It was supposed to be a standard rescue... As far as Tom Billings was concerned, all he had to do was set sail for the South Pacific island of Caprona and find the last-known whereabouts of Bowen J. Tyler. It sounded so simple. However, arriving on the island with his own private army, Billings becomes separated from his companions after a machine gun fight with what appears to be a prehistoric creature. Standing between Billings and Tyler is the interior of the island, known to its local population as Caspak. It is a hot, overgrown, and unforgiving land. We accompany Billings step by step as he experiences strange rituals, vicious creatures and ancient tribes-many of whom want to kill him. There are times when he almost resigns himself to death in the face of insurmountable odds. But, true to his nature, he never gives up. The People That Time Forgot is the second book in the Caspak trilogy, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Since 1918, this science fiction story has delighted and enthralled millions of readers. Preceded by The Land That Time Forgot, this second book in the Caspak trilogy will capture your imagination, by bringing to life the wild, ferocious and dangerous island that is Caspak.
I am forced to admit that even though I had traveled a long distance to place Bowen Tyler's manuscript in the hands of his father, I was still a trifle skeptical as to its sincerity, since I could not but recall that it had not been many years since Bowen had been one of the most notorious practical jokers of his alma mater. The truth was that as I sat in the Tyler library at Santa Monica I commenced to feel a trifle foolish and to wish that I had merely forwarded the manuscript by express instead of bearing it personally, for I confess that I do not enjoy being laughed at.
I have a well-developed sense of humor-when the joke is not on me.
Mr. Tyler, Sr., was expected almost hourly. The last steamer in from Honolulu had brought information of the date of the expected sailing of his yacht Toreador, which was now twenty-four hours overdue. Mr. Tyler's assistant secretary, who had been left at home, assured me that there was no doubt but that the Toreador had sailed as promised, since he knew his employer well enough to be positive that nothing short of an act of God would prevent his doing what he had planned to do. I was also aware of the fact that the sending apparatus of the Toreador's wireless equipment was sealed, and that it would only be used in event of dire necessity. There was, therefore, nothing to do but wait, and we waited.
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 with 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 terrors of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene-the apelike Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactyls soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of preglacial forests-the dragons which we considered myths until science taught us that they were the true recollections of the first man, handed down through countless ages by word of mouth from father to son out of the unrecorded dawn of humanity."
"It is stupendous-if true," I replied. "And to think that possibly they are still there-Tyler and Miss La Rue-surrounded by hideous dangers, and that possibly Bradley still lives, and some of his party! I can't help hoping all the time that Bowen and the girl have found the others; the last Bowen knew of them, there were six left, all told-the mate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson, Whitely, Brady and Sinclair. There might be some hope for them if they could join forces; but separated, I'm afraid they couldn't last long."
"If only they hadn't let the German prisoners capture the U-33! Bowen should have had better judgment than to have trusted them at all. The chances are von Schoenvorts succeeded in getting safely back to Kiel and is strutting around with an Iron Cross this very minute. With a large supply of oil from the wells they discovered in Caspak, with plenty of water and ample provisions, there is no reason why they couldn't have negotiated the submerged tunnel beneath the barrier cliffs and made good their escape."
"I don't like 'em," said the assistant secretary; "but sometimes you got to hand it to 'em."
"Yes," I growled, "and there's nothing I'd enjoy more than handing it to them!" And then the telephone-bell rang.
The assistant secretary answered, and as I watched him, I saw his jaw drop and his face go white. "My God!" he exclaimed as he hung up the receiver as one in a trance. "It can't be!"
"What?" I asked.
"Mr. Tyler is dead," he answered in a dull voice. "He died at sea, suddenly, yesterday."
The next ten days were occupied in burying Mr. Bowen J. Tyler, Sr., and arranging plans for the succor of his son. Mr. Tom Billings, the late Mr. Tyler's secretary, did it all. He is force, energy, initiative and good judgment combined and personified. I never have beheld a more dynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts and executors as a sculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed, fashioned and forced them to his will. He had been a classmate of Bowen Tyler at college, and a fraternity brother, and before that he had been an impoverished and improvident cow-puncher on one of the great Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had picked him out of thousands of employees and made him; or rather Tyler had given him the opportunity, and then Billings had made himself. Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of men as his father, had taken him into his friendship, and between the two of them they had turned out a man who would have died for a Tyler as quickly as he would have for his flag. Yet there was none of the sycophant or fawner in Billings; ordinarily I do not wax enthusiastic about men, but this man Billings comes as close to my conception of what a regular man should be as any I have ever met. I venture to say that before Bowen J. Tyler sent him to college he had never heard the word ethics, and yet I am equally sure that in all his life he never has transgressed a single tenet of the code of ethics of an American gentleman.
Ten days after they brought Mr. Tyler's body off the Toreador, we steamed out into the Pacific in search of Caprona. There were forty in the party, including the master and crew of the Toreador; and Billings the indomitable was in command. We had a long and uninteresting search for Caprona, for the old map upon which the assistant secretary had finally located it was most inaccurate. When its grim walls finally rose out of the ocean's mists before us, we were so far south that it was a question as to whether we were in the South Pacific or the Antarctic. Bergs were numerous, and it was very cold.
All during the trip Billings had steadfastly evaded questions as to how we were to enter Caspak after we had found Caprona. Bowen Tyler's manuscript had made it perfectly evident to all that the subterranean outlet of the Caspakian River was the only means of ingress or egress to the crater world beyond the impregnable cliffs. Tyler's party had been able to navigate this channel because their craft had been a submarine; but the Toreador could as easily have flown over the cliffs as sailed under them. Jimmy Hollis and Colin Short whiled away many an hour inventing schemes for surmounting the obstacle presented by the barrier cliffs, and making ridiculous wagers as to which one Tom Billings had in mind; but immediately we were all assured that we had raised Caprona, Billings called us together.
"There was no use in talking about these things," he said, "until we found the island. At best it can be but conjecture on our part until we have been able to scrutinize the coast closely. Each of us has formed a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast from Bowen's manuscript, and it is not likely that any two of these pictures resemble each other, or that any of them resemble the coast as we shall presently find it. I have in view three plans for scaling the cliffs, and the means for carrying out each is in the hold. There is an electric drill with plenty of waterproof cable to reach from the ship's dynamos to the cliff-top when the Toreador is anchored at a safe distance from shore, and there is sufficient half-inch iron rod to build a ladder from the base to the top of the cliff. It would be a long, arduous and dangerous work to bore the holes and insert the rungs of the ladder from the bottom upward; yet it can be done.
"I also have a life-saving mortar with which we might be able to throw a line over the summit of the cliffs; but this plan would necessitate one of us climbing to the top with the chances more than even that the line would cut at the summit, or the hooks at the upper end would slip.
"My third plan seems to me the most feasible. You all saw a number of large, heavy boxes lowered into the hold before we sailed. I know you did, because you asked me what they contained and commented upon the large letter 'H' which was painted upon each box. These boxes contain the various parts of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose assembling this upon the strip of beach described in Bowen's manuscript-the beach where he found the dead body of the apelike man-provided there is sufficient space above high water; otherwise we shall have to assemble it on deck and lower it over the side. After it is assembled, I shall carry tackle and ropes to the cliff-top, and then it will be comparatively simple to hoist the search-party and its supplies in safety. Or I can make a sufficient number of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance reveals."
That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's towering barrier.
"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan the summit thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would have been to waste our time in working out details of a plan to surmount those." And he jerked his thumb toward the cliffs. "It would take weeks, possibly months, to construct a ladder to the top. I had no conception of their formidable height. Our mortar would not carry a line halfway to the crest of the lowest point. There is no use discussing any plan other than the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find the beach and get busy."
Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could discern surf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw the line of breakers broken by a long sweep of rolling surf upon a narrow beach. The launch was lowered, and five of us made a landing, getting a good ducking in the ice-cold waters in the doing of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the clean-picked bones of what might have been the skeleton of a high order of ape or a very low order of man, lying close to the base of the cliff. Billings was satisfied, as were the rest of us, that this was the beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further found that there was ample room to assemble the sea-plane.
Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting, with the result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the large boxes marked "H" upon the beach, and were busily engaged in opening them. Two days later the plane was assembled and tuned. We loaded tackles and ropes, water, food and ammunition in it, and then we each implored Billings to let us be the one to accompany him. But he would take no one. That was Billings; if there was any especially difficult or dangerous work to be done, that one man could do, Billings always did it himself. If he needed assistance, he never called for volunteers-just selected the man or men he considered best qualified for the duty. He said that he considered the principles underlying all volunteer service fundamentally wrong, and that it seemed to him that calling for volunteers reflected upon the courage and loyalty of the entire command.
We rolled the plane down to the water's edge, and Billings mounted the pilot's seat. There was a moment's delay as he assured himself that he had everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over his armament and ammunition to see that nothing had been omitted. Besides pistol and rifle, there was the machine-gun mounted in front of him on the plane, and ammunition for all three. Bowen's account of the terrors of Caspak had impressed us all with the necessity for proper means of defense.
At last all was ready. The motor was started, and we pushed the plane out into the surf. A moment later, and she was skimming seaward. Gently she rose from the surface of the water, executed a wide spiral as she mounted rapidly, circled once far above us and then disappeared over the crest of the cliffs. We all stood silent and expectant, our eyes glued upon the towering summit above us. Hollis, who was now in command, consulted his wrist-watch at frequent intervals.
"Gad," exclaimed Short, "we ought to be hearing from him pretty soon!"
Hollis laughed nervously. "He's been gone only ten minutes," he announced.
"Seems like an hour," snapped Short. "What's that? Did you hear that? He's firing! It's the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and here we are as helpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand miles away! We can't do a thing. We don't know what's happening. Why didn't he let one of us go with him?"
Yes, it was the machine-gun. We would hear it distinctly for at least a minute. Then came silence. That was two weeks ago. We have had no sign nor signal from Tom Billings since.
The Son of Tarzan is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fourth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. The story begins 10 years after the conclusion of the previous novel, which places it about 1923. Tarzan (John Clayton) would be about 34 and his son, Jack, around 11. During the past decade, Alexis Paulvitch, who had escaped Tarzan at the end of the last novel, has lived a hideous life of abuse and disease among tribal people in Africa. Now he is discovered by a European ship and taken aboard. In the months that followed, Paulvitch encounters the ape, Akut, (whom Tarzan had befriended in that previous story) at one of the ship's stops. Because of Akut's interactions with Tarzan, he was unafraid of white men, and Paulvitch, unaware of the previous relationship, saw an opportunity to make some money. He took Akut to London and began displaying him publicly.
In this second addition to Edgar Rice Burroughs' epic adventures of Tarzan, listeners will find the jungle man leaving America to visit old friends in Europe. Through spirals of action, disaster, and shipwreck, we find Tarzan and a group of travelers, including his first love Jane and his new archenemy Rokoff, back in the jungle where he was raised. Encountering even more hardship in the harsh jungle, Tarzan again fights wild animals and savage tribes in the ultimate search for secret buried treasure. This sequel to Tarzan of the Apes sheds even more light on the beloved jungle hero's life, loves, and struggles fitting into human society.
Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most iconic figures in American pop culture, Tarzan of the Apes, and it is impossible to overstate his influence on entire genres of popular literature in the decades after his enormously winning pulp novels stormed the public's imagination. The Outlaw of Torn, first published in 1927, is considered one of Burroughs' best adventure yarns, a Robin Hood-esque tale of the rescue of young Prince Richard, Henry III's son, from the nefarious clutches of Sir Jules de Vac by Norman of Torn, who becomes a great swordsman and legendary outlaw.
Billy Byrne is a low class American born in Chicago's ghetto. He grows up a thief and a mugger. "Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough." He is not chivalrous nor kind, and has only meager ethics - never giving evidence against a friend or leaving someone behind. He chooses a life of robbery and violence, disrespecting those who work for a living. He has a deep hatred for wealthy society.
In The Oakdale Affair, we follow further adventures of Bridge. Bridge finds himself sheltering from a storm with a mysterious thief. The pair rescue a young woman who's run afoul of her gangster boyfriend. It seems that everybody wants the loot that the thief stole, and somewhere out there is a kidnapped young woman who is the key to it all. Bridge will have a lot of juggling to do to keep gangsters, gypsies, and private detectives in line and solve the mystery at hand.
Five years ago, he upped and left his wife without informing her. He had always felt unworthy. As a result, he decided to go and become a better man. It took him five whole years of daily hard work. When he was satisfied, he returned as a powerful and honorable man. He intended to start a family with his wife. But he got back to meet the greatest shocker of his life. He actually had a daughter!
Traversing back to the ancient Prime Martial World from modern age, Austin finds himself in a younger body as he wakes up. Yet, the young man he possesses was a miserable dimwit, what a bummer! But it doesn’t matter as his mind is sound and clear. Possessing this younger and stronger body, he will fight his way to become the God of martial arts, and rule the whole Martial World!
After spending a night with a strange man on the day before her wedding, Arianna left the country to start her life afresh. The 22-year-old Arianna Jason lived her life pleasing those she loved the most, without knowing that she was simply a prey being nurtured for the day of her ruin. Her life has tasted the butter pill of betrayal. She wants to give back to the world what she's got but how can she change her good, innocent personality to fit into a cruel society and world? Can her sweet nature be contaminated, or will she make it through, paddling on the right path?
Sandra Hill, the long-lost real heiress of the Hill family, was shunned by her own kin. Instead of embracing her, they bestowed their affection upon an impostor. They even arranged her to marry a vegetative man in place of her so-called “sister”. Sandra sneered, refusing to put up with this humiliation, cut off ties with the Hill family immediately and ran into the flash marriage with Wesley Cooper, her unconscious billionaire husband. With her incredible medical skills, she defied the odds and revived him. Little did she expect that her husband spoiled her with all his love... A medical genius, a computer prodigy, a national treasure in painting, and a racing legend... Her husband revealed her various identities, leaving the Hill family regretful. Her father came pleading, "It's Dad's fault. Please come back." Her mother wept, "Mom will protect you from now on. Please come back." Even her five brothers knelt before he, begging for forgiveness. Yet, Sandra's smile held a hint of mockery as she vowed, “Never!”
'His words weren't mere rules, but the laws.' Julia Sanchez wants to be a drama writer. But life took a strange turn for her when she was told to marry the most influential businessman, Marimo Martinez. However, there exists a problem. Marimo Martinez has been in a vegetative state for four years. His chances of survival are limited, yet Julia is forced to marry him. On the wedding day, Julia waited for Marimo to come on a wheelchair. To her surprise, Marimo came in a black tuxedo and was on the aisle, waiting for her. His features were breathtaking and stole her heart in a second. ****** "Wifey, let's make this night beautiful," Marimo said as he advanced to her. Julia gulped and slowly took backward steps. Her breath hitched when her back hit the pillar of the poster bed. Before she could run away, her petite figure landed on the soft mattress and those icy blue orbs fell onto hers. "Mr. Martinez, we don't know each other yet. Could you please—" she paused when she felt his cold fingers on her leg. The next second, she kicked him and Marimo fell to the floor with a loud bang.
A Love story turned battle of Men for one Lady. Isabella finds herself caught in a dangerous game of manipulation and ambition when she is tricked into a compromising situation by Mr. White, a powerful figure in society. Isabella manages to outsmart Mr. White and escapes his clutches, only to be left in a vulnerable state due to a spiked drink. She seeks refuge in a stranger's room, leading her to encounter Vincent, a handsome and enigmatic man who becomes entangled in her troubles. Vincent discovers Isabella's predicament and reluctantly helps her, leading to unexpected intimacy between them. Isabella's world is turned upside down as she grapples with the aftermath of her harrowing experience. Isabella faces backlash from her family and the public as scandalous rumors spread about her involvement with Mr. White. Despite the turmoil, Isabella receives a promising opportunity in the form of a new role that could potentially elevate her career but this opportunity came from the ones who are after Vincent's downfall. Isabella Signs a contract and is deceived to get her husband's signature which leads to his sudden downfall and he ended his feelings for Isabella to revenge his loss. Vincent entangled between his wealth and his feelings begins to change drastically. Isabella is been protected but she doesn't know who keeps saving her from harm while she builds a bond with Timothy again which led to great chaos amongst the rich. Vincent's psychopath Ex made a return. Feigned friendship and destroys the relationship between Vincent and Isabella. Even after they both lose their pregnancy for Vincent. Melissa, Vincent's ex remained obsessive and harmed those around Vincent. Isabella confronts her family's betrayal and manipulative tactics, especially from her mother and sister, who have their own ulterior motives. Timothy's presence adds another layer of complexity to her struggles as she navigates the treacherous waters of high society and the entertainment industry. After Isabella is rescued from Melissa's grip. She made a move that changed her fate.