said it like a professor addressing his class.
“I am going to talk to you about South America,” he said and took a sketch-book out of his table. “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 permission. And that permission will probably never be given. Is that clear?”
“It is very hard… Your behaviour…”
“Then I wish you a very good morning.”
“No, no!” I cried. “So far as I can see, I have no choice.”
“Word of honour?”
“Word of honour.”
He looked at me with doubt in his eyes.
“What do I know about your honour?” said he.
“Upon my word, sir,” I cried, angrily, “I have never been so insulted in my life.”
He seemed more interested than annoyed.
“Round-headed,” he muttered. “Brachycephalic, gray-eyed, black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I suppose?”
“I am an Irishman, sir.”
“That, of course, explains it. Well, you promised. You are probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South America. 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. It was my business to visit these little-known places and to examine their fauna. And I did a great job 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. The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable but degraded race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner. I had cured some of their people, and had impressed them a lot, so that I was not surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return. I understood from their gestures that someone needed my medical services. When I entered the hut I found that the sufferer had already died. He was, to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man. So far as I could understand the account of the natives, he was a complete stranger to them, and had come upon their village through the woods alone being very exhausted.”
“The man’s bag lay beside the couch, and I examined the contents. His name was written upon a tab within it… Maple White, Lake Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. Now I can say that I owe this man a lot.”
“This man had been an artist. There were some simple pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of coloured chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my inkstand, a cheap revolver, and a few cartridges. Some personal equipment he had lost in his journey. Then I noticed a sketch-book. This sketch-book. I hand it to you now, and I ask you to take it page by page and to examine the contents.”
I had opened it. The first page was disappointing, however, as it contained nothing but the picture of a very fat man, “Jimmy Colver on the Mail-boat,” written beneath it. There followed several pages which were filled with small sketches of Indians. Studies of women and babies accounted for several more pages, and then there was an unbroken series of animal drawings.
“I could see nothing unusual.”
“Try the next page,” said he with a smile.
It was a full-page sketch of a landscape in colour… the kind of painting which an open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort. I could see high hills covered with light-green trees. Above the hills there were dark red cliffs. They looked like an unbroken wall. Near the cliffs there was a pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree. Behind it all, a blue tropical sky.
“Well?” he asked.
“It is no doubt a curious formation,” said I “but I am not geologist enough to say that it is wonderful.”
“Wonderful!” he repeated. “It is unique. It is incredible. No one on earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility. Now the next.”
I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker. The head was like that of a bird, the body that of a large lizard. The tail was covered with sharp spikes. In front of this creature there was a small man, or dwarf, who stood looking at it.
“Well, what do you think of that?” cried the Professor, rubbing his hands with triumph.
“It is monstrous… grotesque.”
“But what made him draw such an animal?”
“Gin, I think.”
“Oh, that’s the best explanation you can give, is it?”
“Well, sir, what is yours?”
“The creature exists. That is actually sketched from the life.”
I should have laughed only that I remembered our Catharine-wheel down the passage.
“No doubt,” said I, “no doubt… But this tiny human figure puzzles me. If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it is a European.”
“Look here!” he cried, “You see that plant behind the animal; I suppose you thought it was a flower? Well, it is a huge palm. He sketched himself to give a scale of heights.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Then you think the beast was so huge…”
I had turned over the leaves but there was nothing more in the book.
“… a single sketch by a wandering American artist. You can’t, as a man of science, defend such a position as that.”
For answer the Professor took a book down from a shelf.
“There is an illustration here which would interest you. Ah, yes, here it is! It is said: ‘… Jurassic Dinosaur Stegosaurus. The leg is twice as tall as a full-grown man.’ Well, what do you think of that?”
He handed me the open book. I looked at the picture. In this animal of a dead world there was certainly a very great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist.
“Surely it might be a coincidence…”
“Very good,” said the Professor, “I will now ask you to look at this bone.” He handed over the one which he had already described as part of the dead man’s possessions. It was about six inches long, and thicker than my thumb.
“To what known creature does that bone belong?” asked the Professor.
I examined it.
“It might be a very thick human collar-bone,[24]” I said.
“The human collar-bone is curved. This is straight.”
“Then I don’t know what it is.”
He took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box.
“This human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the creature. What do you say to that?”
“Maybe an elephant…”
“Don’t! Don’t talk of elephants in South America! It belongs to a very large, a very strong animal which exists upon the face of the earth. You are still unconvinced?”
“I am at least deeply interested.”
“Then your case is not hopeless. We will proceed with my narrative. I could hardly come away from the Amazon without learning the truth. There were indications as to the direction from which the dead traveller had come. Indian legends would alone have been my guide, for I found that rumours of a strange land were common among all the tribes. Have you heard of Curupuri?”
“Never.”
“Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something to be avoided. It is a word of terror along