Lost World E-book

                                      1912
                                 THE LOST WORLD

                           by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle









Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)


LOST_WORLD
                                  THE LOST WORLD
-
  Being an account of the recent amazing adventures of Professor E.
Challenger, Lord John Roxton, Professor Summerlee and Mr. Ed Malone of
the 'Daily Gazette'
-
-
                    I have wrought my simple plan
                     If I give one hour of joy
                    To the boy who's half a man,
                     Or the man who's half a boy.


                  1. There Are Heroisms All Round Us
-
  MR. HUNGERTON, her father, really was the most tactless person
upon earth- a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly
good-natured, but absolutely centred upon his own silly self. If
anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the
thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really
believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days
a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear
his views upon bimetallism- a subject upon which he was by way of
being an authority.
  For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous
chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver,
the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.
  'Suppose,' he cried, with feeble violence, 'that all the debts in
the world were called up simultaneously and immediate payment insisted
upon. What, under our present conditions, would happen then?'
  I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon
which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity,
which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject
in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic
meeting.
  At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of fate had come!
All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal
which will send him on a forlorn hope, hope of victory and fear of
repulse alternating in his mind.
                                                         
  She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against
the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof! We had been
friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same
comradeship which I might have established with one of my
fellow-reporters upon the Gazette- perfectly frank, perfectly kind,
and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too
frank and at her ease with rue. It is no compliment to a man. Where
the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions,
heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand
in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the
wincing figure- these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply,
are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned
as much as that- or had inherited it in that race-memory which we call
instinct.
  Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold
and hard, but such a thought was treason. That delicately-bronzed
skin, almost Oriental in its colouring, that raven hair, the large
liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips- all the stigmata of
passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had
never found the secret of drawing it forth. However, come what
might, I should have done with suspense and bring matters to a head
tonight. She could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed lover
than an accepted brother.
  So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long
and uneasy silence when two critical dark eyes looked round at me, and
the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof.
  'I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish
you wouldn't, for things are so much nicer as they are.'
  I drew my chair a little nearer.
                                                        
  'Now, how did you know that I was going to propose?' I asked, in
genuine wonder.
  'Don't women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the world
was ever taken unawares? But, oh, Ned, our friendship has been so good
and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don't you feel how
splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able to
talk face to face as we have talked?'
  'I don't know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with- with
the station-master.' I can't imagine how that official came into the
matter, but in he trotted and set us both laughing. 'That does not
satisfy me in the least. I want my arms around you and your head on my
breast, and, oh, Gladys, I want-'
  She had sprung from her chair as she saw signs that I proposed to
demonstrate some of my wants.
  'You've spoiled everything, Ned,' she said. 'It's all so beautiful
and natural until this kind of thing comes in. It is such a pity.
Why can't you control yourself? '
                                                        
  'I didn't invent it,' I pleaded. 'It's nature. It's love!'
  'Well, perhaps if both love it may be different. I have never felt
it.'
  'But you must- you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys,
you were made for love! You must love!'
  'One must wait till it comes.'
  'But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?'
                                                        
  She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand- such a gracious,
stooping attitude it was- and she pressed back my head. Then she
looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.
  'No, it isn't that,' she said at last. You're not a conceited boy by
nature, and so I can safely tell you that it is not that. It's
deeper.'
  'My character?'
  She nodded severely.
  'What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No,
really I won't, if you'll only sit down!'
                                                        
  She was looking at me with a wondering distrust which was much
more to my mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive and
bestial it looks when you put it down in black and white! And
perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself. Anyhow, she
sat down.
  'Now tell me what's amiss with me.'
  'I'm in love with somebody else,' she said.
  It was my turn to jump out of my chair.
  'It's nobody in particular,' she explained, laughing at the
expression of my face, 'only an ideal. I've never met the kind of
man I mean.'
                                                        
  'Tell me about him. What does he look like?'
  'Oh, he might look very much like you.'
  'How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that I
don't do? Just say the word- teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,
Theosophist, Superman- I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only
give me an idea what would please you.
  She laughed at the elasticity of my character. 'Well, in the first
place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that,' she said. 'He
would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a
silly girl's whim. But above all he must be a man who could do, who
could act, who would look death in the face and have no fear of him- a
man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I
should love, but always the glories he had won, for they would be
reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife's
life of him I could so understand her love. And Lady Stanley! Did
you ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her
husband? These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all
her soul and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love,
honoured by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds.'
  She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought down
the whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard, and went on
with the argument.
                                                        
  'We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons,' said I. 'Besides, we don't
get the chance- at least, I never had the chance. If I did I should
try to take it.'
  'But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man I
mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I've
never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are
heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them, and
for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that
young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a
gale of wind, but because he was announced to go he insisted on
starting. The wind blew him one thousand five hundred miles in
twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the
kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women
must have envied her! That's what I should like- to be envied for my
man.'
  'I'd have done it to please you.'
  'But you shouldn't do it merely to please me. You should do it
because you can't help it, because it's natural to you- because the
man in you is crying out for heroic expression. Now, when you
described the Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone
down and helped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?'
  'I did.'
                                                        
  'You never said so.'
  'There was nothing worth bucking about.'
  'I didn't know.' She looked at me with rather more interest. 'That
was brave of you.'
  'I had to. If you want to write good copy you must be where the
things are.'
  'What a prosaic motive! It seems to take all the romance out of
it. But still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down that
mine.' She gave me her hand, but with such sweetness and dignity
that I could only stoop and kiss it. 'I dare say I am merely a foolish
woman with a young girl's fancies. And yet it is so real with me, so
entirely part of my very self, that I cannot help acting upon it. If I
marry, I do want to marry a famous man.'
                                                        
  'Why should you not?' I cried. 'It is women like you who brace men
up. Give me a chance and see if I will take it! Besides, as you say,
men ought to make their own chances, and not wait until they are
given. Look at Clive- just a clerk, and he conquered India. By George!
I'll do something in the world yet!'
  She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence.
  'Why not?' she said. 'You have everything a man could have- youth,
health, strength, education, energy. I was sorry you spoke. And now
I am glad- so glad- if it wakens these thoughts in you.'
  'And if I do-?'
  Her hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips.
                                                        
  'Not another word, sir. You should have been at the office for
evening duty half an hour ago, only I hadn't the heart to remind
you. Some day, perhaps, when you have won your place in the world,
we shall talk it over again.'
  And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening
pursuing the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with
the eager determination that not another day should elapse before I
should find some deed which was worthy of my lady. But who in all this
wide world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that
deed was to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing
of it?
  And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have
nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have been no
narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the
world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with
the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come
within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he
knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land
where lie the great adventures And the great rewards. Behold me, then,
at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most
insignificant unit, with the settled determination that very night, if
possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was
it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my
life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle
age, but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first
love.


              2. Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger
-
  I ALWAYS liked McArdle, the crabbed old, round-backed, red-headed
news editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me. Of course,
Beaumont was the real boss, but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of
some Olympian height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller
than an international crisis or a split in the Cabinet. Sometimes we
saw him passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum with his eyes
staring vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the
Persian Gulf. He was above and beyond us. But McArdle was his first
lieutenant, and it was he that we knew. The old man nodded as I
entered the room, and he pushed his spectacles far up on his bald
forehead.
  'Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very well,'
said he, in his kindly Scotch accent.
  I thanked him.
  'The colliery explosion was excellent. So was the Southwark fire.
You have the true descreeptive touch. What did you want to see me
about?'
  'To ask a favour.'
                                                         
  He looked alarmed and his eyes shunned mine.
  'Tut! tut! What is it?'
  'Do you think, sir, that you could possibly send me on some
mission for the paper? I would do my best to put it through and get
you some good copy.'
  'What sort of a meesion had you in your mind, Mr. Malone?'
  'Well, sir, anything that had adventure and danger in it. I would
really do my very best. The more difficult it was the better it
would suit me.'
                                                        
  'You seem very anxious to lose your life.'
  'To justify my life, sir.'
  'Dear me, Mr. Malone, this is very- very exalted. I'm afraid the day
for this sort of thing is rather past. The expense of the "special
meesion" business hardly justifies the result, and, of course, in
any case it would only be an experienced man with a name that would
command public confidence who would get such an order. The big blank
spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for
romance anywhere. Wait a bit, though!' he added, with a sudden smile
upon his face. 'Talking of the blank spaces of the map gives me an
idea. What about exposing a fraud- a modern Munchausen- and making him
rideeculous? You could show him up as the liar that he is! Eh, man, it
would be fine. How does it appeal to you?'
  'Anything- anywhere- I care nothing.'
  McArdle was plunged in thought for some minutes.
                                                        
  'I wonder whether you could get on friendly- or at least on
talking terms with the fellow,' he said, at last. 'You seem to have
a sort of genius for establishing relations with people- seempathy,
I suppose, or animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something.
I am conscious of it myself.'
  'You are very good, sir.'
  'So why should you not try your luck with Professor Challenger, of
Enmore Park?'
  I dare say I looked a little startled.
  'Challenger!' I cried. 'Professor Challenger, the famous
zoologist! Wasn't he the man who broke the skull of Blundell, of the
Telegraph?'
                                                        
  The news editor smiled grimly.
  'Do you mind? Didn't you say it was adventures you were after?'
  'It is all in the way of business, sir,' I answered.
  'Exactly. I don't suppose he can always be so violent as that. I'm
thinking that Blundell got him at the wrong moment, maybe, or in the
wrong fashion. You may have better luck, or more tact in handling him.
There's something in your line there, I am sure, and the Gazette
should work it.'
  'I really know nothing about him,' said I. 'I only remember his name
in connection with the police-court proceedings, for striking
Blundell.'
                                                        
  'I have a few notes for your guidance, Mr. Malone. I've had my eye
on the Professor for some little time.' He took a paper from a drawer.
'Here is a summary of his record. I give it you briefly:-
  '"Challenger, George Edward. Born: Largs, N.B., 1863. Educ.: Largs
Academy; Edinburgh University. British Museum Assistant, 1892.
Assistant-Keeper of Comparative Anthropology Department, 1893.
Resigned after acrimonious Correspondence same year. Winner of
Crayston Medal for Zoological Research. Foreign Member of"- well,
quite a lot of things, about two inches of small type- "Societe Belge,
American Academy of Sciences, La Plata, etc., etc. Ex-President
Palaeontological Society. Section H, British Association"- so on, so
on!- "Publications: 'Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuck
Skulls'; 'Outlines of Vertebrate Evolution'; and numerous papers,
including 'The Underlying Fallacy of Weissmannism', which caused
heated discussion at the Zoological Congress of Vienna. Recreations:
Walking, Alpine climbing. Address: Enmore Park, Kensington, W."
  'There, take it with you. I've nothing more for you tonight.'
  I pocketed the slip of paper.
  'One moment, sir,' I said, as I realised that it was a pink bald
head, and not a red face, which was fronting me. 'I am not very
clear yet why I am to interview this gentleman. What has he done?'
                                                        
  The face flashed back again.
  Went to South America on a solitary expedition two years ago. Came
back last year. Had undoubtedly been to South America, but refused
to say exactly where. Began to tell his adventures in a vague way, but
somebody started to pick holes, and he just shut up like an oyster.
Something wonderful happened- or the man's a champion liar, which is
the more probable supposition. Had some damaged photographs, said to
be fakes. Got so touchy that he assaults anyone who asks questions,
and heaves reporters down the stairs. In my opinion he's just a
homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science. That's your man, Mr.
Malone. Now, off you run, and see what you can make of him. You're big
enough to look after yourself. Anyway, you are all safe. Employers'
Liability Act, you know.'
  A grinning red face turned once more into a pink oval, fringed
with gingery fluff: the interview was at an end.
  I walked across to the Savage Club, but instead of turning into it I
leaned upon the railings of Adelphi Terrace and gazed thoughtfully for
a long time at the brown, oily river. I can always think most sanely
and clearly in the open air. I took out the list of Professor
Challenger's exploits, and I read it over under the electric lamp.
Then I had what I can only regard as an inspiration. As a Pressman,
I felt sure from what I had been told that I could never hope to get
into touch with this cantankerous Professor. But these
recriminations twice mentioned in his skeleton biography, could only
mean that he was a fanatic in science. Was there not an exposed margin
there upon which he might be accessible? I would try.
  I entered the club. It was just after eleven, and the big room was
fairly full, though the rush had not yet set in. I noticed a tall,
thin, angular man seated in an arm-chair by the fire. He turned as I
drew my chair up to him. It was the man of all others whom I should
have chosen- Tarp Henry of the staff of Nature, a thin, dry,
leathery creature, who was full, to those who knew him, of kindly
humanity. I plunged instantly into my subject.
                                                        
  'What do you know of Professor Challenger?'
  'Challenger?' He gathered his brows in scientific disapproval.
'Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from
South America.'
  'What story?'
  'Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had
discovered. I believe he has retracted since. Anyhow, he has
suppressed it all. He gave an interview to Reuter's, and there was
such a howl that he saw it wouldn't do. It was a discreditable
business. There were one or two folk who were inclined to take him
seriously, but he soon choked them off.'
  'How?'
                                                        
  'Well, by his insufferable rudeness and impossible behaviour.
There was poor old Wadley, of the Zoological Institute. Wadley sent
a message: "The President of the Zoological Institute presents his
compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal
favour if he would do them the honour to come to their next
meeting." The answer was unprintable.'
  'You don't say?'
  'Well, a bowdlerised version of it would run: "Professor
Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological
Institute, and would take it as a personal favour if he would go to
the devil."'
  'Good Lord!'
  'Yes I expect that's what old Wadley said. I remember his wail at
the meeting, which began: "In fifty years' experience of scientific
intercourse-" It quite broke the old man up.'
                                                        
  'Anything more about Challenger?'
  'Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a
nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious
notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye. I'm a
frontiersman from the extreme edge of the Knowable, and I feel quite
out of place when I leave my study and come into touch with all you
great, rough, hulking creatures. I'm too detached to talk scandal, and
yet at scientific conversaziones I have heard something of Challenger,
for he is one of those men whom nobody can ignore. He's as clever as
they make 'em- a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a
quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that. He had
gone the length of faking some photographs over the South American
business.'
  'You say he is a faddist. What is his particular fad?'
  'He has a thousand, but the latest is something about Weissmann
and Evolution. He had a fearful row about it in Vienna, I believe.'
  'Can't you tell me the point?'
                                                        
  'Not at the moment, but a translation of the proceedings exists.
We have it filed at the office. Would you care to come?'
  'It's just what I want. I have to interview the fellow, and I need
some lead up to him. It's really awfully good of you to give me a
lift. I'll go with you now, if it is not too late.'
-
  Half an hour later I was seated in the newspaper office with a
huge tome in front of me, which had been opened at the article
'Weissmann versus Darwin', with the sub-heading, 'Spirited Protest
at Vienna. Lively Proceedings'. My scientific education having been
somewhat neglected I was unable to follow the whole argument, but it
was evident that the English Professor had handled his subject in a
very aggressive fashion, and had thoroughly annoyed his Continental
colleagues. 'Protests', 'Uproar', and 'General appeal to the Chairman'
were three of the first brackets which caught my eye. Most of the
matter might have been written in Chinese for any definite meaning
that it conveyed to my brain.
  'I wish you could translate it into English for me,' I said,
pathetically, to my helpmate.
                                                        
  'Well, it is a translation.'
  'Then I'd better try my luck with the original.'
  'It is certainly rather deep for a layman.'
  'If I could only get a single good, meaty sentence which seemed to
convey some sort of definite human idea, it would serve my turn. Ah,
yes, this one will do. I seem in a vague way almost to understand
it. I'll copy it out. This shall be my link with the terrible
Professor.'
  'Nothing else I can do?'
                                                        
  'Well, yes; I propose to write to him. If I could frame the letter
here, and use your address, it would give atmosphere.'
  'We'll have the fellow round here making a row and breaking the
furniture.'
  'No, no; you'll see the letter- nothing contentious, I assure you.'
  'Well, that's my chair and desk. You'll find paper there. I'd like
to censor it before it goes.'
  It took some doing, but I flatter myself that it wasn't such a bad
job when it was finished. I read it aloud to the critical
bacteriologist with some pride in my handiwork.
                                                        
-
  'DEAR PROFESSOR CHALLENGER,' it said. 'As a humble student of
Nature, I have always taken the most profound interest in your
speculations as to the differences between Darwin and Weissmann. I
have recently had occasion to refresh my memory by re-reading-'
  'You infernal liar!' murmured Tarp Henry.
  '-by re-reading your masterly address at Vienna. That lucid and
admirable statement seems to be the last word in the matter. There
is one sentence in it, however- namely: "I protest strongly against
the insufferable and entirely dogmatic assertion that each separate id
is a microcosm possessed of an historical architecture elaborated
slowly through the series of generations." Have you no desire, in view
of later research, to modify this statement? Do you not think that
it is over-accentuated? With your permission, I would ask the favour
of an interview, as I feel strongly upon the subject, and have certain
suggestions which I could only elaborate in a personal conversation.
With your consent, I trust to have the honour of calling at eleven
o'clock the day after tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.
  'I remain, Sir, with assurances of profound respect, yours very
truly,
                                                        
                                              EDWARD D. MALONE.'
-
  'How's that?' I asked triumphantly.
  'Well, if your conscience can stand it-'
  'It has never failed me yet.'
                                                        
  'But what do you mean to do?'
  'To get there. Once I am in his room I may see some opening. I may
even go the length of open confession. If he is a sportsman he will be
tickled.'
  'Tickled, indeed! He's much more likely to do the tickling. Chain
mail, or an American football suit- that's what you'll want. Well,
good-bye. I'll have the answer for you here on Wednesday morning- if
he ever deigns to answer you. He is a violent, dangerous, cantankerous
character, hated by everyone who comes across him, and the butt of the
students, so far as they dare take a liberty with him. Perhaps it
would be best for you if you never heard from the fellow at all.'


                3. He is a Perfectly Impossible Person
-
  MY friend's fear or hope was not destined to be realised. When I
called on Wednesday there was a letter with the West Kensington
postmark upon it, and my name scrawled across the envelope in a
hand-writing which looked like a barbed-wire railing. The contents
were as follows:-
-
                                                'Enmore Park, W.
  'SIR,- I have duly received your note, in which you claim to endorse
my views, although I am not aware that they are dependent upon
endorsement either from you or anyone else. You have ventured to use
the word "speculation" with regard to my statement upon the subject of
Darwinism, and I would call your attention to the fact that such a
word in such a connection is offensive to a degree. The context
convinces me, however, that you have sinned rather through ignorance
and tactlessness than through malice, so I am content to pass the
matter by. You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and
appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have
thought that only a sub-human intelligence could have failed to
grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall
consent to see you at the hour named, though visits and visitors of
every sort are exceedingly distasteful to me. As to your suggestion
that I may modify my opinion, I would have you know that it is not
my habit to do so after a deliberate expression of my mature views.
You will kindly show the envelope of this letter to my man, Austin,
when you call, as he has to take every precaution to shield me from
the intrusive rascals who call themselves "journalists".
-
                                                         
                                         'Yours faithfully,
                                      GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.'
-
  This was the letter that I read aloud to Tarp Henry, who had come
down early to hear the result of my venture. His only remark was,
'There's some new stuff, cuticura or something, which is better than
'arnica.' Some people have such extraordinary notions of humour.
  It was nearly half-past ten before I had received my message, but
a taxicab took me round in good time for my appointment. It was an
imposing porticoed house at which we stopped, and the
heavily-curtained windows gave every indication of wealth upon the
part of this formidable Professor. The door was opened by an odd,
swarthy, dried-up person of uncertain age, with a dark pilot jacket
and brown leather gaiters. I found afterwards that he was the
chauffeur, who filled the gaps left by a succession of fugitive
butlers. He looked me up and down with a searching light blue eye.
                                                        
  'Expected?' he asked.
  'An appointment.'
  'Got your letter?'
  I produced the envelope.
  'Right!' He seemed to be a person of few words. Following him down
the passage I was suddenly interrupted by a small woman, who stepped
out from what proved to be the dining-room door. She was a bright,
vivacious, dark-eyed lady, more French than English in her type.
                                                        
  'One moment,' she said. 'You can wait, Austin. Step in here, sir.
May I ask if you have met my husband before?'
  'No, madam, I have not had the honour.'
  'Then I apologise to you in advance. I must tell you that he is a
perfectly impossible person- absolutely impossible. If you are
forewarned you will be the more ready to make allowances.'
  'It is most considerate of you, madam.'
  'Get quickly out of the room if he seems inclined to be violent.
Don't wait to argue with him. Several people have been injured through
doing that. Afterwards there is a public scandal, and it reflects upon
me and all of us. I suppose it wasn't about South America you wanted
to see him?'
                                                        
  I could not lie to a lady.
  'Dear me! That is his most dangerous subject. You won't believe a
word he says- I'm sure I don't wonder. But don't tell him so, for it
makes him very violent. Pretend to believe him, and you may get
through all right. Remember he believes it himself. Of that you may be
assured. A more honest man never lived. Don't wait any longer or he
may suspect. If you find him dangerous- really dangerous- ring the
bell and hold him off until I come. Even at his worst I can usually
control him.'
  With these encouraging words the lady handed me over to the taciturn
Austin, who had waited like a bronze statue of discretion during our
short interview, and I was conducted to the end of the passage.
There was a tap at a door, a bull's bellow from within, and I was face
to face with the Professor.
  He sat in a rotating chair behind a broad table, which was covered
with books, maps, and diagrams. As I entered, his seat spun round to
face me. His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something
strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his
size which took one's breath away- his size and his imposing presence.
His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human
being. I am sure that his top-hat, had I ventured to don it, would
have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the
face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former
florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue,
spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was
peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his
massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts,
very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of
shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him
which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered
with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice
made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.
  'Well?' said he, with a most insolent stare. 'What now?'
                                                        
  I must keep up my deception for at least a little time longer,
otherwise here was evidently an end of the interview.
  'You were good enough to give me an appointment, sir,' said I,
humbly, producing his envelope.
  He took my letter from his desk and laid it out before him.
  'Oh, you are the young person who cannot understand plain English,
are you? My general conclusions you are good enough to approve, as I
understand?'
  'Entirely, sir- entirely!' I was very emphatic.
                                                        
  'Dear me! That strengthens my position very much, does it not?
Your age and appearance make your support doubly valuable. Well, at
least you are better than that herd of swine in Vienna, whose
gregarious grunt is, however, not more offensive than the isolated
effort of the British hog.' He glared at me as the present
representative of the beast.
  'They seem to have behaved abominably,' said I.
  'I assure you that I can fight my own battles, and that I have no
possible need of your sympathy. Put me alone, sir, and with my back to
the wall. G. E. C. is happiest then. Well, sir, let us do what we
can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and
is inexpressibly irksome to me. You had, as I have been led to
believe, some comments to make upon the proposition which I advanced
in my thesis.'
  There was a brutal directness about his methods which made evasion
difficult. I must still make play and wait for a better opening. It
had seemed simple enough at a distance. Oh, my Irish wits, could
they not help me now, when I needed help so sorely? He transfixed me
with two sharp, steely eyes. 'Come, come!' he rumbled.
  'I am, of course, a mere student,' said I, with a fatuous smile,
'hardly more, I might say, than an earnest inquirer. At the same time,
it seemed to me that you were a little severe upon Weissmann in this
matter. Has not the general evidence since that date tended to-
well, to strengthen his position?'
                                                        
  'What evidence?' He spoke with a menacing calm.
  'Well, of course, I am aware that there is not any what you might
call definite evidence. I alluded merely to the trend of modern
thought and the general scientific point of view, if I might so
express it.'
  He leaned forward with great earnestness.
  'I suppose you are aware,' said he, checking off points upon his
fingers, 'that the cranial index is a constant factor?'
  'Naturally,' said I.
                                                        
  'And that telegony is still sub judice?'
  'Undoubtedly.'
  'And that the germ plasm is different from the parthenogenetic egg?'
  'Why, surely!' I cried, and gloried in my own audacity.
  'But what does that prove?' he asked, in a gentle, persuasive voice.
                                                        
  'Ah, what indeed?' I murmured. 'What does it prove?'
  'Shall I tell you?' he cooed.
  'Pray do.'
  'It proves,' he roared. with a sudden blast of fury, 'that you are
the rankest impostor in London- a vile, crawling journalist, who has
no more science than he has decency in his composition!'
  He had sprung to his feet with a mad rage in his eyes. Even at
that moment of tension I found time for amazement at the discovery
that he was quite a short man, his head not higher than my shoulder- a
stunted Hercules whose tremendous vitality had all run to depth,
breadth, and brain.
                                                        
  'Gibberish!' he cried leaning forward, with his fingers on the table
and his face projecting. 'That's what I have been talking to you, sir-
scientific gibberish! Did you think you could match cunning with me-
you with your walnut of a brain? You think you are omnipotent, you
infernal scribblers, don't you? That your praise can make a man and
your blame can break him? We must all bow to you, and try to get a
favourable word, must we? This man shall have a leg up, and this man
shall have a dressing down! Creeping vermin, I know you! You've got
out of your station. Time was when your ears were clipped. You've lost
your sense of proportion. Swollen gas-bags! I'll keep you in your
proper place. Yes, sir, you haven't got over G. E. C. There's one
man who is still your master. He warned you off, but if you will come,
by the Lord you do it at your own risk. Forfeit, my good Mr. Malone, I
claim forfeit! You have played a rather dangerous game, and it strikes
me that you have lost it.'
  'Look here, sir,' said I, backing to the door and opening it; 'you
can be as abusive as you like. But there is a limit. You shall not
assault me.'
  'Shall I not?' He was slowly advancing in a peculiarly menacing way,
but he stopped now and put his big hands into the side pockets of a
rather boyish short jacket which he wore. 'I have thrown several of
you out of the house. You will be the fourth or fifth. Three pound
fifteen each- that is how it averaged. Expensive, but very
necessary. Now, sir, why should you not follow your brethren? I rather
think you must.' He resumed his unpleasant and stealthy advance,
pointing his toes as he walked, like a dancing master.
  I could have bolted for the hall door, but it would have been too
ignominious. Besides, a little glow of righteous anger was springing
up within me. I had been hopelessly in the wrong before, but this
man's menaces were putting me in the right.
  'I'll trouble you to keep your hands off, sir. I'll not stand it.'
                                                        
  'Dear me!' His black moustache lifted and a white fang twinkled in a
sneer. 'You won't stand it, eh?'
  'Don't be such a fool, Professor!' I cried, 'what can you hope
for? I'm fifteen stone, as hard as nails, and play centre
three-quarter every Saturday for the London Irish. I'm not the man-'
  It was at that moment that he rushed me. It was lucky that I had
opened the door, or we should have gone through it. We did a
Catherine-wheel together down the passage. Somehow we gathered up a
chair upon our way, and bounded on with it towards the street. My
mouth was full of his beard, our arms were locked, our bodies
intertwined, and that infernal chair radiated its legs all round us.
The watchful Austin had thrown open the hall door. We went with a back
somersault down the front steps. I have seen the two Macs attempt
something of the kind at the halls, but it appears to take some
practice to do it without hurting oneself. The chair went to matchwood
at the bottom, and we rolled apart into the gutter. He sprang to his
feet, waving his fists and wheezing like an asthmatic.
  'Had enough?' he panted.
  'You infernal bully!' I cried, as I gathered myself together.
                                                        
  Then and there we should have tried the thing out, for he was
effervescing with fight, but fortunately I was rescued from an
odious situation. A policeman was beside us, his notebook in his hand.
  'What's all this? You ought to be ashamed,' said the policeman. It
was the most rational remark which I had heard in Enmore Park. 'Well,'
he insisted, turning to me, 'what is it, then?'
  'This man attacked me,' said I.
  'Did you attack him?' asked the policeman.
  The Professor breathed hard and said nothing.
                                                        
  'It's not the first time, either,' said the policeman, severely,
shaking his head. 'You were in trouble last month for the same
thing. You've blacked this young man's eye. Do you give him in charge,
sir?'
  I relented.
  'No,' said I, 'I do not.'
  'What's that?' said the policeman.
  'I was to blame myself. I intruded upon him. He gave me fair
warning.'
                                                        
  The policeman snapped up his notebook.
  'Don't let us have any more such goings-on,' said he. 'Now, then!
Move on, there, move on!' This to a butcher's boy, a maid, and one
or two loafers who had collected. He clumped heavily down the
street, driving this little flock before him. The Professor looked
at me, and there was something humorous at the back of his eyes.
  'Come in!' said he. 'I've not done with you yet.'
  The speech had a sinister sound, but I followed him none the less
into the house. The man-servant, Austin, like a wooden image, closed
the door behind us.


           4. It's Just the Very Biggest Thing in the World
-
  HARDLY was it shut than Mrs. Challenger darted out from the
dining-room. The small woman was in a furious temper. She barred her
husband's way like an enraged chicken in front of a bulldog. It was
evident that she had seen my exit, but had not observed my return.
  'You brute, George!' she screamed. 'You've hurt that nice young
man.'
  He jerked backwards with his thumb.
  'Here he is, safe and sound behind me.'
  She was confused, but not unduly so.
                                                         
  'I am sorry, I didn't see you.'
  'I assure you, madam, that it is all right.'
  'He has marked your poor face! Oh, George, what a brute you are!
Nothing but scandals from one end of the week to the other. Everyone
hating and making fun of you. You've finished my patience. This ends
it.'
  'Dirty linen,' he rumbled.
  'It's not a secret,' she cried. 'Do you suppose that the whole
street- the whole of London, for that matter- Get away, Austin, we
don't want you here. Do you suppose they don't all talk about you?
Where is your dignity? You, a man who should have been Regius
Professor at a great University with a thousand students all
revering you. Where is your dignity, George?'
                                                        
  'How about yours, my dear?'
  'You try me too much. A ruffian- a common brawling ruffian- that's
what you have become.'
  'Be good, Jessie.'
  'A roaring, raging bully!'
  'That's done it! Stool of penance!' said he.
                                                        
  To my amazement he stooped, picked her up, and placed her sitting
upon a high pedestal of black marble in the angle of the hall. It
was at least seven feet high, and so thin that she could hardly
balance upon it. A more absurd object than she presented cocked up
there with her face convulsed with anger, her feet dangling, and her
body rigid for fear of an upset, I could not imagine.
  'Let me down!' she wailed.
  'Say "please".'
  'You brute, George! Let me down this instant!'
  'Come into the study, Mr. Malone.'
                                                        
  'Really, sir-!' said I, looking at the lady.
  'Here's Mr. Malone pleading for you, Jessie. Say "please", and
down you come.'
  'Oh, you brute! Please! please!'
  He took her down as if she had been a canary.
  'You must behave yourself, dear. Mr. Malone is a Pressman. He will
have it all in his rag tomorrow, and sell an extra dozen among our
neighbours. "Strange story of high life"- you felt fairly high on that
pedestal, did you not? Then a subtitle, "Glimpse of a singular
menage". He's a foul feeder, is Mr. Malone, a carrion eater, like
all of his kind- porcus ex grege diaboli- a swine from the devil's
herd. That's it, Malone- what?'
                                                        
  'You are really intolerable!' said I, hotly.
  He bellowed with laughter.
  'We shall have a coalition presently,' he boomed, looking from his
wife to me and puffing out his enormous chest. Then, suddenly altering
his tone, 'Excuse this frivolous family badinage, Mr. Malone. I called
you back for some more serious purpose than to mix you up with our
little domestic pleasantries. Run away, little woman, and don't fret.'
He placed a huge hand upon each of her shoulders. 'All that you say is
perfectly true. I should be a better man if I did what you advise, but
I shouldn't be quite George Edward Challenger. There are plenty of
better men, my dear, but only one G. E. C. So make the best of him.'
He suddenly gave her a resounding kiss, which embarrassed me even more
than his violence had done. 'Now, Mr. Malone,' he continued, with a
great accession of dignity, 'this way if you please.'
  We re-entered the room which we had left so tumultuously ten minutes
before. The Professor closed the door carefully behind us, motioned me
into an arm-chair, and pushed a cigar-box under my nose.
  'Real San Juan Colorado,' he said. 'Excitable people like you are
the better for narcotics. Heavens! don't bite it! Cut- and cut with
reverence! Now lean back, and listen attentively to whatever I may
care to say to you. If any remark should occur to you, you can reserve
it for some more opportune time.
                                                        
  'First of all, as to your return to my house after your most
justifiable expulsion-' he protruded his beard, and stared at me as
one who challenges and invites contradiction- 'after, as I say, your
well-merited expulsion. The reason lay in your answer to that most
officious policeman, in which I seemed to discern some glimmering of
good feeling upon your part- more, at any rate, than I am accustomed
to associate with your profession. In admitting that the fault of
the incident lay with you, you gave some evidence of a certain
mental detachment and breadth of view which attracted my favourable
notice. The sub-species of the human race to which you unfortunately
belong has always been below my mental horizon. Your words brought you
suddenly above it. You swam up into my serious notice. For this reason
I asked you to return with me, as I was minded to make your further
acquaintance. You will kindly deposit your ash in the small Japanese
tray on the bamboo table which stands at your left elbow.'
  All this he boomed forth like a professor addressing his class. He
had swung round his revolving-chair so as to face me, and he sat all
puffed out like an enormous bull-frog, his head laid back, and his
eyes half-covered by supercilious lids. Now he suddenly turned himself
sideways, and all I could see of him was tangled hair with a red,
protruding ear. He was scratching about among the litter of papers
upon his desk. He faced me presently with what looked like a very
tattered sketch-book in his hand.
  'I am going to talk to you about South America,' said he. 'No
comments if you please. First of all, I wish you to understand that
nothing I tell you now is to be repeated in any public way unless
you have my express permission. That permission will, in all human
probability, never be given. Is that clear?'
  'It is very hard,' said I. 'Surely a judicious account-'
  He replaced the notebook upon the table.
                                                        
  'That ends it,' said he. 'I wish you a very good morning.'
  'No, no!' I cried. 'I submit to any conditions. So far as I can see,
I have no choice.'
  'None in the world,' said he.
  'Well, then, I promise.'
  'Word of honour?'
                                                        
  'Word of honour.'
  He looked at me with doubt in his insolent eyes.
  'After all, what do I know about your honour?' said he.
  'Upon my word, sir,' I cried, angrily, 'you take very great
liberties! I have never been so insulted in my life.'
  He seemed more interested than annoyed at my outbreak.
                                                        
  'Round-headed,' he muttered. 'Brachycephalic, grey-eyed,
black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I presume?'
  'I am an Irishman, sir.'
  'Irish Irish?'
  'Yes, sir.'
  'That, of course, explains it. Let me see; you have given me your
promise that my confidence will be respected? That confidence, I may
say, will be far from complete. But I am prepared to give you a few
indications which will be of interest. In the first place, you are
probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South America-
one which will be classical in the scientific history of the world?
The object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of Wallace and
of Bates, which could only be done by observing their reported facts
under the same conditions in which they had themselves noted them.
If my expedition had no other results it would still have been
noteworthy, but a curious incident occurred to me while there which
opened up an entirely fresh line of inquiry.
                                                        
  'You are aware- or probably, in this half-educated age, you are
not aware- that the country round some parts of the Amazon is still
only partially explored, and that a great number of tributaries,
some of them entirely uncharted, run into the main river. It was my
business to visit this little-known back-country and to examine its
fauna, which furnished me with the materials for several chapters
for that great and monumental work upon zoology which will be my
life's justification. I was returning, my work accomplished, when I
had occasion to spend a night at a small Indian village at a point
where a certain tributary- the name and position of which I
withhold- opens into the main river. The natives were Cucama
Indians, an amiable but degraded race, with mental powers hardly
superior to the average Londoner. I had effected some cures among them
upon my way up the river, and had impressed them considerably with
my personality, so that I was not surprised to find myself eagerly
awaited upon my return. I gathered from their signs that someone had
urgent need of my medical services, and I followed the chief to one of
his huts. When I entered I found that the sufferer to whose aid I
had been summoned had that instant expired. He was, to my surprise, no
Indian, but a white man; indeed, I may say a very white man, for he
was flaxen-haired and had some characteristics of an albino. He was
clad in rags, was very emaciated, and bore every trace of a
prolonged hardship. So far as I could understand the account of the
natives, he was a complete stranger to them, and had come upon their
village through the woods alone and in the last stage of exhaustion.
  'The man's knapsack lay beside the couch, and I examined the
contents. His name was written upon a tab within it- Maple White, Lake
Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. It is a name to which I am prepared
always to lift my hat. It is not too much to say that it will rank
level with my own when the final credit of this business comes to be
apportioned.
  'From the contents of his knapsack it was evident that this man
had been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were scraps of
verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they
appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit. There were also some
rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of
coloured chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my
inkstand, a volume of Baxter's "Moths and Butterflies", a cheap
revolver, and a few cartridges. Of personal equipment he either had
none or he had lost it in his journey. Such were the total effects
of this strange American Bohemian.
  'I was turning away from him when I observed that something
projected from the front of his ragged jacket. It was this
sketch-book, which was as dilapidated then as you see it now.
Indeed, I can assure you that a first folio of Shakespeare could not
be treated with greater reverence than this relic has been since it
came into my possession. I hand it to you now, and I ask you to take
it page by page and to examine the contents.'
  He helped himself to a cigar and leaned back with a fiercely
critical pair of eyes, taking note of the effect which this document
would produce.
                                                        
  I had opened the volume with some expectation of a revelation,
though of what nature I could not imagine. The first page was
disappointing, however, as it contained nothing but the picture of a
very fat man in a pea-jacket, with the legend, 'Jimmy Colver on the
Mail-boat', written beneath it. There followed several pages which
were filled with small sketches of Indians and their ways. Then came a
picture of a cheerful and corpulent ecclesiastic in a shovel hat,
sitting opposite a very thin European, and the inscription: 'Lunch
with Fra Cristofero at Rosario'. Studies of women and babies accounted
for several more pages, and then there was an unbroken series of
animal drawings with such explanations as 'Manatee upon Sandbank',
'Turtles and their Eggs', 'Black Ajouti under a Miriti Palm'- the
latter disclosing some sort of pig-like animal; and finally came a
double page of studies of long-snouted and very unpleasant saurians. I
could make nothing of it, and said so to the Professor.
  'Surely these are only crocodiles?'
  'Alligators! Alligators! There is hardly such a thing as a true
crocodile in South America. The distinction between them-'
  'I meant that I could see nothing unusual- nothing to justify what
you have said.'
  He smiled serenely.
                                                        
  'Try the next page,' said he.
  I was still unable to sympathise. It was a full-page sketch of a
landscape roughly tinted in colour- the kind of painting which an
open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort.
There was a pale-green foreground of feathery vegetation, which sloped
upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in colour, and
curiously ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen. They
extended in an unbroken wall right across the background. At one point
was an isolated pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree, which
appeared to be separated by a cleft from the main crag. Behind it all,
a blue tropical sky. A thin green line of vegetation fringed the
summit of the ruddy cliff. On the next page was another water-colour
wash of the same place, but much nearer, so that one could clearly see
the details.
  'Well?' he asked.
  'It is no doubt a curious formation,' said I, 'but I am not
geologist enough to say that it is wonderful.'
  'Wonderful!' he repeated. 'It is unique. It is incredible. No one on
earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility. Now the next.'
                                                        
  I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a
full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever
seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of
delirium. The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated
lizard, the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and
the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked
like a dozen cocks' wattles placed behind each other. In front of this
creature was an absurd mannikin, or dwarf in the human form, who stood
staring at it.
  'Well, what do you think of that?' cried the Professor, rubbing
his hands with an air of triumph.
  'It is monstrous- grotesque.'
  'But what made him draw such an animal?'
  'Trade gin, I should think.'
                                                        
  'Oh, that's the best explanation you can give, is it?'
  'Well, sir, what is yours?'
  'The obvious one that the creature exists. That it is actually
sketched from the life.'
  I should have laughed only that I had a vision of our doing
another Catherine-wheel down the passage.
  'No doubt,' said I, 'no doubt', as one humours an imbecile. 'I
confess, however,' I added, 'that this tiny human figure puzzles me.
If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy
race in America, but it appears to be a European in a sun-hat.'
                                                        
  The Professor snorted like an angry buffalo. 'You really touch the
limit,' said he. 'You enlarge my view of the possible. Cerebral
paresis! Mental inertia! Wonderful!'
  He was too absurd to make me angry. Indeed, it was a waste of
energy, for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be
angry all the time. I contented myself with smiling wearily. 'It
struck me that the man was small,' said I.
  'Look here!' he cried, leaning forward and dabbing a great hairy
sausage of a finger on to the picture. 'You see that plant behind
the animal; I suppose you thought it was a dandelion or a brussels
sprout- what? Well, it is a vegetable ivory palm, and they run to
about fifty or sixty feet. Don't you see that the man is put in for
a purpose? He couldn't really have stood in front of that brute and
lived to draw it. He sketched himself in to give a scale of heights.
He was, we will say, over five feet high. The tree is ten times
bigger, which is what one would expect.'
  'Good heavens!' I cried. 'Then you think the beast was- Why, Charing
Cross Station would hardly make a kennel for such a brute!'
  'Apart from exaggeration, he is certainly a well-grown specimen,'
said the Professor, complacently.
                                                        
  'But,' I cried, 'surely the whole experience of the human race is
not to be set aside on account of a single sketch-' I had turned
over the leaves and ascertained that there was nothing more in the
book- 'a single sketch by a wandering American artist who may have
done it under hashish, or in the delirium of fever, or simply in order
to gratify a freakish imagination. You can't, as a man of science,
defend such a position as that.'
  For answer the Professor took a book down from a shelf.
  'This is an excellent monograph by my gifted friend, Ray Lankester!'
said he. 'There is an illustration here which would interest you.
Ah, yes, here it is! The inscription beneath it runs: "Probable
appearance in life of the Jurassic Dinosaur Stegosaurus. The hind
leg alone is twice as tall as a full-grown man." Well, what do you
make of that?'
  He handed me the open book. I started as I looked at the picture. In
this reconstructed animal of a dead world there was certainly a very
great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist.
  'That is certainly remarkable,' said I.
                                                        
  'But you won't admit that it is final?'
  'Surely it might be a coincidence, or this American may have seen
a picture of the kind and carried it in his memory. It would be likely
to recur to a man in a delirium.'
  'Very good,' said the Professor, indulgently; 'we leave it at
that. I will now ask you to look at this bone.' He handed over the
bone which he had already described as part of the dead man's
possessions. It was about six inches long, and thicker than my
thumb, with some indications of dried cartilage at one end of it.
  'To what known creature does that bone belong?' asked the Professor.
  I examined it with care, and tried to recall some half-forgotten
knowledge.
 'It might be a very thick human collar-bone,' I said.
                                                        
  My companion waved his hand in contemptuous deprecation.
  'The human collar-bone is curved. This is straight. There is a
groove upon its surface showing that a great tendon played across
it, which could not be the case with a clavicle.'
  'Then I must confess that I don't know what it is.'
  'You need not be ashamed to expose your ignorance, for I don't
suppose the whole South Kensington staff could give a name to it.'
He took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box. 'So far as
I am a judge this human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold
in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the
creature. You will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil
specimen, but recent. What do you say to that?'
  'Surely in an elephant-'
                                                        
  He winced as if in pain.
  'Don't! Don't talk of elephants in South America. Even in these days
of Board Schools-'
  'Well,' I interrupted, 'any large South American animal- a tapir,
for example.'
  'You may take it, young man, that I am versed in the elements of
my business. This is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or of
any other creature known to zoology. It belongs to a very large, a
very strong, and, by all analogy, a very fierce animal which exists
upon the face of the earth, but has not yet come under the notice of
science. You are unconvinced?'
  'I am at least deeply interested.'
                                                       
  'Then your case is not hopeless. I feel that there is reason lurking
in you somewhere, so we patiently grope round for it. We will now
leave the dead American and proceed with my narrative. You can imagine
that I could hardly come away from the Amazon without probing deeper
into the matter. There were indications as to the direction from which
the dead traveller had come. Indian legends would alone have been my
guide, for I found that rumours of a strange land were common among
all the riverine tribes. You have heard, no doubt, of Curupuri?'
  'Never.'
  'Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible,
something malevolent, something to be avoided. None can describe its
shape or nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon. Now
all tribes agree as to the direction in which Curupuri lives. It was
the same direction from which the American had come. Something
terrible lay that way. It was my business to find out what it was.'
  'What did you do?' My flippancy was all gone. This massive man
compelled one's attention and respect.
  'I overcame the extreme reluctance of the natives- a reluctance
which extends even to talk upon the subject- and by judicious
persuasion and gifts, aided, I will admit, by some threats of
coercion, I got two of them to act as guides. After many adventures
which I need not describe, and after travelling a distance which I
will not mention, in a direction which I withhold, we came at last
to a tract of country which has never been described, nor, indeed,
visited save by my unfortunate predecessor. Would you kindly look at
this?'
                                                       
  He handed me a photograph- half-plate size.
  'The unsatisfactory appearance of it is due to the fact,' said he,
'that on descending the river the boat was upset and the case which
contained the undeveloped films was broken, with disastrous results.
Nearly all of them were totally ruined- an irreparable loss. This is
one of the few which partially escaped. This explanation of
deficiencies or abnormalities you will kindly accept. There was talk
of faking. I am not in a mood to argue such a point.'
  The photograph was certainly very off-coloured. An unkind critic
might easily have misinterpreted that dim surface. It was a dull
grey landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I
realised that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs
exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping,
tree-clad plain in the foreground.
  'I believe it is the same place as the painted picture,' said I.
  'It is the same place,' the Professor answered. 'I found traces of
the fellow's camp. Now look at this.'
                                                       
  It was a nearer view of the same scene, though the photograph was
extremely defective. I could distinctly see the isolated, tree-crowned
pinnacle of rock which was detached from the crag.
  'I have no doubt of it at all,' said I.
  'Well, that is something gained,' said he. 'We progress, do we
not? Now, will you please look at the top of that rocky pinnacle? Do
you observe something there?'
  'An enormous tree.'
  'But on the tree?'
                                                       
  'A large bird,' said I.
  He handed me a lens.
  'Yes,' I said, peering through it, 'a large bird stands on the tree.
It appears to have a considerable beak. I should say it was a
pelican.'
  'I cannot congratulate you upon your eyesight,' said the
Professor. 'It is not a pelican, nor, indeed, is it a bird. It may
interest you to know that I succeeded in shooting that particular
specimen. It was the only absolute proof of my experiences which I was
able to bring away with me.'
  'You have it, then?' Here at last was tangible corroboration.
                                                       
  'I had it. It was unfortunately lost with so much else in the same
boat accident which ruined my photographs. I clutched at it as it
disappeared in the swirl of the rapids, and part of its wing was
left in my hand, I was insensible when washed ashore, but the
miserable remnant of my superb specimen was still intact; I now lay it
before you.'
  From a drawer he produced what seemed to me to be the upper
portion of the wing of a large bat. It was at least two feet in
length, a curved bone, with a membranous veil beneath it.
  'A monstrous bat!' I suggested.
  'Nothing of the sort,' said the Professor, severely. 'Living, as I
do, in an educated and scientific atmosphere, I could not have
conceived that the first principles of zoology were so little known.
Is it possible that you do not know the elementary fact in comparative
anatomy, that the wing of a bird is really the forearm, while the wing
of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between?
Now, in this case, the bone is certainly not the forearm, and you
can see for yourself that this is a single membrane hanging upon a
single bone, and therefore that it cannot belong to a bat. But if it
is neither bird nor bat, what is it?'
  My small stock of knowledge was exhausted.
                                                       
  'I really do not know,' said I.
  He opened the standard work to which he had already referred me.
  'Here,' said he, pointing to the picture of an extraordinary
flying monster, 'is an excellent reproduction of the dimorphodon, or
pterodactyl, a flying reptile of the jurassic period. On the next page
is a diagram of the mechanism of its wing. Kindly compare it with
the specimen in your hand.'
  A wave of amazement passed over me as I looked. I was convinced.
There could be no getting away from it. The cumulative proof was
overwhelming. The sketch, the photographs, the narrative, and now
the actual specimen- the evidence was complete. I said so- I said so
warmly, for I felt that the Professor was an ill-used man. He leaned
back in his chair with drooping eyelids and a tolerant smile,
basking in this sudden gleam of sunshine.
  'It's just the very biggest thing that I ever heard of!' said I,
though it was my journalistic rather than my scientific enthusiasm
that was roused. 'It is colossal. You are a Columbus of science who
has discovered a lost world. I'm really awfully sorry if I seemed to
doubt you. It was all so unthinkable. But I understand evidence when I
see it, and this should be good enough for anyone.'
                                                       
  The Professor purred with satisfaction.
  'And then, sir, what did you do next?'
  'It was the wet season, Mr. Malone, and my stores were exhausted.
I explored some portion of this huge cliff, but I was unable to find
any way to scale it. The pyramidal rock upon which I saw and shot
the pterodactyl was more accessible. Being something of a cragsman,
I did manage to get half-way to the top of that. From that height I
had a better idea of the plateau upon the top of the crags. It
appeared to be very large; neither to east nor to west could I see any
end to the vista of green-capped cliffs. Below, it is a swampy, jungly
region, full of snakes, insects, and fever. It is a natural protection
to this singular country.'
  'Did you see any other trace of life?'
  'No, sir, I did not; but during the week that we lay encamped at the
base of the cliff we heard some very strange noises from above.'
                                                       
  'But the creature that the American drew? How do you account for
that?'
  'We can only suppose that he must have made his way to the summit
and seen it there. We know, therefore, that there is a way up. We know
equally that it must be a very difficult one, otherwise the
creatures would have come down and overrun the surrounding country.
Surely that is clear?'
  'But how do they come to be there?'
  'I do not think that the problem is a very obscure one,' said the
Professor; 'there can only be one explanation. South America is, as
you may have heard, a granite continent. At this single point in the
interior there has been, in some far distant age, a great, sudden
volcanic upheaval. These cliffs, I may remark, are basaltic, and
therefore plutonic. An area, as large perhaps as Sussex, has been
lifted up en bloc with all its living contents, and cut off by
perpendicular precipices of a hardness which defies erosion from all
the rest of the continent. What is the result? Why, the ordinary
laws of nature are suspended. The various checks which influence the
struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralised or
altered. Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear. You will
observe that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are jurassic,
and therefore of a great age in the order of life. They have been
artificially conserved by those strange accidental conditions.'
  'But surely your evidence is conclusive. You have only to lay it
before the proper authorities.'
                                                       
  'So, in my simplicity, I had imagined,' said the Professor,
bitterly. 'I can only tell you that it was not so, that I was met at
every turn by incredulity, born partly of stupidity and partly of
jealousy. It is not my nature, sir, to cringe to any man, or to seek
to prove a fact if my word has been doubted. After the first I have
not condescended to show such corroborative proofs as I possess. The
subject became hateful to me- I would not speak of it. When men like
yourself, who represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to
disturb my privacy I was unable to meet them with dignified reserve.
By nature I am, I admit, somewhat fiery, and under provocation I am
inclined to be violent. I fear you may have remarked it.'
  I nursed my eye and was silent.
  'My wife has frequently remonstrated with me upon the subject, and
yet I fancy that any man of honour would feel the same. Tonight,
however, I propose to give an extreme example of the control of the
will over the emotions. I invite you to be present at the exhibition.'
He handed me a card from his desk. 'You will perceive that Mr.
Percival Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is announced to
lecture at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute's Hall upon "The
Record of the Ages". I have been specially invited to be present
upon the platform, and to move a vote of thanks to the lecturer. While
doing so, I shall make it my business, with infinite tact and
delicacy, to throw out a few remarks which may arouse the interest
of the audience and cause some of them to desire to go more deeply
into the matter. Nothing contentious, you understand, but only an
indication that there are greater deeps beyond. I shall hold myself
strongly in leash, and see whether by this self-restraint I attain a
more favourable result.'
  'And I may come?' I asked eagerly.
  'Why, surely,' he answered, cordially. He had an enormously
massive genial manner, which was almost as overpowering as his
violence. His smile of benevolence was a wonderful thing, when his
cheeks would suddenly bunch into two red apples, between his
half-closed eyes and his great black beard. 'By all means, 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 he may be. I fancy
there will be a large audience, for Waldron, though an absolute
charlatan, has a considerable popular following. Now, Mr. Malone, I
have given you rather more of my time than I had intended. The
individual must not monopolise what is meant for the world. I shall be
please to see you at the lecture tonight. In the meantime, you will
understand that no public use is to be made of any of the material
that I have given you.'
                                                       
  'But Mr. McArdle- my news editor, you know- will want to know what I
have done.'
  'Tell him what you like. You can say, among other things, that if he
sends anyone else to intrude upon me I shall call upon him with a
riding whip. But 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.' I had a last impression of red cheeks, blue rippling
beard, and tolerant eyes, as he waved me out of the room.


                             5. Question!
-
  WHAT with the physical shocks incidental to my first interview
with Professor Challenger and the mental ones which accompanied the
second, I was a somewhat demoralised journalist by the time I found
myself in Enmore Park once more. In my aching head the one thought was
throbbing that there really was truth in this man's story, that it was
of tremendous consequence, and that it would work up into
inconceivable copy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to
use it. A taxicab was waiting at the end of the road, so I sprang into
it and drove down to the office. McArdle was at his post as usual.
  'Well,' he cried expectantly, 'what may it run to? I'm thinking,
young man, you have been in the wars. Don't tell me that he
assaulted you.'
  'We had a little difference 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.'
                                                         
  'I'm not so sure about that. You got a black eye out of him, and
that's for publication. We can't have this reign of terror, Mr.
Malone. We must bring the man to his bearings. I'll have a
leaderette on him tomorrow that will raise a blister. Just give me the
material and I will engage to brand the fellow for ever. Professor
Munchausen- how's that for an inset headline? Sir John Mandeville
redivivus- Cagliostro- all the imposters and bullies in history.
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.'
  'What!' roared McArdle. 'You don't mean to say you really believe
this stuff of his about mammoths and mastodons and great sea
sairpents?'
                                                        
  'Well, I don't know about that. I don't think he makes any claims of
that kind. But I do believe that he has got something new.'
  'Then for Heaven's sake, man, write it up!'
  'I'm longing to, but all I know he gave me in confidence and on
condition that I didn't.' I condensed into a few sentences the
Professor's narrative. 'That's how it stands.'
  McArdle looked deeply incredulous.
  'Well, Mr. Malone,' he said at last, 'about this scientific
meeting tonight; there can be no privacy about that, anyhow. I don't
suppose any paper will want to report it, for Waldron has been
reported already a dozen times, and no one is aware that Challenger
will speak. We may get a scoop, if we are lucky. You'll be there in
any case, so you'll just give us a pretty full report. I'll keep space
up to midnight.'
                                                        
  My day was a busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage
Club with Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures. He
listened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared with
laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.
  'My dear chap, 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 fellow is as full of tricks
as the monkey-house at the Zoo. It's all absolute bosh.'
  'But the American poet?'
  'He never existed.'
  'I saw his sketch-book.'
                                                        
  'Challenger's sketch-book.'
  'You think he drew that animal?'
  'Of course he did. Who else?'
  'Well, then, the photographs?'
  'There was nothing in the photographs. By your own admission you
only saw a bird.'
                                                        
  'A pterodactyl.'
  'That's what he says. He put the pterodactyl into your head.'
  'Well, then, the bones?'
  'First one out of an Irish stew. Second one vamped up for the
occasion. If you are clever and you know your business you can fake
a bone as easily as you can a photograph.'
  I began to feel uneasey. Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in
my acquiescence. Then I had a sudden happy thought.
                                                        
  'Will you come to the meeting?' I asked.
  Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.
  'He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger,' said he. 'A lot
of people have accounts to settle with him. 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 rag. I don't want to get into a bear-garden.'
  'You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own
case.'
  'Well, perhaps it's only fair. All right. I'm your man for the
evening.'
                                                        
  When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than I
had expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their little
cargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of
humbler pedestrians, who crowded through the arched doorway, showed
that the audience would be popular as well as scientific. Indeed, it
became evident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful
and even boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions
of the hall. 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. Scraps of popular songs were
chorused with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a
scientific lecture, and there was already a tendency to personal chaff
which promised a jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it
might be to the recipients of these dubious honours.
  Thus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmed
opera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal
query of 'Where did you get that tile?' that he hurriedly removed
it, and concealed it furtively under his chair. When gouty Professor
Wadley limped down to his seat there were general affectionate
inquiries from all parts of the hall as to the exact state of his poor
toe, which caused him obvious embarrassment. The greatest
demonstration of all, however, was at the entrance of my new
acquaintance, Professor Challenger, when he passed down to take his
place at the extreme end of the front row of the platform. Such a yell
of welcome broke forth when his black beard first protruded round
the corner that I began to suspect Tarp Henry was right in his
surmise, and that this assemblage was there not merely for the sake of
the lecture, but because it had got rumoured abroad that the famous
Professor would take part in the proceedings.
  There was some sympathetic laughter on his entrance among the
front benches of well-dressed spectators, as though the
demonstration of the students in this instance was not unwelcome to
them. That greeting was, indeed, a frightful outburst of sound, the
uproar of the carnivora cage when the step of the bucket-bearing
keeper is heard in the distance. There was an offensive tone in it,
perhaps, and yet in the main it struck me as mere riotous outcry,
the noisy reception of one who amused and interested them, rather than
of one they disliked or despised. Challenger smiled with weary and
tolerant contempt, as a kindly man would meet the yapping of a
litter of puppies. He sat slowly down, blew out his chest, passed
his hand caressingly down his beard, and looked with drooping
eyelids and supercilious eyes at the crowded hall before him. The
uproar of his advent had not yet died away when Professor Ronald
Murray, the Chairman, and Mr. Waldron, the lecturer, threaded their
way to the front, and the proceedings began.
  Professor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has the
common fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible. Why on earth
people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not
take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the
strange mysteries of modern life. Their methods are as reasonable as
to try to pour some precious stuff from the spring to the reservoir
through a non-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be
opened. Professor Murray made several profound remarks to his white
tie and to the water-carafe upon the table, with a humorous, twinkling
aside to the silver candlestick upon his right. Then he sat down,
and Mr. Waldron, the famous lecturer, rose amid a general murmur of
applause. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice and an
aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate
the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was
intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy
knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the
precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a
highly humorous process as treated by him.
  It was a bird's-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science,
which, in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded
before us. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas,
flaring through the heavens. Then he pictured the solidification,
the cooling, the wrinkling which formed the mountains, the steam which
turned to water, the slow preparation of the stage upon which was to
be played the inexplicable drama of life. On the origin of life itself
he was discreetly vague. That the germs of it could hardly have
survived the original roasting was, he declared, fairly certain.
Therefore it had come later. 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? It was hardly conceivable. On
the whole, the wisest man was the least dogmatic upon the point. We
could not- or at least we had not succeeded up to date in making
organic life in our laboratories out of inorganic materials. The
gulf between the dead and the living was something which our chemistry
could not as yet bridge. But there was a higher and subtler
chemistry of Nature, which, working with great forces over long
epochs, might well produce results which were impossible for us. There
the matter must be left.
                                                        
  This brought the lecturer to the great ladder of animal life,
beginning low down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up
rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a
kangaroo-rat, a creature which brought forth its young alive, the
direct ancestor of all mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone
in the audience. ('No, no,' from a sceptical student in the back row.)
If the young gentleman in the red tie who cried 'No, no', and who
presumably claimed to have been hatched out of an egg, would wait upon
him after the lecture, he would be glad to see such a curiosity.
(Laughter.) It was strange to think that the climax of all the
age-long processes of Nature had been the creation of that gentleman
in the red tie. But had the process stopped? Was this gentleman to
be taken as the final type- the be-all and end-all of development?
He hoped that he would not hurt the feelings of the gentleman in the
red tie if he maintained that, whatever virtues that gentleman might
possess in private life, still the vast processes of the universe were
not fully justified if they were to end entirely in his production.
Evolution was not a spent force, but one still working, and even
greater achievements were in store.
  Having thus, amid a general titter, played very prettily with his
interrupter, the lecturer went back to his picture of the past, the
drying of the seas, the emergence of the sand-bank, the sluggish,
viscous life which lay upon their margins, the overcrowded lagoons,
the tendency of the sea creatures to take refuge upon the mud-flats,
the abundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth.
'Hence, ladies and gentlemen,' he added, 'that frightful brood of
saurians which still afright our eyes when seen in the Wealden or in
the Solenhofen slates, but which were fortunately extinct long
before the first appearance of mankind upon this planet.'
  'Question!' boomed a voice from the platform.
  Mr. Waldron was a strict disciplinarian with a gift of humour, as
exemplified upon the gentleman with the red tie, which made it
perilous to interrupt him. But this interjection appeared to him so
absurd that he was at a loss how to deal with it. So looks the
Shakespearean who is confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the
astronomer who is assailed by a flat-earth fanatic. He paused for a
moment, and then, raising his voice, repeated slowly the words: 'Which
were extinct before the coming of man.'
  'Question!' boomed 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, with a shrug. 'It is my friend Professor
Challenger,' and amid laughter 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 path the
lecturer took amid the wilds of the past seemed invariably to lead him
to some assertion as to extinct or prehistoric life which instantly
brought the same bull's bellow from the Professor. The audience
began to anticipate it and to roar with delight when it came. The
packed benches of students joined in, and every time Challenger's
beard opened, before any sound could come forth, there was a yell of
'Question' from a hundred voices, and an answering counter-cry of
'Order!' and 'Shame!' from as many more. Waldron, though a hardened
lecturer and a strong man, became rattled. He hesitated, stammered,
repeated himself, got snarled in a long sentence, 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 cease these ignorant and
unmannerly interruptions.'
  There was a hush over the hall, the students rigid with delight at
seeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves.
Challenger levered his bulky figure slowly out of his chair.
                                                        
  'I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron,' he said, 'to cease to make
assertions which are not in strict accordance with scientific fact.'
  The words unloosed a tempest. 'Shame! Shame!' 'Give him a
hearing!' 'Put him out!' 'Shove him off the platform!' 'Fair play!'
emerged from a general roar of amusement or execration. The chairman
was on his feet flapping both his hands and bleating excitedly.
'Professor Challenger- personal- views- later,' were the solid peaks
above his clouds of inaudible mutter. The interrupter bowed, smiled,
stroked his beard, and relapsed into his chair. Waldron, very
flushed and warlike, continued his observations. Now and then, as he
made an assertion, he shot a venomous glance at his opponent, who
seemed to be slumbering deeply, with the same broad, happy smile
upon his face.
  At last the lecture came to an end- I am inclined to think that it
was a premature one, as the peroration was hurried and disconnected.
The thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience
was restless and expectant. Waldron sat down, and after a chirrup from
the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and advanced to the edge of
the platform. In the interests of my paper I took down his speech
verbatim.
  'Ladies and Gentlemen,' he began, amid a sustained interruption from
the back. 'I beg pardon- Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children- I must
apologise, I had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of
this audience' (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one hand
raised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he were
bestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), 'I have been selected
to move a vote of 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 indicate
them as they arose, 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'
(here he beamed and blinked at the lecturer) 'will excuse me when I
say that they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since
they have to be graded to the comprehension of an ignorant
audience.' (Ironical cheering.) 'Popular lecturers are in their nature
parasitic.' (Angry gesture of protest from Mr. Waldron.) 'They exploit
for fame or cash the work which has been done by the indigent and
unknown brethren. One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory,
one brick built into the temple of science, far outweighs any
second-hand exposition which passes an idle hour, but can leave no
useful result behind it. I put forward this obvious reflection, not
out of any desire to disparage Mr. Waldron in particular, but that you
may not lose your sense of proportion and mistake the acolyte for
the high priest.' (At this point Mr. Waldron whispered to the
chairman, who half rose and said something severely to his
water-carafe.) 'But enough of this!' (Loud and prolonged cheers.) 'Let
me pass to some subject of wider interest. What is the particular
point upon which I, as an original investigator, have challenged our
lecturer's accuracy? It is upon the permanence of certain types of
animal life upon the earth. I do not speak upon this subject as an
amateur, nor, I may add, as a popular lecturer, but I speak as one
whose scientific conscience compels him to adhere closely to facts,
when I say that Mr. Waldron is very wrong in supposing that because he
has never himself seen a so-called prehistoric animal, therefore these
creatures no longer exist. They are indeed, as he has said, our
ancestors, but they are, if I may use the expression, our contemporary
ancestors, who can still be found with all their hideous and
formidable characteristics if one has but the energy and hardihood
to seek their haunts. Creatures which were supposed to be jurassic,
monsters who would hunt down and devour our largest and fiercest
mammals, 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 haunts. I know because I have seen some of
them.' (Applause, uproar, and a voice, 'Liar!') 'Am I a liar?'
(General hearty and noisy assent.) 'Did I hear someone say that I
was a liar? Will the person who called me a liar kindly stand up
that I may know him?' (A voice, 'Here he is, sir!' and an
inoffensive little person in spectacles, struggling violently was held
up among a group of students.) 'Did you venture to call me a liar?'
('No, sir, no!' shouted the accused, and disappeared like a
Jack-in-the-box.) 'If any person in this hall dares to doubt my
veracity, I shall be glad to have a few words with him after the
lecture.' ('Liar!') 'Who said that?' (Again the inoffensive one,
plunging desperately was elevated high in the air.) 'If I come down
among you-' (General chorus of 'Come, love, come!' which interrupted
the proceedings for some moments, while the chairman, standing up
and waving both his arms seemed to be conducting the music. The
Professor, with his face flushed, his nostrils dilated, and his
beard bristling, was now in a proper Berserk mood.) 'Every great
discoverer has been met with the same incredulity- the sure brand of a
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.)
  All this is from my hurried notes taken at the time, which give
little notion of the absolute chaos to which the assembly had by
this time been reduced. So terrific was the uproar that several ladies
had already beaten a hurried retreat. Grave and reverend seniors
seemed to have caught the prevailing spirit as badly as the
students, and I saw white-bearded men rising and shaking their fists
at the obdurate Professor. The whole great audience seethed and
simmered like a boiling pot. The Professor took a step forward and
raised both his hands. There was something so big and arresting and
virile in the man that the clatter and shouting died gradually away
before his commanding gesture and his masterful eyes. He seemed to
have a definite message. They hushed to hear it.
                                                        
  'I will not detain you,' he said. 'It is not worth it. Truth is
truth, and the noise of a number of foolish young men- and, I fear I
must add, of their equally foolish seniors- cannot affect the
matter. I claim that I have opened a new field of science. You dispute
it.' (Cheers.) 'Then I put you to the test. Will you accredit one or
more of your own number to go out as your representatives and test
my statement in your name?'
  Mr. Summerlee, the veteran Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose
among the audience, a tall, thin, bitter man, with the withered aspect
of a theologian. He wished, he said, to ask Professor Challenger
whether the results to which he had alluded in his remarks had been
obtained during a journey to the headwaters of the Amazon made by
him two years before.
  Professor Challenger answered that they had.
  Mr. Summerlee 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 explorers of
established scientific repute.
  Professor Challenger answered that Mr. Summerlee appeared to be
confusing the Amazon with the Thames; that it was in reality a
somewhat larger river; that Mr. Summerlee might be interested to
know that with the Orinoco, which communicated with it, some fifty
thousand miles of country were opened up, and that in so vast a
space 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, which
lay in the fact that any assertion about the former could be tested,
while about the latter it could not. He would be obliged if
Professor Challenger would give the latitude and the longitude of
the country in which prehistoric animals were to be found.
  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?
  Mr. Summerlee: 'Yes, I will.' (Great cheering.)
  Professor Challenger: 'Then I guarantee that I will place in your
hands such material as will enable you to find your way. It is only
right, however, 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. May I ask for volunteers?'
  It is thus that the great crisis of a man's life springs out at him.
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? But Gladys- was it not the very opportunity of which she
spoke? Gladys would have told me to go. I had sprung to my feet. I was
speaking, and yet I had prepared no words. Tarp Henry, my companion,
was plucking at my skirts and I heard him whispering, 'Sit down,
Malone! Don't make a public ass of yourself.' 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 upon 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 over and over again.
  '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, I know
all the ground, and have special qualifications for this
investigation.'
                                                        
  'Lord John Roxton's reputation as a sportsman and a traveller is, of
course, world-famous,' said the chairman; 'at the same time it would
certainly be as well to have a member of the Press upon such an
expedition.'
  'Then I move,' said Professor Challenger, 'that both these gentlemen
be elected, as representatives of this meeting, to accompany Professor
Summerlee upon his journey to investigate and to report upon the truth
of my statements.'
  And so, amid shouting and cheering, our fate was decided, and I
found myself borne away in the human current which swirled towards the
door, with my mind half stunned by the vast new project which had
risen so suddenly before it. As I emerged from the hall I was
conscious for a moment of a rush of laughing students down the
pavement, and of an arm wielding a heavy umbrella, which rose and fell
in the midst of them. Then, amid a mixture of groans and cheers,
Professor Challenger's electric brougham slid from the kerb, and I
found myself walking under the silver lights of Regent Street, full of
thoughts of Gladys and of wonder as to my future.
  Suddenly there was a touch at my elbow. I turned, and found myself
looking into the humorous, masterful eyes of the tall, thin man who
had volunteered to be my companion on this strange quest.
  'Mr. Malone, I understand,' said he. 'We are to be companions- what?
My rooms are just over the road, in the Albany. Perhaps you would have
the kindness to spare me half an hour, for there are one or two things
that I badly want to say to you.'


                    6. I Was the Flail of the Lord
-
  LORD JOHN Roxton and I turned down Vigo Street together and
through the dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery. At the
end of a long drab passage my new acquaintance pushed open a door
and turned on an electric switch. A number of lamps shining through
tinted shades bathed the whole great room before us in a ruddy
radiance. Standing in the doorway and glancing round me, I had a
general impression of extraordinary comfort and elegance compared with
an atmosphere of masculine virility. Everywhere there were mingled the
luxury of the wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of
the bachelor. Rich furs and strange iridescent mats from some Oriental
bazaar were scattered upon the floor. Pictures and prints which even
my unpractised eyes could recognise as being of great price and rarity
hung thick upon the walls. Sketches of boxers, of ballet-girls, and of
race-horses alternated with a sensuous Fragonard, a martial
Girardet, and a dreamy Turner. But amid these varied ornaments there
were scattered the trophies which brought back strongly to my
recollection the fact that Lord John Roxton was one of the great
all-round sportsmen and athletes of his day. A dark-blue oar crossed
with a cherry-pink one above his mantel-piece spoke of the old Oxonian
and Leander man, while the foils and boxing-gloves above and below
them were the tools of a man who had won supremacy with each. Like a
dado round the room was the jutting line of splendid heavy game-heads,
the best of their sort from every quarter of the world, with the
rare white rhinoceros of the Lado Enclave drooping its supercilious
lip above them all.
  In the centre of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis
Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with
marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps. On it stood a silver
tray of smokables and a burnished spirit-stand, from which and an
adjacent siphon my silent host proceeded to charge two high glasses.
Having indicated an arm-chair to me and placed my refreshment near it,
he handed me a long, smooth Havana. Then, seating himself opposite
to me, he looked at me long and fixedly with his strange, twinkling,
reckless eyes- eyes of a cold light blue, the colour of a glacier
lake.
  Through the thin haze of my cigar smoke I noted the details of a
face which was already familiar to me from many photographs- the
strongly-curved nose, the hollow, worn cheeks, the dark, ruddy hair,
thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small aggressive
tuft upon his projecting chin. Something there was of Napoleon III,
something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the
essence of the English country gentleman, the keen, alert, open-air
lover of dogs and of horses. His skin was of a rich flower-pot red
from sun and wind. His eyebrows were tufted and overhanging, which
gave those naturally cold eyes an almost ferocious aspect, an
impression which was increased by his strong and furrowed brow. In
figure he was spare, but very strongly built-indeed, he had often
proved that there were few men in England capable of such sustained
exertions. His height was a little over six feet, but he seemed
shorter on account of a peculiar rounding of the shoulders. Such was
the famous Lord John Roxton as he sat opposite to me, biting hard upon
his cigar and watching me steadily in a long and embarrassing silence.
  'Well,' said he, at last, 'we've gone and done it, young
fellah-my-lad.' (This curious phrase he pronounced as if it were all
one word- 'young fellah-my-lad'.) 'Yes, we've taken a jump, you an'
me. I suppose, now, when you went into that room there was no such
notion in your head- what?'
  'No thought of it.'
                                                         
  'The same here. No thought of it. And here we are, up to our necks
in the tureen. Why, I've only been back three weeks from Uganda, and
taken a place in Scotland, and signed the lease and all. Pretty goin's
on- what? How does it hit you?'
  'Well, it is all in the main line of my business. I am a
journalist on the Gazette.'
  'Of course- you said so when you took it on. By the way, I've got
a small job for you, if you'll help me.'
  'With pleasure.'
  'Don't mind takin' a risk, do you?'
                                                        
  'What is the risk?'
  'Well, it's Ballinger- he's the risk. You've heard of him?'
  'No.'
  'Why, young fellah, where have you lived? Sir John Ballinger is
the best gentleman jock in the north country. I could hold him on
the flat at my best, but over jumps he's my master. Well, it's an open
secret that when he's out of trainin' he drinks hard- strikin' an
average, he calls it. He got delirium on Toosday, and has been
ragin' like a devil ever since. His room is above this. The doctors
say that it is all up with the old dear unless some food is got into
him, but as he lies in bed with a revolver on his coverlet, and swears
he will put six of the best through anyone that comes near him,
there's been a bit of a strike among the serving-men. He's a hard
nail, is Jack, and a dead shot, too, but you can't leave a Grand
National winner to die like that- what?'
  'What do you mean to do, then?' I asked.
                                                        
  'Well, my idea was that you and I could rush him. He may be
dozin', and at the worst he can only wing one of us, and the other
should have him. If we can get his bolster-cover round his arms and
then 'phone up a stomach-pump, we'll give the old dear the supper of
his life.'
  It was rather a desperate business to come suddenly into one's day's
work. 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 and with a terror of such a stigma. I dare say
that I could throw myself over a precipice, like the Hun in the
history books, if my courage to do it were questioned, and yet it
would surely be pride and fear, rather than courage, which would be my
inspiration. Therefore, although every nerve in my body shrank from
the whisky-maddened figure which I pictured in the room above, I still
answered, in as careless a voice as I could command, 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
confidential chuckle of laughter, he patted me two or three times on
my chest, finally pushing me back into my chair.
  'All right, sonny my lad- you'll do,' said he.
                                                        
  I looked up in surprise.
  'I saw after Jack Ballinger myself this mornin'. He blew a hole in
the skirt of my kimono, bless his shaky old hand, but we got a
jacket on him, and he's to be all right in a week. I say, young
fellah, I hope you don't mind- what? You see, between you an' me
close-tiled, I look on this South American business as a mighty
serious thing, and if I have a pal with me I want a man I can bank on.
So I sized you down, and I'm bound to say that you came well out of
it. You see, it's all up to you and me, for this old Summerlee man
will want dry-nursin' from the first. By the way, are you by any
chance the Malone who is expected to get his Rugby cap for Ireland?'
  'A reserve, perhaps.'
  'I thought I remembered your face. Why, I was there when you got
that try against Richmond- as fine a swervin' run as I saw the whole
season. I never miss a Rugby match if I can help it, for it is the
manliest game we have left. Well, I didn't ask you in here just to
talk sport. We've got to fix our business. Here are the sailin's, on
the first page of The Times. There's a Booth boat for Para next
Wednesday week, and if the Professor and you can work it, I think we
should take it- what? Very good, I'll fix it with him. What about your
outfit?'
  'My paper will see to that.'
                                                        
  'Can you shoot?'
  'About average Territorial standard.'
  'Good Lord! as bad as that? It's the last thing you young fellahs
think of learnin'. You're all bees without stings, so far as lookin'
after the hive goes. You'll look silly, some o' these days, when
someone comes along an' sneaks the honey. But you'll need to hold your
gun straight in South America, for unless our friend the Professor
is a madman or a liar, we may see some queer things before we get
back. What gun have you?'
  He crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I caught
a glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels, like the pipes of an
organ.
  'I'll see what I can spare you out of my own battery,' said he.
                                                        
  One by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles, opening and
shutting them with a snap and a clang, and then patting them as he put
them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her
children.
  'This is a Blands .577 axite express,' said he. 'I got that big
fellow with it.' He glanced up at the white rhinoceros. 'Ten more
yards, and he'd have added me to his collection.
-
            "On that conical bullet his one chance hangs,
                'Tis the weak one's advantage fair."
                                                        
-
  Hope you know your Gordon, for he's the poet of the horse and the
gun and the man that handles both. Now, here's a useful tool- .470,
telescopic sight, double ejector, point-blank up to three-fifty.
That's the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years
ago. I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts, I may tell you,
though you won't find it in any Blue-book. There are times, young
fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and
justice, or you never feel clean again. That's why I made a little war
on my own. Declared it myself, waged it myself, ended it myself.
Each of those nicks is for a slave murderer- a good row of them- what?
That big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed
in a backwater of the Putomayo River. Now, here's something that would
do for you.' He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle. 'Well
rubbered at the stock, sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip.
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 sealed
orders from a man we don't know. He seemed an uppish old bird. His
brothers of science don't seem too fond of him either. How came you to
take an interest in the affair?'
  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 to you was the truth,' said he,
earnestly, 'and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like
that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it
right through from Darien to Fuego, it's the grandest, richest, most
wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People don't know it yet, and
don't realise what it may become. I've been up an' down it from end to
end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I
spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers. Well, when I was up
there I heard some yarns of the same kind- traditions of Indians and
the like, but with somethin' behind them, no doubt. The more you
knew of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that
anythin' was possible- anythin'. There are just some narrow
water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all
darkness. Now, down here in the Matto Grosso'- he swept his cigar over
a part of the map- 'or up in this corner where three countries meet,
nothin' would surprise me. As that chap said tonight, there are
fifty thousand miles of water-way runnin' through a forest that is
very near the size of Europe. You and I could be as far away from each
other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be