"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - People That Time Forgot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

in, high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked
down through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me.
The hot, humid atmosphere of Caspak condenses as it is fanned
by the cold Antarctic air-currents which sweep across the
crater's top, sending a tenuous ribbon of vapor far out across
the Pacific. Through this the picture gave one the suggestion
of a colossal impressionistic canvas in greens and browns and
scarlets and yellows surrounding the deep blue of the inland
sea--just blobs of color taking form through the tumbling mist.

I dived close to the cliffs and skirted them for several miles
without finding the least indication of a suitable landing-place;
and then I swung back at a lower level, looking for a clearing
close to the bottom of the mighty escarpment; but I could find
none of sufficient area to insure safety. I was flying pretty
low by this time, not only looking for landing places but watching
the myriad life beneath me. I was down pretty well toward the
south end of the island, where an arm of the lake reaches far
inland, and I could see the surface of the water literally
black with creatures of some sort. I was too far up to recognize
individuals, but the general impression was of a vast army of
amphibious monsters. The land was almost equally alive with
crawling, leaping, running, flying things. It was one of the
latter which nearly did for me while my attention was fixed
upon the weird scene below.

The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of
the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a
most terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have
been fully eighty feet long from the end of its long, hideous
beak to the tip of its thick, short tail, with an equal spread
of wings. It was coming straight for me and hissing frightfully--
I could hear it above the whir of the propeller. It was coming
straight down toward the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it
have it right in the breast; but still it came for me, so that
I had to dive and turn, though I was dangerously close to earth.

The thing didn't miss me by a dozen feet, and when I rose, it
wheeled and followed me, but only to the cooler air close to
the level of the cliff-tops; there it turned again and dropped.
Something--man's natural love of battle and the chase, I presume--
impelled me to pursue it, and so I too circled and dived.
The moment I came down into the warm atmosphere of Caspak, the
creature came for me again, rising above me so that it might
swoop down upon me. Nothing could better have suited my armament,
since my machine-gun was pointed upward at an angle of about degrees
and could not be either depressed or elevated by the pilot.
If I had brought someone along with me, we could have raked the
great reptile from almost any position, but as the creature's
mode of attack was always from above, he always found me ready