[I recently purchased an old copy of The Lost World through E-bay. It was a tattered, yellowing tome with a stained leather cover and a few sketchy illustrations -- I had been under the impression that it was the edition featuring the marvelous paintings of Zdenek Burian. I was wrong. Indeed, it wasn't a proper "edition" at all. I found several blue ink marks and comments that made me believe it was what we would today call an uncorrected proof. I flipped through it and happened upon short sections that I did not recall from previous readings of Lost World -- a book I've read at least eight times. I compared these to a cheap paperback copy and realized that the standard version leaves out several long sequences from Edward Malone's famous narrative.]
[As the author of the article "Notes on the Gill-Man of the Upper Amazon," one such missing section particularly startled me. The Challenger Expedition may have stumbled across the so-called Creature from the Black Lagoon a half-century before its official discovery by Dr. Carl Maia!]
[The narrative starts after these lines from Chapter Eight of The Lost World:]
For three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine. On the longer stretches one could hardly tell as one looked ahead where the distant green water ended and the distant green archway began. The deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.
"No Indian here. Too much afraid. Curupiri," said Gomez.
"Curupiri is the spirit of the woods," Lord John explained. "It's the name for any kind of devil. The poor beggars think that there is something fearsome in this direction, and therefore they avoid it."
[The manuscript continues:]
We camped that first night several rods in from the bank of Professor Challenger's hidden tributary. The jungle noises were extraordinary, though confined to the thick canopy high overhead.
"It sounds like every bloody creature out there is being murdered," I remarked.
"Most of them are, young fella," said Roxton. "The Amazon jungle is wilder and more dangerous than any other on God's green earth."
"Oh, Roxton," said Summerlee, lighting his inevitable pipe, "you exaggerate. There are few large predatory animals in the whole of South America. The jaguar -- the anaconda -- the puma, like the one we saw yesterday --"
"Hah!" bellowed Challenger. The hirsute professor settled into a canvas chair. "Kittens and corn snakes compared to what lies ahead!"
Summerlee's goatee shook in agitation. I tried to head off another argument; it would be hard enough to sleep with all the noise.
"I say -- what kind of bird is making that ungodly whooping?" I asked innocently.
Challenger laughed again.
"Malone, even when immersed in the natural world, accompanied by an unparalleled biologist, you fail to absorb its most basic rudiments. No birds are those, but capuchin monkeys. Shockingly loud for their size, but no more so, I daresay, than their distant relatives in the Zoological Society."
"Humph," said Summerlee.
We built a fire and I found a stump to sit on. A loud booming, something like a lion's roar and something like a crocodile's grunt, echoed down the river. Gomez and the Indians popped up next to the tent and babbled in a mixture of Portuguese and the local aboriginal tongue. I smiled in the direction of the river.
"I hope that won't be caterwauling all night," I remarked. The roar came again. "What was that, Professor?"
I noticed suddenly that Challenger, Roxton, and Summerlee had lurched as one to their feet. Challenger stepped forward as if to return to the tributary, but he stopped at the edge of our small camp.
Then out of his mouth came the last words I would have expected from George Edward Challenger:
"I haven't the foggiest idea."
We took turns on watch. Roxton went first, his rifle in his hands as if he expected an enemy to rush from the forest. Lord John was the last thing I saw upon closing my eyes and the first thing I saw upon opening them. He shook me awake, and I rose, wiping away grime and sleep.
"Anything happen?" I asked.
"Nothing you could put a finger on," he answered.
I brushed down my shirt and trousers.
"But there is something," I continued. "You and Challenger and the Indians have been walking around like cats in a dog kennel all evening."
Roxton smiled crookedly.
"You spend enough time hunting, you get the feel for another hunter. You've heard of each wolf pack or bear holding its own territory? The feeling of competition extends to all rival predators, not just other bears or wolves. An animal hunter resents human Nimrods on its land just as it resents any other intruder."
I tossed more limbs on the fire. Roxton scanned the woods once more.
"I can feel something out there. But I'm damned if I know what."
I picked up a rifle of my own.
"Thank you for the campfire story," I said, "but I'm a grown boy now."
Roxton smiled, his sunburned cheeks wrinkling like wax paper.
"Maybe it will keep you on your toes, Malone. If you see or hear anything --"
"Don't you worry."
I kept my back to the fire as I stepped around the perimeter, as the moon keeps one face toward the earth. Once or twice I jumped as my own wavering shadow mimicked my scratching of an ear or shifting of rifle.
The Indians lay like fallen logs in the darkness, but I heard them mumbling. Gomez the half-breed sat tailor-fashion near them. The flames made his face a skull, but a skull that rippled and shifted like jelly.
"Indians don't want to go on," said Gomez frankly.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Curupiri," said the half-breed. "No Indian goes up this river."
"You mentioned something to that effect," I agreed.
Gomez's grin was a Death's Head in the firelight.
"I do not say all: No Indian goes up now. Before they go up -- never come back."
I grunted and continued my vigil.
Perhaps a quarter-hour before I was to wake Challenger (a chore I did not look forward to), I heard a soft coughing near the riverbank. I swung up my rifle; it might have been the short "bark" of a cougar or jaguar.
Cats, however, flow like mist over the earth. The shape I glimpsed between the trunks stood like a man. I froze, and a branch cracked in the fire, giving out and instantaneous flash of brighter light. A large pair of spectacles glinted among the trees - or were they huge, wide-set, steely eyes?
No anthropoid apes lived in South America, that much I did know. This had to be a man. In retrospect it seems absurd, but I called out, "Halt! Who goes there?"
The shape lurched off into the darkness. I was frightened, but I did not fire. I thought of poor Maple-White, diseased, weak, and dying in the trackless jungle. If Indians shunned the area, perhaps it was a lost explorer.
"Hey! Wait!" I called.
The Indians babbled behind me. My European companions added to the confusion. I sprinted into the trees after the figure. We had camped only fifty yards from the river, and the ground beneath the vast forest canopy was remarkably clear of debris.
"Malone! You fool!" called Lord John Roxton.
Professor Challenger added a stronger opinion concerning my parentage.
The bank of the river lay ahead, glowing vague and green in the moonlight. The upright figure balanced on the shore for a second, then it fell stiffly into the water.
"Wait!" I cried again.
Had the figure jumped in deliberately, or had he tripped? The image of a lost explorer simply would not leave me; perhaps, if weak and disoriented, my hypothetical Livingstone might have stumbled into the water and even now lay drowning.
I set my rifle against a tree and sloshed into the river fully clothed.
"Hallo!" I called.
I waded through the shallows, scooping the water aside ridiculously with both hands. My only hope of finding the man (if man it was) was to bump into him.
And so I did. At least, I barked my shin against something solid. I bent and plunged my hands into the black waters.
A chill born not of the cold river jolted through me. I felt a great, serrated body, plated like a man-o'-war. My fingers brushed a spiny fin as long and sharp as a lumberjack's saw. Was it a pike? A caiman?
Whatever it was, it thrashed the stream into foam at my intrusive touch. I jerked back, and pressure-waves against my legs told me of the powerful strokes that propelled the creature away.
"To call that a supreme act of idiocy would itself be incomparable redundancy," growled Challenger. "Should you exhibit a similar tendency to chase off into the night when we achieve the plateau, it would save us all time and grief did I shoot you dead."
"But it was a man," I insisted. "I'm sure. Maybe some poor lost devil like your Maple-White."
"A devil of a swimmer if he crossed the river before we reached you," said Roxton.
"Well," I said, wiping my brow with a soiled handkerchief, "I never actually saw him reach the other shore. I gave up after bumping that pike or whatever it was. It might have dragged him off, damn it."
We sat by our fire again. The Indians and half-breeds held their own powwow some yards away. Our huge black porter, Zambo, stood watch.
Summerlee poured me a mug of tea. Our skeptic was the only one of the party not to heap abuse upon me.
"I would forget this nonsense of a lost explorer. If there are men in these woods, we need look no farther than the drum-beating tribes downstream."
"We still need sleep," said Roxton. "But perhaps two of us -- and two of the Indians -- should remain on watch."
"My thoughts exactly," said Challenger.
Nothing untoward happened for the rest of the night. In the morning we broke camp, and I spotted Roxton kneeling by the riverbank. He shook his head as I called a good morning.
"I've found no footprints besides our own, but this spongy vegetable matter doesn't hold prints well."
I had grown somewhat testy during the night.
"I'm sure I saw something," I insisted.
Lord John looked up and caught me with his ice-blue eyes.
"I don't doubt you, Malone, but it was still madness to run off like that. Look here."
I knelt. Roxton pointed out a torn place in the mossy earth. Four or five claws had marked the yellow mud beneath; the paw of whatever it was had to be wide as a spade.
"What made this?" I asked.
"Not sure," said Roxton. "Either the grandsire of all caimans -- or maybe even one of Challenger's little beasties come downstream to visit. Whichever, you were lucky not to trip over it."
I thought of the "pike".
"Maybe I did."
We said no more. We waded out to the canoes, which lay at anchor out in the shallow river, and we began a day of paddling.
[The manuscript continues with "On the third day it became evident that our journey in the canoes could not last much longer," which is how all modern copies of The Lost World read immediately after the three paragraphs quoted at the beginning. Why was this section deleted? Merely for purposes of length? That was the fate of the "Dracula's Guest" section of Dracula, but who can say at this late date? At any rate, I am convinced that Malone spotted the shiny fishlike eyes of the Gill-Man in the darkness (which looked like spectacles in the firelight) and had a very close encounter with the creature in the river. That he escaped without peril indicates the fish-man displayed only curiosity about humans a century ago. His later exposures to Homo sapiens turned him into the murderous monster beloved of comics and movies. And whose fault is that?]