The Lost World MEGAPACK®. Lin Carter

felled him. Anyway, he was more afraid of the force of warriors he suspected to be at his heels, than he was interested in knocking me about. So into the canoes we went.

      By the time we had reached the midpoint of our voyage and the shores of the island of Ganadol could dimly be glimpsed through the thick mists which cloaked the primeval sea, I understood the answer to the first puzzle.

      I had been baffled by the reasoning of the Apemen…why they had been content with my capture alone, rather than pursuing the other fleeing captives. Eventually, as I saw them double back farther down along the shore, I understood their plan. The Neanderthal men might be slow and sluggish of thought, but their little brains were wily and cunning. They assumed—rightfully, as it turned out—that, once assured of their freedom, the Cro-Magnons would seek the edge of the sea of Sogar-Jad and follow it down the coast to their own kingdom of Thandar.

      By beaching their dugout canoes below the point to which the escaping captives could have come, the Apemen planned to wait in ambush, hoping to recapture their captives.

      It was not a bad scheme at all.

      But something intervened.

      Our first glimpse of “something” was a sudden turmoil is the slimy waters of the Sogar-Jad; the waves broke, seething, as a snake-like head as big as a rain barrel broke above the surface. The Apemen gobbled, pointing, eyes wide with naked fear.

      “Yith! Yith!” they yelled in a fearful wail.

      The flat-browed head rose on the end of a long and seemingly endless neck which upreared far above us, swaying snakily against the steamy skies of Zanthodon.

I couldn’t blame them for squalling. For the yith of the Sogar-Jad was a monstrous plesiosaur!1

      As I sat there in the dugout canoe, frozen with astonishment and awe, the enormous aquatic reptile overturned two of the dugout canoes with his vast flippers. The Neanderthal men fell, squalling fearfully, into the sea. Then the beast turned to survey our craft, squinting down with hungry eyes. White foam sheeted before its breast as the plesiosaurus headed straight for us.

      Our canoe wobbled unsteadily, as Fatso sprang to his feet, mad with fear.

      I tensed: with my hands bound behind me, I was bound for a watery grave, without the slightest hope of survival. A vision flashed before my inward eye as the yith bore down upon us: the fine-boned, flawless face of a beautiful young girl with long, sleek hair like ripe corn and huge, luminous eyes of April blue—

      Behind me, Hurok grasped my wrists. The blade of a flint knife sawed through my bonds. “Save yourself if you can, panjan,” he grunted.

      My hands free, I sprang lithely to my feet.

      Swifter than thought, I reached out, plucked my automatic from the waist of Fatso’s hide garment, clenched the barrel between my teeth, and jumped feet first into the waters of the sea!

      I went down like a stone, then rose to the surface with a kick of my booted feet—

      Whipping the water from my eyes, I stared up—

      Into the jaws of Doom!

1 Eric Carstairs appends a note to the effect that the cavemen of Zanthodon have their own names for the fearsom predators who share the Underground World with them. They call the Triceratops the grymp, for example, and the wooly mammoth is known as the thantor. At the end of this book I have added a brief appendix, listing and defining all of the words in proto-Aryan which Carstairs includes in the manuscript.

      CHAPTER 12

      I FIND A FRIEND

      Treading water furiously, I reached up and snatched the automatic from between my teeth. I had been so briefly immersed beneath the waves, that it seemed unlikely to me that the gunpowder could have become too wet for the gun to fire; but I was about to find out—

      Pointing swiftly, I fired in the very face of the monster reptile.

      It was a lucky shot, and caught the plesiosaur full in one glaring eye. That eye vanished in a splatter of snaky gore; braking with a backwards flip of his flippers, the sea monster gave voice to a piercing screech of fury and pain, and, turning, dived beneath the waves again to assuage his hurt in the cool depths.

      His plunge had overturned the canoe from which I had just dived into the sea. A floundering form broke the waves, arms waving wildly. I recognized him—it was Hurok, the one Neanderthal more friendly and chivalrous than his fellows, the warrior who had cut my hands free. He sank with a gurgle and I knew at once that he was unable to swim.

      I shall never quite be able to explain my next action, even to myself; but it all happened so swiftly that rational thought played little part in the decision, which I reached by sheerest instinct.

      I waited until he rose floundering and roaring to the surface again. Then I swam over to him and knocked him senseless with a good hard right to the jaw!

      Well, there was nothing else to do: in his mindless terror, a drowning man will get a stranglehold on a would-be rescuer and drag him down to death with him.

      Then I turned the unconscious Apeman over until he was floating on his back. Catching his heavy jaw in the crook of my arm, I struck out for shore as best I could. I have always been a good swimmer, but that was the most grueling ordeal any swimmer could ever have endured. Not only was I encumbered by my breeches and boots—but the Apeman I was towing along must have tipped the scales at three hundred pounds, dead weight. Also, I could scarcely breathe, with my automatic still clenched between my teeth.

      How I ever made it to the shore is something I have not quite decided, myself. Suffice it to say that, after an interminable battle with the slimy waves of that steamy sea, I found myself lying face down in wet, sticky sand, with the undertow of the sea pulling at my legs as if trying stubbornly to suck me back into the clutch of the waves again.

      Not far off, Hurok lay like a dead thing.

      I lurched to my knees, dragged myself and the Apeman farther on up the beach, before collapsing again.

      Then, utterly exhausted, I slept.

      * * * *

      When I awoke, I rolled over onto my back and squinted up into the sun, trying to estimate exactly how much time had elapsed while I had been unconscious. Then I remembered, ruefully, that here in Zanthodon there was no sun, and it was forever impossible to measure time. I could have slept an hour or a year, for all that I could ascertain from the heavens.

      My clothes were dry, however, and so was my hair; so it would seem I had slumbered for at least two or three hours. I sat up, stiffly, and looked around me.

      Hurok squatted on his hams, hairy arms propped on hairy knees, regarding me with a fathomless expression on his homely visage.

      I grabbed for my gun, then drew back my fingers sheepishly. For the Neanderthal man had not moved nor flinched.

      Neither did he say a word.

      I looked beyond him, sniffing the air. A tantalizing aroma of cooked meat drifted on the sea wind.

      A hole had been scraped in the sand of the beach. Therein a pile of driftwood had been touched afire, and the carcasses of two plucked seafowl had been spitted on sticks and were toasting over the snapping flames. I had not known there were actual birds in Zanthodon until that moment, but the pile of feathers was unmistakable.

      “Why did you not attack me and slay me while I slept, Hurok?” I asked curiously. “For I have been given to understand that there is perpetual war between your kind and my own.”

      “Hurok does not know,” he said in his slow, deep voice, and within his murky little eyes a gleam of thoughtfulness flickered. Then, after a moment, he attempted a question of his own.

      “Why did you save Hurok from the death-of-water?”

      I