The Lost World Read Online Free PDF

I was minded to make your further acquaintance. You will kindly deposit your ash in the small Japanese tray on the bamboo table which stands at your left elbow.”
    All this he boomed forth like a professor addressing his class. He had swung round his revolving chair so as to face me, and he sat all puffed out like an enormous bull-frog, his head laid back, and his eyes half-covered by supercilious lids. Now he suddenly turned himself sideways, and all I could see of him was tangled hair with a red, protruding ear. He was scratching about among the litter of papers upon his desk. He faced me, presently with what looked like a very tattered sketchbook in his hand.
    “I am going to talk to you about South America,” said he. “No comments if you please. First of all, I wish you to understand that nothing I tell you now is to be repeated in any public way unless you have my express permission. That permission will, in all human probability, never be given. Is that clear?”
    “It is very hard,” said I. “Surely a judicious account——”
    He replaced the notebook upon the table.
    “That ends it,” said he. “I wish you a very good morning.”

    “No, no!” I cried. “I submit to any conditions. So far as I can see, I have no choice.”
    “None in the world,” said he.
    “Well, then, I promise.”
    “Word of honor?”
    “Word of honor.”
    He looked at me with doubt in his insolent eyes.
    “After all, what do I know about your honor?” said he.
    “Upon my word, sir,” I cried, angrily, “you take very great liberties! I have never been so insulted in my life.”
    He seemed more interested than annoyed at my outbreak.
    “Round-headed,” he muttered. “Brachycephalic, gray-eyed, black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I presume?”
    “I am an Irishman, sir.”
    “Irish Irish?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “That, of course, explains it. Let me see; you have given me your promise that my confidence will be respected? That confidence, I may say, will be far from complete. But I am prepared to give you a few indications which will be of interest. In the first place, you are probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South America—one which will be classical in the scientific history of the world? The object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of Wallace and of Bates, which could only be done by observing their reported facts under the same conditions in which they had themselves noted them. If my expedition had no other results it would still have been noteworthy, but a curious incident occurred to me while there which opened up an entirely fresh line of inquiry.
    “You are aware—or probably, in this half-educated age, you are not aware—that the country round some parts of the
Amazon is still only partially explored, and that a great number of tributaries, some of them entirely uncharted, run into the main river. It was my business to visit this little-known back-country and to examine its fauna, which furnished me with the materials for several chapters for that great and monumental work upon zoology which will be my life’s justification. I was returning, my work accomplished, when I had occasion to spend a night at a small Indian village at a point where a certain tributary—the name and position of which I withhold—opens into the main river. The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable but degraded race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner. I had effected some cures among them upon my way up the river, and had impressed them considerably with my personality, so that I was not surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return. I gathered from their signs that someone had urgent need of my medical services, and I followed the chief to one of his huts. When I entered I found that the sufferer to whose aid I had been summoned had that instant expired. He was, to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man; indeed, I may say a very white man, for