We had to go quite a bit farther than usual before we could surround a little
bunch of antelope, and as I was helping drive them, I saw a fine red deer a
couple of hundred yards behind me. He must have been asleep in the long grass,
for I saw him rise and look about him in a bewildered way, and then I raised my
gun and let him have it. He dropped, and I ran forward to finish him with the
long thin knife, which one of the men had given me; but just as I reached him,
he staggered to his feet and ran on for another two hundred yards—when I
dropped him again. Once more was this repeated before I was able to reach him
and cut his throat; then I looked around for my companions, as I wanted them to
come and carry the meat home; but I could see nothing of them. I called a few
times and waited, but there was no response and no one came. At last I became
disgusted, and cutting off all the meat that I could conveniently carry, I set
off in the direction of the cliffs. I must have gone about a mile before the
truth dawned upon me—I was lost, hopelessly lost.
The entire sky was still completely blotted out by dense clouds; nor was there
any landmark visible by which I might have taken my bearings. I went on in the
direction I thought was south but which I now imagine must have been about due
north, without detecting a single familiar object. In a dense wood I suddenly
stumbled upon a thing which at first filled me with hope and later with the
most utter despair and dejection. It was a little mound of new-turned earth
sprinkled with flowers long since withered, and at one end was a flat slab of
sandstone stuck in the ground. It was a grave, and it meant for me that I had
at last stumbled into a country inhabited by human beings. I would find them;
they would direct me to the cliffs; perhaps they would accompany me and take us
back with them to their abodes—to the abodes of men and women like ourselves.
My hopes and my imagination ran riot in the few yards I had to cover to reach
that lonely grave and stoop that I might read the rude characters scratched
upon the simple headstone. This is what I read:
HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET
ENGLISHMAN
KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS
10 SEPT., A.D. 1916
R. I. P.
Tippet! It seemed incredible. Tippet lying here in this gloomy wood! Tippet
dead! He had been a good man, but the personal loss was not what affected me.
It was the fact that this silent grave gave evidence that Bradley had come this
far upon his expedition and that he too probably was lost, for it was not our
intention that he should be long gone. If I had stumbled upon the grave of one
of the party, was it not within reason to believe that the bones of the others
lay scattered somewhere near?
Chapter 9
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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