I don't own anything written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Enjoy.
Trapped in Caprona.
Bowen Tyler and Lisa Clayton looked on in horror as the water from the river bubbled madly like a witches' cauldron and she worked on a volatile potion while the U-33 exploded; neither of them needed to really question what had happened to the German submarine, with the lava from the volcano spilling into the water or hot gases seeping into the water from under the surface which the U-Boat hadn't detected when they'd first travelled into the island's interior from the arctic sea, the temperature within the submarine would have been like a boiling pot of water steaming vegetables or meat. The heat on the submarine alone would have been torturous, but if they'd dived then it would be impossible for them to get out.
Tyler just could not understand what had possessed Von Shoenvorts or Dietz to take the submarine away from Caprona; the German captain had seemed to be an intelligent man and he was smart enough to know that the heat would have created fires inside the submarine and turned the air unbearable and there would have been electrical fires which would have made navigating the river tunnel virtually impossible.
But that explosion… Tyler had a few ideas about what could have happened to make the submarine explode like that; he believed the heat from the river would have created an electrical fire in the engine room, and it would have sparked the diesel engines which the U-33 was still running on the surface before the fire spread to the torpedoes, but he couldn't be sure.
All of those people; Olson, Bradley (had Bradley decided to leave with the Germans after seeing the state of the river and the island, or had he decided to stay and try to wait for him and Lisa? Tyler would never know until he died and crossed over to the other side), Von Shoenvorts, the German submarine captain responsible for the sinking of the SS Montrose before this whole mess started but quickly became a trusted ally who was both thoughtful, intelligent and yet brave and resourceful, and the rest of his crew. Some of them had been mildly hostile, but after some time the British ratings had become friendly with the German sailors, to say nothing of Sinclair and the others who'd accompanied Tyler and Lisa further up steam and well away from the fort where they'd built around a lake of crude unrefined oil.
None of them deserved to die.
In fact, Tyler found himself wishing that Sinclair and the others who'd come with him and Lisa had survived and that the volcano had erupted before the Sto-Lu attacked them. But they weren't, and now with the simultaneous loss of the U-33 and her German crew and the few sailors from the Montrose who'd survived the attack, he and Lisa were now alone.
Tyler's breath caught in his throat as he slowly started to realise what he and Lisa were now destined to become…
The full scale of the realisation that he and Lisa were both stranded here was settling like an icy cloud over his heart, Tyler felt Lisa's hand on his arm, squeezing it so tightly her fingernails were digging into his skin. "Bowen, what're we going to do now?"
Her voice snapped him out of his whirling thoughts and he turned to her and glanced around themselves quickly. Between the river which was bubbling away madly and had quickly covered the low shape of the U-Boat and the fires behind them, Tyler knew they were sitting ducks. They had to get out of here quickly before the lava reached them or a panicking dinosaur or caveman sent them off into the river. "Quickly, we've got to try to find some higher ground, well away from the lava."
As they left the bank of the river, Lisa shook her head, "We might not find any higher ground."
"I know, but we need to get away from the river. That lava was behind us and there were a number of fires, besides there has to be some ground which won't be touched," Tyler said as he scanned the ground looking for signs of lava; he could hear the roars and cries of the dinosaurs deeper in the jungle and in the air, but he doubted they were a threat to attack him or Lisa. The same went for the cavemen tribes on the island; both the Bo-Lu and the Sto-Lu and anyone else here like the Ga-Lu was unlikely to attack them at this point, but that small group of Ga-Lu were happy enough to attack them when the volcano just erupted.
"Do you think there might be survivors from the U-Boat? Someone could have been heading for the fort, but when the volcano erupted they ran off and got lost?"
Tyler hadn't considered that, but he wasn't sure if it was likely or not. Would the U-33 still have left if they'd known one of their crew was gone? He knew that while he had been an ally, Von Shoenvorts had still been a German captain and he had proven that he could be treacherous but he had been intelligent enough to see there was more sense in allying his crew with the British survivors of the Montrose.
"I dunno," he replied.
"It's still possible though," Lisa refused to let go of the idea, but they both knew it would be hard to prove considering how vast Caprona was. "They would have been scared by the volcano."
"So was I, Lisa. I wasn't expecting it to erupt like that and to cause so much damage so quickly."
"Yes, I know. I wasn't expecting it to be as violent either," Lisa's voice choked off into a scream when a dinosaur appeared overhead, bellowing in rage and fear as the lava slowly rolled past it. The giant prehistoric animal didn't notice them and luckily it was too far for its tail to be used as a weapon to throw them flying into the path of another fire. "There was no warning, either. It's just another mystery of this place that makes no sense."
The two came across a large clearing with a number of rocks scattered over the landscape, but there was no sign of any lava or fires except in the distance.
"Is this place a good place to stay until the eruption is over?" Lisa asked.
Tyler looked around for a moment, he would have preferred something a bit bigger or further away, but this was the best they could do right now. "It's going to have to be," He led her to the rocks and they clambered up and they sat down on the top. From where they were sitting, they could see the orange-red glow of the fires and the lava as it spilt everywhere like the giant branches of a river of fire.
For a long time, while the couple were silent, their minds awash with what they had just seen and what could have happened to make the crew just leave like that. Finally, Lisa sighed, "That's it. We're trapped."
Tyler didn't say anything, but he knew she was right. The submarine had been the only way they had of leaving this place. "You don't know that, Lisa; we could build a hot-air balloon-."
Lisa looked at him; he could only just see her expression and her face. "What do we use for an envelope?"
"Animal skins, perhaps?" Tyler replied, but as he said that he became uncertain. Where would they tan the materials and how would they make it into a balloon? It sounded ridiculous from where they were, but they knew there were minerals and oil in Caprona, who knew what they could find later?
Lisa actually seemed to find the idea attractive. "That might work, but I'm worried about the pterodactyls; they will likely attack."
"Yeah, they would," Tyler shuddered as he remembered the way the Bo-Lu caveman Ahm had been caught by that pterodactyl; he would tell Lisa about it later, "but it's still worth a thought."
"Yes," Lisa turned around and looked over the clearing.
Her silence interested him. "What is it, Lisa?" He asked tenderly.
Lisa sighed. "I was just thinking about what happened to the U-Boat, those men."
"I know," Tyler looked down.
"What do you think happened?"
Tyler sighed. He had a couple of ideas, but no proof. "I don't know, Lisa. I've got only two ideas; one, Von Shoenvorts and Bradley both realised they couldn't risk their crew for us anymore after deciding to wait for us. I can understand that. They both had a crew to care about, and it's the job of a naval officer to put the crew and the mission forward. They could have seen the river was becoming worse and worse and they got the idea into their heads to head out past the ice wall and they would come back a few days later when they felt the eruption was over, and then they could pick us up."
Lisa shook her head. "But that's not what happened," she pointed out, "that searchlight was pointed at us; they saw us, but they kept moving further downriver. It's a good idea and I can see Mr Bradley and the captain doing it, but I think Dietz was standing in the conning tower. Who else could it be, he hated us."
Tyler ground his teeth as he thought about what Dietz must have done to wrestle control of the submarine out of Von Shoenvorts's hands. "We can't prove it, Lisa, and theories aren't going to help us now. We have to just wait, wait for the eruption to die down and then head-on."
"I still have my canister, some paper and pens; I managed to hide them from the Sto-Lu when they caught me. We could send a message and send it into the sea."
Tyler wondered if such a message would even make it, but it would do while he and Lisa worked on other plans.