Kitabı oku: «The Lost World / Затерянный мир», sayfa 2

A wave of amazement passed over me as I looked. I was convinced. There could be no getting away from it. The proof was overwhelming. The sketch, the photographs, the narrative, and now the actual specimen… the evidence was complete.

“It’s just the very biggest thing that I ever heard of!” I cried. “It is colossal. You have discovered a lost world! I’m awfully sorry if I seemed to doubt you.”

The Professor purred with satisfaction.²⁵

“And then, sir, what did you do next?”

“I managed to see the plateau from the pyramidal rock upon which I saw and shot the pterodactyl. It appeared to be very large; I could not see the end of it. Below, it is jungly region, full of snakes, insects, and fever. It is a natural protection to this country.”

“Did you see any other trace of life?”

“No, I did not, but we heard some very strange noises from above.”

“But what about the creature that the American drew?”

“We can only suppose that he must have made his way to the rock and seen it there. The way is a very difficult one. That’s why the creatures do not come down and overrun the surrounding country.”

“But how did they come to be there?”

“There can only be one explanation. South America is a granite continent. At this single point in the interior there has been a great, sudden volcanic upheaval.²⁶ These cliffs, I may remark, are basaltic, and therefore plutonic. And a large area has been lifted up with all its living contents. What is the result? Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear. You will observe that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are Jurassic. They have been artificially conserved by those strange accidental conditions.”

“Your evidence is conclusive. You have only to tell the world about it.”

“I can only tell you that I was met by incredulity,²⁷ born partly of stupidity and partly of jealousy. It is not my nature, sir, to prove a fact if my word has been doubted. When men like yourself, who represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to disturb my privacy I was unable to meet them with open arms. By nature I am fiery. I fear you may have remarked it.”

I touched my eye and was silent.

“Well, I invite you to be present at the exhibition.” Challenger handed me a card from his desk. “Mr. Percival Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is to lecture at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute’s Hall upon ‘The Record of the Ages’. I have been specially invited. Maybe a few remarks may arouse the interest of the audience. We’ll see… By all means,²⁸ come. It will be a comfort to me to know that I have one ally in the hall, however inefficient and ignorant of the subject. No public use is to be made of any of the material that I have given you.”

“But Mr. McArdle… my news editor… will want to know what I have done.”

“Tell him what you like. I leave it to you that nothing of all this appears in print. Very good. Then the Zoological Institute’s Hall at eight-thirty tonight.”

Chapter 5
Question!

McArdle was at his post as usual.

“Well,” he cried, expectantly, “Don’t tell me that he attacked you.”

“We had a little difference²⁹ at first.”

“What a man it is! What did you do?”

“Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat. But I got nothing out of him… nothing for publication.”

“You got a black eye³⁰ out of him, and that’s for publication. Mr. Malone, we must bring the man to his bearings.³¹ Just give me the material. I’ll show him up for the fraud he is.”

“I wouldn’t do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is not a fraud at all.”

“You don’t mean to say you really believe this stuff about mammoths and mastodons?”

“I do believe he has got something new.”

I told him the Professor’s narrative in a few sentences.

“Well, Mr. Malone,” he said at last, “about this scientific meeting tonight. You’ll be there in any case, so you’ll just give us a pretty full report.”

That day I met Tarp Henry. He listened to my story with a sceptical smile on his face, and roared with laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.

“My dear friend, things don’t happen like that in real life. People don’t stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence. Leave that to the novelists. The man is full of tricks.”

“Will you come to the meeting with me?” I asked suddenly.

Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.

“He is not a popular person,” said he. “I should say he is about the best-hated man in London. If the medical students turn out there will be no end of a mess.”

“You might at least do him justice³² to hear him state his own case.”

“Well, it’s fair. All right. I’m your man for the evening.”

When we arrived at the hall we found more people than I had expected. The audience would be popular as well as scientific. We had taken our seats. Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiar medical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sent down their contingent. The behaviour of the audience at present was good-humoured, but mischievous.

The greatest demonstration of all, however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, Professor Challenger, when he passed down to take his place. Such a yell of welcome broke forth that I began to suspect Tarp Henry was right that this audience was there not for the sake of³³ the lecture, but because the famous Professor would take part in the proceedings.

Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as a kindly man would meet the yapping of puppies. He sat slowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand down his beard, and looked with drooping eyelids at the crowded hall before him.

Mr. Waldron, the lecturer, came up, and the proceedings began. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner. However he knew how to pass the ideas in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the public. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas. Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling, how the mountains were formed. On the origin of life itself he was vague. Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elements of the globe? Very likely. Had the germs of it arrived from outside upon a meteor? Even the wisest man was the least categorical upon the point.

This brought the lecturer to the animal life, beginning with mollusks and sea creatures, then up rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last mammals. Then he went back to his picture of the past: the drying of the seas, the overcrowded lagoons with sea animals, the tendency of the sea creatures to come out of the sea, the abundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth.

“Hence, ladies and gentlemen,” he added, “those creatures, which still frighten us, but which were fortunately extinct long before the first appearance of mankind upon this planet.”

“Question!³⁴” cried a voice from the platform.

This interjection appeared to him so absurd that at first he didn’t know what to do. He paused for a moment, and then, raising his voice, repeated slowly the words: “Which were extinct before the coming of man.”

“Question!” said the voice once more.

Waldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon the platform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leaned back in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if he were smiling in his sleep.

“I see!” said Waldron. “It is my friend Professor Challenger,” and he renewed his lecture as if this was a final explanation and no more need be said.

But the incident was far from being closed. Whatever the lecturer spoke of the past it brought the same exclamation from the Professor. The audience began to roar with delight when it came. Every time Challenger opened his mouth, there was a yell of “Question!” from a hundred voices. Waldron, though a strong man, started hesitating. He stammered, repeated himself, and finally turned furiously upon the cause of his troubles.

“This is really intolerable!” he cried, glaring across the platform. “I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to stop these ignorant interruptions.”

There was a hush over the hall, the students were delighted at seeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves. Challenger slowly stoop up.

“I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron,” he said, “to stop saying what is not in strict accordance with scientific fact.”

“Shame! Shame!” “Give him a hearing!” “Put him out!” “Shove him off the platform!” emerged from a general roar in the hall. The chairman was on his feet and said nervously:

“Professor Challenger… personal views… later.”

The interrupter bowed, smiled, stroked his beard, and relapsed into his chair. And Waldron continued his observations. At last the lecture came to an end… I should say the ending was hurried and disconnected. The thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience was restless. Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup from the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and came up to the edge of the platform.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began. “I beg pardon… Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children, I should say thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and imaginative address to which we have just listened. There are points in it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to express my opinion at once, but, none the less, Mr. Waldron has accomplished his object well, that object being to give a simple and interesting account of what he conceives to have been the history of our planet. Popular lectures are the easiest to listen to, but Mr. Waldron will excuse me when I say that they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be aimed at an ignorant audience.” (Ironical cheering.) “But enough of this! Let me pass to some subject of wider interest. What is the particular point upon which I have challenged our lecturer’s accuracy? It is upon the existence of certain types of animal life upon the earth. I do not speak upon this subject as an amateur. They are indeed, as he has said, our ancestors, but they are our contemporary ancestors, who can still be found. Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic still exist.” (Cries of “Bosh!” “Prove it!” “How do YOU know?” “Question!”) “How do I know, you ask me? I know because I have visited their secret home. I know because I have seen some of them.” (Applause, uproar, and a voice, “Liar!”) “Am I a liar? Did I hear someone say that I was a liar? If any person in this hall dares to doubt my words, I shall be glad to have a few words with him after the lecture.” (“Liar!”) “Who said that? Every great discoverer has been met with the same incredulity… the generation of fools. When great facts are laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination which would help you to understand them. You can only throw mud at the men who have risked their lives to open new fields to science. You persecute the prophets! Galileo! Darwin, and I…” (Prolonged cheering and complete interruption.)

I saw white-bearded men rising and shaking their fists at the Professor. The whole great audience seethed and simmered like a boiling pot.³⁵ The Professor took a step forward and raised both his hands. There was something so big and strong in the man that the shouting died gradually away before his commanding gesture and his masterful eyes.

“Truth is truth, and the noise of a number of fools cannot affect the matter. I claim that I have opened a new field of science. You don’t believe. Then I put you to the test. Will you choose one or more of your own number to test my statement?”

Mr. Summerlee, the Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose among the audience, a tall, thin, bitter man. He desired to know how it was that Professor Challenger claimed to have made discoveries in those regions which had been overlooked by Wallace, Bates, and other previous famous explorers.

Professor Challenger answered that Mr. Summerlee appeared to be confusing the Amazon with the Thames; that it was in reality a larger river. It was not impossible for one person to find what another had missed.

Mr. Summerlee declared, with an acid smile, that he fully appreciated the difference between the Thames and the Amazon. And he would be pleased if Professor Challenger would give the whereabouts of the prehistoric animals.

Professor Challenger replied that he reserved such information for good reasons of his own, but would be prepared to give it with proper precautions to a committee chosen from the audience. Would Mr. Summerlee serve on such a committee and test his story in person?

“Yes, I will.” (Great cheering.)

“Since Mr. Summerlee goes to check my statement that I should have one or more with him who may check his. I will not disguise from you that there are difficulties and dangers. Mr. Summerlee will need a younger colleague. Any volunteers?”

Could I have imagined when I entered that hall that I was about to pledge myself to a wilder adventure than had ever come to me in my dreams? Was it not the very opportunity of which Gladys spoke? I had sprung to my feet. I heard Tarp Henry whispering, “Sit down, Malone! Don’t make a fool of yourself.³⁶” At the same time I was aware that a tall, thin man, with dark gingery hair, a few seats in front of me, was also on his feet. He glared back at me with hard angry eyes, but I refused to give way.

“I will go, Mr. Chairman!” I kept repeating.

“Name! Name!” cried the audience.

“My name is Edward Dunn Malone. I am the reporter of the Daily Gazette. I claim to be an absolutely unprejudiced witness.”

“What is YOUR name, sir?” the chairman asked of my tall rival.

“I am Lord John Roxton. I have already been up the Amazon.”

“Lord John Roxton is a world-famous traveller,” said the chairman; “at the same time it would certainly be well to have a member of the Press on such an expedition.”

“Then I think,” said Professor Challenger, “both these gentlemen are elected to accompany Professor Summerlee.”

And so, our fate was decided. As I went out from the hall I found myself after some time walking under the silvery lights of Regent Street, full of thoughts of Gladys and my future.

Suddenly there was a touch at my elbow. I turned and saw the tall, thin man who had volunteered to be my companion.

“Mr. Malone, I understand,” said he. “We are to be companions. Perhaps you would spare me half an hour³⁷ as I have one or two things that I want to say to you.”

Chapter 6
I Was The Flail Of The Lord

When I entered his flat I had a general impression of extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of masculinity. Everywhere there were mingled the luxury of the wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of the bachelor. Rich furs, antique things, pictures and prints, and numerous trophies, which brought me back to the fact that Lord John Roxton was one of the great sportsmen and athletes of his day.

Having indicated an arm-chair to me and placed my refreshment near it, he seated himself opposite to me and looked at me long and fixedly with his strange, reckless eyes, eyes of a cold light blue, the colour of a lake.

I examined him too: the strongly-curved nose, the dark red hair, masculine moustaches, the aggressive chin. In figure he was spare, very strongly built.

“Well,” said he, at last, “we’ve done it, my friend. I suppose, when you went into that room there was no such thought in your head?”

“No thought of it.”

“The same. And here we are. Why, I’ve only been back three weeks from Uganda, and taken a place in Scotland, and signed the lease and all. Pretty busy… How does it hit you?”

“Well, it is all in the main line of my business. I am a journalist on the Gazette.”

“Mr Malone, don’t you mind taking a risk, do you?”

“What is the risk?”

“Well, it’s Ballinger… he’s the risk. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“Why, Sir John Ballinger is the best sportsman in the north country. Well, it’s not a secret that when he’s out of training, he drinks hard and gets violent… His room is above this. The doctors say that he is done³⁸ unless some food is got into him, but as he lies in bed with a revolver, and swears he will put six of the best through anyone that comes near him, it is really a problem.”

“What do you mean to do, then?” I asked.

“Well, my idea was that you and I could rush him. He may be sleeping, and at the worst he can only hit one of us, and the other should have him. And we’ll give the old dear the supper of his life.”

It was a rather desperate business. I don’t think that I am a particularly brave man. I have an Irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible than they are. On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of cowardice. I dare say that I could throw myself over a precipice if my courage were questioned, and yet it would surely be pride and fear, rather than courage. I answered as careless as I could that I was ready to go. Some further remark of Lord Roxton’s about the danger only made me irritable.

“Talking won’t make it any better,” said I. “Come on.”

I rose from my chair and he from his. Then with a little chuckle of laughter, he patted me two or three times on the chest, finally pushing me back into my chair.

“All right, sonny,” said he. I looked up in surprise.

“I saw Jack Ballinger myself this morning. He blew a hole in the skirt of my kimono, but we got a jacket on him, and he’s to be all right in a week. I hope you don’t mind… You see I look on this South American business as a very serious thing, and if I have a companion with me I want a man I can rely on.³⁹ So you came well out of it. Tell me, can you shoot?”

“About average Territorial standard.”

“Good Lord! As bad as that? But you’ll need to hold your gun straight in South America, for we may see some queer things before we get back.”

He crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I saw a rich collection of guns.

“I see…” said he. “Now, here’s something that would do for you.”

He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle.

“Sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip.⁴⁰ You can trust your life to that.” He handed it to me and closed the door of his oak cabinet.

“By the way,” he continued, coming back to his chair, “what do you know of this Professor Challenger?”

“I never saw him till today.”

“Well, neither did I. It’s funny we should both sail under the orders from a man we don’t know. His brothers of science don’t seem to like him.”

I told him shortly my experiences of the morning, and he listened intently. Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the table.

“I believe every single word he said was the truth,” said he, earnestly, “America is the richest, most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. But people don’t know it yet. Well, when I was up there I heard some stories of the same kind… traditions of Indians with something behind them. The more you knew of that country, the more you would understand that anything was possible… ANYTHING. There are just some narrow water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all darkness. There are fifty-thousand miles of water-way running through a forest that is very near the size of Europe. Why shouldn’t something new and wonderful lie in such a country? And why shouldn’t we be the men to find it out? Besides, there’s a risk in every mile of it. Give me the great waste lands and a gun and something to look for that’s worth finding. I’ve tried war and aeroplanes, but this hunting of prehistoric beasts is a brand-new sensation!” Lord Roxton said, laughing with delight.

We had a long talk that evening. I left him seated, oiling the lock of his favorite rifle, while he still laughed at the thought of the adventures which awaited us. It was clear to me that I could not in all England have found a cooler head or a braver spirit.

That night, tired after the wonderful happenings of the day, I sat late with McArdle, the news editor, explaining to him the whole situation. It was agreed that I should write home full accounts of my adventures in the shape of successive letters to McArdle, and that these should either be edited for the Gazette as they arrived, or held back to be published later, according to the wishes of Professor Challenger.

And now my patient readers, I can address you directly no longer. From now onwards it can only be through the paper which I represent. In the hands of the editor I leave this account of the events which have led up to one of the most remarkable expeditions of all time, so that if I never return to England there shall be some record as to how the affair came about.

Let me draw one last picture before I close the notebook… It is a wet, foggy morning in the late spring; a thin, cold rain is falling. Three figures are walking to the ship. In front of them a porter pushes a trolley with trunks, wraps, and gun-cases. Professor Summerlee, a long, melancholy figure, walks with drooping head, as one who is already sorry for himself. Lord John Roxton steps briskly, and his face beaming. As for myself, I am glad to have these days of preparation behind me. Suddenly there is a shout behind us. It is Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off. He runs after us.

“No thank you,” says he; “I don’t want to go aboard. I have only a few words to say to you. I beg you not to imagine that I am in any way indebted to you for making this journey. I would have you to understand that it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and I refuse to entertain the most remote sense of personal obligation. My directions for your instruction and guidance are in this sealed envelope. You will open it when you reach a town which is called Manaos, but not until the date and hour which is marked upon the outside. Have I made myself clear? Mr. Malone, I demand that you give no particulars as to your exact destination, and that nothing be actually published until your return. Good-bye, sir. You have done something to change my feelings for the profession to which you unhappily belong. Good-bye, Lord John. You may congratulate yourself upon the hunting-field which awaits you. And good-bye to you also, Professor Summerlee. If you are still capable of self-improvement, you will surely return to London a wiser man.”

So he turned upon his heel, and a minute later I could see his short figure as he made his way back to his train. Well, we are well down Channel now. God bless all we leave behind us, and send us safely back.