Out of Time's Abyss
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter I
This is the tale of Bradley after he left Fort Dinosaur upon the
west coast of the great lake that is in the center of the island.
Upon the fourth day of September, 1916, he set out with four
companions, Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet, to search along
the base of the barrier cliffs for a point at which they might
be scaled.
Through the heavy Caspakian air, beneath the swollen sun, the
five men marched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep
in lush, jungle grasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now
across open meadow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging
into dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous
ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above
their heads.
About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over
them moved and swung and soared the countless forms of Caspak's
teeming life. Always were they menaced by some frightful thing
and seldom were their rifles cool, yet even in the brief time
they had dwelt upon Caprona they had become callous to danger,
so that they swung along laughing and chatting like soldiers on
a summer hike.
"This reminds me of South Clark Street," remarked Brady, who had
once served on the traffic squad in Chicago; and as no one asked
him why, he volunteered that it was "because it's no place for
an Irishman."
"South Clark Street and heaven have something in common, then,"
suggested Sinclair. James and Tippet laughed, and then a hideous
growl broke from a dense thicket ahead and diverted their
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