



Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.










                          THE LOST WORLD

                   I have wrought my simple plan
                    If I give one hour of joy
                  To the boy who's half a man,
                    Or the man who's half a boy.



                          The Lost World


                                By

                     SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

                         COPYRIGHT, 1912



                             Foreword

            Mr. E. D. Malone desires to state that
          both the injunction for restraint and the
          libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly
          by Professor G. E. Challenger, who, being
          satisfied that no criticism or comment in
          this book is meant in an offensive spirit,
          has guaranteed that he will place no
          impediment to its publication and circulation.





                             Contents

CHAPTER

    I.  "THERE ARE HEROISMS ALL ROUND US"
   II.  "TRY YOUR LUCK WITH PROFESSOR CHALLENGER"
  III.  "HE IS A PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE PERSON"
   IV.  "IT'S JUST THE VERY BIGGEST THING IN THE WORLD"
    V.  "QUESTION!"
   VI.  "I WAS THE FLAIL OF THE LORD"
  VII.  "TO-MORROW WE DISAPPEAR INTO THE UNKNOWN"
 VIII.  "THE OUTLYING PICKETS OF THE NEW WORLD"
   IX.  "WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN IT?"
    X.  "THE MOST WONDERFUL THINGS HAVE HAPPENED"
   XI.  "FOR ONCE I WAS THE HERO"
  XII.  "IT WAS DREADFUL IN THE FOREST"
 XIII.  "A SIGHT I SHALL NEVER FORGET"
  XIV.  "THOSE WERE THE REAL CONQUESTS"
   XV.  "OUR EYES HAVE SEEN GREAT WONDERS"
  XVI.  "A PROCESSION!  A PROCESSION!"




                          THE LOST WORLD




                          The Lost World

                            CHAPTER I

                "There Are Heroisms All Round Us"

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon
earth,--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly
good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self.  If
anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the
thought of such a father-in-law.  I am convinced that he really
believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a
week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his
views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an
authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup
about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the
depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the
world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted
upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon
which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity,
which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in
my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic
meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come!  All
that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which
will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse
alternating in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the
red curtain.  How beautiful she was!  And yet how aloof!  We had been
friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same
comradeship which I might have established with one of my
fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectly frank, perfectly kindly,
and perfectly unsexual.  My instincts are all against a woman being too
frank and at her ease with me.  It is no compliment to a man.  Where
the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions,
heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in
hand.  The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing
figure--these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the
true signals of passion.  Even in my short life I had learned as much
as that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality.  Some judged her to be cold
and hard; but such a thought was treason.  That delicately bronzed
skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair, the large
liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,--all the stigmata of passion
were there.  But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found
the secret of drawing it forth.  However, come what might, I should
have done with suspense and bring matters to a head to-night.  She
could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed lover than an accepted
brother.

So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long
and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me,
and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof.  "I have a
presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned.  I do wish you
wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are."

I drew my chair a little nearer