Arthur Conan Doyle - The Lost World

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THE LOST WORLD

I have wrought my simple plan

If I give one hour of joy

To the boy who's half a man,

Or the man who's half a boy.

The Lost World

By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Foreword

Mr. E. D. Malone desires to state that

both the injunction for restraint and the

libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly

by Professor G. E. Challenger, who, being

satisfied that no criticism or comment in

this book is meant in an offensive spirit,

has guaranteed that he will place no

impediment to its publication and circulation.

Contents

CHAPTER

I. "THERE ARE HEROISMS ALL ROUND US"

II. "TRY YOUR LUCK WITH PROFESSOR CHALLENGER"

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III. "HE IS A PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE PERSON"

IV. "IT'S JUST THE VERY BIGGEST THING IN THE WORLD"

V. "QUESTION!"

VI. "I WAS THE FLAIL OF THE LORD"

VII. "TO-MORROW WE DISAPPEAR INTO THE UNKNOWN"

VIII. "THE OUTLYING PICKETS OF THE NEW WORLD"

IX. "WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN IT?

X. "THE MOST WONDERFUL THINGS HAVE HAPPENED"

XI. "FOR ONCE I WAS THE HERO"

XII. "IT WAS DREADFUL IN THE FOREST"

XIII. "A SIGHT I SHALL NEVER FORGET"

XIV. "THOSE WERE THE REAL CONQUESTS"

XV. "OUR EYES HAVE SEEN GREAT WONDERS"

XVI. "A PROCESSION! A PROCESSION!"

THE LOST WORLD

The Lost World

CHAPTER I

"There Are Heroisms All Round Us"

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person

upon earth,--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man,

perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own

silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it

would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am

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convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round

to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his

company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism,

a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous

chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of

silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards

of exchange.

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in

the world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment

insisted upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man,

upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual

levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any

reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the

room to dress for a Masonic meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come!

All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the

signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and

fear of repulse alternating in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined

against the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how

aloof! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could I

get beyond the same comradeship which I might have established

with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectly

frank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts

are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me.

It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins,

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timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked

days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent

head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure--

these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true

signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as

that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be

cold and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicately

bronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair,

the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,--all the

stigmata of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that

up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth.

However, come what might, I should have done with suspense and

bring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, and

better be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.

So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the

long and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked

round at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof.

"I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I do

wish you wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are."

I drew my chair a little nearer. "Now, how did you know that I

was going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.

"Don't women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the world

was ever taken unawares? But--oh, Ned, our friendship has been so

good and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don't you feel how

splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able

to talk face to face as we have talked?"

"I don't know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with--

with the station-master." I can't imagine how that official came

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into the matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing.

"That does not satisfy me in the least. I want my arms round you,

and your head on my breast, and--oh, Gladys, I want----"

She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed

to demonstrate some of my wants. "You've spoiled everything,

Ned," she said. "It's all so beautiful and natural until this

kind of thing comes in! It is such a pity! Why can't you

control yourself?"

"I didn't invent it," I pleaded. "It's nature. It's love."

"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different. I have never

felt it."

"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys,

you were made for love! You must love!"

"One must wait till it comes."

"But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?"

She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand--such a gracious,

stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head. Then she

looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.

"No it isn't that," she said at last. "You're not a conceited

boy by nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that.

It's deeper."

"My character?"

She nodded severely.

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"What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over.

No, really, I won't if you'll only sit down!"

She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to

my mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive and

bestial it looks when you put it down in black and white!--and

perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself.

Anyhow, she sat down.

"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"

"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.

It was my turn to jump out of my chair.

"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the

expression of my face: "only an ideal. I've never met the kind

of man I mean."

"Tell me about him. What does he look like?"

"Oh, he might look very much like you."

"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that

I don't do? Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,

theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you

will only give me an idea what would please you."

She laughed at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the

first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that,"

said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt

himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a man

who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and

have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences.

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It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had

won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton!

When I read his wife's life of him I could so understand her love!

And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapter

of that book about her husband? These are the sort of men that

a woman could worship with all her soul, and yet be the greater,

not the less, on account of her love, honored by all the world

as the inspirer of noble deeds."

She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought

down the whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard,

and went on with the argument.

"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons," said I; "besides, we

don't get the chance,--at least, I never had the chance. If I

did, I should try to take it."

"But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of

man I mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back.

I've never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are

heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them,

and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men.

Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon.

It was blowing a gale of wind; but because he was announced to go

he insisted on starting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles

in twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was

the kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other

women must have envied her! That's what I should like to be,--envied

for my man."

"I'd have done it to please you."

"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me. You should do it

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because you can't help yourself, because it's natural to you,

because the man in you is crying out for heroic expression.

Now, when you described the Wigan coal explosion last month,

could you not have gone down and helped those people, in spite

of the choke-damp?"

"I did."

"You never said so."

"There was nothing worth bucking about."

"I didn't know." She looked at me with rather more interest.

"That was brave of you."

"I had to. If you want to write good copy, you must be where the

things are."

"What a prosaic motive! It seems to take all the romance out

of it. But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went

down that mine." She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness

and dignity that I could only stoop and kiss it. "I dare say I

am merely a foolish woman with a young girl's fancies. And yet

it is so real with me, so entirely part of my very self, that I

cannot help acting upon it. If I marry, I do want to marry a

famous man!"

"Why should you not?" I cried. "It is women like you who brace

men up. Give me a chance, and see if I will take it! Besides, as

you say, men ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until

they are given. Look at Clive--just a clerk, and he conquered

India! By George! I'll do something in the world yet!"

She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence. "Why not?" she said.

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"You have everything a man could have,--youth, health, strength,

education, energy. I was sorry you spoke. And now I am glad--so

glad--if it wakens these thoughts in you!"

"And if I do----"

Her dear hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips. "Not another

word, Sir! You should have been at the office for evening duty

half an hour ago; only I hadn't the heart to remind you. Some day,

perhaps, when you have won your place in the world, we shall talk

it over again."

And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening

pursuing the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and

with the eager determination that not another day should elapse

before I should find some deed which was worthy of my lady.

But who--who in all this wide world could ever have imagined the

incredible shape which that deed was to take, or the strange

steps by which I was led to the doing of it?

And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to

have nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have

been no narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out

into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round

him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any

which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did

from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic

twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.

Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff

of which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settled

determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest

which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was it

selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her

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own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but

never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

CHAPTER II

"Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger"

I always liked McArdle, the crabbed, old, round-backed,

red-headed news editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me.

Of course, Beaumont was the real boss; but he lived in the

rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian height from which he could

distinguish nothing smaller than an international crisis or a

split in the Cabinet. Sometimes we saw him passing in lonely

majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring vaguely and

his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. He was

above and beyond us. But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and

it was he that we knew. The old man nodded as I entered the

room, and he pushed his spectacles far up on his bald forehead.

"Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very

well," said he in his kindly Scotch accent.

I thanked him.

"The colliery explosion was excellent. So was the Southwark fire.

You have the true descreeptive touch. What did you want to see

me about?"

"To ask a favor."

He looked alarmed, and his eyes shunned mine. "Tut, tut! What is it?"

"Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some

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Arthur Conan Doyle - The Lost World

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