Books: Out of Time\'s Abyss
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Edgar Rice Burroughs >> Out of Time\'s Abyss
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8 Created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska
Out of Time's Abyss
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter I
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.
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