| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| 1 | 20 | 40 | 59 | 79 |
|
www.freeclassicebooks.com
was most improbable; but neither of us could say that anything which it
contained was beyond the range of possibility. The weird flora and fauna of
Caspak were as possible under the thick, warm atmospheric conditions of the
super-heated crater as they were in the Mesozoic era under almost exactly similar
conditions, which were then probably world-wide. The assistant secretary had
heard of Caproni and his discoveries, but admitted that he never had taken much
stock in the one nor the other. We were agreed that the one statement most
difficult of explanation was that which reported the entire absence of human
young among the various tribes which Tyler had had intercourse. This was the
one irreconcilable statement of the manuscript. A world of adults! It was
impossible.
We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party of English sailors.
Tyler had found the graves of two of them; how many more might have perished!
And Miss La Rue--could a young girl long have survived the horrors of Caspak
after having been separated from all of her own kind? The assistant secretary
wondered if Nobs still was with her, and then we both smiled at this tacit
acceptance of the truth of the whole uncanny tale:
"
I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but by George, I can't
help believing it, and I can see that girl now, with the big Airedale at her side
protecting her from the terrors of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire
scene--the apelike Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge
pterodactyls soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty
dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of preglacial
forests--the dragons which we considered myths until science taught us that they
were the true recollections of the first man, handed down through countless ages
by word of mouth from father to son out of the unrecorded dawn of humanity."
"It is stupendous--if true," I replied. "And to think that possibly they are still
there--Tyler and Miss La Rue--surrounded by hideous dangers, and that possibly
Bradley still lives, and some of his party! I can't help hoping all the time that
Bowen and the girl have found the others; the last Bowen knew of them, there
were six left, all told--the mate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson, Whitely,
Brady and Sinclair. There might be some hope for them if they could join forces;
but separated, I'm afraid they couldn't last long."
"If only they hadn't let the German prisoners capture the U-33! Bowen should
have had better judgment than to have trusted them at all. The chances are von
Schoenvorts succeeded in getting safely back to Kiel and is strutting around with
an Iron Cross this very minute. With a large supply of oil from the wells they
discovered in Caspak, with plenty of water and ample provisions, there is no
4
Page
Quick Jump
|