Lord John Roxton and I walked together down Vigo Street and entered the gloomy old building where he lived. We followed a long, dull corridor until he opened a door and switched on the electric lights.
The large room suddenly filled with a warm red glow from the shaded lamps.
Standing in the doorway, I was struck by the strange combination of luxury and masculine energy. Everything suggested a wealthy man with excellent taste who nevertheless lived like a careless bachelor.
Expensive furs and brightly colored rugs from the East lay scattered across the floor. The walls were covered with paintings and prints, many of which even I could recognize as valuable and rare.
There were sketches of boxers, ballet dancers, and racehorses, hanging beside works by Fragonard, Girardet, and Turner.
Yet the most interesting decorations were the trophies that reminded me what kind of man Lord John Roxton really was.
Above the fireplace hung two crossed rowing oars, one dark blue and one bright pink, recalling his days at Oxford and his victories in rowing. Foils and boxing gloves hung nearby, reminders that he had also excelled at fencing and boxing.
Around the room, almost like a decorative border, were the heads of magnificent wild animals from all over the world.
Above them all hung the enormous head of a rare white rhinoceros from the Lado Enclave, its upper lip giving it an almost arrogant expression.
In the middle of the deep red carpet stood a beautiful black-and-gold Louis XV table.
It was a priceless antique, but years of careless bachelor living had left it covered with rings from glasses and burn marks from cigars.
On the table was a silver tray filled with cigars and cigarettes, along with a polished stand of spirits.
Without saying much, Roxton poured drinks for both of us.
He pointed me toward a comfortable armchair and placed my glass beside it. Then he handed me a long Havana cigar.
He sat down opposite me and stared at me for a long time.
His eyes were an unusual, cold blue, like the water of a glacier lake, yet there was something mischievous and reckless in them.
Through the thin smoke of my cigar, I studied his face, which I had already seen in many photographs.
He had a strongly curved nose, hollow cheeks, dark reddish hair that was thinning on top, a thick, sharp moustache, and a small aggressive-looking beard on his prominent chin.
There was something of Napoleon III in him, something of Don Quixote, and something unmistakably English—a country gentleman who loved fresh air, horses, and dogs.
His face was deeply tanned and reddish from years of exposure to sun and wind.
His heavy eyebrows hung over his eyes, making his naturally cold expression seem almost fierce.
His forehead was broad and deeply lined.
He was tall, a little over six feet, though his rounded shoulders made him look somewhat shorter.
His body was lean but powerfully built. He had proved many times that very few men in England could match his stamina.
This was the famous Lord John Roxton sitting across from me, biting down on his cigar and watching me in an awkward silence.
At last he spoke.
“Well, young fellow, we’ve really done it.”
He pronounced the words in his peculiar way, almost as if “young fellow, my lad” were a single phrase.
“Yes, you and me—we’ve taken quite a leap.”
“I suppose when you walked into that room earlier today, you never imagined you’d end up in this situation, did you?”
“Not for a moment.”
“Neither did I. Not even a thought of it.”
He laughed.
“And yet here we are, right in the middle of the whole business.”
“I’ve only been back from Uganda for three weeks. I’ve just taken a place in Scotland, signed the lease, and settled everything. And now look at me.”
He took another puff of his cigar.
“What do you think of it?”
“It fits my work well enough. I’m a journalist with the Gazette.”
“Of course. You told me that when you accepted the job.”
He leaned forward.
“By the way, I’ve got a little job for you, if you’re willing to help me.”
“Certainly.”
“You don’t mind taking a bit of a risk, do you?”
“What sort of risk?”
“Well, the risk is called Ballinger. Have you heard of him?”
“No.”
Roxton stared at me in disbelief.
“Where on earth have you been living, young fellow?”
“Sir John Ballinger is the finest gentleman jockey in the north of England. I could beat him on a flat course when I was at my best, but over fences he’s far better than I am.”
He paused.
“It’s an open secret that when he’s out of training, he drinks heavily. He calls it keeping himself at an average.”
“On Tuesday he developed delirium, and he’s been raving like a madman ever since.”
“His room is directly above this one.”
“The doctors say he’ll probably die unless someone gets food into him. But he’s lying in bed with a revolver on his blanket, swearing he’ll put six bullets into anyone who comes near him.”
“Naturally, the servants have decided they want nothing to do with him.”
“Jack is a tough old fellow, and he’s a very good shot. But you can’t let a Grand National winner lie upstairs and die like that, can you?”
“What are you planning to do?” I asked.
“My idea is that you and I rush him together.”
“He might be asleep. And even if he isn’t, he can only shoot one of us at a time.”
“The other man should be able to overpower him.”
“If we can wrap his arms in a pillowcase and tie him down, we’ll call for a stomach pump and get some food into the old fellow.”
It was a rather shocking proposal to have dropped into the middle of my first day with Roxton.
I have never considered myself especially brave.
My Irish imagination has always had a habit of making unfamiliar dangers seem much worse than they really are.
But I had also been raised to hate cowardice. The thought of being called a coward frightened me almost as much as the danger itself.
I suppose I might even throw myself from a cliff if someone challenged my courage, though that would probably be pride and fear of shame rather than genuine bravery.
So although every instinct in me recoiled from the drunken, gun-wielding madman I imagined waiting upstairs, I answered as casually as I could.
“All right. I’m ready.”
Roxton made some further comment about the danger, and it irritated me.
“Talking about it isn’t going to make it safer,” I said.
“Come on.”
I stood up.
He stood up too.
Then, with a quiet laugh, he patted me on the chest several times before gently pushing me back into my chair.
“All right, my lad. You’ll do.”
I looked at him in surprise.
“I already dealt with Jack Ballinger myself this morning.”
“He fired a bullet through the skirt of my dressing gown—God bless his unsteady old hand.”
“But we managed to get a jacket onto him, and the doctors think he’ll be fine within a week.”
He grinned.
“I hope you don’t mind my little test.”
“You see, between you and me, I consider this South American business extremely serious.”
“If I’m going to have a companion with me, I need someone I can rely on.”
“So I wanted to see what sort of man you were.”
“And I have to say, you passed.”
“You and I will have enough to deal with as it is. That old Professor Summerlee is going to need constant attention from the moment we leave.”
He paused.
“By the way, aren’t you the Malone who’s expected to win an Irish Rugby cap?”
“Perhaps. I’m only a reserve at the moment.”
“I knew I’d seen your face somewhere.”
“I was there when you scored that try against Richmond.”
“That was one of the finest runs I’ve seen all season.”
“I never miss a Rugby match when I can help it. It’s the most manly sport we’ve got left.”
He took another drink.
“But I didn’t bring you here just to talk about sport.”
“We have practical matters to settle.”
He picked up the Times.
“Here are the sailing schedules. There’s a Booth Line ship leaving for Pará a week from next Wednesday.”
“If the Professor and you can manage it, I think we should take that ship.”
“I’ll arrange it with him.”
“What about your equipment?”
“My newspaper will provide everything I need.”
“Can you shoot?”
“About as well as the average Territorial soldier.”
Roxton stared at me.
“Good Lord! Is that all?”
“You young fellows never seem to think it’s worth learning.”
“You’re like bees without stings. You know how to look after the hive, but you’ll be helpless when someone comes along to steal the honey.”
“You’ll need to know how to handle a gun in South America.”
“Unless our Professor is either a complete lunatic or a liar, we may see some very strange things before we come home.”
“What sort of gun do you have?”
He walked over to a large oak cabinet.
When he opened it, I saw rows of polished gun barrels shining inside, packed together like the pipes of an organ.
“I’ll see what I can spare from my own collection.”
He took out one beautiful rifle after another.
He opened and closed each one with a sharp metallic click, then returned it to its place with surprising tenderness, almost as if he were putting a child to bed.
“This is a Bland’s .577 express.”
“I killed that big fellow with it.”
He nodded toward the white rhinoceros.
“Ten yards closer, and he’d have killed me instead.”
He smiled.
“There’s an old line about the advantage of the weak man lying in the bullet.”
“I hope you know Gordon. He understood horses, guns, and the men who used them.”
He picked up another rifle.
“Now, this is a useful weapon. .470 caliber, telescopic sight, double ejectors, and accurate at close range out to three hundred and fifty yards.”
“I used it against the Peruvian slave traders three years ago.”
“I was the Lord’s instrument of punishment in those parts, though you won’t find that mentioned in any government report.”
“There are times when a man has to stand up for human rights and justice.”
“Otherwise, he’ll never feel clean inside again.”
“So I started a little war of my own.”
“I declared it myself, fought it myself, and finished it myself.”
He ran a finger along a row of marks on the rifle.
“Every one of these marks represents a slave murderer.”
“There are quite a few.”
He pointed to one particularly large mark.
“That one belongs to Pedro Lopez, the worst of them all.”
“I killed him in a quiet backwater of the Putumayo River.”
He put the rifle away and reached for another.
“Now this one would suit you.”
He handed me a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle.
“The stock is well padded, the sights are excellent, and it holds five cartridges.”
“You could trust your life to this.”
I examined it carefully.
Roxton closed the oak cabinet.
“By the way,” he said as he returned to his chair, “what do you know about Professor Challenger?”
“I’d never seen him before today.”
“Neither had I.”
“It’s rather amusing, isn’t it? We’re both about to sail under sealed orders from a man neither of us knows.”
“He seemed like a rather arrogant old fellow.”
“And from what I’ve heard, the other scientists aren’t particularly fond of him either.”
“So how did you become involved in this business?”
I briefly told him what had happened that morning.
Roxton listened carefully without interrupting.
When I finished, he pulled out a map of South America and spread it across the table.
“I believe every word that man told you.”
“And I don’t say that lightly. I’ve got plenty of experience of South America.”
“It’s one of the places I love most in the world.”
“If you travel all the way from Darien to Tierra del Fuego, I doubt there’s any part of the planet more magnificent, wealthy, or full of possibilities.”
“People simply don’t understand it yet.”
“I’ve traveled through it from one end to the other.”
“I’ve even spent two dry seasons in the very region we’re discussing.”
He pointed to the map.
“While I was there, I heard stories very much like the ones Challenger told you.”
“Indian legends and old traditions.”
“But there was usually something behind them.”
“The more you know about that country, the more you realize that almost anything could exist there.”
“Anything.”
He ran his cigar slowly across the map.
“Look here, in the Matto Grande.”
“Or up here, where three countries meet.”
“Nothing would surprise me in either place.”
“That fellow told us there are fifty thousand miles of rivers and waterways running through a forest almost as large as Europe.”
“You and I could be separated by a distance as great as Scotland is from Constantinople, while still standing somewhere inside the same Brazilian forest.”
“Human beings have barely scratched the surface.”
“There’s a narrow river route here, another trail there, and beyond them lies almost complete darkness.”
“The rivers rise and fall by nearly forty feet.”
“Half the country is swamp.”
“You can’t even cross much of it on foot.”
He looked up at me.
“So why shouldn’t something new and extraordinary be hiding there?”
“And why shouldn’t we be the men who discover it?”
His thin, weather-beaten face suddenly lit up with excitement.
“Besides, there’s a sporting challenge in every mile of the journey.”
“I’m like an old golf ball. All the white paint was knocked off me years ago.”
“Life can hit me as hard as it likes now. It won’t leave much of a mark.”
“But danger and adventure—that’s what makes life worth living.”
“We’ve all become far too comfortable.”
“Give me the wilderness, the open spaces, a gun in my hand, and something worth searching for.”
“I’ve tried war.”
“I’ve tried steeplechasing.”
“I’ve tried flying.”
“But hunting creatures that look as if they were invented during some bizarre seafood nightmare—that’s something completely new.”
He laughed happily at the thought.
Perhaps I have spent too much time describing my new companion.
But Lord John Roxton would soon become my companion for many days, and I want to record what he was like when I first met him.
His strange expressions, his unusual way of speaking, and the restless energy that seemed to fill him were all part of his character.
Eventually, I had to leave him so that I could report everything that had happened.
When I left, he was still sitting beneath the red lamps, carefully cleaning the mechanism of his favorite rifle and quietly laughing to himself as he imagined the adventures ahead.
One thing was already certain.
If there were dangers waiting for us in South America, I could not have chosen a calmer or braver man to face them with me.
That night, despite how exhausted I was after everything that had happened, I stayed late with McArdle, the news editor.
I explained the entire situation to him.
He considered it important enough to bring the matter to Sir George Beaumont, the chief editor, the next morning.
We agreed that I would send detailed reports of my experiences back to England in a series of letters addressed to McArdle.
The letters could either be edited and published in the Gazette as they arrived, or kept until later, depending on Professor Challenger’s wishes.
At that point, we still had no idea what conditions he might impose regarding the directions that would lead us to the unknown country.
We telephoned him for more information.
His answer was mostly a furious attack on the Press.
He finally said that if we told him which ship we intended to take, he would give us whatever instructions he considered necessary when we were ready to leave.
We tried asking another question.
This time, he gave us no answer at all.
Instead, his wife came to the telephone and said sadly that her husband was already in a terrible mood and that she hoped we wouldn’t do anything to make him angrier.
Later that day we tried once more.
There was a tremendous crash on the other end.
A moment later, the telephone exchange informed us that Professor Challenger’s receiver had been smashed.
After that, we gave up trying to contact him.
And now, my patient readers, I can no longer speak to you directly.
From this point onward, if this story ever reaches you at all, it will have to come through the newspaper I represent.
I am leaving this record with my editor so that, even if I never return to England, there will at least be some account of how this extraordinary expedition began.
I am writing these final lines in the saloon of the Booth liner Francisca.
The pilot will carry them back to Mr. McArdle.
Before I close my notebook, let me record one final picture.
It is my last memory of England.
It is a wet, foggy spring morning.
A cold drizzle is falling over the harbor.
Three men in shining raincoats are walking down the quay toward the gangplank of the great liner, whose blue flag is flying from the mast.
Ahead of us, a porter pushes a trolley piled high with trunks, coats, and gun cases.
Professor Summerlee walks slowly, his head bowed and his steps heavy.
He looks like a man who already regrets the journey and expects nothing but misery from it.
Lord John Roxton walks briskly beside him.
His thin, eager face shines beneath his hunting cap and scarf, and he looks as if he could hardly wait to get started.
As for me, I am simply relieved that the preparations are finally over and that the painful goodbyes have been left behind.
I am sure that relief shows in the way I walk.
Just as we reach the ship, someone shouts behind us.
We turn.
It is Professor Challenger.
He had promised to see us off, and now he is hurrying after us.
He is red-faced, short, broad, breathless, and obviously irritated.
“No, thank you,” he said when we invited him aboard.
“I’d much rather stay here.”
“I have only a few things to say to you, and they can be said perfectly well on the quay.”
“First of all, don’t imagine that I owe you anything because you are making this journey.”
“Your decision makes no difference to me whatsoever.”
“I refuse to accept even the slightest suggestion that I should feel personally grateful to you.”
“Truth remains truth.”
“Nothing you write can change it.”
“At most, your reports may excite a few people and satisfy the curiosity of others who are incapable of doing anything themselves.”
He held out a sealed envelope.
“These are the instructions you will need.”
“You are to open this envelope after you reach the Amazonian city of Manaos.”
“Do not open it before the date and exact hour written on the outside.”
“Is that perfectly clear?”
“I leave it entirely to your honor to obey my conditions.”
He looked directly at me.
“No, Mr. Malone, I will not restrict your letters.”
“Publicizing the facts is one of the purposes of this expedition.”
“But you must not reveal our exact destination.”
“And nothing concerning the actual discoveries is to be published until you have returned.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
“You have done something to lessen my contempt for the miserable profession to which you unfortunately belong.”
He turned to Lord John.
“Good-bye, Lord John.”
“Science, as far as I understand, is a completely closed book to you.”
“But you may at least enjoy the hunting opportunities ahead.”
“You will probably have the chance to tell the readers of the Field how you managed to shoot down one of those extraordinary flying creatures.”
Then he turned toward Professor Summerlee.
“And good-bye to you, Professor Summerlee.”
“If you still possess any capacity for learning—which I seriously doubt—you may perhaps return to London as a wiser man.”
With that, Professor Challenger turned sharply and walked away.
A minute later, from the deck of the ship, I could still see his short, heavy figure moving in the distance as he headed back toward the train station.
We are well down the English Channel now.
The final bell has just sounded for letters, and we are saying goodbye to the pilot.
From this point on, we are heading into the unknown.
Whatever lies ahead, there is no turning back now.
God bless everyone we have left behind, and bring us safely home.