THE 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
concentrated into 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, the _Anastatica syriachum_. We called our
camp _Restoration_. Hopkins suggested _Emptiness_ as 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 slope under
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 this time 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 the
impervious 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
the blue, 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. The
_Anastatica_(?), 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, though _here_ schists with pegmatite
veins. An ancient circular axis surrounding a circular depression that
has never been covered 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, the
lake 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 some _trauma_ had 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’t believe 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’ quick eye 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 shone with 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 had descended 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 that _convulsive_ firmness 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 written most
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
phenomenon hinted 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 by _tea_; 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 scrambled _pele-mele_ to 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.
[Illustration:
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—a
_tyrannosaurus_ or 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 then _poured_ forward, 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 invariable _coups_, 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 its _relievos_, I felt
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 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.’”
------------------------------------------------------------------------