Foreword
To the Reader of this Work:
Captain Carter’s strange manuscript is now book form, a few words relative to this remarkable personality is of importance.
My earliest recollections are from the few months he lived at our home in Virginia, prior to 1861. I was a boy of five, yet steel gray eyes of a strong and loyal character. Dark, smooth-faced, splendid specimen of manhood, standing two inches over six feet. Broad shoulders and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man, his hair black and closely cropped are all still vivid. Even now I can hear the laughter dear Uncle Jack.
He was beloved by everyone from the children who matched Jack’s enthusiasm during play. The very same energy he gave to adults in their pastimes. He would spend time recounting to my grandmother of stories about strange happenings in all parts of the world. He claimed in the wilds of Africa there exists a wild man. Our slaves worshiped the ground he trod. They had a funny way of doing big displays of it. I never quite figured out why the other slaves laughed at it.
All of my words makes sense once you learn of his manners and courtliness was of the highest type for a southern gentleman, often accompanied with a smile for a southern belle. Uncle Jack’s horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight even in a country of magnificent horsemen. When he had me in the company adults, my father cautioned uncle against his wild recklessness. Laughter was uncle’s first response, then he’d say, the tumble would be from the back of a horse yet unfoaled. When the war broke out he left us. It would be some fifteen or sixteen years until I’d see Uncle Jack again.
After such a long absence, his unexpected return brought a strange revelation, he didn't change physically. He remained as I described him when a boy previously. Around others he was the same genial man.
When asked, he said he went out West to Arizona after the war. As evidence of his vast wealth, he was successful at it. What exactly happened during those years he told no one. But, in those quiet moments, when a man is meant to be alone, I spied him sit for hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery. At night he would gaze into the heavens. I will learn years later, in great amazement to his own words why he gazed upward.
My uncle didn’t stay long, after a year he moved to New York, purchased a small but beautiful cottage on the Hudson, situated on a bluff overlooking the river. Once a year for the next decade upon my trips to the New York market—my father and I owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia at that time—I’d visit Captain Carter who never aged even then. During a visit in winter of 1885, I observed he was often occupied in writing the manuscript you read now.
Once during a drink, he told me if anything should happen to him I am to take charge of his estate, for which I came into possession of a key to a safe located in his study. In the safe’s inner compartment study I’d find his will, along with personal instructions. Before giving me the key, Uncle Jack made me pledge my fidelity.
That night from my window standing in the moonlight with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal. I had thought he was praying, despite never hearing him profess faith. That memory of him on the brink of the bluff overlooking the Hudson has since too remained with me. Never had I seen such a sad man like Captain Jack was in that moment.
The first of March, 1886. I received a telegram asking me to come to him at once. So I returned with haste, wanting to prove myself to him. On the morning of March 4, 1886, I asked the livery man to drive me out to Captain Carter’s. He replied if I was a friend of the Captain’s I had ill-timing. He’d been found dead after sunrise by the watchman of the adjoining property. For some reason it did not surprise nor hurt me. I hurried out to his place as quickly as possible.
Upon arriving, I found the watchman who had discovered him, along with the local police chief and several townspeople in his little study. The watchman told me Captain Carter was found laid in the snow with the arms outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff. Oddly, still warm to the touch. When he brought me to the spot, I knew the winter of 1885 repeated itself. A local physician and the coroner concluded heart failure as the cause of death since no signs of violence were found. For a man unchanged as Uncle Jack, heart failure was a strange way to die. Once alone in the study, I opened the safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer. Upon reading, he directed me to remove his body to Virginia without embalming. That he was placed in an open coffin in a tomb built in advent of his demise. I’d soon learned it was well ventilated. Dear Uncle Jack planned out everything. Wasting no time I set out to fulfill his wishes. Even in necessary secrecy at times too. The last instruction, said the manuscript should remain unread for eleven years. I couldn’t divulge its contents until twenty-one years after his departing.
A strange feature about the tomb is the massive door’s huge gold-plated spring lock only operable from the inside by its one resident, one Captain John Carter.
Sincerely, Edgar Rice Burroughs.