The Lost World Audiobook - Chapter 4 - By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Read by Dr James Gill

hello well hello first off a slight apology for the um dearth of videos at the moment but things have been somewhat busy and much to my disgruntlement the previous video that i've done here times two there's been horrific problems with the audio i'm not sure what it was occasionally there'd be horrible bursts of static through it and i'm honestly not sure what the problem was so we've actually moved over to using a new microphone so um be very interested to see what your guy's opinions of the new uh system is and we'll see how we do now are you going to sit down are you going to stand there all day because uh i can't actually read the book with you there come on sit down so chapter four of the lost world is actually uh where the story really begins to get going and we understand a little bit about where the adventure is likely to take us come on chief what are you doing you're bringing a pain in the neck now either sit down or go away i don't mind which okay sit down good point down down you're going all coming and lo the dance of the cat continues what on earth are you doing and he's gone okay with that out of the way let's begin with chapter four hardly was it shut when mrs challenger darted out from the dining room the small woman was in a furious temper she barred her husband's way like an enraged chicken in front of a bulldog it was evident that she'd seen my exit but had not observed my return you brute george she screamed you've hurt that nice young man he jerked his thumb backwards who's safe and sound behind me she was confused but not unduly so i'm so sorry i didn't see you i assure you madam that everything is all right she was confused but not and duly so i'm so sorry i didn't see you i i can assure you madam it's all quite alright but he's marked your poor face oh george what a brute you are nothing but scandals from one end of the week to the other everyone hating and making fun of you you finish my patience this ends it dirty linen he rumbled it's not a secret she cried do you suppose that the whole of the street the whole of london for that matter oh get away austin we don't want you here don't you suppose that they don't all talk about you where is your dignity you're a man who should have been regis professor at a great university with a thousand students all revering you where is your dignity george how about yours my dear no you try me too much a ruffian a common brawling ruffian that's what you've become be good jesse a roaring ranging bully that's done it stool of penance he said to my amazement he stooped picked her up and placed her sitting on a high pedestal of black marble in the angle of the hall it was at least seven feet high and so thin that she could hardly balance upon it a more absurd object than she presented cocked up there with her face convulsed with anger and her feet dangling and her body rigid for fear of upset i could not imagine let me down she demanded say please you brute george let me down this in it come into the study mr malone really sir i said looking at the lady here's mr malone pleading for you jesse say please and you can come down oh you brute please please he took her down as if she'd been a canary now you must behave yourself dear mr malone is a pressman he will have it in his rago tomorrow and sell a dozen extra copies amongst our neighbors strange story of high life you felt fairly high on that pedestal didn't you then a subtitle glimpse of a singular menage he's a foul feeder is mr malone a carry-on eater like all of his kind a swine from the devil's hurt that's it malone what you really are intolerable i said hotly he bellowed with laughter we shall have a coalition presently he boomed looking from his wife to me and puffing out his enormous chest then suddenly altering his tone excuse these frivolous family bandages mr malone i called you back for a serious purpose rather than mix you up in some domestic little pleasantry run away little woman and don't fret he placed a huge hand on each of his shoulders all that you say is perfectly true i should be a better man if i did what you advise but i shouldn't be quite george edward challenger there are plenty of better men my dear but only one gec so make the best of him he suddenly gave her a resounding kiss which embarrassed me even more than his violence had done now mr malone he continued with a great accession of dignity this way if you please we entered the room which we'd left so tumultuously 10 minutes before the professor closed the door carefully behind us and motioned me into an armchair and pushed a cigar box under my nose a real san juan colorado he said excitable people like you are better for narcotics heavens don't bite it cut and cut with reverence now lean back and listen attentively to whatever i may care say to you if a remark should occur to you you can reserve it for some more opportune time first of all as your return to my house after your most justifiable expulsion he protruded his beard and stared at me as one who challenges and invites the contradiction after as i say your well-merited expulsion the reason lay in your answer to that most officious policeman in which i seem to discern some glimmering of good feeling upon your part more at any rate i'm accustomed to associate with your profession in admitting that the fault of the incident lay with you you gave some evidence of a certain mental detachment and a breadth of view which attracted my favorable notice the subspecies of the human race to which you unfortunately belong has always been below my mental horizon your words brought you suddenly above it you swam up into my serious notice for this reason i asked you to return with me as i was minded to make you a further acquaintance you will kindly deposit your ash in the small japanese tray on the bamboo table which stands to your left elbow all this he boomed forth like a professor addressing his class he'd swung around his revolving chair as to face me and he sat all puffed up like an enormous bullfrog he laid his head back and his eyes half covered by supercilious lids now suddenly he turned himself sideways and all i could see was dangling hair with a red protruding ear he scratched among the litter of papers upon his desk now he suddenly turned himself sideways and all i could see of him was dangling hair with a red protruding ear as he scratched around amongst the litter of papers on his desk he faced me presently with what looked like a very tattered sketchbook in his hand i'm going to talk to you about south america he said no comments if you please first of all i wish you to understand that nothing i tell you is to be repeated in any public way unless i give you my express permission that permission will in all human probability never be given is that clear it's very hard surely a judicious he replaced the notebook on the table that ends it he said i wish you a very good morning no no i cried i submit to any conditions so far as i can see i don't have any choice none in the world said he well then i promise word of honor yes yes word of honor he looked to me with doubt in his insolent eyes hmm after all what do i know about your honor he said upon my word sir i said angrily you take very great liberties i've never been so insulted in my life he seemed more interested than annoyed at my outbreak round-headed he muttered brachiocephalic grey-eyed black-haired with a suggestion of irish celtic i presume yes i'm an irishman sir irish irish yes sir hmm that of course explains it let me see you have given me your promise that my confidence will be respected that confidence i may say will be far from complete but i'm prepared to give you a few indications which will be of interest in the first place you are probably aware that two years ago i made a journey to south america one which will be classical in the scientific history of the world possibly the object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of wallace and debates which could only be done by observing their reported facts under the same conditions in which they themselves had noted them if my expedition had no other results it still would have been noteworthy but a curious incident occurred to me whilst i was there which would open up an entirely fresh line of inquiry you are aware or probably in this half-educated age you are not aware that the country around some parts of the amazon is still only partially explored and a great number of tributaries some of them entirely uncharted run into the main river it provide business to visit this little known backcountry and examine its fauna which furnished me with the materials for several chapters of that great and monumental work upon zoology which will be my life's justification i was returning my work accomplished when i had the occasion to spend a night at a small indian village at a point where in a certain tributary the name and position of which i withhold opened into the main river the natives were the kokuma indians an amiable but stunted race with mental powers hardly superior to the average londoner i had affected some cures amongst them on my way up the river and had oppressed them considerably with my personality so that i was not surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return i gathered from their signs that someone had urgent need of my medical services and i followed the chief into one of his huts when i entered i found that the sufferer to whose aid i had been summoned had at that instant expired but he was to my surprise no indian but a white man indeed i may say a very white man for he was flax and head and had some characteristics of an albino he was clad in rags and very emaciated and bore every trait of prolonged hardship so far as i could understand the account of the natives he was a complete stranger to them and had come upon their village through the woods alone in the last stage of exhaustion the man's knapsack laid beside the couch and i examined julie the contents his name was written upon a tab within it maple white lake avenue detroit michigan it was a name to which i am prepared to always lift my hat it is not too much to say that it will rank level with my own when the final credit of this business becomes apportioned from the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man had been an artist and a poet in search of effects there were scraps of verse and i do not profess to be a judge of such things but they appeared to be singularly wanting in merit there were also some rather commonplace pictures of river scenery a paint box a box of coloured chalks some brushes a curved bone which lies upon my ink stand a volume of baxter's moths and butterflies a cheap revolver and a few cartridges of personal equipment he had either none or had lost it on his journey such were the total effects of this strange american bohemian i was turning away from him when i observed that something projected from the front of his rugged jacket it was this sketchbook which was dilapidated then as you see it now indeed i assure you that first folio of shakespeare could not be treated with any greater reverence than this relic has been since it came to my possession i hand it to you now and ask that you take it page by page and examine the contents he helped himself to a cigar and leaned back with a fiercely critical eye taking note which the effect this document would produce i had opened the volume with some expectation of revelation though what nature it was i could not imagine the first page was disappointing however as it contained nothing but the picture of a very fat man in a pea jacket with the legend jimmy clover on the mailboat written beneath it there followed several pages which were filled with small sketches of indians and their ways then came a picture of a cheerful and corpusculant ecclesiastic with a shovel hat sitting opposite a very thin european with the inscription lunch with friar costa ferro at rosiario studies of women and babies accounted for several more pages and there was an unbroken series of animal drawings with explanations such as manatee on sandbank turtles and their eggs black ajuti under miriam palm the mata disclosing some sort of pig-like animal and finally came to double-page studies of long-snouted and unpleasant saurians i could make nothing of it and said so it's a professor surely these are only crocodiles alligators alligators there's hardly a thing as a true crocodile in south america the distinction between them i meant i could see nothing unusual nothing that would justify what you've said he smiled serenely try the next page i was still unable to sympathize it was a full page sketch of a landscape roughly tinted in color the kind of painting which open-air artists take as a guide for a further more elaborate effort in the future it was a pale green foreground of feathery vegetation which sloped upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in colour and curiously ribbed like some basaltic formations that i've seen they extended in an unbroken wall right across the background at one point there was an isolated pyramidal rock crowned by a great tree which appeared to be separated by a cleft from the main crag behind it a blue tropical sky a thin green line of vegetation fringed the summit of the ruddy cliff well he asked it's no doubt a curious formation said i but i'm not a geologist and i you know don't have enough to say it was wonderful wonderful he repeated it is unique it is incredible no one on earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility now to the next i turned it over and gave an exclamation of surprise there was a full page picture of the most extraordinary creature that i had ever seen it was the wild dream of an opium smoker a vision of delirium the head was like that of a foul the body of a bloated lizard and the trailing tail was furnished with upturned spikes and the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe which looked like a dozen waddles placed behind each other in front of this creature was an absurd mannequin or dwarf in human form who stood staring at it well what do you think of that cried the professor rubbing his hands with an air of triumph it's monstrous it's grotesque but what made him draw such an animal oh trade gin i think oh is that the best explanation you can give is it well sir what's yours the obvious one is that the creature exists and it's actually sketched from life i should have laughed only that i had a vision of us doing another cartwheel down the passage uh no doubt said i no doubt there's one humorous and imbecile i i confess however that this tiny human figure does puzzle me if it were an indian we could set it down as evidence of some pygmy race in america but it appears to be european wearing a sun hat the professor snorted like an angry buffalo you really do test the limit he said you enlarge my view of the possible cerebral parisis mental inertia he was too absurd to make me angry indeed it was a waste of energy for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be angry all the time i consented myself with smiling wearily it struck me that the man was small said i look here he cried leaning forward and dabbing a great hairy sausage of a finger behind the animal i suppose you thought that was a dandelion or brussels sprout did you what well that vegetable is an ivory palm and they run to 50 or 60 feet don't you see that man was put there for purpose he couldn't really have stood in front of that root and lived to draw it he sketched himself to give a scale of heights he was shall we say over five feet the tree is ten times bigger which is what one would expect my word i cried then you think the beast was but by charing cross station could barely make a kennel for such a brute apart from exaggeration he's certainly a well-grown specimen said the professor complacently but i cried surely the whole experience of the human race is not set aside on account of a single sketch i turned over the leaves and ascertained that was nothing more in the book a single sketch by a wandering american artist who may have done this under hashish or in a delirium of fever or simply in order to gratify a freakish imagination you can't as a man of science defend such a position as that for the answer the professor took down a book from the shelf this is an excellent monograph by my gifted friend ray lancaster he said there is an illustration here which would interest you ah here it is the inscription beneath it runs probable appearance in life of the jurassic dinosaur stegosaurus the hind leg alone is twice as tall as a full-grown man what do you make of that he handed me the open book i stared as i looked at the picture in this reconstructed animal of the dead world there was certainly a very great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist it certainly is remarkable said i but you won't admit it is final surely it might be a coincidence or maybe this american had seen a picture of this kind and carried into his memory it would be very likely to recur to a man in a delirium very good said the professor indulgently we'll leave it at that and now i'll ask you to look at this bone he handed over one which it already described as part of the dead man's possessions it was about six inches long and thicker than my thumb with some indications of dried cartilage at one end to what known creature does that bone belong ask the professor i examined it with care and tried to recall some half-forgotten knowledge um it might be a thick collarbone i said my companion waved his hand in contemptuous depreciation human collarbone is curved this is straight there is a groove upon its surface showing that a great tendon played across it which would not have been the case with a clavicle i must confess that i don't know what it is you need not be ashamed to expose your ignorance for i don't suppose the whole of south kensington staff could give a name to it he took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill box so far as i am a judge of this human bone is an analog to the one which you hold in your hand that will give you some idea of the size of the creature you will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil specimen but recent what do you say to that surely it is an elephant he winced as if in pain don't don't talk of elephants in south america even in these days of bored schools well i interrupted any large south american animal a tape pier for example you may take it young man the time versed in the elements of my business this is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or any other creature known to zoology it belongs to a very large a very strong and by all analogy a very fierce animal which exists upon the face of the earth but does not yet come under the notice of science you are still unconvinced i am at least deeply interested then your case is not hopeless i feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere so we will patiently grope around for it we will now leave the dead american and proceed with my narrative you can imagine that i could hardly come away from the amazon without probing deeper into the matter there were indications as to the direction for which the dead traveller had come indian legends alone could have been my guide for i found some rumors of a strange land were common amongst all the ravine tribes you have no doubt heard of the kapoori never the kupuri is a spirit of the woods something terrible something malevolent something to be avoided no one can describe its shape or nature but it is a word of terror along the amazon now all tribes agree as to the direction in which the kampuri lives but it was the same direction from which the american had come something terrible lay that way and it was my business to find out what so what did you do my flippancy was all gone this massive man compelled wants attention and respect i overcame the extreme reluctance of the natives a reluctance which extends even to talk upon the subject and by judicious persuasion and gifts aided i will admit by some threats of coercion i got two of them to act as guides after many adventures which i need not describe and after travelling a distance i will not mention in a direction which i withhold we came at last to attractive country which has never been described nor indeed visited saved by my unfortunate predecessor would you kindly look at this he handed me a photograph half plate in size the unsatisfactory appearance of it is due to the fact he said that on descending the river the boat was upset and the case which contained the undeveloped films was broken with disastrous results nearly all of them were ruined an irreparable loss this is one of the few which partially escaped this explains the deficiencies or abnormalities and you will kindly accept it there is no talk of faking i am not in the mood to argue such a point the photograph was certainly off-colored and unkind critic might easily have misinterpreted that dim surface it was a dull grey landscape and as i deciphered the details along it i realized it represented a long enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance with a sloping tree-clad plane in the foreground i believe it's the same places in the painted picture said i it is the same place the professor answered i found traces of the fellow's camp now look at this it was a near review of the same scene although the photograph was extremely defective i could distinctly see the isolated tree crown pinnacle of rock which detached from the crowd i have no doubt at all well that is something gained he said we progress do we not now would you please look at the top of that rocky pinnacle do you observe something there an enormous tree but on the tree a large bird said i he handed me a lens yes i said peering through it a large bird in the tree it appears to have a considerable beak i'd say it was a pelican i cannot congratulate you or your eyesight it is not a pelican nor is it indeed a bird it may interest you to know that i succeeded in shooting that particular specimen it's the only absolute proof of my experiences and it was a thing i was able to bring away with me you have it then here at last was tangible corroboration i had it it was unfortunately lost with so much else in the same boat accident which ruined my photographs i clutched at it as it disappeared in the swirl of the rapids and part of its wing was left in my hand i was insensible when washed ashore but the miserable remnant of my superb specimen was still intact i now lay it before you from a draw he produced what seemed to be a large upper portion of the wing of a bat it was at least two feet in length though a curved bone with a membranous veil beneath it a monstrous bat i suggested nothing of the sort said the professor severely living as i do in an educated and scientific atmosphere i could not have conceived that the first principles of zoology was so little known is it possible that you do not know the elementary fact and comparative anatomy that the wing of a bird is really the forearm while the wing of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between now in this case the bone is certainly not the forearm and you can see yourself that this is a single membrane hanging upon a single bone therefore it cannot belong to a bat but if it is neither bird nor bat what is it my small stock of knowledge was exhausted i really don't know said i he opened the standard work to which he had already referred me here he said point into the picture of an extraordinary flying monster is an excellent reproduction of the dimorphodon or pterodactyl a flying reptile of the jurassic period on the next page is a diagram of the mechanism of its wing kindly compare it with the specimen in your hand a wave of amazement passed over me as i looked i was convinced there could be no getting away from it the cumulative proof was overwhelming the sketch the photographs the narrative and now the actual specimenism the evidence was complete and i said so i said so warmly for i felt the professor was an ill-used man he leaned back in his chair with drooping eyelids and a tolerant smile basking in this sudden gleam of sunshine it's just the very biggest thing i've ever heard of said i though it's my journalistic rather than my scientific enthusiasm that was roused it's colossal you are a columbus of science you've discovered a lost world i really am awfully sorry if i seem to doubt you it was also unthinkable but i understand evidence when i see it and this should be good enough for anybody the professor purred with satisfaction then sir what did you do next it was the wet season mr malone my stores were exhausted i explored some portion of this huge cliff but i was unable to find a way to scale it the pyramidal rock on which i saw and shot the pterodactyl was more accessible being something of a cragsman i did manage to get to the top of that from the summit i had a better idea of the plateau upon top of the crags it appeared to be very large neither to the east nor the west could i see any end of the vista of green capped hills below it is a swampy jungle region full of snakes insects and fever it is a natural protection to this singular country did you see any other signs of life no sir i did not but during the week the william camped at the base of the cliffs we heard some very strange noises from above but the creature the american drew how do you account for that we can only suppose that he must have made his way to the summit and seen it up there we know therefore there is a way up we know equally it must be a very difficult one otherwise the creatures would have come down and overrun the surrounding country surely that's clear but how do they come to be up there i do not think the problem is a very obscure one said the professor there can only be one explanation south america as you may have heard is a granite continent at this single point in the interior there has been in some far distant age a great sudden volcanic upheaval these cliffs i may remark are basilic and therefore plutonic an area perhaps as large as sussex has been lifted up on block with all its living contents and cut off by perpendicular precipices of hardness which defies erosion from all the rest of the continent what is the result why the ordinary laws of nature are suspended the various checks which influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or at least altered creatures survive which would otherwise disappear you observe both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are jurassic and therefore of great age in the order of life they have been artificially conserved by these strange accidental conditions but surely your evidence is conclusive you only have to lay it before the authorities so in my simplicity i'd imagined said the professor bitterly i can only tell you it was not so and that i was met at every turn by incredulity born partly from stupidity and partly from jealousy it is not my nature sir to cringe to any man nor to seek to prove a fact if my word has been doubted after the first i have not been condescended to show such cooperative proofs as i possess the subject became hateful to me and i would not speak of it when men like yourself who represent the fool's curiosity of the public came to disturb my privacy i was unable to meet them with a dignified reserve by nature i am i will admit a somewhat fiery person and under provocation i'm inclined to be violent i fear you may have remarked it i nursed my eye and was silent my wife has frequently remonstrated with me upon the subject and yet i fancy that any man of honor would still feel the same tonight however i propose to give an extreme example of control of the will over emotions i invite you to be present at the exhibition he handed me a card from his desk you will perceive that mr percival waldron a naturalist of some popular repute is announced to lecture at 8 30 at the zoological institute's hall of the recorded ages i have specially been invited to present upon the evening platform and move a vote of thanks for the lecturer while doing so i shall make it my business with infinite tact and delicacy to throw out a few remarks which may arouse the interest of the audience and cause some of them to desire to go more deeply into the matter nothing contentious you understand but only an indication that there are greater depths beyond i shall hold myself strongly in leash and see whether by this self-restraint i can attain a more favorable result and i may come i asked gingerly why surely he answered cordially he had an enormously genial manner which was almost as overpowering as his violence his smile of benevolence was a wonderful thing when his cheeks would suddenly bunch into two red apples between his half close eyes and his great black beard by all means come it will be a comfort to me to know that i have at least one ally in the hall however insufficient and ignorant of the subject he may be i fancy there will be a large audience for waldron though an absolute charlatan has a considerable popular following now mr malone have given you rather more of my time than i had intended the individual must not monopolize that which is meant for the world i shall be pleased to see you at the lecture tonight in the meantime you will understand that no public use is to be made of any of the material that i have given to you but mr mcardle my news editor you know he will want to know what i've done tell him what you like you can say among other things that if he sends anyone else to intrude upon me i shall call upon him with a riding whip but i leave it to you that nothing of this will appear in print very good then to the zoological institute's hall at 8 30 tonight i had a last impression of red cheeks a blue rippling beard and intolerant eyes as he waved me out of the room end of chapter four well that's completed the first magazine of the strand and we're now going to move on next time to the second volume and see what happens in the great hall i hope you've been enjoying these stories so far and i'd be very grateful if you could like the video and also potentially subscribe to the channel and you'll get an update when the next chapter is available on that i'll say good night take [Music] you