作者：Edgar Rice Burroughs
出版社：Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs - Delphi Classics (Illustrated试读：
The Complete Works ofEDGAR RICE BURROUGHSVOLUME 49 OF 73The Land that Time ForgotParts EditionBy Delphi Classics, 2014Version 1COPYRIGHT‘The Land that Time Forgot’Edgar Rice Burroughs: Parts Edition (in 73 parts)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2017.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 78877 560 1
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www.delphiclassics.comEdgar Rice Burroughs: Parts Edition
This eBook is Part 49 of the Delphi Classics edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs in 73 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Land that Time Forgot from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.
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EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
IN 73 VOLUMESParts Edition Contents
The Tarzan Series
1, Tarzan of the Apes
2, The Return of Tarzan
3, The Beasts of Tarzan
4, The Son of Tarzan
5, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
6, Jungle Tales of Tarzan
7, Tarzan the Untamed
8, Tarzan the Terrible
9, Tarzan and the Golden Lion
10, Tarzan and the Ant Men
11, Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins
12, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
13, Tarzan and the Lost Empire
14, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core
15, Tarzan the Invincible
16, Tarzan and the City of Gold
17, Tarzan and the Lion Man
18, Tarzan and the Leopard Men
19, Tarzan’s Quest
20, Tarzan the Magnificent
21, Tarzan and the Forbidden City
22, Tarzan and the Castaways
23, Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
The Barsoom Series
24, A Princess of Mars
25, The Gods of Mars
26, The Warlord of Mars
27, Thuvia, Maid of Mars
28, The Chessmen of Mars
29, The Master Mind of Mars
30, A Fighting Man of Mars
31, Swords of Mars
32, Synthetic Men of Mars
33, Llana of Gathol
34, John Carter and the Giant of Mars
35, Skeleton Men of Jupiter
The Pellucidar Series
36, At the Earth’s Core
37, Pellucidar
38, Tanar of Pellucidar
39, Back to the Stone Age
40, Savage Pellucidar
41, Land of Terror
The Mucker Series
42, The Mucker
43, The Return of the Mucker
44, The Oakdale Affair
The Jungle Adventures
45, The Cave Girl
46, The Eternal Lover
47, Jungle Girl
48, The Lad and the Lion
The Caspak Series
49, The Land that Time Forgot
50, The People that Time Forgot
51, Out of Time’s Abyss
The Moon Series
52, Part I: The Moon Maid
53, Part II: The Moon Men
54, Part III: The Red Hawk
The Western Novels
55, The Bandit of Hell’s Bend
56, The War Chief
57, Apache Devil
58, The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County
The Venus Series
59, Pirates of Venus
60, Lost on Venus
61, Carson of Venus
62, Escape on Venus
The Other Novels
63, The Lost Continent
64, The Girl from Farris’s
65, H. R. H. the Rider
66, The Efficiency Expert
67, The Girl from Hollywood
68, The Mad King
69, The Outlaw of Torn
70, The Monster Men
71, The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw
72, Beyond the Farthest Star
Contextual Pieces
73, Reviews and Articles
www.delphiclassics.com
The Land that Time ForgotCONTENTSCHAPTER 1CHAPTER 2CHAPTER 3CHAPTER 4CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 6CHAPTER 7CHAPTER 8CHAPTER 9CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 1It must have been a little after three o’clock in the afternoon that it happened — the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that all that I have passed through — all those weird and terrifying experiences — should have been encompassed within so short a span as three brief months. Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time - things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I had come to Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician, and was slowly being bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter. Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I was now risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the southernmost extremity of Greenland.Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke — but my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the natives, waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and while the evening meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro along the rocky, shattered shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove the worn granite, or whatever the rocks of Cape Farewell may be composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one of these soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more surprised than was I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the surf of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I was soaked above the knees doing it; and then I sat down in the sand and opened it, and in the long twilight read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly folded, which was its contents.You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting quotation marks — which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.My home is in Santa Monica. I am, or was, junior member of my father’s firm. We are ship-builders. Of recent years we have specialized on submarines, which we have built for Germany, England, France and the United States. I know a sub as a mother knows her baby’s face, and have commanded a score of them on their trial runs. Yet my inclinations were all toward aviation. I graduated under Curtiss, and after a long siege with my father obtained his permission to try for the Lafayette Escadrille. As a stepping-stone I obtained an appointment in the American ambulance service and was on my way to France when three shrill whistles altered, in as many seconds, my entire scheme of life.I was sitting on deck with some of the fellows who were going into the American ambulance service with me, my Airedale, Crown Prince Nobbler, asleep at my feet, when the first blast of the whistle shattered the peace and security of the ship. Ever since entering the U-boat zone we had been on the lookout for periscopes, and children that we were, bemoaning the unkind fate that was to see us safely into France on the morrow without a glimpse of the dread marauders. We were young; we craved thrills, and God knows we got them that day; yet by comparison with that through which I have since passed they were as tame as a Punch-and-Judy show.I shall never forget the ashy faces of the passengers as they stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship’s side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship — which, of course, was not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we were being torpedoed.I stood rigid, spellbound, watching the white wake of the torpedo. It struck us on the starboard side almost amidships. The vessel rocked as though the sea beneath it had been uptorn by a mighty volcano. We were thrown to the decks, bruised and stunned, and then above the ship, carrying with it fragments of steel and wood and dismembered human bodies, rose a column of water hundreds of feet into the air.The silence which followed the detonation of the exploding torpedo was almost equally horrifying. It lasted for perhaps two seconds, to be followed by the screams and moans of the wounded, the cursing of the men and the hoarse commands of the ship’s officers. They were splendid — they and their crew. Never before had I been so proud of my nationality as I was that moment. In all the chaos which followed the torpedoing of the liner no officer or member of the crew lost his head or showed in the slightest any degree of panic or fear.While we were attempting to lower boats, the submarine emerged and trained guns on us. The officer in command ordered us to lower our flag, but this the captain of the liner refused to do. The ship was listing frightfully to starboard, rendering the port boats useless, while half the starboard boats had been demolished by the explosion. Even while the passengers were crowding the starboard rail and scrambling into the few boats left to us, the submarine commenced shelling the ship. I saw one shell burst in a group of women and children, and then I turned my head and covered my eyes.When I looked again to horror was added chagrin, for with the emerging of the U-boat I had recognized her as a product of our own shipyard. I knew her to a rivet. I had superintended her construction. I had sat in that very conning- tower and directed the efforts of the sweating crew below when first her prow clove the sunny summer waters of the Pacific; and now this creature of my brain and hand had turned Frankenstein, bent upon pursuing me to my death.A second shell exploded upon the deck. One of the lifeboats, frightfully overcrowded, swung at a dangerous angle from its davits. A fragment of the shell shattered the bow tackle, and I saw the women and children and the men vomited into the sea beneath, while the boat dangled stern up for a moment from its single davit, and at last with increasing momentum dived into the midst of the struggling victims screaming upon the face of the waters.Now I saw men spring to the rail and leap into the ocean. The deck was tilting to an impossible angle. Nobs braced himself with all four feet to keep from slipping into the scuppers and looked up into my face with a questioning whine. I stooped and stroked his head.“Come on, boy!” I cried, and running to the side of the ship, dived headforemost over the rail. When I came up, the first thing I saw was Nobs swimming about in a bewildered sort of way a few yards from me. At sight of me his ears went flat, and his lips parted in a characteristic grin.The submarine was withdrawing toward the north, but all the time it was shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target, which, combined with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm; and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon and the U-boat submerged and disappeared.All the time the lifeboats has been pulling away from the danger of the sinking liner, and now, though I yelled at the top of my lungs, they either did not hear my appeals for help or else did not dare return to succor me. Nobs and I had gained some little distance from the ship when it rolled completely over and sank. We were caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few yards, neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced hurriedly about for something to which to cling. My eyes were directed toward the point at which the liner had disappeared when there came from the depths of the ocean the muffled reverberation of an explosion, and almost simultaneously a geyser of water in which were shattered lifeboats, human bodies, steam, coal, oil, and the flotsam of a liner’s deck leaped high above the surface of the sea — a watery column momentarily marking the grave of another ship in this greatest cemetery of the seas.When the turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it. In no other way can I account for its having leaped so far out of the water — a beneficent circumstance to which I doubtless owe my life, and that of another far dearer to me than my own. I say beneficent circumstance even in the face of the fact that a fate far more hideous confronts us than that which we escaped that day; for because of that circumstance I have met her whom otherwise I never should have known; I have met and loved her. At least I have had that great happiness in life; nor can Caspak, with all her horrors, expunge that which has been.So for the thousandth time I thank the strange fate which sent that lifeboat hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to which it had been dragged — sent it far up above the surface, emptying its water as it rose above the waves, and dropping it upon the surface of the sea, buoyant and safe.It did not take me long to clamber over its side and drag Nobs in to comparative safety, and then I glanced around upon the scene of death and desolation which surrounded us. The sea was littered with wreckage among which floated the pitiful forms of women and children, buoyed up by their useless lifebelts. Some were torn and mangled; others lay rolling quietly to the motion of the sea, their countenances composed and peaceful; others were set in hideous lines of agony or horror. Close to the boat’s side floated the figure of a girl. Her face was turned upward, held above the surface by her life-belt, and was framed in a floating mass of dark and waving hair. She was very beautiful. I had never looked upon such perfect features, such a divine molding which was at the same time human — intensely human. It was a face filled with character and strength and femininity — the face of one who was created to love and to be loved. The cheeks were flushed to the hue of life and health and vitality, and yet she lay there upon the bosom of the sea, dead. I felt something rise in my throat as I looked down upon that radiant vision, and I swore that I should live to avenge her murder.And then I let my eyes drop once more to the face upon the water, and what I saw nearly tumbled me backward into the sea, for the eyes in the dead face had opened; the lips had parted; and one hand was raised toward me in a mute appeal for succor. She lived! She was not dead! I leaned over the boat’s side and drew her quickly in to the comparative safety which God had given me. I removed her life-belt and my soggy coat and made a pillow for her head. I chafed her hands and arms and feet. I worked over her for an hour, and at last I was rewarded by a deep sigh, and again those great eyes opened and looked into mine.At that I was all embarrassment. I have never been a ladies’ man; at Leland-Stanford I was the butt of the class because of my hopeless imbecility in the presence of a pretty girl; but the men liked me, nevertheless. I was rubbing one of her hands when she opened her eyes, and I dropped it as though it were a red-hot rivet. Those eyes took me in slowly from head to foot; then they wandered slowly around the horizon marked by the rising and falling gunwales of the lifeboat. They looked at Nobs and softened, and then came back to me filled with questioning.“I — I—” I stammered, moving away and stumbling over the next thwart. The vision smiled wanly.“Aye-aye, sir!” she replied faintly, and again her lips drooped, and her long lashes swept the firm, fair texture of her skin.“I hope that you are feeling better,” I finally managed to say.“Do you know,” she said after a moment of silence, “I have been awake for a long time! But I did not dare open my eyes. I thought I must be dead, and I was afraid to look, for fear that I should see nothing but blackness about me. I am afraid to die! Tell me what happened after the ship went down. I remember all that happened before — oh, but I wish that I might forget it!” A sob broke her voice. “The beasts!” she went on after a moment. “And to think that I was to have married one of them — a lieutenant in the German navy.”Presently she resumed as though she had not ceased speaking. “I went down and down and down. I thought I should never cease to sink. I felt no particular distress until I suddenly started upward at ever-increasing velocity; then my lungs seemed about to burst, and I must have lost consciousness, for I remember nothing more until I opened my eyes after listening to a torrent of invective against Germany and Germans. Tell me, please, all that happened after the ship sank.”I told her, then, as well as I could, all that I had seen — the submarine shelling the open boats and all the rest of it. She thought it marvelous that we should have been spared in so providential a manner, and I had a pretty speech upon my tongue’s end, but lacked the nerve to deliver it. Nobs had come over and nosed his muzzle into her lap, and she stroked his ugly face, and at last she leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead. I have always admired Nobs; but this was the first time that it had ever occurred to me that I might wish to be Nobs. I wondered how he would take it, for he is as unused to women as I. But he took to it as a duck takes to water. What I lack of being a ladies’ man, Nobs certainly makes up for as a ladies’ dog. The old scalawag just closed his eyes and put on one of the softest “sugar-wouldn’t- melt-in-my-mouth” expressions you ever saw and stood there taking it and asking for more. It made me jealous.“You seem fond of dogs,” I said.“I am fond of this dog,” she replied.Whether she meant anything personal in that reply I did not know; but I took it as personal and it made me feel mighty good.As we drifted about upon that vast expanse of loneliness it is not strange that we should quickly become well acquainted. Constantly we scanned the horizon for signs of smoke, venturing guesses as to our chances of rescue; but darkness settled, and the black night enveloped us without ever the sight of a speck upon the waters.We were thirsty, hungry, uncomfortable, and cold. Our wet garments had dried but little and I knew that the girl must be in grave danger from the exposure to a night of cold and wet upon the water in an open boat, without sufficient clothing and no food. I had managed to bail all the water out of the boat with cupped hands, ending by mopping the balance up with my handkerchief — a slow and back-breaking procedure; thus I had made a comparatively dry place for the girl to lie down low in the bottom of the boat, where the sides would protect her from the night wind, and when at last she did so, almost overcome as she was by weakness and fatigue, I threw my wet coat over her further to thwart the chill. But it was of no avail; as I sat watching her, the moonlight marking out the graceful curves of her slender young body, I saw her shiver.“Isn’t there something I can do?” I asked. “You can’t lie there
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