"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - The People That Time Forgot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

We discussed the manuscript and hazarded guesses concerning it
and the strange events it narrated. The torpedoing of the
liner upon which Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., had taken passage for
France to join the American Ambulance was a well-known fact,
and I had further substantiated by wire to the New York office
of the owners, that a Miss La Rue had been booked for passage.
Further, neither she nor Bowen had been mentioned among the list
of survivors; nor had the body of either of them been recovered.

Their rescue by the English tug was entirely probable; the
capture of the enemy U-33 by the tug's crew was not beyond
the range of possibility; and their adventures during the
perilous cruise which the treachery and deceit of Benson
extended until they found themselves in the waters of the far
South Pacific with depleted stores and poisoned water-casks,
while bordering upon the fantastic, appeared logical enough as
narrated, event by event, in the manuscript.

Caprona has always been considered a more or less mythical
land, though it is vouched for by an eminent navigator of the
eighteenth century; but Bowen's narrative made it seem very real,
however many miles of trackless ocean lay between us and it.
Yes, the narrative had us guessing. We were agreed that it was
most improbable; but neither of us could say that anything which
it contained was beyond the range of possibility. The weird
flora and fauna of Caspak were as possible under the thick,
warm atmospheric conditions of the super-heated crater as
they were in the Mesozoic era under almost exactly similar
conditions, which were then probably world-wide. The assistant
secretary had heard of Caproni and his discoveries, but admitted
that he never had taken much stock in the one nor the other.
We were agreed that the one statement most difficult of
explanation was that which reported the entire absence of human
young among the various tribes which Tyler had had intercourse.
This was the one irreconcilable statement of the manuscript.
A world of adults! It was impossible.

We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party
of English sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them;
how many more might have perished! And Miss La Rue--could a
young girl long have survived the horrors of Caspak after
having been separated from all of her own kind? The assistant
secretary wondered if Nobs still was with her, and then we both
smiled at this tacit acceptance of the truth of the whole
uncanny tale:

"I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but
by George, I can't help believing it, and I can see that girl
now, with the big Airedale at her side protecting her from the