Edgar Rice Burroughs - Lost Continent series.pdf - Edgar Rice Burroughs - margozap

cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I

have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time - things

that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past,

a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest

Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting

inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than

in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne me and

where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.

After reading this far, my interest, which already had been

stimulated by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the

boiling-point. I had come to Greenland for the summer, on the

advice of my physician, and was slowly being bored to extinction, as

I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter.

Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of

sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I

was now risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape

Farewell at the southernmost extremity of Greenland.

Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke - but

my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me;

so I shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as

possible.

The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the

natives, waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and

while the evening meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro

along the rocky, shattered shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove

the worn granite, or whatever the rocks of Cape Farewell may be

composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one of these

soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger

in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more

surprised than was I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle

turning and twisting in the surf of Cape Farewell at the southern

extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I was soaked above the

knows her baby's face, and have commanded a score of them on

their trial runs. Yet my inclinations were all toward aviation. I

graduated under Curtiss, and after a long siege with my father

obtained his permission to try for the Lafayette Escadrille. As a

stepping-stone I obtained an appointment in the American

ambulance service and was on my way to France when three shrill

whistles altered, in as many seconds, my entire scheme of life.

I was sitting on deck with some of the fellows who were going

into the American ambulance service with me, my Airedale, Crown

Prince Nobbler, asleep at my feet, when the first blast of the whistle

shattered the peace and security of the ship. Ever since entering the

U-boat zone we had been on the lookout for periscopes, and

children that we were, bemoaning the unkind fate that was to see

us safely into France on the morrow without a glimpse of the dread

marauders. We were young; we craved thrills, and God knows we

got them that day; yet by comparison with that through which I

have since passed they were as tame as a Punch-and-Judy show.

I shall never forget the ashy faces of the passengers as they

stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose

with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship's side, I saw not two

hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing

toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We

were aboard an American ship - which, of course, was not armed.

We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we were being

torpedoed.

I stood rigid, spellbound, watching the white wake of the torpedo.

It struck us on the starboard side almost amidships. The vessel

rocked as though the sea beneath it had been uptorn by a mighty

volcano. We were thrown to the decks, bruised and stunned, and

then above the ship, carrying with it fragments of steel and wood

and dismembered human bodies, rose a column of water hundreds

of feet into the air.

and trained guns on us. The officer in command ordered us to lower

our flag, but this the captain of the liner refused to do. The ship

was listing frightfully to starboard, rendering the port boats useless,

while half the starboard boats had been demolished by the

explosion. Even while the passengers were crowding the starboard

rail and scrambling into the few boats left to us, the submarine

commenced shelling the ship. I saw one shell burst in a group of

women and children, and then I turned my head and covered my

eyes.

When I looked again to horror was added chagrin, for with the

emerging of the U-boat I had recognized her as a product of our own

shipyard. I knew her to a rivet. I had superintended her

construction. I had sat in that very conning-tower and directed the

efforts of the sweating crew below when first her prow clove the

sunny summer waters of the Pacific; and now this creature of my

brain and hand had turned Frankenstein, bent upon pursuing me

to my death.

A second shell exploded upon the deck. One of the lifeboats,

frightfully overcrowded, swung at a dangerous angle from its davits.

A fragment of the shell shattered the bow tackle, and I saw the

women and children and the men vomited into the sea beneath,

while the boat dangled stern up for a moment from its single davit,

and at last with increasing momentum dived into the midst of the

struggling victims screaming upon the face of the waters.

Now I saw men spring to the rail and leap into the ocean. The

deck was tilting to an impossible angle. Nobs braced himself with all

four feet to keep from slipping into the scuppers and looked up into

my face with a questioning whine. I stooped and stroked his head.

"Come on, boy!" I cried, and running to the side of the ship, dived

headforemost over the rail. When I came up, the first thing I saw

was Nobs swimming about in a bewildered sort of way a few yards

from me. At sight of me his ears went flat, and his lips parted in a

they either did not hear my appeals for help or else did not dare

return to succor me. Nobs and I had gained some little distance

from the ship when it rolled completely over and sank. We were

caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few

yards, neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced

hurriedly about for something to which to cling. My eyes were

directed toward the point at which the liner had disappeared when

there came from the depths of the ocean the muffled reverberation

of an explosion, and almost simultaneously a geyser of water in

which were shattered lifeboats, human bodies, steam, coal, oil, and

the flotsam of a liner's deck leaped high above the surface of the sea

- a watery column momentarily marking the grave of another ship

in this greatest cemetery of the seas.

When the turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea

had ceased to spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search

of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of

Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not

a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of

the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a

mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its

mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous

strain put upon it. In no other way can I account for its having

leaped so far out of the water - a beneficent circumstance to which I

doubtless owe my life, and that of another far dearer to me than my

own. I say beneficent circumstance even in the face of the fact that

a fate far more hideous confronts us than that which we escaped

that day; for because of that circumstance I have met her whom

otherwise I never should have known; I have met and loved her. At

least I have had that great happiness in life; nor can Caspak, with

all her horrors, expunge that which has been.

So for the thousandth time I thank the strange fate which sent

that lifeboat hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to

Edgar Rice Burroughs - Lost Continent series.pdf

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