Part 24 (1/2)
”It's over,” said Lord John ”I think we can leave the tidying up to them Perhaps the less we see of it the better we shall sleep”
Challenger's eyes were shi+ning with the lust of slaughter
”We have been privileged,” he cried, strutting about like a gamecock, ”to be present at one of the typical decisive battles of history--the battles which have determined the fate of the world What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another? It is less Each produces the saes the cave-dwellers held their own against the tiger folk, or the elephants first found that they had a master, those were the real conquests--the victories that count By this strange turn of fate we have seen and helped to decide even such a contest Now upon this plateau the future must ever be for man”
It needed a robust faith in the end to justify such tragic h the woods we found the ape- thick, transfixed with spears or arrows Here and there a little group of shattered Indians marked where one of the anthropoids had turned to bay, and sold his life dearly Always in front of us we heard the yelling and roaring which showed the direction of the pursuit The ape-men had been driven back to their city, they had ain they had been broken, and noere in tihty or a hundred males, the last survivors, had been driven across that sae of the cliff, the scene of our own exploit two days before As we arrived the Indians, a semicircle of spearmen, had closed in on them, and in a minute it was over, Thirty or forty died where they stood The others, screa, were thrust over the precipice, and went hurtling down, as their prisoners had of old, on to the sharp baer had said, and the reign of man was assured forever in Maple White Land
The males were exter were driven away to live in bondage, and the long rivalry of untold centuries had reached its bloody end
For us the victory brought ain ere able to visit our caet at our stores Once more also ere able to communicate with Zambo, who had been terrified by the spectacle froe of the cliff
”Co froet you sure if you stay up there”
”It is the voice of sanity!” said Suh and they are neither suitable to our character or our position I hold you to your word, Challenger Fro us out of this horrible country and back once more to civilization”
CHAPTER XV
”Our Eyes have seen Great Wonders”
I write this from day to day, but I trust that before I coht shi+nes, at last, through our clouds We are held here with no clear ainst it Yet, I can well ilad that ere kept, against our will, to see soular place, and of the creatures who inhabit it
The victory of the Indians and the annihilation of the ape- point of our fortunes From then onwards, ere in truth masters of the plateau, for the natives looked upon us with a e poe had aided them to destroy their hereditary foe For their own sakes they would, perhaps, be glad to see the departure of such formidable and incalculable people, but they have not theested any way by which we may reach the plains below There had been, so far as we could follow their signs, a tunnel by which the place could be approached, the lower exit of which we had seen from below By this, no doubt, both ape-men and Indians had at different epochs reached the top, and Maple White with his companion had taken the same way Only the year before, however, there had been a terrific earthquake, and the upper end of the tunnel had fallen in and completely disappeared The Indians now could only shake their heads and shrug their shoulders e expressed by signs our desire to descend It may be that they cannot, but it et away
At the end of the victorious ca ape-folk were driven across the plateau (their wailings were horrible) and established in the neighborhood of the Indian caves, where they would, from noards, be a servile race under the eyes of their masters
It was a rude, raw, priypt At night we could hear fro-drawn cry, as soreatness and recalled the departed glories of Ape Town Hewers of wood and drawers of water, such were they from noards
We had returned across the plateau with our allies two days after the battle, and made our camp at the foot of their cliffs They would have had us share their caves with the that to do so would put us in their power if they were treacherously disposed We kept our independence, therefore, and had our weapons ready for any e the most friendly relations We also continually visited their caves, which were h whether made by man or by Nature we have never been able to determine They were all on the one stratum, hollowed out of so the ruddy cliffs above theranite which forhty feet above the ground, and were led up to by long stone stairs, so narrow and steep that no large ani in straight passages of varying length into the side of the hill, with sray walls decorated with many excellent pictures done with charred sticks and representing the various ani were swept from the country the future explorer would find upon the walls of these caves auanodons, and fish lizards--which had lived so recently upon earth
Since we had learned that the huge iguanodons were kept as ta meat-stores, we had conceived that man, even with his primitive weapons, had established his ascendancy upon the plateau We were soon to discover that it was not so, and that he was still there upon tolerance
It was on the third day after our foredy occurred Challenger and Suether that day to the lake where soed in harpooning specireat lizards
Lord John and I had remained in our camp, while a nurassy slope in front of the caves engaged in different ways Suddenly there was a shrill cry of alarues Fro wildly for shelter, swar up the staircases and into the caves in atheir ar to us to join theazine rifles and ran out to see what the danger could be
Suddenly froroup of twelve or fifteen Indians, running for their lives, and at their very heels two of those frightful monsters which had disturbed our camp and pursued me upon my solitary journey In shape they were like horrible toads, and s, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant We had never before seen theht, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been We now stood aht, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck the rainbow bloom as they moved
We had little time to watch theitives and weretheht upon each in turn, leaving hiled, to bound on after the others
The wretched Indians screamed with terror, but were helpless, run as they would, before the relentless purpose and horrible activity of these monstrous creatures One after another they went down, and there were not half-a-dozen surviving by the time my companion and I could come to their help But our aid was of little avail and only involved us in the sae of a couple of hundred yards we e bullet after bullet into the beasts, but with nothem with pellets of paper
Their slow reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springs of their lives, with no special brain center but scattered throughout their spinal cords, could not be tapped by any modern weapons The ress by distracting their attention with the flash and roar of our guns, and so to give both the natives and ourselves time to reach the steps which led to safety But where the conical explosive bullets of the twentieth century were of no avail, the poisoned arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice of strophanthus and steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed