englishman. "Now run!" Bradley called to Tippet
and himself turned in flight toward a nearby tree. The other
men, now safely ensconced upon various branches, watched the race
with breathless interest. Would Bradley make it? It seemed
scarce possible. And if he didn't! James gasped at the thought.
Six feet at the shoulder stood the frightful mountain of
blood-mad flesh and bone and sinew that was bearing down with the
speed of an express train upon the seemingly slow-moving man.

It all happened in a few seconds; but they were seconds that
seemed like hours to the men who watched. They saw Tippet leap
to his feet at Bradley's shouted warning. They saw him run,
stooping to recover his rifle as he passed the spot where it
had fallen. They saw him glance back toward Bradley, and then they
saw him stop short of the tree that might have given him safety
and turn back in the direction of the bear. Firing as he ran,
Tippet raced after the great cave bear--the monstrous thing that
should have been extinct ages before--ran for it and fired even
as the beast was almost upon Bradley. The men in the trees
scarcely breathed. It seemed to them such a futile thing for
Tippet to do, and Tippet of all men! They had never looked upon
Tippet as a coward--there seemed to be no cowards among that
strangely assorted company that Fate had gathered together from
the four corners of the earth--but Tippet was considered a
cautious man. Overcautious, some thought him. How futile he and
his little pop-gun appeared as he dashed after that living engine
of destruction! But, oh, how glorious! It was some such thought
as this that ran through Brady's mind, though articulated it
might have been expressed otherwise, albeit more forcefully.

Just then it occurred to Brady to fire and he, too, opened upon
the bear, but at the same instant the animal stumbled and fell
forward, though still growling most fearsomely. Tippet never
stopped running or firing until he stood within a foot of the
brute, which lay almost touching Bradley and was already
struggling to regain its feet. Placing the muzzle of his gun
against the bear's ear, Tippet pulled the trigger. The creature
sank limply to the ground and Bradley scrambled to his feet.

"Good work, Tippet," he said. "Mightily obliged to you--awful
waste of ammunition, really."

And then they resumed the march and in fifteen minutes the
encounter had ceased even to be a topic of conversation.

For two days they continued upon their perilous way. Already the
cliffs loomed high and forbidding close ahead without sign of
break to encourage hope that somewhere they might be scaled.
Late in the afternoon the party crossed a small stream of warm
water upon the sluggishly moving surface of which floated
countless millions of tiny green eggs surrounded by a light scum
of the same color, though of a darker shade. Their past
experience of Caspak had taught them that they might expect to
come upon a stagnant pool of warm water if they followed the
stream to its source; but there they were almost certain to find
some of Caspak's grotesque, manlike creatures. Already since
they had disembarked from the U-33 after its perilous trip
through the subterranean channel beneath the barrier cliffs had
brought them into the inland sea of Caspak, had they encountered
what had appeared to be three distinct types of these creatures.
There had been the pure apes--huge, gorillalike beasts--and those
who walked, a trifle more erect and had features with just a
shade more of the human cast about them. Then there were men
like Ahm, whom they had captured and confined at the fort--Ahm,
the club-man. "Well-known club-man," Tyler had called him. Ahm
and his people had knowledge of a speech. They had a language,
in which they were unlike the race just inferior to them, and
they walked much more erect and were less hairy: but it was
principally the fact that they possessed a spoken language and
carried a weapon that differentiated them from the others.

All of these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In
common with the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of
nature as they seemed to understand it was to kill--kill--kill.
And so it was that Bradley had no desire to follow up the little
stream toward the pool near which were sure to be the caves of
some savage tribe, but fortune played him an unkind trick, for
the pool was much closer than he imagined, its southern end
reaching fully a mile south of the point at which they crossed
the stream, and so it was that after forcing their way through a
tangle of jungle vegetation they came out upon the edge of the
pool which they had wished to avoid.

Almost simultaneously there appeared south of them a party of
naked men armed with clubs and hatchets. Both parties halted as
they caught sight of one another. The men from the fort saw
before them a hunting party evidently returning to its caves or
village laden with meat. They were large men with features
closely resembling those of the African Negro though their
skins were white. Short hair grew upon a large portion of their
limbs and bodies, which still retained a considerable trace of
apish progenitors. They were, however, a distinctly higher type
than the Bo-lu, or club-men.

Bradley would have been glad to have averted a meeting; but as he
desired to lead his party south around the end of the pool, and
as it was hemmed in by the jungle on one side and the water on
the other, there seemed no escape from an encounter.

On the chance that he might avoid a clash, Bradley stepped
forward with upraised hand. "We are friends, " he called in the
tongue of Ahm, the Bolu, who had been held a prisoner at the
fort; "permit us to pass in peace. We will not harm you."

At this the hatchet-men set up a great jabbering with much
laughter, loud and boisterous. "No," shouted one, "you will not
harm us, for we shall kill you. Come! We kill! We kill!"
And with hideous shouts they charged down upon the Europeans.

"Sinclair, you may fire," said Bradley quietly." Pick off
the leader. Can't waste ammunition."

The Englishman raised his piece to his shoulder and took quick
aim at the breast of the yelling savage leaping toward them.
Directly behind the leader came another hatchet-man, and with the
report of Sinclair's rifle both warriors lunged forward in the
tall grass, pierced by the same bullet. The effect upon the rest
of the band was electrical. As one man they came to a sudden
halt, wheeled to the east and dashed into the jungle, where the
men could hear them forcing their way in an effort to put as much
distance as possible between themselves and the authors of this
new and frightful noise that killed warriors at a great distance.

Both the savages were dead when Bradley approached to examine
them, and as the Europeans gathered around, other eyes were bent
upon them with greater curiosity than they displayed for the
victim of Sinclair's bullet. When the party again took up the
march around the southern end of the pool the owner of the eyes
followed them--large, round eyes, almost expressionless except
for a certain cold cruelty which glinted malignly from under
their pale gray irises.

All unconscious of the stalker, the men came, late in the
afternoon, to a spot which seemed favorable as a campsite.
A cold spring bubbled from the base of a rocky formation which
overhung and partially encircled a small inclosure. At Bradley's
command, the men took up the duties assigned them--gathering
wood, building a cook-fire and preparing the evening meal.
It was while they were thus engaged that Brady's attention was
attracted by the dismal flapping of huge wings. He glanced up,
expecting to see one of the great flying reptiles of a bygone
age, his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. He had
groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed
maniac from a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he
looked up, he went white and staggered back.

"Gawd!" he almost screamed. "What is it?"

Attracted by Brady's cry the others seized their rifles as they
followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them
that was not moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady
spoke again in an almost inaudible voice. "Holy Mother protect
us--it's a banshee!"

Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of
danger, felt a strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as
slowly, not a hundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself
across the sky, its huge, round eyes glaring down upon them.
And until it disappeared over the tops of the trees of a near-by
wood the five men stood as though paralyzed, their eyes never
leaving the weird shape; nor never one of them appearing to recall
that he grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.

With the passing of the thing, came the reaction. Tippet sank to
the ground and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Gord," he moaned.
"Tyke me awy from this orful plice." Brady, recovered from the
first shock, swore loud and luridly. He called upon all the
saints to witness that he was unafraid and that anybody with half
an eye could have seen that the creature was nothing more than
"one av thim flyin' alligators" that they all were familiar with.

"Yes," said Sinclair with fine sarcasm, "we've saw so many of
them with white shrouds on 'em."

"Shut up, you fool!" growled Brady. "If you know so much, tell
us what it was after bein' then."

Then he turned toward Bradley. "What was it, sor, do you think?"
he asked.

Bradley shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "It looked like
a winged human being clothed in a flowing white robe. Its face
was more human than otherwise. That is the way it looked to me;
but what it really was I can't even guess, for such a creature is
as far beyond my experience or knowledge as it is beyond yours.
All that I am sure of is that whatever else it may have been, it
was quite material--it was no ghost; rather just another of the
strange forms of life which we have met here and with which we
should be accustomed by this time."

Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. "Yer cawn't tell
me," he cried. "Hi seen hit. Blime, Hi seen hit. Hit was ha
dead man flyin' through the hair. Didn't Hi see 'is heyes?
Oh, Gord! Didn't Hi see 'em?"

"It didn't look like any beast or reptile to me," spoke up Sinclair.
"It was lookin' right down at me when I looked up and I saw its
face plain as I see yours. It had big round eyes that looked all
cold and dead, and its cheeks were sunken in deep, and I could see
its yellow teeth behind thin, tight-drawn lips--like a man who had
been dead a long while, sir," he added, turning toward Bradley.

"Yes!" James had not spoken since the apparition had passed over them,
and now it was scarce speech which he uttered--rather a series of
articulate gasps. "Yes--dead--a--long--while. It--means something.
It--come--for some--one. For one--of
us. One--of us is goin'--
to die. I'm goin' to die!" he ended in a wail.

"Come! Come!" snapped Bradley. "Won't do. Won't do at all.
Get to work, all of you. Waste of time. Can't waste time."

His authoritative tones brought them all up standing, and
presently each was occupied with his own duties; but each worked
in silence and there was no singing and no bantering such as had
marked the making of previous camps. Not until they had eaten
and to each had been issued the little ration of smoking tobacco
allowed after each evening meal did any sign of a relaxation of
taut nerves appear. It was Brady who showed the first signs of
returning good spirits. He commenced humming "It's a Long Way to
Tipperary" and presently to voice the words, but he was well into
his third song before anyone joined him, and even then there
seemed a dismal note in even the gayest of tunes.

A huge fire blazed in the opening of their rocky shelter that the
prowling carnivora might be kept at bay; and always one man stood
on guard, watchfully alert against a sudden rush by some maddened
beast of the jungle. Beyond the fire, yellow-green spots of
flame appeared, moved restlessly about, disappeared and
reappeared, accompanied by a hideous chorus of screams and growls
and roars as the hungry meat-eaters hunting through the night
were attracted by the light or the scent of possible prey.

But to such sights and sounds as these the five men had
become callous. They sang or talked as unconcernedly as they
might have done in the bar-room of some publichouse at home.

Sinclair was standing guard. The others were listening to
Brady's description of traffic congestion at the Rush Street
bridge during the rush hour at night. The fire crackled cheerily.
The owners of the yellow-green eyes raised their frightful chorus
to the heavens. Conditions seemed again to have returned to normal.
And then, as though the hand of Death had reached out and touched
them all, the five men tensed into sudden rigidity.

Above the nocturnal diapason of the teeming jungle sounded a
dismal flapping of wings and over head, through the thick night,
a shadowy form passed across the diffused light of the flaring
camp-fire. Sinclair raised his rifle and fired. An eerie wail
floated down from above and the apparition, whatever it might
have been, was swallowed by the darkness. For several seconds
the listening men heard the sound of those dismally flapping wings
lessening in the distance until they could no longer be heard.

Bradley was the first to speak. "Shouldn't have fired,
Sinclair," he said; "can't waste ammunition." But there was
no note of censure in his tone. It was as though he understood
the nervous reaction that had compelled the other's act.

"I couldn't help it, sir," said Sinclair. "Lord, it would take
an iron man to keep from shootin' at that awful thing. Do you
believe in ghosts, sir?"

"No," replied Bradley. "No such things."

"I don't know about that," said Brady. "There was a woman
murdered over on the prairie near Brighton--her throat was cut
from ear to ear, and--"

"Shut up," snapped Bradley.

"My grandaddy used to live down Coppington wy," said Tippet.
"They were a hold ruined castle on a 'ill near by, hand at midnight
they used to see pale blue lights through the windows an 'ear--"

"Will you close your hatch!" demanded Bradley. "You fools will
have yourselves scared to death in a minute. Now go to sleep."

But there was little sleep in camp that night until utter
exhaustion overtook the harassed men toward morning; nor was
there any return of the weird creature that had set the nerves of
each of them on edge.

The following forenoon the party reached the base of the barrier
cliffs and for two days marched northward in an effort to
discover a break in the frowning abutment that raised its rocky
face almost perpendicularly above them, yet nowhere was there the
slightest indication that the cliffs were scalable.

Disheartened, Bradley determined to turn back toward the fort, as
he already had exceeded the time decided upon by Bowen Tyler and
himself for the expedition. The cliffs for many miles had been
trending in a northeasterly direction, indicating to Bradley that
they were approaching the northern extremity of the island.
According to the best of his calculations they had made
sufficient easting during the past two days to have brought them
to a point almost directly north of Fort Dinosaur and as nothing
could be gained by retracing their steps along the base of the
cliffs he decided to strike due south through the unexplored
country between them and the fort.

That night (September 9, 1916), they made camp a short distance
from the cliffs beside one of the numerous cool springs that are
to be found within Caspak, oftentimes close beside the still
more numerous warm and hot springs which feed the many pools.
After supper the men lay smoking and chatting among themselves.
Tippet was on guard. Fewer night prowlers threatened them, and
the men were commenting upon the fact that the farther north they
had traveled the smaller the number of all species of animals
became, though it was still present in what would have seemed
appalling plenitude in any other part of the world. The diminution
in reptilian life was the most noticeable change in the fauna of
northern Caspak. Here, however, were forms they had not met
elsewhere, several of which were of gigantic proportions.

According to their custom all, with the exception of the man on
guard, sought sleep early, nor, once disposed upon the ground for
slumber, were they long in finding it. It seemed to Bradley that
he had scarcely closed his eyes when he was brought to his feet,
wide awake, by a piercing scream which was punctuated by the
sharp report of a rifle from the direction of the fire where
Tippet stood guard. As he ran toward the man, Bradley heard
above him the same uncanny wail that had set every nerve on edge
several nights before, and the dismal flapping of huge wings.
He did not need to look up at the white-shrouded figure winging
slowly away into the night to know that their grim visitor
had returned.

The muscles of his arm, reacting to the sight and sound of the
menacing form, carried his hand to the butt of his pistol; but
after he had drawn the weapon, he immediately returned it to its
holster with a shrug.

"What for?" he muttered. "Can't waste ammunition." Then he
walked quickly to where Tippet lay sprawled upon his face.
By this time James, Brady and Sinclair were at his heels, each
with his rifle in readiness.

"Is he dead, sir?" whispered James as Bradley kneeled beside the
prostrate form.

Bradley turned Tippet over on his back and pressed an ear close
to the other's heart. In a moment he raised his head.
"Fainted," he announced. "Get water. Hurry!" Then he loosened
Tippet's shirt at the throat and when the water was brought,
threw a cupful in the man's face. Slowly Tippet regained
consciousness and sat up. At first he looked curiously into the
faces of the men about him; then an expression of terror
overspread his features. He shot a startled glance up into the
black void above and then burying his face in his arms began to
sob like a child.

"What's wrong, man?" demanded Bradley. "Buck up! Can't play
cry-baby. Waste of energy. What happened?"

"Wot 'appened, sir!" wailed Tippet. "Oh, Gord, sir! Hit came back.
Hit came for me, sir. Right hit did, sir; strite hat me, sir;
hand with long w'ite 'ands it clawed for me. Oh, Gord! Hit almost
caught me, sir. Hi'm has good as dead; Hi'm a marked man; that's
wot Hi ham. Hit was a-goin' for to carry me horf, sir."

"Stuff and nonsense," snapped Bradley. "Did you get a good look
at it?"

Tippet said that he did--a much better look than he wanted.
The thing had almost clutched him, and he had looked straight
into its eyes--"dead heyes in a dead face," he had described them.

"Wot was it after bein', do you think?" inquired Brady.

"Hit was Death," moaned Tippet, shuddering, and again a pall of
gloom fell upon the little party.

The following day Tippet walked as one in a trance. He never
spoke except in reply to a direct question, which more often than
not had to be repeated before it could attract his attention.
He insisted that he was already a dead man, for if the thing didn't
come for him during the day he would never live through another
night of agonized apprehension, waiting for the frightful end
that he was positive was in store for him. "I'll see to that,"
he said, and they all knew that Tippet meant to take his own life
before darkness set in.

Bradley tried to reason with him, in his short, crisp way, but
soon saw the futility of it; nor could he take the man's weapons
from him without subjecting him to almost certain death from any
of the numberless dangers that beset their way.

The entire party was moody and glum. There was none of the
bantering that had marked their intercourse before, even in the
face of blighting hardships and hideous danger. This was a new
menace that threatened them, something that they couldn't
explain; and so, naturally, it aroused within them superstitious
fear which Tippet's attitude only tended to augment. To add
further to their gloom, their way led through a dense forest,
where, on account of the underbrush, it was difficult to make
even a mile an hour. Constant watchfulness was required to avoid
the many snakes of various degrees of repulsiveness and enormity
that infested the wood; and the only ray of hope they had to
cling to was that the forest would, like the majority of
Caspakian forests, prove to be of no considerable extent.

Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque
creature of Titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees,
which here commenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what
appeared to be an enormous dragon devouring the carcass of
a mammoth. From frightful jaws to the tip of its long tail it
was fully forty feet in length. Its body was covered with plates
of thick skin which bore a striking resemblance to armor-plate.
The creature saw Bradley almost at the same instant that he saw
it and reared up on its enormous hind legs until its head towered
a full twenty-five feet above the ground. From the cavernous
jaws issued a hissing sound of a volume equal to the escaping steam
from the safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, and then the
creature came for the man.

"Scatter!" shouted Bradley to those behind him; and all but
Tippet heeded the warning. The man stood as though dazed, and
when Bradley saw the other's danger, he too stopped and wheeling
about sent a bullet into the massive body forcing its way through
the trees toward him. The shot struck the creature in the belly
where there was no protecting armor, eliciting a new note which
rose in a shrill whistle and ended in a wail. It was then that
Tippet appeared to come out of his trance, for with a cry of
terror he turned and fled to the left. Bradley, seeing that he
had as good an opportunity as the others to escape, now turned his
attention to extricating himself; and as the woods seemed dense
on the right, he ran in that direction, hoping that the close-set
boles would prevent pursuit on the part of the great reptile.
The dragon paid no further attention to him, however, for Tippet's
sudden break for liberty had attracted its attention; and after
Tippet it went, bowling over small trees, uprooting underbrush
and leaving a wake behind it like that of a small tornado.

Bradley, the moment he had discovered the thing was pursuing
Tippet, had followed it. He was afraid to fire for fear of
hitting the man, and so it was that he came upon them at the very
moment that the monster lunged its great weight forward upon the
doomed man. The sharp, three-toed talons of the forelimbs seized
poor Tippet, and Bradley saw the unfortunate fellow lifted high
above the ground as the creature again reared up on its hind
legs, immediately transferring Tippet's body to its gaping jaws,
which closed with a sickening, crunching sound as Tippet's bones
cracked beneath the great teeth.

Bradley half raised his rifle to fire again and then lowered it
with a shake of his head. Tippet was beyond succor--why waste a
bullet that Caspak could never replace? If he could now escape
the further notice of the monster it would be a wiser act than to
throw his life away in futile revenge. He saw that the reptile
was not looking in his direction, and so he slipped noiselessly
behind the bole of a large tree and thence quietly faded away in
the direction he believed the others to have taken. At what he
considered a safe distance he halted and looked back. Half hidden
by the intervening trees he still could see the huge head and the
massive jaws from which protrude the limp legs of the dead man.
Then, as though struck by the hammer of Thor, the creature
collapsed and crumpled to the ground. Bradley's single bullet,
penetrating the body through the soft skin of the belly, had slain
the Titan.

A few minutes later, Bradley found the others of the party.
The four returned cautiously to the spot where the creature lay
and after convincing themselves that it was quite dead, came close
to it. It was an arduous and gruesome job extricating Tippet's
mangled remains from the powerful jaws, the men working for the
most part silently.

"It was the work of the banshee all right," muttered Brady.
"It warned poor Tippet, it did."

"Hit killed him, that's wot hit did, hand hit'll kill some more
of us," said James, his lower lip trembling.

"If it was a ghost," interjected Sinclair, "and I don't say as it
was; but if it was, why, it could take on any form it wanted to.
It might have turned itself into this thing, which ain't no
natural thing at all, just to get poor Tippet. If it had of been
a lion or something else humanlike it wouldn't look so strange;
but this here thing ain't humanlike. There ain't no such thing
an' never was."

"Bullets don't kill ghosts," said Bradley, "so this couldn't have
been a ghost. Furthermore, there are no such things. I've been
trying to place this creature. Just succeeded. It's a tyrannosaurus.
Saw picture of skeleton in magazine. There's one in New York
Natural History Museum. Seems to me it said it was found in place
called Hell Creek somewhere in western North America. Supposed to
have lived about six million years ago."

"Hell Creek's in Montana," said Sinclair. "I used to punch cows
in Wyoming, an' I've heard of Hell Creek. Do you s'pose that
there thing's six million years old?" His tone was skeptical.

"No," replied Bradley; "But it would indicate that the island
of Caprona has stood almost without change for more than six
million years."

The conversation and Bradley's assurance that the creature was
not of supernatural origin helped to raise a trifle the spirits
of the men; and then came another diversion in the form of
ravenous meat-eaters attracted to the spot by the uncanny sense
of smell which had apprised them of the presence of flesh, killed
and ready for the eating.

It was a constant battle while they dug a grave and consigned all
that was mortal of John Tippet to his last, lonely resting-place.
Nor would they leave then; but remained to fashion a rude head-
stone from a crumbling out-cropping of sandstone and to gather
a mass of the gorgeous flowers growing in such great profusion
around them and heap the new-made grave with bright blooms.
Upon the headstone Sinclair scratched in rude characters the words:


HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET
ENGLISHMAN
KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS
10 SEPT. A.D. 1916
R.I.P.

and Bradley repeated a short prayer before they left their
comrade forever.

For three days the party marched due south through forests and
meadow-land and great park-like areas where countless herbivorous
animals grazed--deer and antelope and bos and the little ecca,
the smallest species of Caspakian horse, about the size of a rabbit.
There were other horses too; but all were small, the largest being
not above eight hands in height. Preying continually upon the
herbivora were the meat-eaters, large and small--wolves, hyaenadons,
panthers, lions, tigers, and bear as well as several large and
ferocious species of reptilian life.

On September twelfth the party scaled a line of sandstone cliffs
which crossed their route toward the south; but they crossed them
only after an encounter with the tribe that inhabited the numerous
caves which pitted the face of the escarpment. That night they
camped upon a rocky plateau which was sparsely wooded with jarrah,
and here once again they were visited by the weird, nocturnal
apparition that had already filled them with a nameless terror.

As on the night of September ninth the first warning came
from the sentinel standing guard over his sleeping companions.
A terror-stricken cry punctuated by the crack of a rifle brought
Bradley, Sinclair and Brady to their feet in time to see James,
with clubbed rifle, battling with a white-robed figure that
hovered on widespread wings on a level with the Englishman's head.
As they ran, shouting, forward, it was obvious to them that the
weird and terrible apparition was attempting to seize James; but
when it saw the others coming to his rescue, it desisted,
flapping rapidly upward and away, its long, ragged wings giving
forth the peculiarly dismal notes which always characterized the
sound of its flying.

Bradley fired at the vanishing menacer of their peace and safety;
but whether he scored a hit or not, none could tell, though,
following the shot, there was wafted back to them the same
piercing wail that had on other occasions frozen their marrow.

Then they turned toward James, who lay face downward upon the
ground, trembling as with ague. For a time he could not even
speak, but at last regained sufficient composure to tell them
how the thing must have swooped silently upon him from above
and behind as the first premonition of danger he had received
was when the long, clawlike fingers had clutched him beneath
either arm. In the melee his rifle had been discharged and he
had broken away at the same instant and turned to defend himself
with the butt. The rest they had seen.

From that instant James was an absolutely broken man.
He maintained with shaking lips that his doom was sealed, that
the thing had marked him for its own, and that he was as good as
dead, nor could any amount of argument or raillery convince him
to the contrary. He had seen Tippet marked and claimed and now
he had been marked. Nor were his constant reiterations of this
belief without effect upon the rest of the party. Even Bradley
felt depressed, though for the sake of the others he managed to
hide it beneath a show of confidence he was far from feeling.

And on the following day William James was killed by a
saber-tooth tiger--September 13, 1916. Beneath a jarrah tree on
the stony plateau on the northern edge of the Sto-lu country in
the land that Time forgot, he lies in a lonely grave marked by a
rough headstone.

Southward from his grave marched three grim and silent men.
To the best of Bradley's reckoning they were some twenty-five
miles north of Fort Dinosaur, and that they might reach the fort
on the following day, they plodded on until darkness overtook them.
With comparative safety fifteen miles away, they made camp at last;
but there was no singing now and no joking. In the bottom of his
heart each prayed that they might come safely through just this
night, for they knew that during the morrow they would make the
final stretch, yet the nerves of each were taut with strained
anticipation of what gruesome thing might flap down upon them from
the black sky, marking another for its own. Who would be the next?

As was their custom, they took turns at guard, each man doing two
hours and then arousing the next. Brady had gone on from eight
to ten, followed by Sinclair from ten to twelve, then Bradley had
been awakened. Brady would stand the last guard from two to
four, as they had determined to start the moment that it became
light enough to insure comparative safety upon the trail.

The snapping of a twig aroused Brady out of a dead sleep, and as
he opened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and that at
twenty paces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to
his feet, his rifle ready in his hand, Sinclair awoke and took in
the scene in a single swift glance. The fire was out and Bradley
was nowhere in sight. For a long moment the lion and the men
eyed one another. The latter had no mind to fire if the beast
minded its own affairs--they were only too glad to let it go its
way if it would; but the lion was of a different mind.

Suddenly the long tail snapped stiffly erect, and as though it
had been attached to two trigger fingers the two rifles spoke in
unison, for both men knew this signal only too well--the
immediate forerunner of a deadly charge. As the brute's head had
been raised, his spine had not been visible; and so they did what
they had learned by long experience was best to do. Each covered
a front leg, and as the tail snapped aloft, fired. With a
hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurched forward to the ground
with both front legs broken. It was an easy accomplishment in
the instant before the beast charged--after, it would have been
well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in and finished
him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrific
roarings should attract his mate or others of their kind.

Then the two men turned and looked at one another. "Where is
Lieutenant Bradley?" asked Sinclair. They walked to the fire.
Only a few smoking embers remained. A few feet away lay
Bradley's rifle. There was no evidence of a struggle. The two
men circled about the camp twice and on the last lap Brady
stooped and picked up an object which had lain about ten yards
beyond the fire--it was Bradley's cap. Again the two looked
questioningly at one another, and then, simultaneously, both
pairs of eyes swung upward and searched the sky. A moment later
Brady was examining the ground about the spot where Bradley's cap
had lain. It was one of those little barren, sandy stretches
that they had found only upon this stony plateau. Brady's own
footsteps showed as plainly as black ink upon white paper; but
his was the only foot that had marred the smooth, windswept
surface--there was no sign that Bradley had crossed the spot
upon the surface of the ground, and yet his cap lay well
toward the center of it.

Breakfastless and with shaken nerves the two survivors plunged
madly into the long day's march. Both were strong, courageous,
resourceful men; but each had reached the limit of human nerve
endurance and each felt that he would rather die than spend
another night in the hideous open of that frightful land.
Vivid in the mind of each was a picture of Bradley's end, for
though neither had witnessed the tragedy, both could imagine almost
precisely what had occurred. They did not discuss it--they did
not even mention it--yet all day long the thing was uppermost in
the mind of each and mingled with it a similar picture with himself
as victim should they fail to make Fort Dinosaur before dark.

And so they plunged forward at reckless speed, their clothes,
their hands, their faces torn by the retarding underbrush that
reached forth to hinder them. Again and again they fell; but be
it to their credit that the one always waited and helped the
other and that into the mind of neither entered the thought or
the temptation to desert his companion--they would reach the fort
together if both survived, or neither would reach it.

They encountered the usual number of savage beasts and reptiles;
but they met them with a courageous recklessness born of desperation,
and by virtue of the very madness of the chances they took, they
came through unscathed and with the minimum of delay.

Shortly after noon they reached the end of the plateau.
Before them was a drop of two hundred feet to the valley beneath.
To the left, in the distance, they could see the waters of the
great inland sea that covers a considerable portion of the area
of the crater island of Caprona and at a little lesser distance
to the south of the cliffs they saw a thin spiral of smoke arising
above the tree-tops.

The landscape was familiar--each recognized it immediately
and knew that that smoky column marked the spot where Dinosaur
had stood. Was the fort still there, or did the smoke arise
from the smoldering embers of the building they had helped to
fashion for the housing of their party? Who could say!

Thirty precious minutes that seemed as many hours to the
impatient men were consumed in locating a precarious way from the
summit to the base of the cliffs that bounded the plateau upon
the south, and then once again they struck off upon level ground
toward their goal. The closer they approached the fort the
greater became their apprehension that all would not be well.
They pictured the barracks deserted or the small company
massacred and the buildings in ashes. It was almost in a frenzy
of fear that they broke through the final fringe of jungle and
stood at last upon the verge of the open meadow a half-mile from
Fort Dinosaur.

"Lord!" ejaculated Sinclair. "They are still there!" And he fell
to his knees, sobbing.

Brady trembled like a leaf as he crossed himself and gave silent
thanks, for there before them stood the sturdy ramparts of
Dinosaur and from inside the inclosure rose a thin spiral of
smoke that marked the location of the cook-house. All was well,
then, and their comrades were preparing the evening meal!

Across the clearing they raced as though they had not already
covered in a single day a trackless, primeval country that
might easily have required two days by fresh and untired men.
Within hailing distance they set up such a loud shouting that
presently heads appeared above the top of the parapet and soon
answering shouts were rising from within Fort Dinosaur. A moment
later three men issued from the inclosure and came forward to
meet the survivors and listen to the hurried story of the eleven
eventful days since they had set out upon their expedition to the
barrier cliffs. They heard of the deaths of Tippet and James and
of the disappearance of Lieutenant Bradley, and a new terror
settled upon Dinosaur.

Olson, the Irish engineer, with Whitely and Wilson constituted
the remnants of Dinosaur's defenders, and to Brady and Sinclair
they narrated the salient events that had transpired since Bradley
and his party had marched away on September 4th. They told them
of the infamous act of Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and his
German crew who had stolen the U-33, breaking their parole, and
steaming away toward the subterranean opening through the barrier
cliffs that carried the waters of the inland sea into the open
Pacific beyond; and of the cowardly shelling of the fort.

They told of the disappearance of Miss La Rue in the night of
September 11th, and of the departure of Bowen Tyler in search of
her, accompanied only by his Airedale, Nobs. Thus of the
original party of eleven Allies and nine Germans that had
constituted the company of the U-33 when she left English waters
after her capture by the crew of the English tug there were but
five now to be accounted for at Fort Dinosaur. Benson, Tippet,
James, and one of the Germans were known to be dead. It was
assumed that Bradley, Tyler and the girl had already succumbed to
some of the savage denizens of Caspak, while the fate of the
Germans was equally unknown, though it might readily be believed
that they had made good their escape. They had had ample time to
provision the ship and the refining of the crude oil they had
discovered north of the fort could have insured them an ample
supply to carry them back to Germany.