It needed a robust faith in the end to justify such tragic means. Aswe advanced together through the woods we found the ape-men lyingthick, transfixed with spears or arrows. Here and there a little groupof shattered Indians marked where one of the anthropoids had turned tobay, and sold his life dearly. Always in front of us we heard theyelling and roaring which showed the direction of the pursuit. Theape-men had been driven back to their city, they had made a last standthere, once again they had been broken, and now we were in time to seethe final fearful scene of all. Some eighty or a hundred males, thelast survivors, had been driven across that same little clearing whichled to the edge of the cliff, the scene of our own exploit two daysbefore. As we arrived the Indians, a semicircle of spearmen, hadclosed in on them, and in a minute it was over, Thirty or forty diedwhere they stood. The others, screaming and clawing, were thrust overthe precipice, and went hurtling down, as their prisoners had of old,on to the sharp bamboos six hundred feet below. It was as Challengerhad said, and the reign of man was assured forever in Maple White Land.The males were exterminated, Ape Town was destroyed, the females andyoung were driven away to live in bondage, and the long rivalry ofuntold centuries had reached its bloody end.
For us the victory brought much advantage. Once again we were able tovisit our camp and get at our stores. Once more also we were able tocommunicate with Zambo, who had been terrified by the spectacle fromafar of an avalanche of apes falling from the edge of the cliff.
"Come away, Massas, come away!" he cried, his eyes starting from hishead. "The debbil get you sure if you stay up there."
"It is the voice of sanity!" said Summerlee with conviction. "We havehad adventures enough and they are neither suitable to our character orour position. I hold you to your word, Challenger. From now onwardsyou devote your energies to getting us out of this horrible country andback once more to civilization."
CHAPTER XV
"Our Eyes have seen Great Wonders"
I write this from day to day, but I trust that before I come to the endof it, I may be able to say that the light shines, at last, through ourclouds. We are held here with no clear means of making our escape, andbitterly we chafe against it. Yet, I can well imagine that the day maycome when we may be glad that we were kept, against our will, to seesomething more of the wonders of this singular place, and of thecreatures who inhabit it.
The victory of the Indians and the annihilation of the ape-men, markedthe turning point of our fortunes. From then onwards, we were in truthmasters of the plateau, for the natives looked upon us with a mixtureof fear and gratitude, since by our strange powers we had aided them todestroy their hereditary foe. For their own sakes they would, perhaps,be glad to see the departure of such formidable and incalculablepeople, but they have not themselves suggested any way by which we mayreach the plains below. There had been, so far as we could followtheir signs, a tunnel by which the place could be approached, the lowerexit of which we had seen from below. By this, no doubt, both ape-menand Indians had at different epochs reached the top, and Maple Whitewith his companion had taken the same way. Only the year before,however, there had been a terrific earthquake, and the upper end of thetunnel had fallen in and completely disappeared. The Indians now couldonly shake their heads and shrug their shoulders when we expressed bysigns our desire to descend. It may be that they cannot, but it mayalso be that they will not, help us to get away.
At the end of the victorious campaign the surviving ape-folk weredriven across the plateau (their wailings were horrible) andestablished in the neighborhood of the Indian caves, where they would,from now onwards, be a servile race under the eyes of their masters.It was a rude, raw, primeval version of the Jews in Babylon or theIsraelites in Egypt. At night we could hear from amid the trees thelong-drawn cry, as some primitive Ezekiel mourned for fallen greatnessand recalled the departed glories of Ape Town. Hewers of wood anddrawers of water, such were they from now onwards.
We had returned across the plateau with our allies two days after thebattle, and made our camp at the foot of their cliffs. They would havehad us share their caves with them, but Lord John would by no meansconsent to it considering that to do so would put us in their power ifthey were treacherously disposed. We kept our independence, therefore,and had our weapons ready for any emergency, while preserving the mostfriendly relations. We also continually visited their caves, whichwere most remarkable places, though whether made by man or by Nature wehave never been able to determine. They were all on the one stratum,hollowed out of some soft rock which lay between the volcanic basaltforming the ruddy cliffs above them, and the hard granite which formedtheir base.
The openings were about eighty feet above the ground, and were led upto by long stone stairs, so narrow and steep that no large animal couldmount them. Inside they were warm and dry, running in straightpassages of varying length into the side of the hill, with smooth graywalls decorated with many excellent pictures done with charred sticksand representing the various animals of the plateau. If every livingthing were swept from the country the future explorer would find uponthe walls of these caves ample evidence of the strange fauna--thedinosaurs, iguanodons, and fish lizards--which had lived so recentlyupon earth.
Since we had learned that the huge iguanodons were kept as tame herdsby their owners, and were simply walking meat-stores, we had conceivedthat man, even with his primitive weapons, had established hisascendancy upon the plateau. We were soon to discover that it was notso, and that he was still there upon tolerance.
It was on the third day after our forming our camp near the Indiancaves that the tragedy occurred. Challenger and Summerlee had gone offtogether that day to the lake where some of the natives, under theirdirection, were engaged in harpooning specimens of the great lizards.Lord John and I had remained in our camp, while a number of the Indianswere scattered about upon the grassy slope in front of the cavesengaged in different ways. Suddenly there was a shrill cry of alarm,with the word "Stoa" resounding from a hundred tongues. From everyside men, women, and children were rushing wildly for shelter, swarmingup the staircases and into the caves in a mad stampede.
Looking up, we could see them waving their arms from the rocks aboveand beckoning to us to join them in their refuge. We had both seizedour magazine rifles and ran out to see what the danger could be.Suddenly from the near belt of trees there broke forth a group oftwelve or fifteen Indians, running for their lives, and at their veryheels two of those frightful monsters which had disturbed our camp andpursued me upon my solitary journey. In shape they were like horribletoads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were ofan incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had neverbefore seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animalssave when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stoodamazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of acurious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with anever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved.
We had little time to watch them, however, for in an instant they hadovertaken the fugitives and were making a dire slaughter among them.Their method was to fall forward with their full weight upon each inturn, leaving him crushed and mangled, to bound on after the others.The wretched Indians screamed with terror, but were helpless, run asthey would, before the relentless purpose and horrible activity ofthese monstrous creatures. One after another they went down, and therewere not half-a-dozen surviving by the time my companion and I couldcome to their help. But our aid was of little avail and only involvedus in the same peril. At the range of a couple of hundred yards weemptied our magazines, firing bullet after bullet into the beasts, butwith no more effect than if we were pelting them with pellets of paper.Their slow reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springsof their lives, with no special brain center but scattered throughouttheir spinal cords, could not be tapped by any modern weapons. Themost that we could do was to check their progress by distracting theirattention with the flash and roar of our guns, and so to give both thenatives and ourselves time to reach the steps which led to safety. Butwhere the conical explosive bullets of the twentieth century were of noavail, the poisoned arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice ofstrophanthus and steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed.Such arrows were of little avail to the hunter who attacked the beast,because their action in that torpid circulation was slow, and beforeits powers failed it could certainly overtake and slay its assailant.But now, as the two monsters hounded us to the very foot of the stairs,a drift of darts came whistling from every chink in the cliff abovethem. In a minute they were feathered with them, and yet with no signof pain they clawed and slobbered with impotent rage at the steps whichwould lead them to their victims, mounting clumsily up for a few yardsand then sliding down again to the ground. But at last the poisonworked. One of them gave a deep rumbling groan and dropped his hugesquat head on to the earth. The other bounded round in an eccentriccircle with shrill, wailing cries, and then lying down writhed in agonyfor some minutes before it also stiffened and lay still. With yells oftriumph the Indians came flocking down from their caves and danced afrenzied dance of victory round the dead bodies, in mad joy that twomore of the most dangerous of all their enemies had been slain. Thatnight they cut up and removed the bodies, not to eat--for the poisonwas still active--but lest they should breed a pestilence. The greatreptilian hearts, however, each as large as a cushion, still lay there,beating slowly and steadily, with a gentle rise and fall, in horribleindependent life. It was only upon the third day that the ganglia randown and the dreadful things were still.
Some day, when I have a better desk than a meat-tin and more helpfultools than a worn stub of pencil and a last, tattered note-book, I willwrite some fuller account of the Accala Indians--of our life amongstthem, and of the glimpses which we had of
the strange conditions ofwondrous Maple White Land. Memory, at least, will never fail me, forso long as the breath of life is in me, every hour and every action ofthat period will stand out as hard and clear as do the first strangehappenings of our childhood. No new impressions could efface thosewhich are so deeply cut. When the time comes I will describe thatwondrous moonlit night upon the great lake when a youngichthyosaurus--a strange creature, half seal, half fish, to look at,with bone-covered eyes on each side of his snout, and a third eye fixedupon the top of his head--was entangled in an Indian net, and nearlyupset our canoe before we towed it ashore; the same night that a greenwater-snake shot out from the rushes and carried off in its coils thesteersman of Challenger's canoe. I will tell, too, of the greatnocturnal white thing--to this day we do not know whether it was beastor reptile--which lived in a vile swamp to the east of the lake, andflitted about with a faint phosphorescent glimmer in the darkness. TheIndians were so terrified at it that they would not go near the place,and, though we twice made expeditions and saw it each time, we couldnot make our way through the deep marsh in which it lived. I can onlysay that it seemed to be larger than a cow and had the strangest muskyodor. I will tell also of the huge bird which chased Challenger to theshelter of the rocks one day--a great running bird, far taller than anostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it awalking death. As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savagecurving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut witha chisel. This time at least modern weapons prevailed and the greatcreature, twelve feet from head to foot--phororachus its name,according to our panting but exultant Professor--went down before LordRoxton's rifle in a flurry of waving feathers and kicking limbs, withtwo remorseless yellow eyes glaring up from the midst of it. May Ilive to see that flattened vicious skull in its own niche amid thetrophies of the Albany. Finally, I will assuredly give some account ofthe toxodon, the giant ten-foot guinea pig, with projecting chiselteeth, which we killed as it drank in the gray of the morning by theside of the lake.
All this I shall some day write at fuller length, and amidst these morestirring days I would tenderly sketch in these lovely summer evenings,when with the deep blue sky above us we lay in good comradeship amongthe long grasses by the wood and marveled at the strange fowl thatswept over us and the quaint new creatures which crept from theirburrows to watch us, while above us the boughs of the bushes were heavywith luscious fruit, and below us strange and lovely flowers peeped atus from among the herbage; or those long moonlit nights when we lay outupon the shimmering surface of the great lake and watched with wonderand awe the huge circles rippling out from the sudden splash of somefantastic monster; or the greenish gleam, far down in the deep water,of some strange creature upon the confines of darkness. These are thescenes which my mind and my pen will dwell upon in every detail at somefuture day.
But, you will ask, why these experiences and why this delay, when youand your comrades should have been occupied day and night in thedevising of some means by which you could return to the outer world?My answer is, that there was not one of us who was not working for thisend, but that our work had been in vain. One fact we had very speedilydiscovered: The Indians would do nothing to help us. In every otherway they were our friends--one might almost say our devoted slaves--butwhen it was suggested that they should help us to make and carry aplank which would bridge the chasm, or when we wished to get from themthongs of leather or liana to weave ropes which might help us, we weremet by a good-humored, but an invincible, refusal. They would smile,twinkle their eyes, shake their heads, and there was the end of it.Even the old chief met us with the same obstinate denial, and it wasonly Maretas, the youngster whom we had saved, who looked wistfully atus and told us by his gestures that he was grieved for our thwartedwishes. Ever since their crowning triumph with the ape-men they lookedupon us as supermen, who bore victory in the tubes of strange weapons,and they believed that so long as we remained with them good fortunewould be theirs. A little red-skinned wife and a cave of our own werefreely offered to each of us if we would but forget our own people anddwell forever upon the plateau. So far all had been kindly, howeverfar apart our desires might be; but we felt well assured that ouractual plans of a descent must be kept secret, for we had reason tofear that at the last they might try to hold us by force.
In spite of the danger from dinosaurs (which is not great save atnight, for, as I may have said before, they are mostly nocturnal intheir habits) I have twice in the last three weeks been over to our oldcamp in order to see our negro who still kept watch and ward below thecliff. My eyes strained eagerly across the great plain in the hope ofseeing afar off the help for which we had prayed. But the longcactus-strewn levels still stretched away, empty and bare, to thedistant line of the cane-brake.
"They will soon come now, Massa Malone. Before another week passIndian come back and bring rope and fetch you down." Such was thecheery cry of our excellent Zambo.
I had one strange experience as I came from this second visit which hadinvolved my being away for a night from my companions. I was returningalong the well-remembered route, and had reached a spot within a mileor so of the marsh of the pterodactyls, when I saw an extraordinaryobject approaching me. It was a man who walked inside a framework madeof bent canes so that he was enclosed on all sides in a bell-shapedcage. As I drew nearer I was more amazed still to see that it was LordJohn Roxton. When he saw me he slipped from under his curiousprotection and came towards me laughing, and yet, as I thought, withsome confusion in his manner.
"Well, young fellah," said he, "who would have thought of meetin' youup here?"
"What in the world are you doing?" I asked.
"Visitin' my friends, the pterodactyls," said he.
"But why?"
"Interestin' beasts, don't you think? But unsociable! Nasty rude wayswith strangers, as you may remember. So I rigged this framework whichkeeps them from bein' too pressin' in their attentions."
"But what do you want in the swamp?"
He looked at me with a very questioning eye, and I read hesitation inhis face.
"Don't you think other people besides Professors can want to knowthings?" he said at last. "I'm studyin' the pretty dears. That'senough for you."