The Lost World Audiobook - Chapter 6 - By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Read by Dr James Gill

[Music] hello so it's been a little while since we've had the opportunity to uh revisit the lost world but i've managed to find a little bit of time so let's see if we can get on with chapter six and as if and by magic his launch of appears now i'll be honest i did try to film this the other day and this one was a thorough pain in the neck sufficient everything had to be abandoned and a dreamy turner apparently you won't sit heady okay but amid these apparently we need to start again so his lordship had not reached his preferred seating position before we started now can we begin once more sire thank you no come on sit down just sit down okay with the cat repositioned let's try again chapter five no chapter six of the lost world well i'm going to start without you what are you going to do apparently the cat says no so let's begin and see if he decides to join us formally chapter six i was the flail of the lord lord john roxton and i turned down vigo street together and through the dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery at the end of a long drab passage my new acquaintance pushed open a door and turned on an electric switch a number of lamps shone through tinted shades bathing the whole great room before us in a ruddy radiance standing in the doorway and glancing around me i had a general impression of extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of masculine virility everywhere there mingled the luxury of a wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of the bachelor rich furs and strange iridescent mats from some oriental bazaar were scattered upon the floor pictures and prints which even to my unpracticed eyes could recognize as being of great price and rarity hung thick upon the walls sketches of boxes of ballet girls and racehorses alternated with sensoris fragonard's marshall geridae and dreamy turners but amid these varied ornaments they were scattered the trophies which brought back strongly to my recollection the fact that lord roxton was one of the great all-round sportsmen and athletes of his day a dark blue oar crossed with a cherry pink one above his mantelpiece spoke of the old oxonian and leander man while foils and boxing gloves above and below them were the tools of a man who'd won supremacy with each like a dado around the room was the jutting line of splendid heavy game heads the best of their sword from every quarter of the world and with the rare white rhinoceros of the lady enclave drooping its supercilious lip above them all in the center of the rich red carpet was a black and cold louis quince table a lovely antique now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and scars and cigar stumps on it stood a silver tray of smoker balls with a burnished spirit stand from which an adjacent siphon my silent host proceeded to discharge two high glasses having an indicated an armchair to me and placed my refreshment near it he handled me a long smooth havana then seating himself opposite me he looked me long and fixedly with his strange twinkling reckless eyes eyes of a cold blue light the color of a glacier lake through the thin haze of my cigar smoke i noted the details of the face which was already familiar to me from many photographs the strongly curved nose the hollow worn cheeks the dark ruddy hair thin on top and crisp viral mustaches the small aggressive tuft upon his projecting chin there was something of napoleon iii something of don quixote and yet something which was the essence of the english country gentleman keen alert an open-air lover of dogs and horses his skin was a rich flowerpot red from sun and wind his eyebrows were tufted and overhanging which gave those naturally cold eyes an almost ferocious aspect an impression which was increased by his strong and thorough brow in figure he was spare but very strongly built indeed for hit often proved that there were few men in england capable of more sustained exertions his height was little over six feet but he seemed shorter on account of a peculiar rounding to the shoulders such was the famous lord john roxton as he sat opposite me biting hard upon his cigar and watching me steadily and a long and embarrassing silence well he said it last we've gone and done it young philharmonic this curious phrase he pronounced it as if it were all one word young fella milad yes we've taken the jump you and i i suppose now when you went into that room there's no such notion in your head what not a thought of it same here not a thought of it and here we are up to our next in the terrain why i've only been back three weeks from uganda and taken a place in scotland signed the lease and all pretty goings-on what how does it hit you well it's it's in the main line for my gazette i suppose i'm you know in the business i'm a journalist for the gazette of course you said so when you took it on by the way i've got a small job for you if you could help me with pleasure don't mind taking risk do what is the risk well it's ballinger he's the risk have you heard of him no why young fella where have you lived sir john ballinger's best gentleman jock in the north country i could hold him over the flat at my best but over the jumps he's my master well it's open secret that when he's not training he drinks hard striking an average he calls it he got delirium on tuesday and has been raging like a devil ever since his room is up above this the doctor says all up with the old deer unless someone gets some food into him but as he lies in bed with a revolver on his coverlet and swears he'll put six of the best through anyone who goes near him there's been a bit of a strike amongst the serving men it's a hard nail is jack in a dead shot too but you can't leave a grand national winner to die like that what what do you mean to do then i asked well my idea was that you and i could rush him he may be dozing and the worst he could do is maybe wing one of us and the other could then have him if we get his bolster cover round his arms and then telegram up her stomach pump we'll give the old deer a supper of his life it was a rather desperate business to come into suddenly on one day's work i don't think i'm a particularly brave man i have an irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible than they are on the other hand i was brought up with a horror of cowardice and with the terror of such stigma i dare say that i could throw myself off over a precipice like the hun in the history books if my courage to do it were questioned and yet it would surely be pride and fear rather than courage which would be my inspiration therefore although every nerve in my body shrank from the whiskey maddened figure that i pictured in the room above i still answered in as careless a voice as i could command that i was ready to go some further remark from lord roxton about danger only made me more irritable talking about it won't make it any better i said come let's go i rose from my chair and he from his and with a little confidential chuckle of laughter he patted me two or three times on the chest finally pushing me back into my chair all right sunny lad you'll do you'll do he said i looked up in surprise i saw after jack ballinger myself this morn it blew a hole in the skirt of my kimono bless his shaky old hand but we got the jacket on him and he'll be all right in a week i say young fella i hope you don't mind what you see between you and me close tiled i took this south american business mighty serious thing and if i have a power with me i want a man i can bank on so i slide you down and i'm bound to say you came out well of it you see it's all up to you and me for this old sumly man want dry nursing from the start by the way are you bringing chancellor malone who expects to get his rugby camp for ireland as a reserve perhaps i thought i remembered your face why i was there when you did that try against richmond as the finest swerving run as i saw the whole season i never miss a rugged match if i can help it but it's the man this game we have left well i didn't ask you in just to talk sport we've got to fix our business here's the sailings for the first page of the times there's a booth boat for para next week and if you and the press professor can work it i think we should take it what very good i'll fix it with him now what about your outfit uh i think my paper will see to that hmm can you shoot about an average territorial standard my word as bad as that it's the last thing you young fellas think of learning you're bees without sting so far as looking after the hive goes you'll look silly one of those days when someone comes along and sneaks away the honey but you'll need to hold your gun straight in south america for unless our friend professor is a madman or a liar we may see some queer things before we get back what gun have you he crossed to an open cupboard and as he threw it open i caught a glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels like the pipes of an organ i'll see if i can spare you something from my own battery he said one by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles opening and shutting them with a snap and a clang and then patting them as he put them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her children this is a bland point 577 excite express he said i got that big fellow with it he glanced up at the white rhinoceros 10 more yards and it added me to his collection i hope i know you're i hope you know you're gordon that he's the poet of the horse and the gun and that man can handle both hmm now here's a useful tool .470 telescopic sight double ejector point blank up to 350. that's the rifle i used years ago as a against the peruvian slave i was the flail of the lord up in those parts i might tell you although you won't find it in a blue book there are times young fellow milad when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice or you'll never feel clean again that's why i made a little war on my own declared it myself wasted myself ended it myself each of those nicks is for a slave murderer good rather than what that big one is for pedro lopez king of the ball i killed him in a backwater on the potomac river now here's something to do for you he took out a beautiful brown silver rifle well rubbered at the stock sharply sighted five cartridges the clip you can trust your life to that he handed it to me and closed the door to his ogre cabinet by the way he continued coming back to his chair what do you know of this professor challenger honestly i never saw until today well neither did i it's funny she would both sail under sealed orders from a man we don't know seemed a bit of an uppish old bird his brothers of science don't seem too fond of me either hmm how came you to take an interest in this affair i told him shortly my experience was the morning and he listened intently then he drew out a map of south america and laid it on the table i believe every single word he said to you was the truth he said earnestly and mind you i have something to go on when i speak like that south america is a place i love and i think if you take it right through from darren to the fuego it's the grandest richest most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet people don't know it yet and don't realize what it may become i've been up and down it from end to end and had two dry seasons in those very parts as i told you when i spoke of the war i made on the slave dealers well when i was there i had some yarns of the same kind traditions of indians and the like but something behind them no doubt the more you know of that country young fella the more you'll understand anything is possible anything there are just some narrow water lanes along along which folk travel and outside that it's all darkness now down there in the motto grande he swept his cigar over part of the map or up in this corner where the three countries meet nothing would surprise me as that chap said tonight there are 50 000 miles of waterway running through the forest it's very near the size of europe you and i could stand as far away from each other as scotland is from constantinople and yet each of us will be in the same great brazilian forest man has just made a track here and a scrape there in that maze while the river rises and falls at the best of 40 feet over half the country is a morass you can't pass over why shouldn't something new and something wonderful lie in such a country and why shouldn't we be the men to find it besides he added with his queer gaunt face shining in delight there's a sporting risk in every mile of it i'm like an old golf ball i've had all the white paint knocked off me long ago life can whack me about now and it can't leave a mark but a sporting risk young fella that's the salt of existence that's what makes life worth living again we're all getting a deal too soft dull and comfy give me great wastelands wide spaces with a gun in my fist and something to look for that's worth finding i'm your man i've tried war and steeple chasing and airplanes but this hunting of beasts that looks like a lobster supper dream is a brand new sensation he chuckled with glee at the prospect perhaps i've dwelt too long upon this new acquaintance but he is to be my comrade for many a day so i've tried to set him down as i first saw him with his quaint personality and his queer little tricks of speech and thought it was only the need of getting into the account of my meeting which drew me at last from his company i left him seated amid his pink radiance oiling the lock of his favorite rifle whilst he still chuckled to himself of the thought of the adventures that awaited us it was very clear to me that if any dangers lay before us and i could not in all england have had a cooler head or braver spirit with which to share them that night as weary as i was after the wonderful happenings of the day i sat late with mcardle the news editor explaining to him the whole situation which he thought important enough to bring next morning before the notice of sir george beaumont the chief it was agreed that i should write home some full account of my adventures in the shape of successive letters to mr mcardle and these should either be edited for the gazette as they arrived or held back to be published later according to the wishes of professor challenger since we could not yet know what conditions he might attach to those directions which would show us to the unknown land in response to a telephone inquiry we received nothing more definite than a formulation against the press ending up with a remark that if we would notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us the moment of starting a second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all save a plaintiff bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse a third attempt later in the day provoked a terrific crash and a subsequent message from the central exchange that professor challenger siva had been shattered after that we abandoned any attempt at communication and now my patient readers i can address you directly no longer from now onwards if indeed in any continuation this narrative should ever reach you it can only be through the paper with which i represent in the hands of the editor i leave this account of the events which have led up to one of the most remarkable expeditions of all time so that if i never return to england there should be some record as of how the fair came about i'm writing these last lines in the saloon of the booth of the lineup francesca and they will go back to the pilot in the keeping of mr mcardle let me draw one last picture before i close my notebook the picture which is the last memory of the old country which i bear away with me it is a wet foggy morning in late spring a thin cold rain is falling three shining macintoshed figures or walking down the key making for the gangplank of a great liner from which a blue peter is flying in front of them a porter bushes a trolley piled high with trunks wraps and gun cases professor summerley a long melancholy figure walks with dragging steps and drooping head as one who's already profoundly sorry for himself lord roxton steps bristly and his thin eager face beams forth with between his hunting cap and his muffler as for myself i'm glad to have got the bustling days of preparation and the pangs of leaf taking behind me and i have no doubt that i show it my bearing suddenly just as we reach the vessel there is a shout behind us it is professor challenger who's promised to see us off he runs after us a puffing red-faced irratible figure no thank you he says i should so much prefer not to go on board i have only a few words to say to you and they can very well be said where you are i beg you do not imagine that i'm in any way indebted to you for making this journey i would have you understand that it is a matter of perfect indifference to me and i refuse to entertain the most remote sense of personal obligation truth is truth and nothing you can report can affect it in any way though it may excite the emotions and allow the curiosity of a number of very ineffectual people my directions for your instruction and guidance are in the sealed envelope you will open it when you reach the town upon the amazon which is called manos and not until the date and hour marked upon the outside have i made myself clear i leave the strict observations of my conditions entirely to your honor no mr malone i will place no restrictions upon your correspondence since the ventilation of facts is the object of your journey but i demand that you shall give no particulars as to your exact destinations and that nothing be actually published until you return goodbye sir you've done something to mitigate my feelings for the loaths and profession of which you unhappily belong goodbye lord roxton science as i understand as a sealed book to you but you may congratulate yourself upon the hunting field which awaits you you will no doubt have the opportunity to describe in field how you brought down the rocketing dimorphodon and goodbye to you also professor sumley if you are still capable of self-improvement of which i'm frankly unconvinced you'll surely return to london a wiser man so he turned upon his heel and a minute later from the deck i could see his short squat figure bobbing about in the distance as he made his way back to his train well we are well down the channel now there's the last bell for letters and it's goodbye to the pilot we'll be down hull on the old trail from now on god bless all we leave behind and send us safely back end of chapter six things are probably getting started now um yeah be interesting to see whether or not the ball jumps straight to the amazon now or if you've got to endure a sea voyage with them have to wait and see you next time take care [Music] you