CHAPTER VIThe Crocodilo-Python
But nature reasserted its importunities, and hunger gnawed my vitals. In a chapter of Admiral Peary’s book, “Over the Great Ice,” is a thrilling episode which describes his own and Astrum’s, hunger before they slew the musk ox near Independence Bay, Greenland, and the ferocity, almost, with which they feasted on the raw meat. I once thought that the story had been given a half theatrical exaggeration. Now I know it was truthful enough. My companions were also weak and prostrated. I now saw clearly their thin, pinched features, the natureless stare of their eyes, the flaccid, hopeless flutter of their hands. I had not realized how near we had been to dropping dead in our tracks.
There was a shot—another, then—another. “God be thanked,” muttered Goritz, and the Professor mechanically rose to his unsteady feet, and shaded his eyes, looking down the hillside.
“He’s coming, and his hands are full,” at length he said, and sank to the ground.
It seemed an eternity before the tall figure of the Yankee brushed through the grass, and flung the dead bodies of three wild geese among us.
Few or none who have not known the extremity of hunger can understand how, as Mikkelsen expresses it, “one’s whole consciousness becomes concentratedinto one importunate demand for food—food—food.” And do you remember, if you read it, how Mikkelsen and Iversen set up the tins of the cache at Schnauder’s Island in a row, to feast their eyes on them, and then, after all, came that “feverish race with death—the grim death of hunger”?
Our state was not as desperate, but perhaps we were not such hardened and strong men. It was not long before a fire made of branches and twigs and grass was burning merrily, and though there was nothing but water to drink, and there were no condiments—no salt or pepper, no bread or biscuits, we devoured the fried duck with a rapture no words can properly do justice to. It was not enough. Hopkins must go again and again. But the larder furnished us in these new, hospitable surroundings was inexhaustible. We wondered whether the sound of a gunshot had ever been heard here; the birds were simply curious, not frightened, and only interrupted their play or avocation with a momentary and short flight.
We moved forward from our first resting place and encamped under the leafy covering of a beautiful, narrow, silver-leaved tree, that the Professor told us was a relative of that ornament of parks and pleasure grounds in Europe and America, theAnastatica syriachum. We called our campRestoration. Hopkins suggestedEmptinessas a name, for several reasons, because of our unappeasable appetites and because in it, besides ourselves, our guns, a few cooking vessels (to be exact, just a pot and a fryingpan) the rope we carried, and our few instruments, our ammunition and our matches, there were none of the appurtenances that are associated with the name of camp. But the name Restoration pleased us better, for here were we filled with a wonderful animation of expectancy,here our strength had been fully restored, here we had become joyful beyond estimation, the Professor had resumed his alacrity of mind, and once more we all embarked on the sea of fabulous imagining. It was altogether wonderful. Where were we? What was the meaning of this temperate charm of climate? Whence came this broad illumination when the sun had set?
The first moments of our mere animal restoration passed, then a delicious weariness overcame us as we surrendered to the mirthful spirit of surprise and admiration, and to the curative properties of fried or boiled duck. Around us stretched a magnificent country, which bore the aspect of the sylvan loneliness of the lakeland of Minnesota and Wisconsin and Canada, though more undulating or hilly. The wall of steam and cloud behind us, occasionally glowing dully with the flame of its intermittent explosions, extended north and south, or was lost in the pearly exhalations of the distance.
It formed an inexhaustible source of rain, for, as the east winds prevailed, the mists swept over this aquitanian land in showers, or, if the west wind, it was rolled away in thunderous glory to deluge that steep, barren zone we had descended, from Krocker Land Rim, and, beyond the Rim, it fell again in snow. The Professor, boastful now, and Goritz calmly exultant, arranged the fortunes we were about to meet in pleasing colors. To listen to them as Hopkins and I lay on our backs in the fragrant grass, starred with white and blue blossoms, was like the recital of a fairy story, a legend of miracles and marvels.
The Professor took up the strain in this wise:
“Here is the most wonderful illustration of Perpetual Motion. The precipitation of the Arctic Sea falls on this land in rain, outside of it in snow. The rain flows down the rivers of the arid slopeunder Krocker Land Rim, is emptied into the heated or inflamed bowels of the earth, uncovered by the huge meridional crevice, and returned as steam to be again thrown down, evaporated and reprecipitated in an endless chain of supreme magnitude.
“And, gentlemen, we have entered the polar depression of which you were so scornfully incredulous. We have already fallen two thousand feet below the mean level of the earth. This is a temperate region, with symptoms of subtropical or even perhaps tropical life I believe we shall discover a series of successive gigantic steps, each a recession within the crust of the earth, like continental amphitheatrical terraces, and at the Center—”
“What?” gurgled Hopkins.
“Ah! Mr. Hopkins, what indeed.”
But before the Professor could frame his answer to the question, Goritz, whose reticence had now succumbed to the wonders of our experience had seized the thread of the lecture. He would outdo the Professor in prophecies, with a merry fling or soaring of imagination that made that cheerful scientist dubious or irritated. I think he rather resented this unexpected, half satirical participation in the monopoly of his professional vaticinations.
“I’ll tell you what, Hopkins,” would continue Goritz smilingly, with a musical intonation that accorded with the serenity of our surroundings, “it will be a City of Gold—houses of gold, golden chariots, golden furniture. We can break off the legs and arms of the chairs and tables, knock down the doors, rip up the flagging, and put up a stack of gold bric-a-brac that will keep us forever. We’ll go back, bring in the engineers, bridge that gulf, and railroad the metropolis to the shore, ship the whole thing to America and then—(by thistime Hopkins would be pummeling me “to sit up and take notice”) we’ll come back, seize the mines and fetch the Millenium back to the world; no more poor, no begging, no charities, just universal peace and happiness!”
“May be,” Hopkins would grunt as he knocked me flat again, and fell himself face forward to the ground, “may be, but Pujo and the Democratic Congress will catch you, if you don’t watch out. Why my dear, unsophisticated friend, if you gave it away, and let people know you had a claim on the original, inexhaustible goldbrick of the Universe, the crowd up here would tilt the earth over, and set it rolling the wrong way. And then—WHAT?”
So we often joked and laughed together in the halcyon days that restored our strength and health. But the fit of mere whimsical jubilation soon came to an end. Our exploits were only begun, and already two serious wonders attracted our attention and brought us in contact with an amazing phenomenon. The first was the unbroken illumination, the measureless day! The sun itself hardly raised its red disk above the horizon now. We knew that the six months’ night was fast approaching, outside of this enchanted bowl, and yet within its magic circle the light remained, and there were no alternations of day and night. A varying light indeed, as there were clear or cloudy skies, but still the sensible, broad day. What did this mean? What anomaly of natural philosophy, of physics, of astronomy, could be invoked to explain this aberration?
And the second was the Sleep of Vegetation. The trees went to sleep, the flowers too. The leaves of the trees turned upward, and clasped the twigs and branches, exposing their dull brown under surfaces only, and the sepals and petals of the flowers did the same. Shielded behind theimpervious dark film of the thickened integument, the green upper surfaces remained as it were closed; a voluntary recuperation that was novel enough. The Professor was enraptured, and he discovered that the breathing pores (stomata), usually in plants on the under side of the leaf, were here above, that too there was no prevalent custom, so to speak, among the plants, in their “going to sleep.” One plant would be thus sleeping alongside of a wide-awake neighbor. But he did note a kind of periodicity, in opening and closing, as Pfeffer has done in plants kept constantly in the dark. And it seemed to all of us that the colors were both paler and deeper; deeper in the reds and purples, paler in the greens and yellows.
But that artificial sun that towards the west illumined the zenith, an endless fixed lamp set in the sky, immovable above the earth? What was that? Towards it we hastened, now almost free of loads, and free of cares, immersed in a reckless curiosity, feeling the wantonness of a luxurious and marvel-bringing pastime.
It grew colder, showing that the outside changes affected the depressed area, but the phantom light in the west was also a source of heat, and if we were to drop down further within lower craters, the “static heat of the earth,” the Professor averred, would “increasingly raise the temperature.”
Our meals of bird became monotonous, but though we saw fish in the lakes, we could not catch them. Our instruments, matches, ammunition, guns, and the indispensable pot and fryingpan, a few odds and ends in our pockets and some vestiges of other commodities in our packs made up our possessions. A change of under clothing we had vouchsafed ourselves, before we abandoned the sledge, and an under dress too of serge, so that,though our skins and furs were thrown aside, “we might be able,” as Hopkins said, “to meet the ladies of El Dorado without a blush.”
The scenes around us, as we pushed westward, repeated themselves with inconspicuous changes, but we would often enter into pictorial compositions that exhaled an artistic beauty quite incomparable. It was after a ten hour tramp over the interminable savannahs, that the Professor, noting a cliffside, a unique feature, towards the north, we directed our steps thither. Then we encountered a picture that swayed us by its loveliness, and we ran into a zoological revelation also, that made our hair stand on end, so that the emotional antipodes thus experienced supplied us with some exciting themes for conversation.
We first stood at the beginning of a valley sloping from us with wide, graceful reaches. It lay between two series of hills, separated by minor valleys, whose contributions of water, in tree or bush-lined brooks, were added to the meandering river that subjugated all other impressions in its stately movement towards a far distant lake. This latter formed a great mirror of light on the horizon. The hills were much more deeply wooded than any we had passed, indeed the country assumed a new phase, and the languid inclines and faintly expostulating elevations here were replaced by more boulders and a piedmont-like picturesqueness.
And yet there dwelt in the picture a gentleness, an inviting softness of contour that was ingratiating, while the banked trees, the occasional escarpments of glistening rock, and that luminous, distant haze over the faraway lake tended to add strength and mystery. It was almost, by our chronometers, mid-day when we entered this delightful vale. Dark evergreens added a tonic charm to the coloring, and above us, scoring theblue, were ranged radiating white ribs of compacted cumulus.
We had clambered up on the ledges of a rock exposure, encumbered at its base by huge, confused fragments, and edged at its summit by the bushy fortress of a white flowered low tree like a wild cherry. TheAnastatica(?), so abundant in the country we had passed over, had disappeared, and with it, we surmised, that mirific population of cranes, herons, geese, and ducks that made the enchained lakes vocal with pipings, screams, haloos, and bugle calls.
“Looks good to me,” exclaimed Hopkins. “Yes,” I said, “if we could take that picture with us back to New York on a canvas or a film, or a plate, we’d have ’em guessing. It’s a marvel. Pretty hard to believe we’re at north latitude 84°. That’s about it, Professor?”
“84°, 50’, 5”,” replied the Professor sententiously, as he applied his lens and his eyes to a scrap of stone.
“New York?” snorted Goritz. “You surely don’t ask for anything better than this. This is Eden.” It certainly seemed so, and while Hopkins contented himself with the comment that he hadn’t noticed any snakes about, we turned attentive ears to the Professor, who by this time had completed his enthralled study of the glittering schist in his hand.
“Azoic rocks,” he cried, his becoming smile mantling his face, his red, prominent ears and his flaring hair making a droll combination. “Very early rocks; the Grenville Series beyond doubt, as named by the Canadian geologists; the first solidifications of the earth’s crust, perhaps schists, granites and limestones, thoughhereschists with pegmatite veins. An ancient circular axis surrounding a circular depression that has never beencovered by the later oceans. Gentlemen, we are probably now situated on the one point of the earth wherein the processes of evolution have never played any role, because marine life has never existed within it, and the processes of derivation which have supplied the dry land with their mammalian fauna from the animals of the sea have been totally excluded, unless—unless—,” the judicial introspection and litigation which the Professor assumed at such critical points in his scientific homilies were always diverting, “unless the barrier had been broken at some point and the surrounding ocean admitted, just as Walcott has surmised may have been the case with the western protaxes of North America, when the pre-Cambrian seas introduced their life into the interior basin of the continent. We shall see, however; the sedimentary rocks of the inner circles (It was quite reassuring to observe the Professor’s stalwart certainty about everything) will reveal that. Even had no such invasion been permitted, life would have reached this isolated nucleus through the flight and migration of birds who might readily enough, as pointed out by Darwin, Wallace, Lancaster, Leidy and others, have carried the embryos of fish, the shells of molluscs and the larvae and bodies of insects hither, and the winds themselves may have assisted in this involuntary transit. The injection of seeds might have taken place in all sorts of ways. So far, you will observe that the faunal features, as might be expected, are very scanty, and true mammals are absent. The zoological peculiarities of this paleolithic bowl are absolutely unique. As a contribution to biological science our results promise to assume important proportions.”
Under the stimulus of this flattering encouragement we resumed our way, following the banks of the beautiful river to that remote splendor, thelake on the horizon, which seemed a fairy sea, where indeed might float argosies of an indigenous people which had been imprisoned in this inverted earth cone since human occupation of our earth began.
And it soon became apparent that we were again rapidly descending, a transition indicated by increasing warmth and the changed gradient of the river which was flowing rapidly, more rapidly, between thickset, outstretched arms of alder-like trees. Our interest was intense. The utter, incalculable strangeness of it all kept our nerves strung to an extreme tension. Sometimes we were simultaneously arrested by an overpowering mental revolt against it, as though we felt we had lost our senses, or as though sometraumahad been inflicted on our brain, and then we stood staring, in absolute stupefaction. For all this was not simply new, it was superbly beautiful.
“Every way we’re to the good,” cried Hopkins. “We’re walking right into a Safe Deposit that would make Rockefeller or Rothschild coil up in a colic of undisguised despair. That, in the first place. Then, we’re mighty comfortable, well fed, careless and improving. That counts in the second place. And thirdly, if we get back to sanitary plumbing, carved food, and flats, we’ll be able to put up a story that will keep the people—I mean everybody—gasping, and there won’t be enough presses to print it, enough woodpulp to print it on, and I assume it’s more than likely that we’ll precipitate, as they say, the worst panic ever known, because nobody will be able to work until they’ve finished the story, and from appearances I think we could a tale unfold that might cover a thousand or more pages. Our copyright will be worth a king’s ransom.”
“But they won’t read it because they won’tbelieve it,” I said. “We’ll be classed with Munchausen and old Doc. Cook, Symmes and Sinbad.”
“Won’t believe it?” exploded Hopkins. “Won’t we show em? The Professor will rattle off the new species, and how about our buying out the government at Washington, and running the country just free of expense a few days, say for a week, to prove it? That will be convincing, I undertake to say. And then the pictures. The camera’s working yet, and there are a dozen or so of film rolls. But don’t worry. We’ll be the biggest thing on the foot-stool, and then—some. Christopher has had a fair show, in fact he’s been rather spoilt, but he’ll have every reason to be glad he’s out of sight when we get there. Why really it’s hard to understand what won’t happen.”
At that we all laughed, and that relief made us serious again, and with eyes open, pencils scribbling, and an occasional click of the camera (Hopkins was our photographer) we hastened down the now somewhat contracting valley. An elbow of land pushed out and diverted the stream and on this point, where the river turned, swerving back into its first course, and where an expanse of yellow sand and pebbles furnished an open space from which the lake, the receding valley behind us, a gorge before us, the open sky, and the encroaching flanks of higher hills were all visible, we halted.
Hopkins seized the opportunity for a new flight of speculation.
“Do you know,” and the shadow of a real embarrassment on his face fixed our attention, “I’ve been wondering who is to own this bailiwick. Of course we’ll meet the native residents sooner or later—their shyness is a little unaccountable as it is—but you don’t imagine for a moment that the first class national hogs of Europe would let a promising domain like this go unappropriated?Not much. Those disinterested potentates would be up here before you could say Jack Robinson to prove how necessary it was for the peace of the world to cut it up at once. Gentlemen, this is an international question, and we’re the only men who have a right to settle it. What do you say?”
“Oh, my portion goes to Denmark,” chuckled Goritz.
“Mine too,” I added.
“I owe allegiance to Norway,” reminded the Professor.
“Funny—how clannish you are,” continued Hopkins. “You’re all as good as Americans, and you speak English. You’ve lived in the United States, and you know, way down in your boots, that she’s the Hope of the whole earth; the only thing just now visible in the shape of government that cares two coppers for the under dog. Ain’t that so? Well I’ll tell yer,” and Hopkins squinted, drawled, and put his long index on the side of his very presentable nose, “I’ll tell yer. We’ll give the Edenites a square deal, and let them decide. You see we can each take the stump for our own country, and then give them the choice at a general Primary Election.”
“Will you let the ladies vote?” I asked innocently.
“Why not? Certainly. Ladies first,” smiled back the gallant Yankee.
“Well then,” I triumphantly concluded, “as they can’t understand us, they’ll of course, after the manner of their sex, be guided by LOOKS, and—America wins.”
We shouted at Hopkins’ discomfiture. He certainly looked nonplussed and aggrieved. He was shaping a retort, and his mouth had already formed the words “See here, Erickson; don’t you fool yourself—” when there was a movement on the opposite bank. Almost instantly Hopkins’ quickeye was diverted, and his arm shot forward, indicating the intrusion, while he whispered in the stage-struck style, “Look, look!”
We turned as one man. Opposite, thrusting their heads out of the foliage of the bank, and revealing too the front quarters of their bodies were four wild pigs, a hog, a sow and two youngsters. The adult animals were of great size, with portentous mouths and snouts, flat cheek protrusions, hairy, pointed ears, and the animals bore two upturned involuted tooth horns or tusks on each side of their upper and lower jaws. The animals were black, their bodies covered with coarse, spiny short hair, bristling into a mane at the neck and their small, fiery eyes snapped viciously. They were large brutes, stout, muscular, possessed of a strange hollow grunt that rumbled ominously inside their heads for a while, and then became suddenly audible as a terrifying, snorting squeal. It was the oddest, most unaccountable animal noise any of us had ever heard. But the Professor complacently informed us that the creatures were undoubtedly related to the Forest Pig—Hylochoerus meinertz hageni—of British East Africa, and that their study would add a new chapter to natural history, while the skins of the monsters would be eagerly competed for by the museums of the world.
Hopkins dismissed this with a wave of his hand, urging the antecedent considerations of pork chops, fresh ham, and sausage. The subjects of this colloquy remained, however, undisturbed. Had we shot them there was no discoverable way in our position at the time to secure their bodies, and from the gastronomic point of view the Professor questioned their importance.
The pigs watched us nervously for a short time, then they grunted reflectively; their whitish-green eyes were almost distended in excitement and shonewith a blue light. But with a raised arm, a thrown pebble, and a shout from Goritz they flew off, crashing among the undergrowth and easily traceable in their flight down the hillside by the wake of violently agitated shrubbery and herbs.
“An interesting encounter,” remarked the Professor. “Its congener is found today over the slopes of Mt. Kenia at a high altitude, where the jungle and the forest meet, supposed by Akely to follow the trail of the elephant, and addicted to an inexplicable habit of scraping together leaves and grasses which it forms into diminutive mounds. We are coming into a warmer region, the increasing prevalence of acacia and eucalyptus-like trees, the occasional pitch pine, and something like an evergreen oak indicate that, though this floral association may be uncommon. I really believe that along the edges of that great lake ahead of us are—palms!”
It was only a short way from this delightful spot, with its sweeping view, that we heard the rush and roar of falling water, as we now fought our way through a tangled maze of branches, emerging at intervals on grassy glades which bore evidence of the past presence of the wild pigs. An hour later we almost tumbled over the brink of a rocky gulf, into which the gathered waters of the river obviously fell. We could not see the falls, but the spouting spray, rising in spiral puffs, the moisture showering through the trees, and the dull bass resonation from the tormented pool that caught the plunging torrent, announced its nearness.
It was a matter of some difficulty, making our descent, and the ropes again did good service in helping us down the vertical walls. It was pretty clear that we were about to meet a picture of some grandeur, for our climb continued, and when we finally broke through to the river again, we haddescended over three hundred feet. Fortunately we were not required to increase our exertions to reach a favorable position for enjoyment of the scenic wonder we had circumvented. It was before us.
Above us in a narrow sheet, in a setting of the wildest beauty, the river poured its flood, tense, glossy, when it first slipped over the rim, as with thatconvulsivefirmness of the young swimmer at the first plunge over his head. Then it began unraveling its woven strands, and became plicated in silken ridges that unwound still more, or flew apart in diamond dust, so volatile that it rose upward in shimmers and rainbows, while at our feet, discharged from the overburdened pool, rushed a torrent of mobile beryl. It was transcendently lovely in the frame of trees; and how amazing to have repeated here, at the pole of the earth, the familiar charms of the woodlands and streams, the sylvan solitudes of the world in temperate and tropical climes where the sun rose and set each day throughout the year!
What was climate? “Climate,” retorted the Professor, “is an atmospheric condition fundamentally dependent upon the heat received from the sun, but if there is light, that heat can come from the interior level of the earth itself quite as well.”
“Yes,” we exclaimed, “if there is light, but the light that, as with the sun, insures the processes of growth in plants, should not be here, for the sun has already run its course for the functions of vegetation at the North. What is the meaning of this continuous light that bathes this marvelous new world we have entered? Does it, like the sunlight, build up leaves, decorate flowers, strengthen twig and trunk?”
“Ah! Does it?” soliloquized the Professor. “Solvitur ambulando; look around us. What do you see?”
We did look around us, we were looking even then, and the scene was indeed rich in color, in greenness, in luxuriance perhaps of floral charm. This everlasting illumination, with the strange accommodation of the plants to an enforced sleep, almost maddened us with wonder. To be sure we found out later that the greenness changed, and, if we had studied the matter more closely we would have been made aware of a paleness in the grass (this condition had been evident for some days, while a peculiar effect within ourselves seemed referable to this inexplicable light). I will return to this when it has formed the topic of a later conference, held during those divine hours passed on the hills of the Deer Fels.
We now had satisfied our eyes with the picture show, and we hastened on, for our supplies of duck were almost exhausted, and, although the Professor had added to this a salutary and delicious spinach-like mess, made from the boiled shoots and tender leaves of a plant like our poke or pigeon berry, which grew abundantly in the valleys, yet we had become impatient for some change of food. The pigs suggested a new and appetizing novelty in our cuisine. This indication of game in the country we were approaching whetted our desire to begin a more stirring life, and to penetrate now rapidly towards the veritable center and solution of all this mystery.
It was not long before we had threaded the precipitous ravine, which from the foot of the falls extended into the park-like expanses about the great lake. A great lake it was, dotted with distant islands and embosomed in a subdued white land almost impossible to describe. The borders of the lake were marshy and flat, the water was fresh, and the vegetation in its neighborhood green. It was a physiographic anomaly to find this freshness enclosed in a land on whose face were writtenmost legibly the characters of sterility and dryness. The soil of the low hills was parched, and a cactus or euphorbia growth replaced the broad leaved plants which had pertinaciously clung to our steps up to this point, and had indeed pushed out into the plain, but with an evident aversion, as they became smaller, sparser, and at some remove disappeared altogether. The spiky stiffness of something like the Spanish Bayonet gradually assumed predominance, and the ashen tokens of sage bush (?) multiplied.
We concluded that in our hand-to-mouth method of subsistence it might be unsafe to venture forward on this trackless waste, and, still expectant of finally terminating our exploration with the finding of human beings, agreed to follow the margin of the lake. This would keep us supplied with food, would carry us on, apparently a little north of east, and as its waters were fresh, would doubtless offer some outlet of escape without compelling us to traverse the inhospitable barrens.
It was here that we shot some quail-like birds, which furnished a new element to our larder, and some acid and fruity berries proved edible, after our ludicrously careful experiments had tested their qualities. Then Hopkins ran against a formidable wild hog and laid him low, and while he did not prove exactly delectable, there was a noticeable difference from previous entries on our menus which made that addition welcome also. The Professor extracted some lard which helped as fuel and served to quicken into a blaze our sluggish fires.
The palms noted by the Professor were fully realized, and they made the most curious and extraordinary foregrounds, in conspicuous groups, against the dull lengthiness and vapid immensity of the chlorinated desert beyond them. It was at this time that we hit the zoological phenomenonhinted at before, which completed our nervous prostration, if mental suspense and amazement represent that state. We were encamped about three days’ journey from the deep glade from which we emerged on the plain, and were still following the marginal fertile tracts bordering the lake. The lake furnished some surprises.
Strips of muddy banks forming islands covered with a profusion of plants, among which might tower a palm, banks of marl wherein the Professor picked out cretaceous fossils, occasional warm springs, the condensed vapors of which floated lazily upward, and which, where they spouted from the ground, had erected basins of calcareous sinter, or their waters trickled to the lake between banks red and white like painted boards.
Our camp—a fire, our knapsacks, our multi-serviceable pot and fryingpan, and our outstretched figures, with the instruments, always including our camera outfit, a few implements and guns—was at the foot of a thicket of high ferns, under a group of palms, and we were at the base of an inconsiderable hill or rise, whose top these ferns and palms concealed. Hopkins had just returned from stalking some of the wild pigs, but he was empty handed; Goritz was very busy devising a stretcher or hurdle for our various belongings, to be carried between two of us, by turns, and the Professor was ruminating, with head in his hands, his wing-like ears protruding. I think I was asleep. Our supper had been made memorable bytea; a hidden package in one of our packs contained this precious leaf, and it was quite noteworthy how it revived and cheered us.
Well, I felt a sharp jolt, and a cavernous abyss yawned under my feet, and with a monstrous effort I snatched a providential branch and saved myself from falling.My eyes opened; I had seized Hopkins’leg, and it was he whose energetic shaking had broken my slumbers with this nightmare.
“Get a move on, Alfred. The scrap of the centuries is going on up there.” He pointed to the grove and hilltop. “If we had a motion-picture camera, we’d have everything in that line knocked into junk. Get up. The White Hope is having it out with the sable champion.”
Utterly bewildered by these incomprehensible words I struggled to my feet, and we both scrambledpele-meleto the top, and there joined Goritz and the Professor, who hardly noticed our approach, so absorbed were they in watching the strangest spectacle that ever human eyes beheld.
Out on the level on a thin carpet of herbs and grass was reared the violent and horrible shape of a writhing, bending, gracefully oscillating, whitish-green monster, and before him the infuriated figure of a black pig. The pig’s bristling mane was erected, his small tail, like a bit of black rope, beat upon his muscular buttocks, his eyes gleamed viciously, his muzzle with its expanded nostrils was upturned, and his challenge sounded like a cornet, and again like a rolling drum.
But the creature before it mastered all attention. The elongated head of a saurian armed along its jaws with sword-like teeth, a long curved neck, a thorax but slightly enlarged over the width of the rest of the body, provided with a short pair of front legs, terminated by claws perceptibly webbed, and opening and shutting with a nervous rapidity, noticeable dull-colored scales striping its sides, a pair of much longer hind legs on whose skin-enwrapped, stilt-like support it had raised itself, and then a prodigious tail, heavy and fat at its protrusion, but lengthening out into a thin python-like body whose involuntary movements swayed it to and fro in serpentine motions through the flattened weeds.
two animals face each otherTHE CROCODILO-PYTHON AND THE WILD PIG
THE CROCODILO-PYTHON AND THE WILD PIG
THE CROCODILO-PYTHON AND THE WILD PIG
The color of the beast was most loathsome; a sickly yellow white it seemed at first; a closer study showed it to be a nauseating green, like a frog scum, and yet through it all, as if summoned to the surface at the will of the creature, coursed reddish blotches, whose inflamed contrasts gave the whole skin the aspect of inflammation, of purulent disease. This coloring prevailed over the neck, the faintly swelling belly, the sides, and over the hind rump and thighs and anal region. The monster awakened an awestruck repulsion. But at the moment its source, home, meaning, were swallowed up in the thrilling, tremendous combat between these strange litigants, a wild boar of today, a saurian—atyrannosaurusor something like it—of the Cretaceous!
The huge lizard was skillful, wavering, crafty and sinuous. It swung from side to side, and when it attempted to descend on its antagonist its mouth opened, almost absurdly, as if waiting for the appetizing bite its hunger or its ferocity anticipated. A wicked mouth, shining with yellow teeth and slobbering with saliva! Any disposition to laugh at its floundering indecision was soon, or at once, overcome by hatred of its hideousness.
It was interesting to watch the hog. He was irresolute and then aggressive; he lunged outward and then tumbled backward. As the giant lizard reeled upward and thenpouredforward, the bristling pig would run in, and then “sidestep,” as Hopkins said. The ultimate object of both combatants became increasingly clear; the saurian aimed at crashing down on the pig, and the pig relying on its sharp incisors intended to rip open the defenceless abdomen of its foe. Again and again with shifting success they attempted their invariablecoups, and again and again recoiled, frustrated in their design.
The fight passed through one episode of some novelty. The saurian in flinging itself forward lost its balance, and, as it were, stumbled to the ground. We saw its eyes then, queer turgid, opal masses, lit internally with fire. In a trice the pig leaped upon its back, stamping and tearing, but, in another trice, the effort seemed incalculable, the huge tail of the snake lizard swept around and bowled the discomfited porker sideways with a swishing blow that knocked it down. Then for a moment it seemed as if the coiling ribbon would enclose the pig, when, held in its crushing vise, the lizard might dissect its victim at leisure. But the pig squirmed out of the trap, and, nothing daunted, resumed its defence with less obvious pugnacity. Except for its monstrous spectacular features the conflict grew monotonous. And here came the end.
Nature was exhausted; an unguarded moment of inattention and, like the black pounce of the eagle, the ponderous head of the lizard fell on the pig, the scimitar teeth cut into hide and bone. A snarling roar, an infuriated lacerating drive by the boar, and, though he sank sideways in a death agony, his tusks had torn open the belly of his conqueror. The viscera emptied from their enclosure, an abominable odor assailed us, and the great bulk of the amphibian lapsed to the ground, its inverted head, caught in the chancery of its body, broke its neck, and with a husky frightening exhalation, like a magnified hiss, it fell in convulsions. The pig was already dead.
Just then none of us were inclined to pursue any investigations. We were all absolutely silent, and all went back to our little camp in a state of mental consternation. The Professor had no theories to propose, nor had Hopkins any comments. As for Goritz, he mechanically brought out the gold belt, and as I bent over him and noticed itsrelievos, Ifelt convinced that its designer and artificer had seen the saurian.
But something more awful occurred about three hours afterwards, when, as we observed, the smell from the battlefield became more and more intolerable. The waters of the lake were furrowed with approaching objects, exposed heads rose upon the shore, shuffling and waddling and scrambling creatures proceeded up the bank, and the entangled bodies of the great lizard and the pig were soon being torn to pieces, in the clapping jaws of the former’s brethren, as they rustled and scraped against each other in their envious greed in what, by our reckoning, was their nocturnal banquet.
Soon, however, I fell asleep again; a feverish sleep it was and I welcomed my awakening. It must have been hours later, the lake was calm and beautiful to see in the mysterious light, and it was the cheerful, heart-inspiring voice of Hopkins that half restored my normal gaiety. He was helping the Professor at what in its serial position was our breakfast, and he prattled to his benignant comrade:
“‘We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,And drab as a dead man’s hand;We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping treesOr trailed through the mud and sand.Croaking and blind, with our three clawed feetWriting a language dumb,With never a spark in the empty dark,To hint at a life to come.’”
“‘We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,And drab as a dead man’s hand;We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping treesOr trailed through the mud and sand.Croaking and blind, with our three clawed feetWriting a language dumb,With never a spark in the empty dark,To hint at a life to come.’”
“‘We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,And drab as a dead man’s hand;We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping treesOr trailed through the mud and sand.Croaking and blind, with our three clawed feetWriting a language dumb,With never a spark in the empty dark,To hint at a life to come.’”
“‘We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man’s hand;
We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark,
To hint at a life to come.’”