



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          libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly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.  "Now, how did you know that I was
going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.

"Don't women always know?  Do you suppose any woman in the world was
ever taken unawares?  But--oh, Ned, our friendship has been so good and
so pleasant!  What a pity to spoil it!  Don't you feel how splendid it
is that a young man and a young woman should be able to talk face to
face as we have talked?"

"I don't know, Gladys.  You see, I can talk face to face with--with the
station-master."  I can't imagine how that official came into the
matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing.  "That does not
satisfy me in the least.  I want my arms round you, and your head on my
breast, and--oh, Gladys, I want----"

She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed to
demonstrate some of my wants.  "You've spoiled everything, Ned," she
said.  "It's all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing
comes in!  It is such a pity!  Why can't you control yourself?"

"I didn't invent it," I pleaded.  "It's nature.  It's love."

"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different.  I have never felt
it."

"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul!  Oh, Gladys, you
were made for love!  You must love!"

"One must wait till it comes."

"But why can't you love me, Gladys?  Is it my appearance, or what?"

She did unbend a little.  She put forward a hand--such a gracious,
stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head.  Then she
looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.

"No it isn't that," she said at last.  "You're not a conceited boy by
nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that.  It's deeper."

"My character?"

She nodded severely.

"What can I do to mend it?  Do sit down and talk it over.  No, really,
I won't if you'll only sit down!"

She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to my
mind than her whole-hearted confidence.  How primitive and bestial it
looks when you put it down in black and white!--and perhaps after all
it is only a feeling peculiar to myself.  Anyhow, she sat down.

"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"

"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.

It was my turn to jump out of my chair.

"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the expression
of my face: "only an ideal.  I've never met the kind of man I mean."

"Tell me about him.  What does he look like?"

"Oh, he might look very much like you."

"How dear of you to say that!  Well, what is it that he does that I
don't do?  Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,
theosophist, superman.  I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only
give me an idea what would please you."

She laughed at the elasticity of my character.  "Well, in the first
place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she.  "He
would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a
silly girl's whim.  But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who
could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a
man of great deeds and strange experiences.  It is never a man that I
should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be
reflected upon me.  Think of Richard Burton!  When I read his wife's
life of him I could so understand her love!  And Lady Stanley!  Did you
ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband?
These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul,
and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honored
by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds."

She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought down
the whole level of the interview.  I gripped myself hard, and went on
with the argument.

"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons," said I; "besides, we don't get
the chance,--at least, I never had the chance.  If I did, I should try
to take it."

"But chances are all around you.  It is the mark of the kind of man I
mean that he makes his own chances.  You can't hold him back.  I've
never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well.  There are heroisms
all round us waiting to be done.  It's for men to do them, and for
women to reserve their love as a reward for such men.  Look at that
young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon.  It was blowing a
gale of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted on
starting.  The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-four
hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia.  That was the kind of man I
mean.  Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have
envied her!  That's what I should like to be,--envied for my man."

"I'd have done it to please you."

"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me.  You should do it because
you can't help yourself, because it's natural to you, because the man
in you is crying out for heroic expression.  Now, when you described
the Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone down and
helped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?"

"I did."

"You never said so."

"There was nothing worth bucking about."

"I didn't know."  She looked at me with rather more interest.  "That
was brave of you."

"I had to.  If you want to write good copy, you must be where the
things are."

"What a prosaic motive!  It seems to take all the romance out of it.
But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down that
mine."  She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness and dignity that
I could only stoop and kiss it.  "I dare say I am merely a foolish
woman with a young girl's fancies.  And yet it is so real with me, so
entirely part of my very self, that I cannot help acting upon it.  If I
marry, I do want to marry a famous man!"

"Why should you not?" I cried.  "It is women like you who brace men up.
Give me a chance, and see if I will take it!  Besides, as you say, men
ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until they are given.
Look at Clive--just a clerk, and he conquered India!  By George!  I'll
do something in the world yet!"

She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence.  "Why not?" she said.
"You have everything a man could have,--youth, health, strength,
education, energy.  I was sorry you spoke.  And now I am glad--so
glad--if it wakens these thoughts in you!"

"And if I do----"

Her dear hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips.  "Not another word,
Sir!  You should have been at the office for evening duty half an hour
ago; only I hadn't the heart to remind you.  Some day, perhaps, when
you have won your place in the world, we shall talk it over again."

And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing
the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with the eager
determination that not another day should elapse before I should find
some deed which was worthy of my lady.  But who--who in all this wide
world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that deed was
to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing of it?

And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have
nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have been no
narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the world
with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the
desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight
of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and
ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the
great adventures and the great rewards.  Behold me, then, at the office
of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant
unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to
find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys!  Was it hardness,
was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own
glorification?  Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to
ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.




                            CHAPTER II

            "Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger"

I always liked McArdle, the crabbed, old, round-backed, red-headed news
editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me.  Of course, Beaumont was
the real boss; but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian
height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller than an
international crisis or a split in the Cabinet.  Sometimes we saw him
passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring
vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf.  He
was above and beyond us.  But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and it
was he that we knew.  The old man nodded as I entered the room, and he
pushed his spectacles far up on his bald forehead.

"Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very well,"
said he in his kindly Scotch accent.

I thanked him.

"The colliery explosion was excellent.  So was the Southwark fire.  You
have the true descreeptive touch.  What did you want to see me about?"

"To ask a favor."

He looked alarmed, and his eyes shunned mine. "Tut, tut!  What is it?"

"Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some mission for
the paper?  I would do my best to put it through and get you some good
copy."

"What sort of meesion had you in your mind, Mr. Malone?"

"Well, Sir, anything that had adventure and danger in it.  I really
would do my very best.  The more difficult it was, the better it would
suit me."

"You seem very anxious to lose your life."

"To justify my life, Sir."

"Dear me, Mr. Malone, this is very--very exalted.  I'm afraid the day
for this sort of thing is rather past.  The expense of the'special
meesion' business hardly justifies the result, and, of course, in any
case it would only be an experienced man with a name that would command
public confidence who would get such an order.  The big blank spaces in
the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for romance
anywhere.  Wait a bit, though!" he added, with a sudden smile upon his
face.  "Talking of the blank spaces of the map gives me an idea.  What
about exposing a fraud--a modern Munchausen--and making him
rideeculous?  You could show him up as the liar that he is!  Eh, man,
it would be fine.  How does it appeal to you?"

"Anything--anywhere--I care nothing."

McArdle was plunged in thought for some minutes.

"I wonder whether you could get on friendly--or at least on talking
terms with the fellow," he said, at last.  "You seem to have a sort of
genius for establishing relations with people--seempathy, I suppose, or
animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something.  I am conscious
of it myself."

"You are very good, sir."

"So why should you not try your luck with Professor Challenger, of
Enmore Park?"

I dare say I looked a little startled.

"Challenger!" I cried.  "Professor Challenger, the famous zoologist!
Wasn't he the man who broke the skull of Blundell, of the Telegraph?"

The news editor smiled grimly.

"Do you mind?  Didn't you say it was adventures you were after?"

"It is all in the way of business, sir," I answered.

"Exactly.  I don't suppose he can always be so violent as that.  I'm
thinking that Blundell got him at the wrong moment, maybe, or in the
wrong fashion.  You may have better luck, or more tact in handling him.
There's something in your line there, I am sure, and the Gazette should
work it."

"I really know nothing about him," said I.  "I only remember his name
in connection with the police-court proceedings, for striking Blundell."

"I have a few notes for your guidance, Mr. Malone.  I've had my eye on
the Professor for some little time."  He took a paper from a drawer.
"Here is a summary of his record.  I give it you briefly:--

"'Challenger, George Edward.  Born: Largs, N. B., 1863.  Educ.: Largs
Academy; Edinburgh University.  British Museum Assistant, 1892.
Assistant-Keeper of Comparative Anthropology Department, 1893.
Resigned after acrimonious correspondence same year.  Winner of
Crayston Medal for Zoological Research.  Foreign Member of'--well,
quite a lot of things, about two inches of small type--'Societe Belge,
American Academy of Sciences, La Plata, etc., etc.  Ex-President
Palaeontological Society.  Section H, British Association'--so on, so
on!--'Publications: "Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuck
Skulls"; "Outlines of Vertebrate Evolution"; and numerous papers,
including "The underlying fallacy of Weissmannism," which caused heated
discussion at the Zoological Congress of Vienna.  Recreations: Walking,
Alpine climbing.  Address: Enmore Park, Kensington, W.'

"There, take it with you.  I've nothing more for you to-night."

I pocketed the slip of paper.

"One moment, sir," I said, as I realized that it was a pink bald head,
and not a red face, which was fronting me.  "I am not very clear yet
why I am to interview this gentleman.  What has he done?"

The face flashed back again.

"Went to South America on a solitary expedeetion two years ago.  Came
back last year.  Had undoubtedly been to South America, but refused to
say exactly where.  Began to tell his adventures in a vague way, but
somebody started to pick holes, and he just shut up like an oyster.
Something wonderful happened--or the man's a champion liar, which is
the more probable supposeetion.  Had some damaged photographs, said to
be fakes.  Got so touchy that he assaults anyone who asks questions,
and heaves reporters down the stairs.  In my opinion he's just a
homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science.  That's your man, Mr.
Malone.  Now, off you run, and see what you can make of him.  You're
big enough to look after yourself.  Anyway, you are all safe.
Employers' Liability Act, you know."

A grinning red face turned once more into a pink oval, fringed with
gingery fluff; the interview was at an end.

I walked across to the Savage Club, but instead of turning into it I
leaned upon the railings of Adelphi Terrace and gazed thoughtfully for
a long time at the brown, oily river.  I can always think most sanely
and clearly in the open air.  I took out the list of Professor
Challenger's exploits, and I read it over under the electric lamp.
Then I had what I can only regard as an inspiration.  As a Pressman, I
felt sure from what I had been told that I could never hope to get into
touch with this cantankerous Professor.  But these recriminations,
twice mentioned in his skeleton biography, could only mean that he was
a fanatic in science.  Was there not an exposed margin there upon which
he might be accessible?  I would try.

I entered the club.  It was just after eleven, and the big room was
fairly full, though the rush had not yet set in.  I noticed a tall,
thin, angular man seated in an arm-chair by the fire.  He turned as I
drew my chair up to him.  It was the man of all others whom I should
have chosen--Tarp Henry, of the staff of Nature, a thin, dry, leathery
creature, who was full, to those who knew him, of kindly humanity.  I
plunged instantly into my subject.

"What do you know of Professor Challenger?"

"Challenger?" He gathered his brows in scientific disapproval.
"Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from
South America."

"What story?"

"Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had discovered.
I believe he has retracted since.  Anyhow, he has suppressed it all.
He gave an interview to Reuter's, and there was such a howl that he saw
it wouldn't do.  It was a discreditable business.  There were one or
two folk who were inclined to take him seriously, but he soon choked
them off."

"How?"

"Well, by his insufferable rudeness and impossible behavior.  There was
poor old Wadley, of the Zoological Institute.  Wadley sent a message:
'The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to
Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would
do them the honor to come to their next meeting.'  The answer was
unprintable."

"You don't say?"

"Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run:  'Professor Challenger
presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute,
and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.'"

"Good Lord!"

"Yes, I expect that's what old Wadley said.  I remember his wail at the
meeting, which began:  'In fifty years experience of scientific
intercourse----'  It quite broke the old man up."

"Anything more about Challenger?"

"Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know.  I live in a
nine-hundred-diameter microscope.  I can hardly claim to take serious
notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.  I'm a
frontiersman from the extreme edge of the Knowable, and I feel quite
out of place when I leave my study and come into touch with all you
great, rough, hulking creatures.  I'm too detached to talk scandal, and
yet at scientific conversaziones I HAVE heard something of Challenger,
for he is one of those men whom nobody can ignore.  He's as clever as
they make 'em--a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a
quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that.  He had
gone the length of faking some photographs over the South American
business."

"You say he is a faddist.  What is his particular fad?"

"He has a thousand, but the latest is something about Weissmann and
Evolution.  He had a fearful row about it in Vienna, I believe."

"Can't you tell me the point?"

"Not at the moment, but a translation of the proceedings exists.  We
have it filed at the office.  Would you care to come?"

"It's just what I want.  I have to interview the fellow, and I need
some lead up to him.  It's really awfully good of you to give me a
lift.  I'll go with you now, if it is not too late."


Half an hour later I was seated in the newspaper office with a huge
tome in front of me, which had been opened at the article "Weissmann
versus Darwin," with the sub heading, "Spirited Protest at Vienna.
Lively Proceedings."  My scientific education having been somewhat
neglected, I was unable to follow the whole argument, but it was
evident that the English Professor had handled his subject in a very
aggressive fashion, and had thoroughly annoyed his Continental
colleagues.  "Protests," "Uproar," and "General appeal to the Chairman"
were three of the first brackets which caught my eye.  Most of the
matter might have been written in Chinese for any definite meaning that
it conveyed to my brain.

"I wish you could translate it into English for me," I said,
pathetically, to my help-mate.

"Well, it is a translation."

"Then I'd better try my luck with the original."

"It is certainly rather deep for a layman."

"If I could only get a single good, meaty sentence which seemed to
convey some sort of definite human idea, it would serve my turn.  Ah,
yes, this one will do.  I seem in a vague way almost to understand it.
I'll copy it out.  This shall be my link with the terrible Professor."

"Nothing else I can do?"

"Well, yes; I propose to write to him.  If I could frame the letter
here, and use your address it would give atmosphere."

"We'll have the fellow round here making a row and breaking the
furniture."

"No, no; you'll see the letter--nothing contentious, I assure you."

"Well, that's my chair and desk.  You'll find paper there.  I'd like to
censor it before it goes."

It took some doing, but I flatter myself that it wasn't such a bad job
when it was finished.  I read it aloud to the critical bacteriologist
with some pride in my handiwork.


"DEAR PROFESSOR CHALLENGER," it said, "As a humble student of Nature, I
have always taken the most profound interest in your speculations as to
the differences between Darwin and Weissmann.  I have recently had
occasion to refresh my memory by re-reading----"


"You infernal liar!" murmured Tarp Henry.


--"by re-reading your masterly address at Vienna.  That lucid and
admirable statement seems to be the last word in the matter.  There is
one sentence in it, however--namely:  'I protest strongly against the
insufferable and entirely dogmatic assertion that each separate id is a
microcosm possessed of an historical architecture elaborated slowly
through the series of generations.' Have you no desire, in view of
later research, to modify this statement?  Do you not think that it is
over-accentuated?  With your permission, I would ask the favor of an
interview, as I feel strongly upon the subject, and have certain
suggestions which I could only elaborate in a personal conversation.
With your consent, I trust to have the honor of calling at eleven
o'clock the day after to-morrow (Wednesday) morning.

"I remain, Sir, with assurances of profound respect, yours very truly,

EDWARD D. MALONE."


"How's that?" I asked, triumphantly.

"Well if your conscience can stand it----"

"It has never failed