I am forced to admit that even
though I had traveled a long
distance to place Bowen Tyler's
manuscript in the hands of his
father, I was still a trifle
skeptical as to its sincerity,
since I could not but recall
that it had not been many years
since Bowen had been one of the
most notorious practical jokers
of his alma mater. The truth
was that as I sat in the Tyler
library at Santa Monica I commenced
to feel a trifle foolish and
to wish that I had merely forwarded
the manuscript by express instead
of bearing it personally, for
I confess that I do not enjoy
being laughed at. I have a well-developed
sense of humor--when the joke
is not on me.
Mr. Tyler, Sr., was expected
almost hourly. The last steamer
in from Honolulu had brought
information of the date of the
expected sailing of his yacht
Toreador, which was now twenty-four
hours overdue. Mr. Tyler's assistant
secretary, who had been left
at home, assured me that there
was no doubt but that the Toreador
had sailed as promised, since
he knew his employer well enough
to be positive that nothing short
of an act of God would prevent
his doing what he had planned
to do. I was also aware of the
fact that the sending apparatus
of the Toreador's wireless equipment
was sealed, and that it would
only be used in event of dire
necessity. There was, therefore,
nothing to do but wait, and we
waited.
We discussed the manuscript
and hazarded guesses concerning
it and the strange events it
narrated. The torpedoing of the
liner upon which Bowen J. Tyler,
Jr., had taken passage for France
to join the American Ambulance
was a well-known fact, and I
had further substantiated by
wire to the New York office of
the owners, that a Miss La Rue
had been booked for passage.
Further, neither she nor Bowen
had been mentioned among the
list of survivors; nor had the
body of either of them been recovered.
Their rescue by the English
tug was entirely probable; the
capture of the enemy U-33 by
the tug's crew was not beyond
the range of possibility; and
their adventures during the perilous
cruise which the treachery and
deceit of Benson extended until
they found themselves in the
waters of the far South Pacific
with depleted stores and poisoned
water-casks, while bordering
upon the fantastic, appeared
logical enough as narrated, event
by event, in the manuscript.
Caprona has always been considered
a more or less mythical land,
though it is vouched for by an
eminent navigator of the eighteenth
century; but Bowen's narrative
made it seem very real, however
many miles of trackless ocean
lay between us and it. Yes, the
narrative had us guessing. We
were agreed that it 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 reason
why they couldn't have negotiated
the submerged tunnel beneath
the barrier cliffs and made good
their escape."
"I don't like 'em," said the
assistant secretary; "but sometimes
you got to hand it to 'em."
"Yes," I growled, "and there's
nothing I'd enjoy more than handing
it to them!" And then the telephone-bell
rang.
The assistant
secretary answered, and as
I watched him, I saw his
jaw drop and his face go white. "My
God!" he exclaimed as he hung
up the receiver as one in a trance. "It
can't be!"
"What?" I asked.
"Mr. Tyler is dead," he answered
in a dull voice. "He died at
sea, suddenly, yesterday."
The next ten days were occupied
in burying Mr. Bowen J. Tyler,
Sr., and arranging plans for
the succor of his son. Mr. Tom
Billings, the late Mr. Tyler's
secretary, did it all. He is
force, energy, initiative and
good judgment combined and personified.
I never have beheld a more dynamic
young man. He handled lawyers,
courts and executors as a sculptor
handles his modeling clay. He
formed, fashioned and forced
them to his will. He had been
a classmate of Bowen Tyler at
college, and a fraternity brother,
and before, that he had been
an impoverished and improvident
cow-puncher on one of the great
Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had
picked him out of thousands of
employees and made him; or rather
Tyler had given him the opportunity,
and then Billings had made himself.
Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of
men as his father, had taken
him into his friendship, and
between the two of them they
had turned out a man who would
have died for a Tyler as quickly
as he would have for his flag.
Yet there was none of the sycophant
or fawner in Billings; ordinarily
I do not wax enthusiastic about
men, but this man Billings comes
as close to my conception of
what a regular man should be
as any I have ever met. I venture
to say that before Bowen J. Tyler
sent him to college he had never
heard the word ethics, and yet
I am equally sure that in all
his life he never has transgressed
a single tenet of the code of
ethics of an American gentleman.
Ten days after they brought
Mr. Tyler's body off the Toreador,
we steamed out into the Pacific
in search of Caprona. There were
forty in the party, including
the master and crew of the Toreador;
and Billings the indomitable
was in command. We had a long
and uninteresting search for
Caprona, for the old map upon
which the assistant secretary
had finally located it was most
inaccurate. When its grim walls
finally rose out of the ocean's
mists before us, we were so far
south that it was a question
as to whether we were in the
South Pacific or the Antarctic.
Bergs were numerous, and it was
very cold.
All during the trip Billings
had steadfastly evaded questions
as to how we were to enter Caspak
after we had found Caprona. Bowen
Tyler's manuscript had made it
perfectly evident to all that
the subterranean outlet of the
Caspakian River was the only
means of ingress or egress to
the crater world beyond the impregnable
cliffs. Tyler's party had been
able to navigate this channel
because their craft had been
a submarine; but the Toreador
could as easily have flown over
the cliffs as sailed under them.
Jimmy Hollis and Colin Short
whiled away many an hour inventing
schemes for surmounting the obstacle
presented by the barrier cliffs,
and making ridiculous wagers
as to which one Tom Billings
had in mind; but immediately
we were all assured that we had
raised Caprona, Billings called
us together.
"There was no use in talking
about these things," he said, "until
we found the island. At best
it can be but conjecture on our
part until we have been able
to scrutinize the coast closely.
Each of us has formed a mental
picture of the Capronian seacoast
from Bowen's manuscript, and
it is not likely that any two
of these pictures resemble each
other, or that any of them resemble
the coast as we shall presently
find it. I have in view three
plans for scaling the cliffs,
and the means for carrying out
each is in the hold. There is
an electric drill with plenty
of waterproof cable to reach
from the ship's dynamos to the
cliff-top when the Toreador is
anchored at a safe distance from
shore, and there is sufficient
half-inch iron rod to build a
ladder from the base to the top
of the cliff. It would be a long,
arduous and dangerous work to
bore the holes and insert the
rungs of the ladder from the
bottom upward; yet it can be
done.
"I also have
a life-saving mortar with which
we might be
able to throw a line over the
summit of the cliffs; but this
plan would necessitate one of
us climbing to the top with the
chances more than even that the
line would cut at the summit,
or the hooks at the upper end
would slip.
"My third plan
seems to me the most feasible.
You all saw
a number of large, heavy boxes
lowered into the hold before
we sailed. I know you did, because
you asked me what they contained
and commented upon the large
letter 'H' which was painted
upon each box. These boxes contain
the various parts of a hydro-aeroplane.
I purpose assembling this upon
the strip of beach described
in Bowen's manuscript--the beach
where he found the dead body
of the apelike man--provided
there is sufficient space above
high water; otherwise we shall
have to assemble it on deck and
lower it over the side. After
it is assembled, I shall carry
tackle and ropes to the cliff-top,
and then it will be comparatively
simple to hoist the search-party
and its supplies in safety. Or
I can make a sufficient number
of trips to land the entire party
in the valley beyond the barrier;
all will depend, of course, upon
what my first reconnaissance
reveals."
That afternoon we steamed slowly
along the face of Caprona's towering
barrier.
"You see now," remarked Billings
as we craned our necks to scan
the summit thousands of feet
above us, "how futile it would
have been to waste our time in
working out details of a plan
to surmount those." And he jerked
his thumb toward the cliffs. "It
would take weeks, possibly months,
to construct a ladder to the
top. I had no conception of their
formidable height. Our mortar
would not carry a line halfway
to the crest of the lowest point.
There is no use discussing any
plan other than the hydro-aeroplane.
We'll find the beach and get
busy."
Late the following morning
the lookout announced that he
could discern surf about a mile
ahead; and as we approached,
we all saw the line of breakers
broken by a long sweep of rolling
surf upon a narrow beach. The
launch was lowered, and five
of us made a landing, getting
a good ducking in the ice-cold
waters in the doing of it; but
we were rewarded by the finding
of the clean-picked bones of
what might have been the skeleton
of a high order of ape or a very
low order of man, lying close
to the base of the cliff. Billings
was satisfied, as were the rest
of us, that this was the beach
mentioned by Bowen, and we further
found that there was ample room
to assemble the sea-plane.
Billings, having
arrived at a decision, lost
no time in acting,
with the result that before mid-afternoon
we had landed all the large boxes
marked "H" upon the beach, and
were busily engaged in opening
them. Two days later the plane
was assembled and tuned. We loaded
tackles and ropes, water, food
and ammunition in it, and then
we each implored Billings to
let us be the one to accompany
him. But he would take no one.
That was Billings; if there was
any especially difficult or dangerous
work to be done, that one man
could do, Billings always did
it himself. If he needed assistance,
he never called for volunteers--just
selected the man or men he considered
best qualified for the duty.
He said that he considered the
principles underlying all volunteer
service fundamentally wrong,
and that it seemed to him that
calling for volunteers reflected
upon the courage and loyalty
of the entire command.
We rolled the plane down to
the water's edge, and Billings
mounted the pilot's seat. There
was a moment's delay as he assured
himself that he had everything
necessary. Jimmy Hollis went
over his armament and ammunition
to see that nothing had been
omitted. Besides pistol and rifle,
there was the machine-gun mounted
in front of him on the plane,
and ammunition for all three.
Bowen's account of the terrors
of Caspak had impressed us all
with the necessity for proper
means of defense.
At last all was ready. The
motor was started, and we pushed
the plane out into the surf.
A moment later, and she was skimming
seaward. Gently she rose from
the surface of the water, executed
a wide spiral as she mounted
rapidly, circled once far above
us and then disappeared over
the crest of the cliffs. We all
stood silent and expectant, our
eyes glued upon the towering
summit above us. Hollis, who
was now in command, consulted
his wrist-watch at frequent intervals.
"Gad," exclaimed Short, "we
ought to be hearing from him
pretty soon!"
Hollis laughed
nervously. "He's
been gone only ten minutes," he
announced.
"Seems like an hour," snapped
Short. "What's that? Did you
hear that? He's firing! It's
the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and
here we are as helpless as a
lot of old ladies ten thousand
miles away! We can't do a thing.
We don't know what's happening.
Why didn't he let one of us go
with him?"
Yes, it was the machine-gun.
We would hear it distinctly for
at least a minute. Then came
silence. That was two weeks ago.
We have had no sign nor signal
from Tom Billings since.
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