The Land that Time Forgot, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Part IV.

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1:01No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off your first month with promo code space80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space80 at Talkspace.com. Chapter nine of the land that time forgot. This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libravox.org, recording by Ralph Snellson. The land that time forgot by Edgar Rice Burles. Chapter nine. As I stood looking down upon that sad and lonely mound wrapped in the most dismal of reflections and premonitions, I was suddenly seized from behind and thrown to earth. As I fell, a warm body fell on top of me and hands grasped my arms and legs. When I could look up, I saw a number of giant fingers pinning me down while others stood about surveying me.

2:03Here again was a new type of man, a higher type, than the primitive tribe I had just quitted. They were a taller people, too, with better-shaped skulls and more intelligent faces. There were less of the eight characteristics about their features and less of the Negroid, too. They carried weapons, stone-shot spears, stone knives and hatchets, and they wore ornaments and breech claws. The former of feathers worn in their hair, and the latter made of a single snake skin, cured with a head-on, the head depending to their knees. Of course, I did not take in all these details upon the instant of my capture, for I was busy with other matters. Three of the warriors were sitting upon me, trying to hold me down by main strength and awkwardness, and they were having their hands full in the doing, I can tell you. I don't like to appear conceded, but I may as well admit that I am proud of my strength, and the science that I have acquired, and developed in the directing of it. That and my horsemanship, I always have been proud of.

3:06And now that day, all the long hours that I had put into careful study, practice, and training, brought me in two or three minutes of full return upon my investment. Californians, as a rule, are familiar with Jujitsu, and I especially had made a study of it for several years, both at school and in the gym of the Los Angeles Athletic Club. While recently I had had in my employ a Japanese, who was a wonder at the art. It took me just about thirty seconds to break the elbow of one of my assailants, trip another, and send him stumbling backward among his fellows, and throw the third completely over my head in such a way that, when he fell, his neck was broken. In the instant that the others of the party stood in mute and inactive surprise, I unslung my rifle, which carelessly I had been carrying across my back, and when they charged, as I felt they would, I put a bullet in the forehead of one of them. This stopped them all, temporarily, not the death of their fellow,

4:09but the report of the rifle, the first they had ever heard. Before they were ready to attack me again, one of them spoke in a commanding tone to his fellows, and in a language similar but still more comprehensive than that of the tribe to the south, as theirs was more complete than arms. He commanded them to stand back, and then he advanced, and addressed me. He asked me who I was, from whence I came, and what my intentions were. I replied that I was a stranger in task-pack, that I was lost, and that my only desire was to find my way back to my companions. He asked where they were, and I told him toward the south, somewhere, using the cuspacking phrase which literally translated means toward the beginning. His surprise showed upon his face before he voiced it in words. There are no gallows there, he said. I tell you, I said angrily, that I am from another country, far from Casback, far beyond the high cliffs.

5:10I do not know who the gallows may be. I have never seen them. This is the farthest north I have been. Look at me! Look at my clothing, and my weapons. Have you ever seen a gallow, or any other creature in Casback, who possessed such things? He had to admit that he had not, and also that he was much interested in me, my rifle, and the way I had handled his three warriors. Finally, he became half-convince that I was telling him the truth, and offered to aid me if I would show him how I had thrown the man over my head, and also make him a present of the banged spear, as he called it. I refused to give him my rifle, but promised to show him the trek he wished to learn if he would guide me in the right direction. He told me that he would do so tomorrow, that it was too late today, and that I might come to their village and spend the night with them. I was low to lose so much time, but the fellow was obterate, and so I accompanied them. The two dead men they left were they had fallen, nor gave them a second glance, thus cheap

6:13his life upon Casback. These people also were cave dwellers, but their cave showed the result of a higher intelligence that brought them a step nearer to civilized man than the tribe next toward the beginning. The interiors of their caverns were clear to rubbish, though still far from clean, and they had pallets of dried grasses covered with the skins of leopard, lengths, and bear. While before the entrances were bearers of stone and small, rudely circular stone ovens. The walls of the cavern, which I was conducted, were covered with drawings scratched upon the sandstone. There were the outlines of the giant red deer, of mammoths, of tigers, and other beasts. Here as in the last tribe there were no children, or any old people. The man of this tribe had two names, or rather names of two syllables, and their language contained words of two syllables, whereas in the tribe of Tsaw the words were all of a single syllable, with the exception of a very few like attis and galloos.

7:17The chief's name was Tojo, and his household consisted of seven females and himself. These women were much more comely, or rather less hideous than those of Tsta's people. One of them even was almost pretty. Being less hairy, and having a rather nice skin, with high coloring, they were all much interested in me, and examined my clothing, and equipment carefully, handling, and feeling, and smelling of each article. I learned from them that their people were known as Bandlu, or Spearman. Tsaw's race was called Stolu, Hatchetmen. In all these in the scale of evolution came the Bolu, or Clubmen, and then the Allos, who had no weapons, and no language. In that word I recognized what to me seemed the most remarkable discovery I had made upon Caprona. For unless it were mere coincidence, I had come upon a word that had been handed down from the beginning of spoken language upon earth, had been handed down four millions

8:17of years, perhaps, with little change. It was the sole remaining thread of the ancient woof of a dawning culture which had been woven when Caprona was a fiery mount upon a great landmast, teeming with life. It linked the unfathomable then to the eternal now, and yet it may have been pure coincidence. My better judgment tells me that it is coincidence that, in Kasbach, the term for speechless man, is Allos, and in the outer world of our own day, it is Allalus. The commonly woman of whom I spoke was called Sota, and she took such a lively interest in me that Tojo finally objected to her attentions, emphasizing his displeasure by knocking her down and kicking her into a corner of the cavern. I leaked between them while he was still kicking her, and obtaining a quick hold upon him, dragged him screaming with pain from the cave. Then I made him promise not to hurt the she, again, upon pain of worse punishment.

9:17Sota gave me a grateful look, but Tojo and the balance of his women were sullen and ominous. Later in the evening Sota confided to me that she was soon to leave the tribe. Sota soon to be Krollu, she confided, in a low whisper. I asked her what a Krollu might be, and she tried to explain, but I do not yet know if I understood her. From her gestures I deduced that the Krollus were a people who were armed with bows and arrows, had vessels in which to cook their food, and huts of some sort in which they lived, and were accompanied by animals. It was all very fragmentary and vague, but the idea seemed to be that the Krollus were a more advanced people than the band-loos. I pondered a long time upon all that I had heard, before sleep came to me. I tried to find some connection between these various races that would explain the universal hope which each of them harbored that someday they would become gallows.

10:19Sota had given me a suggestion, but the resulting idea was so weird that I could scarce even entertain it. Yet it coincided with arms expressed hope, with the various steps in evolution I had noted in the several tribes I had encountered, and with the range of type represented in each tribe. For example, among the band-loos were such types as Sota, who seemed to me to be the highest in the scale of evolution, and Tojo, who was just a shade nearer the ape, while there were others who had flatter noses. More prognathous faces and hairier bodies, the question puzzled me. Possibly in the outer world the answer to it is locked in the bosom of the Sphinx. Who knows? I do not. Seeing the thoughts of a lunatic or a dope feigned I fell asleep, and when I awoke my hands and feet were securely tied, and my weapons had been taken from me. How they did it without awakening me I cannot tell you. It was humiliating, but it was true.

11:21Tojo stood above me, the early light of morning was dimly filtering into the cave. Tell me, he demanded, how to throw a man over my head, and break his neck, for I am going to kill you, and I wish to know this thing before you die. Of all the ingenuous declarations I have ever heard, this one caught the proverbial bun. It struck me as so funny that even in the face of death I laughed. Death I may remark here had, however, lost much of his terror for me. I had become a disciple of lessons fleeting philosophy of the valuelessness of human life. I realized that she was quite right, that we were but comic figures hopping from the cradle to the grave of interest to practically no other created thing than ourselves and our few intimates. Behind Tojo stood Soda. She raised one hand with the palm toward me, the cast-packing equivalent of a negative shake of the head. Let me think about it, I parried, and Tojo said that he would wait until night.

12:24He would give me a day to think it over. Then he left, and the women left, the men for the hunt, and the women, as I later learned from Soda, for the warm pool where they immersed their bodies as did the she's of the solo. Atta explained Soda when I questioned her as to the purpose of this matutinal right, but that was later. I must have lain there bound and uncomfortable for two or three hours, when at last Soda entered the cave. She carried a sharp knife, mine, in fact, and with it she cut my bonds. Come, she said, Soda will go with you back to the gallows, it is time that Soda left the band-blood, together we will go to the Krolu, and after that the gallows. Tojo will kill you tonight, he will kill Soda if he knows that Soda aided you, we will go together. I will go with you to Krolu, I replied, but then I must return to my own people toward the beginning. You cannot go back, she said, it is forbidden, they would kill you, thus far have you come,

13:29there is no returning. But I must return, I insisted. My people are there, I must return and lead them in this direction. She insisted, and I insisted, but at last we compromised. I was to escort her as far as the country of the Krolu, and then I was to go back after my own people, and lead them north into a land where the dangers were fewer, and the people less murderous. She brought me all my belongings that had been filth from me, rifle, ammunition, knife, and thermos bottle, and then hand in hand we descended the cliff and set off toward the north. For three days we continued upon our way, until we arrived outside a village of fatstats, just at dusk. Koto said that she would enter alone, I must not be seen if I did not intend to remain, as it was forbidden that one should return and live after having advanced this far. So she left me, she was a dear girl, and a staunch and true comrade, more like a man

14:30and a woman. In her simple barbaric way she was both refined and chased. She had been the wife of Tojo, among the Krolu she would find another mate, after the manner of the strange, cast-packy, and world, but she told me very frankly that whenever I returned she would leave her mate and come to me, as she preferred me above all others. I was becoming a lady's man after a lifetime of bashfulness. At the outskirts of the village I left her without even seeing the sort of people who inhabited it, and set off through the growing darkness toward the south. On the third day I made a detour westward to avoid the country of the Bandlu, as I did not care to be detained by a meeting with Tojo. On the sixth day I came to the cliffs of the Stoleu, and my heartbeat fast as I approached them, for here was less. Soon I would hold her tight in my arms again, soon her warm lips would merge with mine. I felt sure that she was still safe among the hatchet people, and I was already picturing

15:33the joy and the love-light in her eyes when she should see me once more, as I emerged from the last clump of trees, and almost ran toward the cliffs. It was late in the morning, the women must have returned from the pool. Yet as I drew near I saw no sign of life, whatever. They have remained longer, I thought, but when I was quite close to the base of the cliffs I saw that which dashed my hopes and my happiness to earth. Soon along the ground were a score of mute and horrible suggestions of what had taken place during my absence. Bones picked clean of flesh, the bones of man-like creatures, the bones of many of the tribe of Stoleu, nor in any cave was their sign of life. Closely I examined the ghastly remains, fearful each instant that I should find the dainty skull that would shatter my happiness for life, but though I searched diligently picking up every one of the twenty odd skulls I found none that was the skull of a creature but

16:35slightly removed from the ape. Hope then still lived, for another three days I searched north and south, east and west were the hatchet man of cast back, but never a trace of them did I find. It was raining most of the time now, and the weather was as near cold as it ever seems to get on Caprona. At last I gave up the search and set off toward Fort Dinosaur. For a week, a week filled with the terrors and dangers of a primeval world, I pushed on in the direction I thought was south. The sun never shone, the rains scarcely ever ceased falling. The beasts I met with were fewer in number, but infinitely more terrible in temper. Yet I lived on until there came to me the realization that I was hopelessly lost, that a year of sunshine would not again give me my bearings, and while I was cast down by this terrifying knowledge, the knowledge that I never again could find this, I stumbled upon another grave, the grave of William James, with its little crude headstone, and its

17:39scrawled characters, recording that he had died upon the thirteenth of September, killed by a saber-tooth tiger. I think that I almost gave up then. Never in my life have I felt more hopeless, or helpless, or alone. I was lost. I could not find my friends. I did not even know that they still lived. In fact, I could not bring myself to believe that they did. I was sure that less was dead. I wanted myself to die, and yet I clung to life, useless and hopeless in herring a thing as it had become. I clung to life because some ancient reptilian forebearer had clung to life and transmitted to me through the ages the most powerful motive that guided his minute brain, the motive of self-preservation. At last I came to the Great Barrier Cliffs, and after three days of mad effort, of maniacal effort, I scaled them, I built crude ladders, I wed sticks in narrow fissures, I chopped

18:41toe-holes and finger-holes with my long knife, but at last I scaled them. Near the summit I came upon a huge cavern. It is the abode of some mighty winged creature of the Triassic, or rather it was. Now it is mine. I slew the thing, and took its abode. I reached the summit, and looked out upon the broad grey, terrible Pacific of the far southern winter. It was cold up there. It is cold here today. And here I sit watching, watching, watching for the thing I know will never come for a sale. End of chapter 9 Chapter 10 of the Land That Time Forgot This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org, recording by Ralph

19:42Snellson. The Land That Time Forgot By Edgar Rice Burles. Chapter 10 Once a day I descend to the base of the cliff and hunt, and fill my stomach with water from a clear cold spring. I have three gourds which I fill with water, and take back to my cave against the long nights. I am fashioned a spear and a bow and arrow that I may conserve my ammunition, which is running low. My clothes are worn to shreds. Tomorrow I shall discard them for leopard skins which I have tanned and sewn into a garment strong and warm. It is cold up here. I have a fire burning, and I sit, bent over it while I write. But I am safe here. No other living creature ventures to the chill summit of the barrier cliffs. I am safe, and I am alone with my sorrows and my remembered joys, but without hope. It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast, but there is none in mine.

20:42I am about done. Presently I shall fold these pages and push them into my thermos bottle. I shall cork it and screw the cap tight, and then I shall hurl it as far out into the sea as my strength will permit. The wind is offshore. The tide is running out. Once it will be carried into one of those numerous ocean currents which sweep perpetually from pole to pole and from continent to continent. To be deposited at last upon some inhabited shore. If fate is kind and this does happen, then for God's sake come and get me. It was a week ago that I wrote the presiding paragraph which I thought would end the written record of my life upon Caprona. I had paused to put a new point on my quill and stir the crude ink which I made by crushing a black variety of berry and mixing it with water before attaching my signature. When faintly from the valley far below came an unmistakable sound which brought me to

21:43my feet, trembling with excitement to peer eagerly downward for my dizzy ledge. How full of meaning that sound was to me you may gas when I tell you that it was the report of a firearm. For a moment my gaze traversed the landscape beneath until it was caught and held by four figures near the base of the cliff. A human figure held it bay by three hyena-doms, those ferocious and bloodthirsty wild dogs of the Eocene, a fourth beast lay dead or dying nearby. I couldn't be sure, looking down from above as I was, but yet I trembled like a leaf in the intuitive belief that it was less, and my judgment served to confirm my wild desire. For whoever it was carried only a pistol, and thus had less been armed. The first wave of sudden joy which served through me was shortly lived in the face of the swift following conviction that the one who fought below was already doomed. Luck and only luck it must have been which had permitted that first shot to lay low one

22:47of the savage creatures, for even such a heavy weapon as my pistol is entirely inadequate against even the lesser carnivora of a cast back. In a moment the three would charge. A futile shot would but ten more greatly to enrage the one it chants to hit, and then the three would drag down the little human figure and tear it to pieces. And maybe it was less, my heart stood still at the thought, but mind and muscle responded to the quick decision I was forced to make. There was but a single hope, a single chance, and I took it. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and took careful aim. It was a long shot, a dangerous shot, for unless one is accustomed to it shooting from a considerable altitude is most deceptive work. There is though something about marksmanship which is quite beyond all scientific laws. On other theory can I explain my marksmanship of that moment. Three times my rifle spoke, three quick short syllables of death.

23:49I did not take conscious aim, and yet at each report a beast crumpled in its tracks. From my ledge to the base of the cliff is a matter of several thousand feet of dangerous climbing, yet I ventured to say that the first ape, from whose loins my line has descended, never could have equaled the speed with which I literally dropped down the face of that rugged escarpment. The last two hundred feet is over a steep incline of loose rubble to the valley bottom, and I had just reached the top of this when there arose my ears and agonized cry, born, born, quick, my love, quick! I had been too much occupied with the dangers of the descent to glance down toward the valley, but that cry which told me that it was indeed less, and that she was again in danger, brought my eyes quickly upon her in time to see a hairy, burly, brute Caesar, and start off at a run toward the nearby wood. From rot to rock, chamulike, I leaped downward toward the valley, in pursuit of less than

24:52her hideous abductor. He was heavier than I by many pounds, and so waited by the burden he carried that I easily overtook him, and at last he turned, snarling to face me. It was coal of the tribe of saw, the hatchet-man. He recognized me, and with a low ground he threw less aside and came for me. The she is mine, he cried, I care, I care! I had had to discard my rifle before I commenced the rapid descent of the cliff, so that now I was armed only with a hunting-knife, and this I whipped from its scabbard as coal leaped toward me. He was a mighty beast, mightily muscled, and the urge that has made males fight since the dawn of life on earth filled him with the bloodlust and the thirst to slay, but not one with less did it fill me with the same primal passions. Two abysmal beasts sprang at each other's throats that day beneath the shadow of the earth's oldest cliffs, the man of now and the man thing of the earliest forgotten them,

25:57imbued by the same deathless passion that has come down unchanged through all the epic periods and eras of time from the beginning, and which shall continue to the incalculable end, woman, the imperishable alpha and omega of life. Coal closed and sought my jugular with his teeth. He seemed to forget the hatchet dangling by its arx-hide thong at his hip, as I forgot, for the moment the dagger in my hand, and I doubt not, but that Coal would easily have bested me in an encounter of that sort had not Liz's voice awakened within my momentarily reverted brain the skill and cunning of reasoning man. Oh, and she cried, your knife, your knife! It was enough, it recalled me from the forgotten eon to which my brain had flown, and left me once again a modern man battling with a clumsy unskilled brute. No longer did my jaw snap at the hairy throat before me, but instead my knife sought and found

26:59a space between two ribs over the savage heart. Coal voiced a single horrid scream stiffened spasmodically and sank to the earth, and lest through herself into my arms all the fears and sorrows of the past were wiped away, and once again I was the happiest of man. With some misgivings I shortly afterward cast my eyes upward toward the precarious ledge which ran before my cave, for it seemed to me quite beyond all reason to expect a dainty modern bell to assay the perils of that frightful climb. I asked her if she thought she could brave the ascend, and she laughed galey in my face, watch she cried and ran eagerly toward the base of the cliff. Like a squirrel she clamored swiftly aloft so that I was forced to exert myself to keep pace with her, at first she frightened me, but presently I was aware that she was quite as safe here as was I. When we finally came to my ledge and I again held her in my arms, she recalled to my

28:03mind that for several weeks she had been living the life of a cave girl with the tribe of Hatchetman. They had been driven from their former caves by another tribe which had slain many and carried off quite half the females, and the new cliffs to which they had flown had proven far higher and more precipitous so that she had become, through necessity, a most practiced climber. She told me of cause desire for her, since all his females had been stolen, and of how her life had been a constant nightmare of terror as she sought by night and by day to elude the great brute. For a time knobs had been all the protection she required, but one day he disappeared, nor has she seen him since. She believes that he was deliberately made away with, and so do I, for we both are sure that he never would have deserted her. With her means of protection gone, this was now at the mercy of the Hatchetman, nor was it many hours before he had caught her at the base of the cliff and seized her, but as

29:07he bore her triumphantly aloft toward his cave, she had managed to break loose and escape him. For three days he had pursued me, she said, through this horrible world, how I have passed through in safety I cannot guess, nor how I have always managed to outdistance him, yet I have done it, until just as you discovered me, fate was kind to us born. I nodded my head in a scent and crushed her to me, and then we talked and planned, as I cooked antelope steaks over my fire, and we came to the conclusion that there was no hope of rescue, that she and I were doomed to live and die upon Caprona. Well, it might be worse, I would rather live here always with this, than to live elsewhere without her, and she, dear girl, says the same of me. But I am afraid of this life for her, it is a hard, fierce, dangerous life, and I shall pray always that we shall be rescued from it, for her sake.

30:08That night the clouds broke, and the moon shone down upon our little edge, and there, hand in hand, we turned our faces toward heaven, and plighted our trough, beneath the eyes of God. No human agency could have married us more sacredly than we are wed, we are man and wife, and we are content. If God wills it, we shall live out our lives here, if He wills otherwise, then this manuscript, which I shall now consign to the inscrutable forces of the sea, shall fall into friendly hands. However, we are each without hope, and so we say goodbye, and this our last message to the world beyond the barrier cliffs, signed Bonjay Titer, Jr., List LaRue Titer, end of chapter 10, end of the land that time forgot by Edgar Rice Burles. This is the new Weight Watchers, built for real life and real results, no matter what

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