As we strolled slowly back toward the boat, planning and discussingthis, we were suddenly startled by a loud and unmistakable detonation.

"A shell from the U-33!" exclaimed von Schoenvorts.

"What can be after signifyin'?" queried Olson.

"They are in trouble," I answered for all, "and it's up to usto get back to them. Drop that carcass," I directed the mencarrying the meat, "and follow me!" I set off at a rapid runin the direction of the harbor.

We ran for the better part of a mile without hearing anythingmore from the direction of the harbor, and then I reduced thespeed to a walk, for the exercise was telling on us who had beencooped up for so long in the confined interior of the U-33.Puffing and panting, we plodded on until within about a mile ofthe harbor we came upon a sight that brought us all up standing.We had been passing through a little heavier timber than wasusual to this part of the country, when we suddenly emerged intoan open space in the center of which was such a band as mighthave caused the most courageous to pause. It consisted of upwardof five hundred individuals representing several species closelyallied to man. There were anthropoid apes and gorillas--theseI had no difficulty in recognizing; but there were other formswhich I had never before seen, and I was hard put to it to saywhether they were ape or man. Some of them resembled the corpsewe had found upon the narrow beach against Caprona's sea-wall,while others were of a still lower type, more nearly resemblingthe apes, and yet others were uncannily manlike, standing thereerect, being less hairy and possessing better shaped heads.

There was one among the lot, evidently the leader of them, whobore a close resemblance to the so-called Neanderthal man of LaChapelle-aux-Saints. There was the same short, stocky trunk uponwhich rested an enormous head habitually bent forward into thesame curvature as the back, the arms shorter than the legs, andthe lower leg considerably shorter than that of modern man, theknees bent forward and never straightened. This creature and oneor two others who appeared to be of a lower order than he, yethigher than that of the apes, carried heavy clubs; the others werearmed only with giant muscles and fighting fangs--nature's weapons.All were males, and all were entirely naked; nor was there uponeven the highest among them a sign of ornamentation.

At sight of us they turned with bared fangs and low growls toconfront us. I did not wish to fire among them unless it becameabsolutely necessary, and so I started to lead my party aroundthem; but the instant that the Neanderthal man guessed myintention, he evidently attributed it to cowardice upon our part,and with a wild cry he leaped toward us, waving his cudgel abovehis head. The others followed him, and in a minute we should havebeen overwhelmed. I gave the order to fire, and at the firstvolley six of them went down, including the Neanderthal man.The others hesitated a moment and then broke for the trees, somerunning nimbly among the branches, while others lost themselvesto us between the boles. Both von Schoenvorts and I noticed thatat least two of the higher, manlike types took to the trees quiteas nimbly as the apes, while others that more nearly approachedman in carriage and appearance sought safety upon the ground withthe gorillas.

An examination disclosed that five of our erstwhile opponentswere dead and the sixth, the Neanderthal man, was but slightlywounded, a bullet having glanced from his thick skull, stunning him.We decided to take him with us to camp, and by means of belts wemanaged to secure his hands behind his back and place a leasharound his neck before he regained consciousness. We thenretraced our steps for our meat being convinced by our ownexperience that those aboard the U-33 had been able to frightenoff this party with a single shell--but when we came to where wehad left the deer it had disappeared.

On the return journey Whitely and I preceded the rest of theparty by about a hundred yards in the hope of getting anothershot at something edible, for we were all greatly disgustedand disappointed by the loss of our venison. Whitely and Iadvanced very cautiously, and not having the whole party withus, we fared better than on the journey out, bagging two largeantelope not a half-mile from the harbor; so with our game andour prisoner we made a cheerful return to the boat, where wefound that all were safe. On the shore a little north of wherewe lay there were the corpses of twenty of the wild creatures whohad attacked Bradley and his party in our absence, and the restof whom we had met and scattered a few minutes later.

We felt that we had taught these wild ape-men a lesson and thatbecause of it we would be safer in the future--at least saferfrom them; but we decided not to abate our carefulness one whit;feeling that this new world was filled with terrors still unknownto us; nor were we wrong.The following morning we commenced work upon our camp, Bradley,Olson, von Schoenvorts, Miss La Rue, and I having sat up half thenight discussing the matter and drawing plans. We set the men atwork felling trees, selecting for the purpose jarrah, a hard,weather-resisting timber which grew in profusion near by. Half themen labored while the other half stood guard, alternating each hourwith an hour off at noon. Olson directed this work. Bradley, vonSchoenvorts and I, with Miss La Rue's help, staked out the variousbuildings and the outer wall. When the day was done, we had quitean array of logs nicely notched and ready for our building operationson the morrow, and we were all tired, for after the buildings hadbeen staked out we all fell in and helped with the logging--all butvon Schoenvorts. He, being a Prussian and a gentleman, couldn'tstoop to such menial labor in the presence of his men, and I didn'tsee fit to ask it of him, as the work was purely voluntary uponour part. He spent the afternoon shaping a swagger-stick from thebranch of jarrah and talking with Miss La Rue, who had sufficientlyunbent toward him to notice his existence.

We saw nothing of the wild men of the previous day, and only oncewere we menaced by any of the strange denizens of Caprona, whensome frightful nightmare of the sky swooped down upon us, only tobe driven off by a fusillade of bullets. The thing appeared tobe some variety of pterodactyl, and what with its enormous sizeand ferocious aspect was most awe-inspiring. There was anotherincident, too, which to me at least was far more unpleasant thanthe sudden onslaught of the prehistoric reptile. Two of the men,both Germans, were stripping a felled tree of its branches.Von Schoenvorts had completed his swagger-stick, and he and Iwere passing close to where the two worked.

One of them threw to his rear a small branch that he had justchopped off, and as misfortune would have it, it struck vonSchoenvorts across the face. It couldn't have hurt him, for itdidn't leave a mark; but he flew into a terrific rage, shouting:"Attention!" in a loud voice. The sailor immediatelystraightened up, faced his officer, clicked his heels togetherand saluted. "Pig!" roared the Baron, and struck the fellowacross the face, breaking his nose. I grabbed von Schoenvorts'arm and jerked him away before he could strike again, if such hadbeen his intention, and then he raised his little stick to strikeme; but before it descended the muzzle of my pistol was againsthis belly and he must have seen in my eyes that nothing wouldsuit me better than an excuse to pull the trigger. Like all hiskind and all other bullies, von Schoenvorts was a coward atheart, and so he dropped his hand to his side and started to turnaway; but I pulled him back, and there before his men I told himthat such a thing must never again occur--that no man was to bestruck or otherwise punished other than in due process of thelaws that we had made and the court that we had established.All the time the sailor stood rigidly at attention, nor could Itell from his expression whether he most resented the blow hisofficer had struck him or my interference in the gospel of theKaiser-breed. Nor did he move until I said to him: "Plesser, youmay return to your quarters and dress your wound." Then hesaluted and marched stiffly off toward the U-33.

Just before dusk we moved out into the bay a hundred yards fromshore and dropped anchor, for I felt that we should be saferthere than elsewhere. I also detailed men to stand watch duringthe night and appointed Olson officer of the watch for the entirenight, telling him to bring his blankets on deck and get whatrest he could. At dinner we tasted our first roast Capronaantelope, and we had a mess of greens that the cook had foundgrowing along the stream. All during the meal von Schoenvortswas silent and surly.

After dinner we all went on deck and watched the unfamiliarscenes of a Capronian night--that is, all but von Schoenvorts.There was less to see than to hear. From the great inland lakebehind us came the hissing and the screaming of countless saurians.Above us we heard the flap of giant wings, while from the shorerose the multitudinous voices of a tropical jungle--of a warm,damp atmosphere such as must have enveloped the entire earthduring the Palezoic and Mesozoic eras. But here were intermingledthe voices of later eras--the scream of the panther, the roar ofthe lion, the baying of wolves and a thunderous growling whichwe could attribute to nothing earthly but which one day we wereto connect with the most fearsome of ancient creatures.

One by one the others went to their rooms, until the girl andI were left alone together, for I had permitted the watch togo below for a few minutes, knowing that I would be on deck.Miss La Rue was very quiet, though she replied graciouslyenough to whatever I had to say that required reply. I askedher if she did not feel well.

"Yes," she said, "but I am depressed by the awfulness of it all.I feel of so little consequence--so small and helpless in theface of all these myriad manifestations of life stripped to thebone of its savagery and brutality. I realize as never beforehow cheap and valueless a thing is life. Life seems a joke, acruel, grim joke. You are a laughable incident or a terrifyingone as you happen to be less powerful or more powerful than someother form of life which crosses your path; but as a rule you areof no moment whatsoever to anything but yourself. You are a comiclittle figure, hopping from the cradle to the grave. Yes, thatis our trouble--we take ourselves too seriously; but Capronashould be a sure cure for that." She paused and laughed.

"You have evolved a beautiful philosophy," I said. "It fillssuch a longing in the human breast. It is full, it issatisfying, it is ennobling. What wonderous strides towardperfection the human race might have made if the first man hadevolved it and it had persisted until now as the creed of humanity."

"I don't like irony," she said; "it indicates a small soul."

"What other sort of soul, then, would you expect from `a comiclittle figure hopping from the cradle to the grave'?" I inquired."And what difference does it make, anyway, what you like and whatyou don't like? You are here for but an instant, and you mustn'ttake yourself too seriously."

She looked up at me with a smile. "I imagine that I am frightened andblue," she said, "and I know that I am very, very homesick and lonely."There was almost a sob in her voice as she concluded. It was thefirst time that she had spoken thus to me. Involuntarily, I laidmy hand upon hers where it rested on the rail.

"I know how difficult your position is," I said; "but don't feelthat you are alone. There is--is one here who--who would doanything in the world for you," I ended lamely. She did notwithdraw her hand, and she looked up into my face with tears on hercheeks and I read in her eyes the thanks her lips could not voice.Then she looked away across the weird moonlit landscape and sighed.Evidently her new-found philosophy had tumbled about her ears, forshe was seemingly taking herself seriously. I wanted to take herin my arms and tell her how I loved her, and had taken her handfrom the rail and started to draw her toward me when Olson cameblundering up on deck with his bedding.The following morning we started building operations in earnest,and things progressed finely. The Neanderthal man was somethingof a care, for we had to keep him in irons all the time, and hewas mighty savage when approached; but after a time he becamemore docile, and then we tried to discover if he had a language.Lys spent a great deal of time talking to him and trying to drawhim out; but for a long while she was unsuccessful. It took usthree weeks to build all the houses, which we constructed closeby a cold spring some two miles from the harbor.

We changed our plans a trifle when it came to building thepalisade, for we found a rotted cliff near by where we could getall the flat building-stone we needed, and so we constructed astone wall entirely around the buildings. It was in the form ofa square, with bastions and towers at each corner which wouldpermit an enfilading fire along any side of the fort, and wasabout one hundred and thirty-five feet square on the outside,with walls three feet thick at the bottom and about a foot anda half wide at the top, and fifteen feet high. It took a longtime to build that wall, and we all turned in and helped exceptvon Schoenvorts, who, by the way, had not spoken to me exceptin the line of official business since our encounter--a conditionof armed neutrality which suited me to a T. We have just finishedit, the last touches being put on today. I quit about a week agoand commenced working on this chronicle for our strange adventures,which will account for any minor errors in chronology which mayhave crept in; there was so much material that I may have madesome mistakes, but I think they are but minor and few.

I see in reading over the last few pages that I neglected tostate that Lys finally discovered that the Neanderthal manpossessed a language. She had learned to speak it, and so haveI, to some extent. It was he--his name he says is Am, or Ahm--who told us that this country is called Caspak. When we askedhim how far it extended, he waved both arms about his head in anall-including gesture which took in, apparently, the entire universe.He is more tractable now, and we are going to release him, for hehas assured us that he will not permit his fellows to harm us.He calls us Galus and says that in a short time he will be a Galu.It is not quite clear to us what he means. He says that there aremany Galus north of us, and that as soon as he becomes one he willgo and live with them.

Ahm went out to hunt with us yesterday and was much impressed bythe ease with which our rifles brought down antelopes and deer.We have been living upon the fat of the land, Ahm, having shownus the edible fruits, tubers and herbs, and twice a week we goout after fresh meat. A certain proportion of this we dry andstore away, for we do not know what may come. Our drying processis really smoking. We have also dried a large quantity of twovarieties of cereal which grow wild a few miles south of us.One of these is a giant Indian maize--a lofty perennial often fiftyand sixty feet in height, with ears the size off a man's body andkernels as large as your fist. We have had to construct a secondstore house for the great quantity of this that we have gathered.

September 3, 1916: Three months ago today the torpedo from theU-33 started me from the peaceful deck of the American liner uponthe strange voyage which has ended here in Caspak. We have settleddown to an acceptance of our fate, for all are convinced that noneof us will ever see the outer world again. Ahm's repeated assertionsthat there are human beings like ourselves in Caspak have rousedthe men to a keen desire for exploration. I sent out one partylast week under Bradley. Ahm, who is now free to go and come ashe wishes, accompanied them. They marched about twenty-five milesdue west, encountering many terrible beasts and reptiles and nota few manlike creatures whom Ahm sent away. Here is Bradley'sreport of the expedition:

Marched fifteen miles the first day, camping on the bank of alarge stream which runs southward. Game was plentiful and we sawseveral varieties which we had not before encountered in Caspak.Just before making camp we were charged by an enormous woollyrhinoceros, which Plesser dropped with a perfect shot. We hadrhinoceros-steaks for supper. Ahm called the thing "Atis." It wasalmost a continuous battle from the time we left the fort until wearrived at camp. The mind of man can scarce conceive the plethoraof carnivorous life in this lost world; and their prey, of course,is even more abundant.

The second day we marched about ten miles to the foot of the cliffs.Passed through dense forests close to the base of the cliffs.Saw manlike creatures and a low order of ape in one band, andsome of the men swore that there was a white man among them.They were inclined to attack us at first; but a volley from ourrifles caused them to change their minds. We scaled the cliffsas far as we could; but near the top they are absolutelyperpendicular without any sufficient cleft or protuberance togive hand or foot-hold. All were disappointed, for we hungeredfor a view of the ocean and the outside world. We even had ahope that we might see and attract the attention of a passing ship.Our exploration has determined one thing which will probablybe of little value to us and never heard of beyond Caprona'swalls--this crater was once entirely filled with water.Indisputable evidence of this is on the face of the cliffs.

Our return journey occupied two days and was as filled withadventure as usual. We are all becoming accustomed to adventure.It is beginning to pall on us. We suffered no casualties andthere was no illness.

I had to smile as I read Bradley's report. In those four dayshe had doubtless passed through more adventures than an Africanbig-game hunter experiences in a lifetime, and yet he covered itall in a few lines. Yes, we are becoming accustomed to adventure.Not a day passes that one or more of us does not face death atleast once. Ahm taught us a few things that have provedprofitable and saved us much ammunition, which it is uselessto expend except for food or in the last recourse of self-preservation. Now when we are attacked by large flying reptileswe run beneath spreading trees; when land carnivora threaten us,we climb into trees, and we have learned not to fire at any ofthe dinosaurs unless we can keep out of their reach for at leasttwo minutes after hitting them in the brain or spine, or fiveminutes after puncturing their hearts--it takes them so long to die.To hit them elsewhere is worse than useless, for they do not seemto notice it, and we had discovered that such shots do not killor even disable them.

September 7, 1916: Much has happened since I last wrote. Bradley isaway again on another exploration expedition to the cliffs. He expectsto be gone several weeks and to follow along their base in search ofa point where they may be scaled. He took Sinclair, Brady, James,and Tippet with him. Ahm has disappeared. He has been gone aboutthree days; but the most startling thing I have on record is thatvon Schoenvorts and Olson while out hunting the other day discoveredoil about fifteen miles north of us beyond the sandstone cliffs.Olson says there is a geyser of oil there, and von Schoenvorts ismaking preparations to refine it. If he succeeds, we shall havethe means for leaving Caspak and returning to our own world.I can scarce believe the truth of it. We are all elated to theseventh heaven of bliss. Pray God we shall not be disappointed.

I have tried on several occasions to broach the subject of mylove to Lys; but she will not listen.