It was the drawing, this one of the story character, Lord Roxton, not Douglas Baxter, but exactly the same features, same rifle held aloft. This one was far more stylized for the printing, but there was no doubt the similarities were breathtaking.
Ben turned back inside the book’s cover board to the inscription by Arthur Conan Doyle.
“To my good friend, Benjamin Cartwright — your experiences ignited my imagination, and this is the result.” He rubbed his chin. “Is that what Doyle really meant; that over a 100 years ago, Benjamin had actually done what he had described in his work of fiction?”
“Yes, yes, of course he did,” Dan urged. “And there’s your proof, right in front of you.”
“I don’t know.” Ben noticed a folded piece of paper in the notebook and flattened it out. He looked at it momentarily, before snorting softly. “And what would a modern zoologist make of this?” He slid it towards Jenny.
She peered down at the drawing, her lips curving up at the corners. It was a magnificent rendition of a jungle in the rain, the penciled shading managing to impart dripping fern fronds and vines. But they were just to frame the main subject — through a tunnel-like portal of jungle could be observed a dead creature lying in the mud.
Jenny read the ancient notations. “Unknown dinosaurian.” She looked up slowly. “Un-bloody-known dinosaurian.” She grinned at Dan. “If you guys do go, you damn well count me in.”
“I’m in too,” said Steve.
“Me too,” Andrea said. “This adventure will make me famous.”
Emma raised her hand and grinned sheepishly at Ben. “Don’t know about being famous, but I’d die curious if I was dumb enough to say no.”
“Ah Jesus Christ.” Ben sighed and leaned back. “This could get us all killed. I don’t want to be responsible for —”
“I speak for myself, and am responsible for myself,” Jenny said. “Ben, if there’s even a one in a million chance of this being real, you need to check it out. And if, as you said, there is only a small window every half a generation, then what do we do? Wait until we’re all in our forties before finally making up our minds?”
She folded her arms. “One more thing, the Pemon still exist, are still used as guides, and I can arrange for them to be with us.”
“It’s all lining up, buddy.” Dan’s smile widened.
Emma pushed her dark hair back off her forehead. “The wide-eyed kid in me says, go, go, go! But the adult, the one who’s supposed to be sensible, is asking, do we really think we can find this plateau with just a few notes?”
Ben leaned forward to carefully flip pages again, first of the old edition of the Lost World. He came to a hand-drawn map. Then he did the same to the notebook. “A few notes, and this.”
There was a map, hand-drawn, but surprisingly detailed. There were even longitude and latitude coordinates. He turned a few more pages. “And this, and this, and this.” There were more maps, just as detailed as the first.
“Oh my God,” Jenny breathed. “This can work. It can really work.”
Ben nodded. “The ones in the novel and my ancestor’s notebook aren’t the same. Maybe Doyle decided to keep some things secret, huh?”
“Ho-ooo-ley shit,” Steve said with a broad grin. “He knew it was real.”
Ben sat forward and clasped his fingers together. “If we go, we run this like a military operation. Agreed?”
Everyone enthusiastically agreed.
“I’ve been on jungle missions before; it’s damn hard work. We’re gonna need a plan, and some serious kit.”
“The kit I can take care of,” Dan said. “You just give me a shopping list.”
“I’ll help,” Steve said.
“Me too,” said Emma.
“I’ll make contact with my friends in Venezuela and let them know we’ll need local guides and transportation.”
Andrea smiled. “And I better call my agent. This is gonna be fun.”
Ben sighed and put his hand on the book. “And I need to study this and draw out anything and everything we need to know.”
The group broke up quickly, each excited and eager to get their allotted tasks in motion.
Ben climbed to his room, sat on the bed, and kicked off his shoes. He punched both pillows into a single mound and stuffed them behind his head and shoulders, and then opened the notebook to read.
As he read, the drawings, the words, and descriptions all began to transport him back over a hundred years to that fateful expedition of 1908.
CHAPTER 13
The torrential rain had finally eased back to a greasy drizzle. Benjamin Cartwright raised a hand to his small party. The smell of death was growing stronger. Last night’s storm had passed over, but the ever-present cloud cover remained.
The stories had been true; the once in a half-generation wet season was here, and that meant in this area apparently the sun never shone much above a twilight, rendering everything damp, humid, and like a bottled greenhouse covered in shade-cloth.
They had been following a game trail for days, and still were, even though he knew it was a dangerous ploy in that the smell of carrion usually attracted large predators. But they had no choice. The jungle here was near impenetrable, and it was either hack, hour by hour, through the green morass, moving ahead at only a few feet every hour, or burrow along readymade caves.
In amongst the constant drip of water on large broad leaves, Cartwright overheard the Pemon guides muttering their discontent — coming this far had meant entering lands that were taboo to them. He was now leading them closer to a sacred plateau that rose over a thousand feet from the floor of the jungle and up into the clouds.
It was his destination, and home he had been told of a civilization older than the Egyptian pyramids, and a place of flora and fauna not seen since the dawn of time. As a rising archeologist, he’d be famous overnight. But it wasn’t fame or riches that drove him forward, but a curiosity that had burned within him since he was just a small boy.
Cartwright looked up at the cloud cover. He had wanted to bring a hot air balloon to traverse the jungle and also raise them to the plateau. But the cloud would make navigation impossible, plus the fact that for some strange reason his compass had gone haywire.
He sighed. If they ever found a way up to this secret land, they’d have to climb hand over hand. He’d never done that before but would meet that challenge when it came.
Cartwright rested beneath the huge trunks of trees that defied any known classification — their massive trunks were covered in hair, or the bark that coated them was like wooden scales. They were close; he knew it.
He pulled out his notebook to look briefly at the maps he had made — all crude and sketched from conversations he had with the Pemon village elders. What he sought was something that was at the foot of a sacred tabletop mountain, or tepui — they were called various names from sky lands, houses of the gods, and cloud kingdoms, and all of them were taboo. The unique geological formations were massive flat-topped mountains and were composed of sheer blocks of Precambrian quartz arenite sandstone that rose abruptly from the jungle, and for some that was a half a mile into the air.
But the one he searched for was supposedly so tall it was hidden in a thick cloud cover that constantly masked its roof. The massive vertical walls sealed off whatever was up there from life on the ground, and also vice versa.
Climbing them was said to be impossible, but paradoxically, it was strictly forbidden to even try. According to the Pemon, legend had it that generations ago, a young, foolish man had climbed up, and within a day, his remains were flung back down, missing limbs and head. So, as far as the Pemon were concerned, whatever was up there, having it cut off from them was a good thing.