The most incredible things have happened to us, and they seem to keep happening without end.
I have only five old notebooks, a pile of scraps of paper, and one stylographic pencil. But as long as I can still move my hand, I intend to record everything we see and experience. We are the only human beings who have ever witnessed such things, so it is vitally important that I write them down while they are still clear in my memory.
There is no telling what will happen to us. Perhaps Zambo will eventually manage to carry these letters down to the river. Perhaps, by some miracle, I will return and take them with me. Or perhaps some future explorer, perhaps flying in a perfected aircraft, will discover our trail and find this bundle of notes.
Whatever happens, I believe these pages will survive as one of the strangest true adventure stories ever written.
The morning after Gomez trapped us on the plateau, a new phase of our adventure began.
And the first thing that happened did not exactly make me feel welcome in our new home.
I had just woken from a short sleep after dawn when I noticed something strange on my leg. My trouser leg had ridden up slightly, leaving a patch of skin above my sock exposed.
Sitting on it was what looked like a large purple grape.
I leaned forward to brush it away.
The moment my fingers touched it, the thing burst and sprayed blood all over my hand.
I shouted in disgust.
Both professors hurried over.
“Most interesting,” said Summerlee, examining my leg closely. “That appears to be an enormous blood-sucking tick. I don’t believe anyone has classified this species before.”
“The first scientific discovery of our new life here!” Challenger announced in his booming voice.
“We must surely name it Ixodes Maloni. Being bitten may be a minor inconvenience, my young friend, but you should consider it an honor. Your name will live forever in zoological history.”
“You’re very generous,” I said. “But I would rather not have my name attached to such filthy vermin.”
Challenger raised his eyebrows and put a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“You must learn to look at Nature scientifically,” he said. “To a man with a philosophical mind, a blood tick is every bit as remarkable as a peacock or the northern lights. Look at its needle-like mouth and its swollen body after feeding. There is beauty in all of this.”
“I am sure we can find another specimen,” Summerlee said dryly.
He pointed toward Challenger.
“In fact, one has just disappeared beneath your shirt collar.”
Challenger let out a roar and jumped into the air.
He tore off his coat and began pulling at his shirt.
Summerlee and I laughed so hard that we could barely help him.
At last Challenger stood exposed from the waist up. His enormous body—fifty-four inches around the chest, according to his tailor—was covered in thick black hair.
We quickly found the tick wandering through it before it could bite him.
Unfortunately, there were plenty more of them in the bushes around us.
There was no question about it.
We had to move our camp.
Before doing so, however, we needed to settle matters with Zambo.
He soon appeared on the top of the nearby pinnacle and threw several tins of cocoa and biscuits across to us.
We told him to keep enough of the remaining supplies below to survive for two months.
The Indians were to receive everything else as payment for their help and as a reward for carrying our letters back toward the Amazon.
Several hours later, we watched them disappear across the distant plain in single file, each man carrying a bundle on his head.
Zambo remained behind.
He moved into our little tent at the foot of the pinnacle and stayed there.
He was now our only connection with the outside world.
We moved away from the tick-infested bushes and found a small clearing surrounded by trees.
Flat rocks lay in the middle, and there was an excellent spring nearby.
It was a comfortable place to sit, so we settled there and began discussing how we would explore this strange new country.
Birds called from the trees, including one whose strange cry sounded almost like a howl.
Apart from that, there was no sign of life.
Our first job was to take stock of our supplies.
Between what we had carried up ourselves and what Zambo had sent across by rope, we were reasonably well equipped.
We had four rifles and about thirteen hundred rounds of ammunition.
We also had a shotgun with only about a hundred and fifty cartridges loaded with medium-sized shot.
We had enough food for several weeks, plenty of tobacco, and a few scientific instruments, including a large telescope and a good pair of field glasses.
We gathered everything in the clearing.
As our first defense, we cut down a number of thorn bushes and piled them into a circular barrier about fifteen yards across.
This would be our headquarters, our storehouse, and our refuge if anything suddenly attacked us.
We jokingly called it Fort Challenger.
By noon the fort was ready.
Fortunately, the heat was not unbearable. In fact, the climate of the plateau seemed almost temperate.
Among the dense vegetation we found beech trees, oaks, and even birches.
A huge gingko rose above the other trees and spread its strange leaves and branches over our little fort.
We sat in its shade and continued planning.
Lord John had naturally taken command now that we were facing real danger.
“As long as neither men nor animals know we’re here, we’re safe,” he said.
“The moment they discover us, our troubles begin.”
He looked around the forest.
“So far, there’s no sign that anyone has found us. That’s why I think we should stay quiet for a while and study the country around us. We need to learn what our neighbors are like before we go knocking on their doors.”
“But we can’t stay here forever,” I said. “We have to explore.”
“Of course we do, young Malone. We’ll move forward.”
He smiled.
“But we’ll use our heads. We must never go so far that we can’t get back to our base.”
He became serious.
“And unless we’re fighting for our lives, we must not fire our guns.”
“But you fired yesterday,” Summerlee pointed out.
“I had no choice. Besides, the wind was blowing outward. I doubt the sound carried very far into the plateau.”
He paused.
“By the way, what are we going to call this place? I suppose we’re entitled to give it a name.”
Several names were suggested, though none seemed quite right.
Then Challenger spoke.
“There is only one appropriate name,” he declared. “This land must be named after the man who first discovered it.”
“Maple White Land,” I said.
And so it was decided.
From that day forward, I called it Maple White Land in my maps and notes. I hope that one day the name will appear on maps of the world.
Our greatest question now was how to explore this mysterious country without getting ourselves killed.
We already knew that strange creatures lived here.
Maple White’s sketches had shown us that even more dangerous monsters might exist.
The skeleton we had found impaled on bamboo also suggested that intelligent and possibly hostile beings lived on the plateau. A human body could hardly have ended up there unless someone—or something—had thrown it from above.
We were trapped in a land where escape seemed impossible.
Every sensible instinct told us to be cautious.
But at the same time, none of us could simply sit at the edge of this lost world and refuse to enter it.
Curiosity was pulling us forward.
We reinforced the entrance to our thorn enclosure and left our supplies safely inside.
Then we set out.
We followed the little stream that flowed from our spring.
It would give us a reliable path back to camp.
We had gone only a few hundred yards when the forest began to reveal its secrets.
Many of the trees were completely unfamiliar to me.
Summerlee, however, recognized several of them as ancient types of conifers and cycads that had disappeared from the modern world millions of years ago.
Soon the stream became wider and turned into a large swamp.
Tall reeds grew everywhere, including strange plants that Summerlee identified as ancient horsetails. Tree ferns rose among them, all bending in the strong wind.
Lord John was walking ahead when he suddenly stopped and raised his hand.
“Look at this!”
He stared at the mud.
“Good Lord. This must belong to the father of all birds!”
An enormous three-toed footprint had been pressed deep into the soft ground.
Whatever had made it had crossed the swamp and disappeared into the forest.
We all gathered around it.
If this really belonged to a bird, then the creature must have been unimaginably large.
Its footprint was far bigger than an ostrich’s.
Lord John looked around excitedly and loaded two cartridges into his elephant gun.
“I’ll swear by my reputation as a hunter that this track is fresh,” he said.
“It can’t have passed more than ten minutes ago. Look at the water still running into the deepest part of the print.”
He pointed farther ahead.
“And look! There’s a smaller one beside it.”
Sure enough, a series of smaller footprints followed the same path.
Summerlee was examining the ground when he suddenly pointed at another mark.
“What do you make of that?”
It looked like the enormous print of a human hand, complete with five fingers, right beside the three-toed tracks.
“That’s Wealden!” Challenger cried.
“I’ve seen marks like these in the Wealden clay.”
He leaned over the track with growing excitement.
“This animal walked upright on three-toed feet and sometimes placed one of its five-fingered forelimbs on the ground.”
He looked triumphantly at Lord John.
“Not a bird, my dear Roxton.”
“A mammal?”
“No. A reptile.”
Challenger’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“A dinosaur.”
He stared at the track.
“Nothing else could have made it.”
“These footprints once puzzled scientists in Sussex. But who could possibly have imagined that we would actually see the animal that made them?”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
We followed the tracks out of the swamp and through another wall of bushes and trees.
Then the forest opened into a clearing.
And there they were.
Five creatures unlike anything I had ever seen.
We crouched behind the bushes and watched them.
There were two adults and three young ones.
All five were enormous.
Even the young were as large as elephants.
The adults were vastly bigger.
Their skin was dark gray, almost slate-colored, covered with scales like a giant lizard. Sunlight glinted across their backs.
They sat upright on enormous three-toed hind feet, balancing themselves with thick, powerful tails.
Their front limbs were much smaller and had five fingers.
With those strange hands, they pulled branches toward their mouths and calmly fed on the leaves.
The best comparison I can make is that they looked like gigantic kangaroos twenty feet long, except that their skin resembled that of black crocodiles.
We remained completely still.
The wind was blowing toward us, and the bushes concealed us perfectly.
The creatures had no idea we were there.
The young ones occasionally played around their parents, clumsily jumping and crashing back onto the ground.
The adults seemed unbelievably strong.
One of them wanted to reach some leaves high on a tree.
Instead of finding another way, it simply wrapped its front limbs around the trunk and pulled the entire tree down.
The tree came crashing straight onto the creature.
It let out several sharp cries.
Apparently, even a dinosaur that powerful had limits.
Perhaps the accident made it nervous, because it slowly moved away into the forest.
Its mate and the three young ones followed.
We watched their dark, shining bodies moving between the trees.
Their heads rose high above the bushes.
Then they disappeared.
I looked at Lord John.
He stood frozen, his finger resting on the trigger of his elephant gun.
His eyes were blazing with the excitement of a hunter.
I knew exactly what he was thinking.
What hunter wouldn’t want the head of such a creature mounted as the greatest trophy in his collection?
But he controlled himself.
If the creatures discovered us, our entire expedition could be ruined.
The two professors were equally overwhelmed.
Without realizing it, they had grabbed each other’s hands.
They looked almost like children seeing something magical for the first time.
Challenger wore a huge, peaceful smile.
Summerlee’s usually sarcastic expression had softened into genuine wonder.
At last Summerlee whispered:
“Nunc dimittis! What will England say when they hear about this?”
“My dear Summerlee,” Challenger replied confidently, “I can tell you exactly what England will say.”
He smiled.
“They’ll say you’re a liar and a scientific fraud.”
“Even if we have photographs?”
“Fake photographs.”
“Even if we bring back specimens?”
“Ah, then perhaps they’ll believe us.”
Challenger turned toward me.
“Malone, remember this date. August twenty-eighth. Today we saw five living iguanodons in a clearing in Maple White Land.”
“Write it in your diary,” he continued. “And send the story to your newspaper.”
Lord John chuckled.
“And then you’ll get kicked in the teeth by the editors.”
He shook his head.
“Things look very different from London, young fella. Plenty of men have seen amazing things and never told anyone because they knew nobody would believe them.”
He looked back toward the clearing.
“Give it a month or two, and even we’ll wonder if this was real.”
He turned to Summerlee.
“What did you call them again?”
“Iguanodons.”
Summerlee explained that their footprints could be found in the ancient sands of southern England.
“The region around Sussex and Kent was once full of them,” he said.
“There was plenty of vegetation for them to eat. Then the climate changed, and they disappeared.”
He looked around the plateau.
“Here, apparently, the old conditions never ended.”
“If we survive this place,” Lord John said, “I’m taking a head home with me.”
He laughed.
“I’d love to see the faces of some of those famous hunters in Africa if I walked into their club carrying that.”
Then his expression became serious.
“I don’t know about you fellows, but it seems to me we’re walking on very thin ice.”
I understood what he meant.
The forest around us was filled with mystery.
Even though the iguanodons were huge, they seemed slow and harmless.
But if creatures from prehistoric times had survived here, what else might be living among the rocks and trees?
I knew very little about prehistoric animals, but I remembered reading that some ancient predators were powerful enough to hunt creatures far larger than today’s lions and tigers.
What if such monsters still lived here?
We were about to find out.
That very morning, during our first real exploration of Maple White Land, we discovered something far more frightening than the iguanodons.
It was a terrible experience.
If the iguanodon clearing became a dream we would remember for the rest of our lives, then what we found later that day would become our nightmare.
We moved slowly through the forest.
Lord John went first as our scout, refusing to let us advance until he was satisfied that the way was clear.
The professors slowed us down in another way.
Every few minutes one of them would suddenly stop and call us over to examine some flower, insect, or plant that represented a species unknown to modern science.
After traveling perhaps two or three miles, we reached a large opening.
The stream continued ahead of us, and we stayed on its right side.
Beyond the trees stood a belt of bushes leading toward a field of scattered rocks.
Boulders were everywhere across the plateau.
We moved cautiously through bushes that reached above our waists.
Then we heard it.
A strange mixture of low growls, whistles, and harsh clicking noises.
The sound seemed to come from directly ahead.
Lord John immediately raised his hand.
“Stop.”
He moved quickly toward the rocks, crouching low.
We watched him disappear behind them.
A moment later he peered over the top.
His expression changed completely.
He simply stood there staring.
Whatever he had seen had left him speechless.
Finally he waved us forward.
But he held up one finger.
Slowly.
Carefully.
We crawled toward him and looked over the rocks.
Below us was a huge hollow.
It appeared to have once been a volcanic crater or blowhole.
The depression was shaped like a giant bowl.
Several hundred yards below us were pools of stagnant green water, covered with a foul layer of scum and surrounded by tall reeds.
But the swamp itself was not the worst thing.
It was what lived there.
The hollow was filled with pterodactyls.
Hundreds of them.
Young creatures crawled and flapped around the edges of the pools.
Huge females crouched over clusters of leathery yellow eggs.
The whole place seemed to writhe with ugly reptilian life.
Their cries filled the air.
So did a thick, rotten smell that made my stomach turn.
The males were perched higher up on separate rocks.
They looked completely different from the busy females below.
They were tall, gray, thin creatures that looked almost like dried specimens in a museum.
They hardly moved.
Only their red eyes rolled from side to side.
Occasionally one would snap its long, narrow beak at a passing dragonfly.
Their enormous wings were folded against their bodies.
Because their wings were attached to their front limbs, they looked almost like ancient, twisted old women wrapped in enormous gray shawls.
There must have been close to a thousand of them in that hollow.
The professors were fascinated.
They could have watched them all day.
They pointed out dead fish and birds scattered among the rocks and concluded that these animals were feeding on them.
They were also thrilled to discover why pterodactyl fossils were often found in large concentrations in certain places.
Apparently, these creatures lived together in huge colonies, much like penguins.
But Challenger eventually wanted to prove a point that Summerlee had challenged.
He leaned too far over the rocks.
That nearly got us all killed.
One of the nearest males suddenly let out a piercing whistle.
Its enormous wings opened.
With a powerful movement, it rose into the air.
The females and young crowded together beside the water.
Then another male took off.
Then another.
One after another, the whole ring of sentinels launched themselves into the sky.
At first it was an extraordinary sight.
More than a hundred huge creatures circled above us, moving through the air with surprisingly fast wingbeats.
Then we realized what was happening.
They were surrounding us.
The creatures first flew in a wide circle.
Then the circle became smaller.
Their flight grew lower.
Soon they were racing around us in a tightening ring.
The sound of their wings was enormous.
The dry, leathery flapping reminded me of the noise of aircraft at an airfield.
“Back to the trees!” Lord John shouted.
“Stay together!”
He raised his rifle like a club.
“These things are coming for us.”
We tried to retreat.
The circle closed.
The nearest creatures flew so close that their wing tips almost touched our faces.
We swung our rifles at them, but their bodies were too fast and their wings too flexible.
There was nothing solid to hit.
Suddenly one long neck shot out of the swirling mass.
A sharp beak lunged straight at us.
Then another.
And another.
Summerlee cried out and grabbed his face.
Blood ran between his fingers.
Something struck the back of my neck.
The blow made me dizzy.
Challenger fell.
I bent down to help him.
Another creature struck me from behind, and I crashed down on top of him.
Then came a deafening gunshot.
Lord John’s elephant gun had fired.
I looked up.
One of the creatures lay on the ground with a broken wing.
It hissed and snapped its beak at us.
Its eyes were bloodshot and wild.
It looked like a demon from some ancient painting.
The gunshot had frightened the others.
They climbed higher and circled above us.
“Now!” Lord John shouted.
“Run for your lives!”
We staggered through the bushes.
But the creatures followed.
Just as we reached the trees, they attacked again.
Summerlee was knocked flat.
We grabbed him and dragged him forward.
Once we reached the forest, we were safe.
The enormous wings could not maneuver properly between the tree trunks.
We limped home, battered and exhausted.
For a long time, we could still see the pterodactyls high above us.
Against the deep blue sky, they looked no bigger than pigeons.
They circled overhead as if they were still watching us.
Eventually, when we reached thicker forest, they abandoned the chase.
We never saw them again.
“A very useful and convincing observation,” Challenger said when we stopped beside the stream.
He was washing his swollen knee.
“We now know a great deal more about the behavior of an enraged pterodactyl.”
Summerlee was cleaning a cut on his forehead.
I was bandaging the wound in my neck.
Lord John’s coat had been torn open at the shoulder, though the creature’s teeth had only scratched his skin.
Challenger examined our injuries with great interest.
“Our young friend has clearly suffered a stabbing injury,” he said.
“Lord John’s wound, however, appears to have been caused by a bite.”
He touched his own head.
“As for me, I was struck repeatedly by their wings.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“So we have observed several different methods of attack.”
“We came very close to dying,” Lord John said.
“And I can’t imagine a worse way to go than being torn apart by those filthy creatures.”
He looked at his gun.
“I hated having to fire.”
“If you hadn’t fired, we’d probably be dead,” I said.
“It may not matter,” Lord John replied.
“There must be plenty of loud noises in these woods. Trees split and fall all the time. The creatures may not connect the sound with us.”
He stood up.
“But we’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
“We should get back to camp, clean these wounds properly, and use some carbolic acid.”
He frowned.
“Who knows what kind of poison those horrible beaks carry?”
Yet the day’s dangers were not over.
We followed the stream until we finally reached our clearing.
Seeing the thorn wall of Fort Challenger made us believe we were safe again.
We were wrong.
The entrance was untouched.
The thorn barrier was still standing.
Nothing had broken through the walls.
And yet something had been inside.
We found no tracks, so we could not tell what kind of creature had visited us.
The only clue was the enormous gingko tree hanging over the fort.
Whatever had entered might have used its branches.
But there was plenty of evidence of what it had done.
Our supplies had been scattered all over the ground.
One tin of meat had been crushed almost flat, apparently so the creature could get at the food inside.
A box of cartridges had been smashed to pieces.
One brass cartridge had been torn apart.
We stared at the damage in silence.
A feeling of fear spread through us again.
We looked into the dark spaces between the trees.
At any moment, something terrible might be hiding there.
Then we heard a familiar voice.
Zambo was calling to us.
We hurried to the edge of the plateau.
There he was, sitting on top of the opposite pinnacle, grinning at us.
“All well, Massa Challenger!” he shouted.
“All well!”
“Me stay here. No fear.”
“You always find me when you want.”
His honest face was a comfort.
So was the enormous view stretching away from the plateau.
Far in the distance, we could see the vast Brazilian plain and the route leading toward the Amazon.
For a moment, it reminded us that we were still living in the twentieth century.
Down there, ordinary people were going about their lives.
Huge steamships traveled along the Amazon.
People worried about money, work, food, and all the small problems of everyday life.
And here we were, stranded above the clouds among creatures that had vanished from the earth millions of years ago.
It was almost impossible to believe that both worlds existed at the same time.
One other memory from that extraordinary day remains with me.
The two professors had started arguing.
Their injuries had probably made their tempers even worse.
They could not agree on whether the creatures that attacked us belonged to the genus Pterodactylus or Dimorphodon.
Their argument became so heated that I moved away from them.
I sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and smoked.
After a while, Lord John wandered over.
“Malone,” he said, “do you remember that place where those flying beasts were?”
“Very clearly.”
“That volcanic-looking pit?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice what the ground was like?”
“Mostly rock.”
“No, I mean around the water. Where the reeds were.”
I thought for a moment.
“It was bluish. Almost like clay.”
“Exactly.”
He nodded.
“A volcanic tube filled with blue clay.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
He walked away.
Behind him, the two professors continued their argument.
Summerlee’s sharp voice rose and fell against Challenger’s deep, booming reply.
I probably would have forgotten Lord John’s strange question.
But later that night, I heard him muttering to himself.
“Blue clay…”
He paused.
“Clay in a volcanic tube.”
Those were the last words I heard before exhaustion finally pulled me into sleep.