England -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Science fiction
Then I introduced them to Victory, and told them that she was queen of
England. They thought, at first, that I was joking. But when I had
recounted my adventures and they realized that I was in earnest, they
believed me.
They told me that they had followed me inshore when I had not returned
from the hunt, that they had met the men of the elephant country, and
had had a short and one-sided battle with the fellows. And that
afterward they had returned to the launch with a prisoner, from whom
they had learned that I had probably been captured by the men of the
lion country.
With the prisoner as a guide they had set off up-river in search of me,
but had been much delayed by motor trouble, and had finally camped
after dark a half mile above the spot where Victory and I had spent the
night. They must have passed us in the dark, and why I did not hear the
sound of the propeller I do not know, unless it passed me at a time
when the lions were making an unusually earsplitting din upon the
opposite side.
Taking the antelope with us, we all returned to the launch, where we
found Taylor as delighted to see me alive again as Delcarte had been. I
cannot say truthfully that Snider evinced much enthusiasm at my rescue.
Taylor had found the ingredients for chemical fuel, and the distilling
of them had, with the motor trouble, accounted for their delay in
setting out after me.
The prisoner that Delcarte and Snider had taken was a powerful young
fellow from the elephant country. Notwithstanding the fact that they
had all assured him to the contrary, he still could not believe that we
would not kill him.
He assured us that his name was Thirty-six, and, as he could not count
above ten, I am sure that he had no conception of the correct meaning
of the word, and that it may have been handed down to him either from
the military number of an ancestor who had served in the English ranks
during the Great War, or that originally it was the number of some
famous regiment with which a forbear fought.
Now that we were reunited, we held a council to determine what course
we should pursue in the immediate future. Snider was still for setting
out to sea and returning to Pan-America, but the better judgment of
Delcarte and Taylor ridiculed the suggestion—we should not have lived a
fortnight.
To remain in England, constantly menaced by wild beasts and men equally
as wild, seemed about as bad. I suggested that we cross the Channel and
ascertain if we could not discover a more enlightened and civilized
people upon the continent. I was sure that some trace of the ancient
culture and greatness of Europe must remain. Germany, probably, would
be much as it was during the twentieth century, for, in common with
most Pan-Americans, I was positive that Germany had been victorious in
the Great War.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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