The Project Gutenberg eBook of At the Earth’s Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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At the Earth’s Core

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

CONTENTS

PROLOG

In the first place please bear in mind that I do benefits of plush pillows for kidsnot expect you to believe thisstory. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when,in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist ofit to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last tripto London.

You would surely have thought that I had been detected in no less a heinouscrime than the purloining of the Crown Jewels from the Tower, or putting poisonin the coffee of His Majesty the King.

The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed before I was halfthrough!—it is all that saved him from exploding—and my dreams of an HonoraryFellowship, gold medals, and a niche in the Hall of Fame faded into the thin,cold air of his arctic atmosphere.

But I believe the story, and so would you, and so would the learned Fellow ofthe Royal Geological Society, had you and he heard it from the lips of the manwho told it to me. Had you seen, as I did, the fire of truth in those grayeyes; had you felt the ring of sincerity in that quiet voice; had you realizedthe pathos of it all—you, too, would believe. You would not have needed thefinal ocular proof that I had—the weird rhamphorhynchus-like creature which hehad brought back with him from the inner world.

I came upon him quite suddenly, and no less unexpectedly, upon the rim of thegreat Sahara Desert. He was standing before a goat-skin tent amidst a clump ofdate palms within a tiny oasis. Close by was an Arab douar of some eight or tentents.

I had come down from the north to hunt lion. My party consisted of a dozenchildren of the desert—I was the only “white” man. As we approached the littleclump of verdure I saw the man come from his tent and with hand-shaded eyespeer intently at us. At sight of me he advanced rapidly to meet us.

“A white man!” he cried. “May the good Lord be praised! I have been watchingyou for hours, hoping against hope that THIS time there would be a white man.Tell me the date. What year is it?”

And when I had told him he staggered as though he had been struck full in theface, so that he was compelled to grasp my stirrup leather for support.

“It cannot be!” he cried after a moment. “It cannot be! Tell me that you aremistaken, or that you are but joking.”

“I am telling you the truth, my friend,” I replied. “Why should I deceive astranger, or attempt to, in so simple a matter as the date?”

For some time he stood in silence, with bowed head.

“Ten years!” he murmured, at last. “Ten years, and I thought that at the mostit could be scarce more than one!” That night he told me his story—the storythat I give you here as nearly in his own words as I can recall them.

I
TOWARD THE ETERNAL FIRES

I was born in Connecticut about thirty years ago. My name is David Innes. Myfather was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died. All his propertywas to be mine when I had attained my majority—provided that I had devoted thetwo years intervening in close application to the great business I was toinherit.

I did my best to fulfil the last wishes of my parent—not because of theinheritance, but because I loved and honored my father. For six months I toiledin the mines and in the counting-rooms, for I wished to know every minutedetail of the business.

Then Perry interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devotedthe better part of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterraneanprospector. As relaxation he studied paleontology. I looked over his plans,listened to his arguments, inspected his working model—and then, convinced, Iadvanced the funds necessary to construct a full-sized, practical prospector.

I shall not go into the details of its construction—it lies out there in thedesert now—about two miles from here. Tomorrow you may care to ride out and seeit. Roughly, it is a steel cylinder a hundred feet long, and jointed so that itmay turn and twist through solid rock if need be. At one end is a mightyrevolving drill operated by an engine which Perry said generated more power tothe cubic inch than any other engine did to the cubic foot. I remember that heused to claim that that invention alone would make us fabulously wealthy—wewere going to make the whole thing public after the successful issue of ourfirst secret trial—but Perry never returned from that trial trip, and I onlyafter ten years.

I recall as it were but yesterday the night of that momentous occasion uponwhich we were to test the practicality of that wondrous invention. It was nearmidnight when we repaired to the lofty tower in which Perry had constructed his“iron mole” as he was wont to call the thing. The great nose rested upon thebare earth of the floor. We passed through the doors into the outer jacket,secured them, and then passing on into the cabin, which contained thecontrolling mechanism within the inner tube, switched on the electric lights.

Perry looked to his generator; to the great tanks that held the life-givingchemicals with which he was to manufacture fresh air to replace that which weconsumed in breathing; to his instruments for recording temperatures, speed,distance, and for examining the materials through which we were to pass.

He tested the steering device, and overlooked the mighty cogs which transmittedits marvelous velocity to the giant drill at the nose of his strange craft.

Our seats, into which we strapped ourselves, were so arranged upon transversebars that we would be upright whether the craft were ploughing her way downwardinto the bowels of the earth, or running horizontally along some great seam ofcoal, or rising vertically toward the surface again.

At length all was ready. Perry bowed his head in prayer. For a moment we weresilent, and then the old man’s hand grasped the starting lever. There was afrightful roaring beneath us—the giant frame trembled and vibrated—there was arush of sound as the loose earth passed up through the hollow space between theinner and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. We were off!

The noise was deafening. The sensation was frightful. For a full minute neitherof us could do aught but cling with the proverbial desperation of the drowningman to the handrails of our swinging seats. Then Perry glanced at thethermometer.

“Gad!” he cried, “it cannot be possible—quick! What does the distance meterread?”

That and the speedometer were both on my side of the cabin, and as I turned totake a reading from the former I could see Perry muttering.

“Ten degrees rise—it cannot be possible!” and then I saw him tug franticallyupon the steering wheel.

As I finally found the tiny needle in the dim light I translated Perry’sevident excitement, and my heart sank within me. But when I spoke I hid thefear which haunted me. “It will be seven hundred feet, Perry,” I said, “by thetime you can turn her into the horizontal.”

“You’d better lend me a hand then, my boy,” he replied, “for I cannot budge herout of the vertical alone. God give that our combined strength may be equal tothe task, for else we are lost.”

I wormed my way to the old man’s side with never a doubt but that the greatwheel would yield on the instant to the power of my young and vigorous muscles.Nor was my belief mere vanity, for always had my physique been the envy anddespair of my fellows. And for that very reason it had waxed even greater thannature had intended, since my natural pride in my great strength had led me tocare for and develop my body and my muscles by every means within my power.What with boxing, football, and baseball, I had been in training sincechildhood.

And so it was with the utmost confidence that I laid hold of the huge iron rim;but though I threw every ounce of my strength into it, my best effort was asunavailing as Perry’s had been—the thing would not budge—the grim, insensate,horrible thing that was holding us upon the straight road to death!

At length I gave up the useless struggle, and without a word returned to myseat. There was no need for words—at least none that I could imagine, unlessPerry desired to pray. And I was quite sure that he would, for he never left anopportunity neglected where he might sandwich in a prayer. He prayed when hearose in the morning, he prayed before he ate, he prayed when he had finishedeating, and before he went to bed at night he prayed again. In between he oftenfound excuses to pray even when the provocation seemed far-fetched to myworldly eyes—now that he was about to die I felt positive that I should witnessa perfect orgy of prayer—if one may allude with such a simile to so solemn anact.

But to my astonishment I discovered that with death staring him in the faceAbner Perry was transformed into a new being. From his lips there flowed—notprayer—but a clear and limpid stream of undiluted profanity, and it was alldirected at that quietly stubborn piece of unyielding mechanism.

“I should think, Perry,” I chided, “that a man of your professed religiousnesswould rather be at his prayers than cursing in the presence of imminent death.”

“Death!” he cried. “Death is it that appalls you? That is nothing by comparisonwith the loss the world must suffer. Why, David within this iron cylinder wehave demonstrated possibilities that science has scarce dreamed. We haveharnessed a new principle, and with it animated a piece of steel with the powerof ten thousand men. That two lives will be snuffed out is nothing to the worldcalamity that entombs in the bowels of the earth the discoveries that I havemade and proved in the successful construction of the thing that is nowcarrying us farther and farther toward the eternal central fires.”

I am frank to admit that for myself I was much more concerned with our ownimmediate future than with any problematic loss which the world might be aboutto suffer. The world was at least ignorant of its bereavement, while to me itwas a real and terrible actuality.

“What can we do?” I asked, hiding my perturbation beneath the mask of a low andlevel voice.

“We may stop here, and die of asphyxiation when our atmosphere tanks areempty,” replied Perry, “or we may continue on with the slight hope that we maylater sufficiently deflect the prospector from the vertical to carry us alongthe arc of a great circle which must eventually return us to the surface. If wesucceed in so doing before we reach the higher internal temperature we may evenyet survive. There would seem to me to be about one chance in several millionthat we shall succeed—otherwise we shall die more quickly but no more surelythan as though we sat supinely waiting for the torture of a slow and horribledeath.”

I glanced at the thermometer. It registered 110 degrees. While we were talkingthe mighty iron mole had bored its way over a mile into the rock of the earth’scrust.

“Let us continue on, then,” I replied. “It should soon be over at this rate.You never intimated that the speed of this thing would be so high, Perry.Didn’t you know it?”

“No,” he answered. “I could not figure the speed exactly, for I had noinstrument for measuring the mighty power of my generator. I reasoned, however,that we should make about five hundred yards an hour.”

“And we are making seven miles an hour,” I concluded for him, as I sat with myeyes upon the distance meter. “How thick is the Earth’s crust, Perry?” I asked.

“There are almost as many conjectures as to that as there are geologists,” washis answer. “One estimates it thirty miles, because the internal heat,increasing at the rate of about one degree to each sixty to seventy feet depth,would be sufficient to fuse the most refractory substances at that distancebeneath the surface. Another finds that the phenomena of precession andnutation require that the earth, if not entirely solid, must at least have ashell not less than eight hundred to a thousand miles in thickness. So thereyou are. You may take your choice.”

“And if it should prove solid?” I asked.

“It will be all the same to us in the end, David,” replied Perry. “At the bestour fuel will suffice to carry us but three or four days, while our atmospherecannot last to exceed three. Neither, then, is sufficient to bear us in safetythrough eight thousand miles of rock to the antipodes.”

“If the crust is of sufficient thickness we shall come to a final stop betweensix and seven hundred miles beneath the earth’s surface; but during the lasthundred and fifty miles of our journey we shall be corpses. Am I correct?” Iasked.

“Quite correct, David. Are you frightened?”

“I do not know. It all has come so suddenly that I scarce believe that eitherof us realizes the real terrors of our position. I feel that I should bereduced to panic; but yet I am not. I imagine that the shock has been so greatas to partially stun our sensibilities.”

Again I turned to the thermometer. The mercury was rising with less rapidity.It was now but 140 degrees, although we had penetrated to a depth of nearlyfour miles. I told Perry, and he smiled.

“We have shattered one theory at least,” was his only comment, and then hereturned to his self-assumed occupation of fluently cursing the steering wheel.I once heard a pirate swear, but his best efforts would have seemed like thoseof a tyro alongside of Perry’s masterful and scientific imprecations.

Once more I tried my hand at the wheel, but I might as well have essayed toswing the earth itself. At my suggestion Perry stopped the generator, and as wecame to rest I again threw all my strength into a supreme effort to move thething even a hair’s breadth—but the results were as barren as when we had beentraveling at top speed.

I shook my head sadly, and motioned to the starting lever. Perry pulled ittoward him, and once again we were plunging downward toward eternity at therate of seven miles an hour. I sat with my eyes glued to the thermometer andthe distance meter. The mercury was rising very slowly now, though even at 145degrees it was almost unbearable within the narrow confines of our metalprison.

About noon, or twelve hours after our start upon this unfortunate journey, wehad bored to a depth of eighty-four miles, at which point the mercuryregistered 153 degrees F.

Perry was becoming more hopeful, although upon what meager food he sustainedhis optimism I could not conjecture. From cursing he had turned to singing—Ifelt that the strain had at last affected his mind. For several hours we hadnot spoken except as he asked me for the readings of the instruments from timeto time, and I announced them. My thoughts were filled with vain regrets. Irecalled numerous acts of my past life which I should have been glad to havehad a few more years to live down. There was the affair in the Latin Commons atAndover when Calhoun and I had put gunpowder in the stove—and nearly killed oneof the masters. And then—but what was the use, I was about to die and atone forall these things and several more. Already the heat was sufficient to give me aforetaste of the hereafter. A few more degrees and I felt that I should loseconsciousness.

“What are the readings now, David?” Perry’s voice broke in upon my somberreflections.

“Ninety miles and 153 degrees,” I replied.

“Gad, but we’ve knocked that thirty-mile-crust theory into a cocked hat!” hecried gleefully.

“Precious lot of good it will do us,” I growled back.

“But my boy,” he continued, “doesn’t that temperature reading mean anything toyou? Why it hasn’t gone up in six miles. Think of it, son!”

“Yes, I’m thinking of it,” I answered; “but what difference will it make whenour air supply is exhausted whether the temperature is 153 degrees or 153,000?We’ll be just as dead, and no one will know the difference, anyhow.” But I mustadmit that for some unaccountable reason the stationary temperature did renewmy waning hope. What I hoped for I could not have explained, nor did I try. Thevery fact, as Perry took pains to explain, of the blasting of several veryexact and learned scientific hypotheses made it apparent that we could not knowwhat lay before us within the bowels of the earth, and so we might continue tohope for the best, at least until we were dead—when hope would no longer beessential to our happiness. It was very good, and logical reasoning, and so Iembraced it.

At one hundred miles the temperature had DROPPED TO 152 1/2 DEGREES! When Iannounced it Perry reached over and hugged me.

From then on until noon of the second day, it continued to drop until it becameas uncomfortably cold as it had been unbearably hot before. At the depth of twohundred and forty miles our nostrils were assailed by almost overpoweringammonia fumes, and the temperature had dropped to TEN BELOW ZERO! We sufferednearly two hours of this intense and bitter cold, until at about two hundredand forty-five miles from the surface of the earth we entered a stratum ofsolid ice, when the mercury quickly rose to 32 degrees. During the next threehours we passed through ten miles of ice, eventually emerging into anotherseries of ammonia-impregnated strata, where the mercury again fell to tendegrees below zero.

Slowly it rose once more until we were convinced that at last we were nearingthe molten interior of the earth. At four hundred miles the temperature hadreached 153 degrees. Feverishly I watched the thermometer. Slowly it rose.Perry had ceased singing and was at last praying.

Our hopes had received such a deathblow that the gradually increasing heatseemed to our distorted imaginations much greater than it really was. Foranother hour I saw that pitiless column of mercury rise and rise until at fourhundred and ten miles it stood at 153 degrees. Now it was that we began to hangupon those readings in almost breathless anxiety.

One hundred and fifty-three degrees had been the maximum temperature above theice stratum. Would it stop at this point again, or would it continue itsmerciless climb? We knew that there was no hope, and yet with the persistenceof life itself we continued to hope against practical certainty.

Already the air tanks were at low ebb—there was barely enough of the preciousgases to sustain us for another twelve hours. But would we be alive to know orcare? It seemed incredible.

At four hundred and twenty miles I took another reading.

“Perry!” I shouted. “Perry, man! She’s going down! She’s going down! She’s 152degrees again.”

“Gad!” he cried. “What can it mean? Can the earth be cold at the center?”

“I do not know, Perry,” I answered; “but thank God, if I am to die it shall notbe by fire—that is all that I have feared. I can face the thought of any deathbut that.”

Down, down went the mercury until it stood as low as it had seven miles fromthe surface of the earth, and then of a sudden the realization broke upon usthat death was very near. Perry was the first to discover it. I saw him fussingwith the valves that regulate the air supply. And at the same time Iexperienced difficulty in breathing. My head felt dizzy—my limbs heavy.

I saw Perry crumple in his seat. He gave himself a shake and sat erect again.Then he turned toward me.

“Good-bye, David,” he said. “I guess this is the end,” and then he smiled andclosed his eyes.

“Good-bye, Perry, and good luck to you,” I answered, smiling back at him. But Ifought off that awful lethargy. I was very young—I did not want to die.

For an hour I battled against the cruelly enveloping death that surrounded meupon all sides. At first I found that by climbing high into the framework aboveme I could find more of the precious life-giving elements, and for a whilethese sustained me. It must have been an hour after Perry had succumbed that Iat last came to the realization that I could no longer carry on this unequalstruggle against the inevitable.

With my last flickering ray of consciousness I turned mechanically toward thedistance meter. It stood at exactly five hundred miles from the earth’ssurface—and then of a sudden the huge thing that bore us came to a stop. Therattle of hurtling rock through the hollow jacket ceased. The wild racing ofthe giant drill betokened that it was running loose in AIR—and then anothertruth flashed upon me. The point of the prospector was ABOVE us. Slowly itdawned on me that since passing through the ice strata it had been above. Wehad turned in the ice and sped upward toward the earth’s crust. Thank God! Wewere safe!

I put my nose to the intake pipe through which samples were to have been takenduring the passage of the prospector through the earth, and my fondest hopeswere realized—a flood of fresh air was pouring into the iron cabin. Thereaction left me in a state of collapse, and I lost consciousness.

II
A STRANGE WORLD

I was unconscious little more than an instant, for as I lunged forward from thecrossbeam to which I had been clinging, and fell with a crash to the floor ofthe cabin, the shock brought me to myself.

My first concern was with Perry. I was horrified at the thought that upon thevery threshold of salvation he might be dead. Tearing open his shirt I placedmy ear to his breast. I could have cried with relief—his heart was beatingquite regularly.

At the water tank I wetted my handkerchief, slapping it smartly across hisforehead and face several times. In a moment I was rewarded by the raising ofhis lids. For a time he lay wide-eyed and quite uncomprehending. Then hisscattered wits slowly foregathered, and he sat up sniffing the air with anexpression of wonderment upon his face.

“Why, David,” he cried at last, “it’s air, as sure as I live. Why—why what doesit mean? Where in the world are we? What has happened?”

“It means that we’re back at the surface all right, Perry,” I cried; “butwhere, I don’t know. I haven’t opened her up yet. Been too busy reviving you.Lord, man, but you had a close squeak!”

“You say we’re back at the surface, David? How can that be? How long have Ibeen unconscious?”

“Not long. We turned in the ice stratum. Don’t you recall the sudden whirlingof our seats? After that the drill was above you instead of below. We didn’tnotice it at the time; but I recall it now.”

“You mean to say that we turned back in the ice stratum, David? That is notpossible. The prospector cannot turn unless its nose is deflected from theoutside—by some external force or resistance—the steering wheel within wouldhave moved in response. The steering wheel has not budged, David, since westarted. You know that.”

I did know it; but here we were with our drill racing in pure air, and copiousvolumes of it pouring into the cabin.

“We couldn’t have turned in the ice stratum, Perry, I know as well as you,” Ireplied; “but the fact remains that we did, for here we are this minute at thesurface of the earth again, and I am going out to see just where.”

“Better wait till morning, David—it must be midnight now.”

I glanced at the chronometer.

“Half after twelve. We have been out seventy-two hours, so it must be midnight.Nevertheless I am going to have a look at the blessed sky that I had given upall hope of ever seeing again,” and so saying I lifted the bars from the innerdoor, and swung it open. There was quite a quantity of loose material in thejacket, and this I had to remove with a shovel to get at the opposite door inthe outer shell.

In a short time I had removed enough of the earth and rock to the floor of thecabin to expose the door beyond. Perry was directly behind me as I threw itopen. The upper half was above the surface of the ground. With an expression ofsurprise I turned and looked at Perry—it was broad daylight without!

“Something seems to have gone wrong either with our calculations or thechronometer,” I said. Perry shook his head—there was a strange expression inhis eyes.

“Let’s have a look beyond that door, David,” he cried.

Together we stepped out to stand in silent contemplation of a landscape at onceweird and beautiful. Before us a low and level shore stretched down to a silentsea. As far as the eye could reach the surface of the water was dotted withcountless tiny isles—some of towering, barren, granitic rock—others resplendentin gorgeous trappings of tropical vegetation, myriad starred with themagnificent splendor of vivid blooms.

Behind us rose a dark and forbidding wood of giant arborescent fernsintermingled with the commoner types of a primeval tropical forest. Hugecreepers depended in great loops from tree to tree, dense under-brush overgrewa tangled mass of fallen trunks and branches. Upon the outer verge we could seethe same splendid coloring of countless blossoms that glorified the islands,but within the dense shadows all seemed dark and gloomy as the grave.

And upon all the noonday sun poured its torrid rays out of a cloudless sky.

“Where on earth can we be?” I asked, turning to Perry.

For some moments the old man did not reply. He stood with bowed head, buried indeep thought. But at last he spoke.

“David,” he said, “I am not so sure that we are ON earth.”

“What do you mean, Perry?” I cried. “Do you think that we are dead, and this isheaven?” He smiled, and turning, pointing to the nose of the prospectorprotruding from the ground at our backs.

“But for that, David, I might believe that we were indeed come to the countrybeyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory untenable—it, certainly,could never have gone to heaven. However I am willing to concede that weactually may be in another world from that which we have always known. If weare not ON earth, there is every reason to believe that we may be IN it.”

“We may have quartered through the earth’s crust and come out upon sometropical island of the West Indies,” I suggested. Again Perry shook his head.

“Let us wait and see, David,” he replied, “and in the meantime suppose we do abit of exploring up and down the coast—we may find a native who can enlightenus.”

As we walked along the beach Perry gazed long and earnestly across the water.Evidently he was wrestling with a mighty problem.

“David,” he said abruptly, “do you perceive anything unusual about thehorizon?”

As I looked I began to appreciate the reason for the strangeness of thelandscape that had haunted me from the first with an illusive suggestion of thebizarre and unnatural—THERE WAS NO HORIZON! As far as the eye could reach outthe sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in thedistance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until theimpression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant pointthat the eyes could fathom—the distance was lost in the distance. That wasall—there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe belowthe line of vision.

“A great light is commencing to break on me,” continued Perry, taking out hiswatch. “I believe that I have partially solved the riddle. It is now twoo’clock. When we emerged from the prospector the sun was directly above us.Where is it now?”

I glanced up to find the great orb still motionless in the center of theheaven. And such a sun! I had scarcely noticed it before. Fully thrice the sizeof the sun I had known throughout my life, and apparently so near that thesight of it carried the conviction that one might almost reach up and touch it.

“My God, Perry, where are we?” I exclaimed. “This thing is beginning to get onmy nerves.”

“I think that I may state quite positively, David,” he commenced, “that weare—” but he got no further. From behind us in the vicinity of the prospectorthere came the most thunderous, awe-inspiring roar that ever had fallen upon myears. With one accord we turned to discover the author of that fearsome noise.

Had I still retained the suspicion that we were on earth the sight that met myeyes would quite entirely have banished it. Emerging from the forest was acolossal beast which closely resembled a bear. It was fully as large as thelargest elephant and with great forepaws armed with huge claws. Its nose, orsnout, depended nearly a foot below its lower jaw, much after the manner of arudimentary trunk. The giant body was covered by a coat of thick, shaggy hair.

Roaring horribly it came toward us at a ponderous, shuffling trot. I turned toPerry to suggest that it might be wise to seek other surroundings—the idea hadevidently occurred to Perry previously, for he was already a hundred pacesaway, and with each second his prodigious bounds increased the distance. I hadnever guessed what latent speed possibilities the old gentleman possessed.

I saw that he was headed toward a little point of the forest which ran outtoward the sea not far from where we had been standing, and as the mightycreature, the sight of which had galvanized him into such remarkable action,was forging steadily toward me, I set off after Perry, though at a somewhatmore decorous pace. It was evident that the massive beast pursuing us was notbuilt for speed, so all that I considered necessary was to gain the treessufficiently ahead of it to enable me to climb to the safety of some greatbranch before it came up.

Notwithstanding our danger I could not help but laugh at Perry’s frantic capersas he essayed to gain the safety of the lower branches of the trees he now hadreached. The stems were bare for a distance of some fifteen feet—at least onthose trees which Perry attempted to ascend, for the suggestion of safetycarried by the larger of the forest giants had evidently attracted him to them.A dozen times he scrambled up the trunks like a huge cat only to fall back tothe ground once more, and with each failure he cast a horrified glance over hisshoulder at the oncoming brute, simultaneously emitting terror-stricken shrieksthat awoke the echoes of the grim forest.

At length he spied a dangling creeper about the bigness of one’s wrist, andwhen I reached the trees he was racing madly up it, hand over hand. He hadalmost reached the lowest branch of the tree from which the creeper dependedwhen the thing parted beneath his weight and he fell sprawling at my feet.

The misfortune now was no longer amusing, for the beast was already too closeto us for comfort. Seizing Perry by the shoulder I dragged him to his feet, andrushing to a smaller tree—one that he could easily encircle with his arms andlegs—I boosted him as far up as I could, and then left him to his fate, for aglance over my shoulder revealed the awful beast almost upon me.

It was the great size of the thing alone that saved me. Its enormous bulkrendered it too slow upon its feet to cope with the agility of my youngmuscles, and so I was enabled to dodge out of its way and run completely behindit before its slow wits could direct it in pursuit.

The few seconds of grace that this gave me found me safely lodged in thebranches of a tree a few paces from that in which Perry had at last found ahaven.

Did I say safely lodged? At the time I thought we were quite safe, and so didPerry. He was praying—raising his voice in thanksgiving at our deliverance—andhad just completed a sort of paeon of gratitude that the thing couldn’t climb atree when without warning it reared up beneath him on its enormous tail andhind feet, and reached those fearfully armed paws quite to the branch uponwhich he crouched.

The accompanying roar was all but drowned in Perry’s scream of fright, and hecame near tumbling headlong into the gaping jaws beneath him, so precipitatewas his impetuous haste to vacate the dangerous limb. It was with a deep sighof relief that I saw him gain a higher branch in safety.

And then the brute did that which froze us both anew with horror. Grasping thetree’s stem with his powerful paws he dragged down with all the great weight ofhis huge bulk and all the irresistible force of those mighty muscles. Slowly,but surely, the stem began to bend toward him. Inch by inch he worked his pawsupward as the tree leaned more and more from the perpendicular. Perry clungchattering in a panic of terror. Higher and higher into the bending and swayingtree he clambered. More and more rapidly was the tree top inclining toward theground.

I saw now why the great brute was armed with such enormous paws. The use thathe was putting them to was precisely that for which nature had intended them.The sloth-like creature was herbivorous, and to feed that mighty carcass entiretrees must be stripped of their foliage. The reason for its attacking us mighteasily be accounted for on the supposition of an ugly disposition such as thatwhich the fierce and stupid rhinoceros of Africa possesses. But these werelater reflections. At the moment I was too frantic with apprehension on Perry’sbehalf to consider aught other than a means to save him from the death thatloomed so close.

Realizing that I could outdistance the clumsy brute in the open, I dropped frommy leafy sanctuary intent only on distracting the thing’s attention from Perrylong enough to enable the old man to gain the safety of a larger tree. Therewere many close by which not even the terrific strength of that titanic monstercould bend.

As I touched the ground I snatched a broken limb from the tangled mass thatmatted the jungle-like floor of the forest and, leaping unnoticed behind theshaggy back, dealt the brute a terrific blow. My plan worked like magic. Fromthe previous slowness of the beast I had been led to look for no such marvelousagility as he now displayed. Releasing his hold upon the tree he dropped on allfours and at the same time swung his great, wicked tail with a force that wouldhave broken every bone in my body had it struck me; but, fortunately, I hadturned to flee at the very instant that I felt my blow land upon the toweringback.

As it started in pursuit of me I made the mistake of running along the edge ofthe forest rather than making for the open beach. In a moment I was knee-deepin rotting vegetation, and the awful thing behind me was gaining rapidly as Ifloundered and fell in my efforts to extricate myself.

A fallen log gave me an instant’s advantage, for climbing upon it I leaped toanother a few paces farther on, and in this way was able to keep clear of themush that carpeted the surrounding ground. But the zigzag course that thisnecessitated was placing such a heavy handicap upon me that my pursuer wassteadily gaining upon me.

Suddenly from behind I heard a tumult of howls, and sharp, piercing barks—muchthe sound that a pack of wolves raises when in full cry. Involuntarily Iglanced backward to discover the origin of this new and menacing note with theresult that I missed my footing and went sprawling once more upon my face inthe deep muck.

My mammoth enemy was so close by this time that I knew I must feel the weightof one of his terrible paws before I could rise, but to my surprise the blowdid not fall upon me. The howling and snapping and barking of the new elementwhich had been infused into the melee now seemed centered quite close behindme, and as I raised myself upon my hands and glanced around I saw what it wasthat had distracted the DYRYTH, as I afterward learned the thing is called,from my trail.

It was surrounded by a pack of some hundred wolf-like creatures—wild dogs theyseemed—that rushed growling and snapping in upon it from all sides, so thatthey sank their white fangs into the slow brute and were away again before itcould reach them with its huge paws or sweeping tail.

But these were not all that my startled eyes perceived. Chattering andgibbering through the lower branches of the trees came a company of manlikecreatures evidently urging on the dog pack. They were to all appearancesstrikingly similar in aspect to the Negro of Africa. Their skins were veryblack, and their features much like those of the more pronounced Negroid typeexcept that the head receded more rapidly above the eyes, leaving little or noforehead. Their arms were rather longer and their legs shorter in proportion tothe torso than in man, and later I noticed that their great toes protruded atright angles from their feet—because of their arboreal habits, I presume.Behind them trailed long, slender tails which they used in climbing quite asmuch as they did either their hands or feet.

I had stumbled to my feet the moment that I discovered that the wolf-dogs wereholding the dyryth at bay. At sight of me several of the savage creatures leftoff worrying the great brute to come slinking with bared fangs toward me, andas I turned to run toward the trees again to seek safety among the lowerbranches, I saw a number of the man-apes leaping and chattering in the foliageof the nearest tree.

Between them and the beasts behind me there was little choice, but at leastthere was a doubt as to the reception these grotesque parodies on humanitywould accord me, while there was none as to the fate which awaited me beneaththe grinning fangs of my fierce pursuers.

And so I raced on toward the trees intending to pass beneath that which heldthe man-things and take refuge in another farther on; but the wolf-dogs werevery close behind me—so close that I had despaired of escaping them, when oneof the creatures in the tree above swung down headforemost, his tail loopedabout a great limb, and grasping me beneath my armpits swung me in safety upamong his fellows.

There they fell to examining me with the utmost excitement and curiosity. Theypicked at my clothing, my hair, and my flesh. They turned me about to see if Ihad a tail, and when they discovered that I was not so equipped they fell intoroars of laughter. Their teeth were very large and white and even, except forthe upper canines which were a trifle longer than the others—protruding just abit when the mouth was closed.

When they had examined me for a few moments one of them discovered that myclothing was not a part of me, with the result that garment by garment theytore it from me amidst peals of the wildest laughter. Apelike, they essayed todon the apparel themselves, but their ingenuity was not sufficient to the taskand so they gave it up.

In the meantime I had been straining my eyes to catch a glimpse of Perry, butnowhere about could I see him, although the clump of trees in which he hadfirst taken refuge was in full view. I was much exercised by fear thatsomething had befallen him, and though I called his name aloud several timesthere was no response.

Tired at last of playing with my clothing the creatures threw it to the ground,and catching me, one on either side, by an arm, started off at a mostterrifying pace through the tree tops. Never have I experienced such a journeybefore or since—even now I oftentimes awake from a deep sleep haunted by thehorrid remembrance of that awful experience.

From tree to tree the agile creatures sprang like flying squirrels, while thecold sweat stood upon my brow as I glimpsed the depths beneath, into which asingle misstep on the part of either of my bearers would hurl me. As they boreme along, my mind was occupied with a thousand bewildering thoughts. What hadbecome of Perry? Would I ever see him again? What were the intentions of thesehalf-human things into whose hands I had fallen? Were they inhabitants of thesame world into which I had been born? No! It could not be. But yet where else?I had not left that earth—of that I was sure. Still neither could I reconcilethe things which I had seen to a belief that I was still in the world of mybirth. With a sigh I gave it up.

III
A CHANGE OF MASTERS

We must have traveled several miles through the dark and dismal wood when wecame suddenly upon a dense village built high among the branches of the trees.As we approached it my escort broke into wild shouting which was immediatelyanswered from within, and a moment later a swarm of creatures of the samestrange race as those who had captured me poured out to meet us. Again I wasthe center of a wildly chattering horde. I was pulled this way and that.Pinched, pounded, and thumped until I was black and blue, yet I do not thinkthat their treatment was dictated by either cruelty or malice—I was acuriosity, a freak, a new plaything, and their childish minds required theadded evidence of all their senses to back up the testimony of their eyes.

Presently they dragged me within the village, which consisted of severalhundred rude shelters of boughs and leaves supported upon the branches of thetrees.

Between the huts, which sometimes formed crooked streets, were dead branchesand the trunks of small trees which connected the huts upon one tree to thosewithin adjoining trees; the whole network of huts and pathways forming analmost solid flooring a good fifty feet above the ground.

I wondered why these agile creatures required connecting bridges between thetrees, but later when I saw the motley aggregation of half-savage beasts whichthey kept within their village I realized the necessity for the pathways. Therewere a number of the same vicious wolf-dogs which we had left worrying thedyryth, and many goatlike animals whose distended udders explained the reasonsfor their presence.

My guard halted before one of the huts into which I was pushed; then two of thecreatures squatted down before the entrance—to prevent my escape, doubtless.Though where I should have escaped to I certainly had not the remotestconception. I had no more than entered the dark shadows of the interior thanthere fell upon my ears the tones of a familiar voice, in prayer.

“Perry!” I cried. “Dear old Perry! Thank the Lord you are safe.”

“David! Can it be possible that you escaped?” And the old man stumbled towardme and threw his arms about me.

He had seen me fall before the dyryth, and then he had been seized by a numberof the ape-creatures and borne through the tree tops to their village. Hiscaptors had been as inquisitive as to his strange clothing as had mine, withthe same result. As we looked at each other we could not help but laugh.

“With a tail, David,” remarked Perry, “you would make a very handsome ape.”

“Maybe we can borrow a couple,” I rejoined. “They seem to be quite the thingthis season. I wonder what the creatures intend doing with us, Perry. Theydon’t seem really savage. What do you suppose they can be? You were about totell me where we are when that great hairy frigate bore down upon us—have youreally any idea at all?”

“Yes, David,” he replied, “I know precisely where we are. We have made amagnificent discovery, my boy! We have proved that the earth is hollow. We havepassed entirely through its crust to the inner world.”

“Perry, you are mad!”

“Not at all, David. For two hundred and fifty miles our prospector bore usthrough the crust beneath our outer world. At that point it reached the centerof gravity of the five-hundred-mile-thick crust. Up to that point we had beendescending—direction is, of course, merely relative. Then at the moment thatour seats revolved—the thing that made you believe that we had turned about andwere speeding upward—we passed the center of gravity and, though we did notalter the direction of our progress, yet we were in reality movingupward—toward the surface of the inner world. Does not the strange fauna andflora which we have seen convince you that you are not in the world of yourbirth? And the horizon—could it present the strange aspects which we both notedunless we were indeed standing upon the inside surface of a sphere?”

“But the sun, Perry!” I urged. “How in the world can the sun shine through fivehundred miles of solid crust?”

“It is not the sun of the outer world that we see here. It is another sun—anentirely different sun—that casts its eternal noonday effulgence upon the faceof the inner world. Look at it now, David—if you can see it from the doorway ofthis hut—and you will see that it is still in the exact center of the heavens.We have been here for many hours—yet it is still noon.

“And withal it is very simple, David. The earth was once a nebulous mass. Itcooled, and as it cooled it shrank. At length a thin crust of solid matterformed upon its outer surface—a sort of shell; but within it was partiallymolten matter and highly expanded gases. As it continued to cool, whathappened? Centrifugal force hurled the particles of the nebulous center towardthe crust as rapidly as they approached a solid state. You have seen the sameprinciple practically applied in the modern cream separator. Presently therewas only a small super-heated core of gaseous matter remaining within a hugevacant interior left by the contraction of the cooling gases. The equalattraction of the solid crust from all directions maintained this luminous corein the exact center of the hollow globe. What remains of it is the sun you sawtoday—a relatively tiny thing at the exact center of the earth. Equally toevery part of this inner world it diffuses its perpetual noonday light andtorrid heat.

“This inner world must have cooled sufficiently to support animal life longages after life appeared upon the outer crust, but that the same agencies wereat work here is evident from the similar forms of both animal and vegetablecreation which we have already seen. Take the great beast which attacked us,for example. Unquestionably a counterpart of the Megatherium of thepost-Pliocene period of the outer crust, whose fossilized skeleton has beenfound in South America.”

“But the grotesque inhabitants of this forest?” I urged. “Surely they have nocounterpart in the earth’s history.”

“Who can tell?” he rejoined. “They may constitute the link between ape and man,all traces of which have been swallowed by the countless convulsions which haveracked the outer crust, or they may be merely the result of evolution alongslightly different lines—either is quite possible.”

Further speculation was interrupted by the appearance of several of our captorsbefore the entrance of the hut. Two of them entered and dragged us forth. Theperilous pathways and the surrounding trees were filled with the black ape-men,their females, and their young. There was not an ornament, a weapon, or agarment among the lot.

“Quite low in the scale of creation,” commented Perry.

“Quite high enough to play the deuce with us, though,” I replied. “Now what doyou suppose they intend doing with us?”

We were not long in learning. As on the occasion of our trip to the village wewere seized by a couple of the powerful creatures and whirled away through thetree tops, while about us and in our wake raced a chattering, jabbering,grinning horde of sleek, black ape-things.

Twice my bearers missed their footing, and my heart ceased beating as weplunged toward instant death among the tangled deadwood beneath. But on bothoccasions those lithe, powerful tails reached out and found sustainingbranches, nor did either of the creatures loosen their grasp upon me. In fact,it seemed that the incidents were of no greater moment to them than would bethe stubbing of one’s toe at a street crossing in the outer world—they butlaughed uproariously and sped on with me.

For some time they continued through the forest—how long I could not guess forI was learning, what was later borne very forcefully to my mind, that timeceases to be a factor the moment means for measuring it cease to exist. Ourwatches were gone, and we were living beneath a stationary sun. Already I waspuzzled to compute the period of time which had elapsed since we broke throughthe crust of the inner world. It might be hours, or it might be days—who in theworld could tell where it was always noon! By the sun, no time had elapsed—butmy judgment told me that we must have been several hours in this strange world.

Presently the forest terminated, and we came out upon a level plain. A shortdistance before us rose a few low, rocky hills. Toward these our captors urgedus, and after a short time led us through a narrow pass into a tiny, circularvalley. Here they got down to work, and we were soon convinced that if we werenot to die to make a Roman holiday, we were to die for some other purpose. Theattitude of our captors altered immediately as they entered the natural arenawithin the rocky hills. Their laughter ceased. Grim ferocity marked theirbestial faces—bared fangs menaced us.

We were placed in the center of the amphitheater—the thousand creatures forminga great ring about us. Then a wolf-dog was brought—HYAENODON Perry calledit—and turned loose with us inside the circle. The thing’s body was as large asthat of a full-grown mastiff, its legs were short and powerful, and its jawsbroad and strong. Dark, shaggy hair covered its back and sides, while itsbreast and belly were quite white. As it slunk toward us it presented a mostformidable aspect with its upcurled lips baring its mighty fangs.

Perry was on his knees, praying. I stooped and picked up a small stone. At mymovement the beast veered off a bit and commenced circling us. Evidently it hadbeen a target for stones before. The ape-things were dancing up and down urgingthe brute on with savage cries, until at last, seeing that I did not throw, hecharged us.

At Andover, and later at Yale, I had pitched on winning ball teams. My speedand control must both have been above the ordinary, for I made such a recordduring my senior year at college that overtures were made to me in behalf ofone of the great major-league teams; but in the tightest pitch that ever hadconfronted me in the past I had never been in such need for control as now.

As I wound up for the delivery, I held my nerves and muscles under absolutecommand, though the grinning jaws were hurtling toward me at terrific speed.And then I let go, with every ounce of my weight and muscle and science in backof that throw. The stone caught the hyaenodon full upon the end of the nose,and sent him bowling over upon his back.

At the same instant a chorus of shrieks and howls arose from the circle ofspectators, so that for a moment I thought that the upsetting of their championwas the cause; but in this I soon saw that I was mistaken. As I looked, theape-things broke in all directions toward the surrounding hills, and then Idistinguished the real cause of their perturbation. Behind them, streamingthrough the pass which leads into the valley, came a swarm of hairymen—gorilla-like creatures armed with spears and hatchets, and bearing long,oval shields. Like demons they set upon the ape-things, and before them thehyaenodon, which had now regained its senses and its feet, fled howling withfright. Past us swept the pursued and the pursuers, nor did the hairy onesaccord us more than a passing glance until the arena had been emptied of itsformer occupants. Then they returned to us, and one who seemed to haveauthority among them directed that we be brought with them.

When we had passed out of the amphitheater onto the great plain we saw acaravan of men and women—human beings like ourselves—and for the first timehope and relief filled my heart, until I could have cried out in the exuberanceof my happiness. It is true that they were a half-naked, wild-appearingaggregation; but they at least were fashioned along the same lines asourselves—there was nothing grotesque or horrible about them as about the othercreatures in this strange, weird world.

But as we came closer, our hearts sank once more, for we discovered that thepoor wretches were chained neck to neck in a long line, and that thegorilla-men were their guards. With little ceremony Perry and I were chained atthe end of the line, and without further ado the interrupted march was resumed.

Up to this time the excitement had kept us both up; but now the tiresomemonotony of the long march across the sun-baked plain brought on all theagonies consequent to a long-denied sleep. On and on we stumbled beneath thathateful noonday sun. If we fell we were prodded with a sharp point. Ourcompanions in chains did not stumble. They strode along proudly erect.Occasionally they would exchange words with one another in a monosyllabiclanguage. They were a noble-appearing race with well-formed heads and perfectphysiques. The men were heavily bearded, tall and muscular; the women, smallerand more gracefully molded, with great masses of raven hair caught into looseknots upon their heads. The features of both sexes were well proportioned—therewas not a face among them that would have been called even plain if judged byearthly standards. They wore no ornaments; but this I later learned was due tothe fact that their captors had stripped them of everything of value. Asgarmenture the women possessed a single robe of some light-colored, spottedhide, rather similar in appearance to a leopard’s skin. This they wore eithersupported entirely about the waist by a leathern thong, so that it hungpartially below the knee on one side, or possibly looped gracefully across oneshoulder. Their feet were shod with skin sandals. The men wore loin cloths ofthe hide of some shaggy beast, long ends of which depended before and behindnearly to the ground. In some instances these ends were finished with thestrong talons of the beast from which the hides had been taken.

Our guards, whom I already have described as gorilla-like men, were ratherlighter in build than a gorilla, but even so they were indeed mighty creatures.Their arms and legs were proportioned more in conformity with human standards,but their entire bodies were covered with shaggy, brown hair, and their faceswere quite as brutal as those of the few stuffed specimens of the gorilla whichI had seen in the museums at home.

Their only redeeming feature lay in the development of the head above and backof the ears. In this respect they were not one whit less human than we. Theywere clothed in a sort of tunic of light cloth which reached to the knees.Beneath this they wore only a loin cloth of the same material, while their feetwere shod with thick hide of some mammoth creature of this inner world.

Their arms and necks were encircled by many ornaments of metal—silverpredominating—and on their tunics were sewn the heads of tiny reptiles in oddand rather artistic designs. They talked among themselves as they marched alongon either side of us, but in a language which I perceived differed from thatemployed by our fellow prisoners. When they addressed the latter they used whatappeared to be a third language, and which I later learned is a mongrel tonguerather analogous to the Pidgin-English of the Chinese coolie.

How far we marched I have no conception, nor has Perry. Both of us were asleepmuch of the time for hours before a halt was called—then we dropped in ourtracks. I say “for hours,” but how may one measure time where time does notexist! When our march commenced the sun stood at zenith. When we halted ourshadows still pointed toward nadir. Whether an instant or an eternity ofearthly time elapsed who may say. That march may have occupied nine years andeleven months of the ten years that I spent in the inner world, or it may havebeen accomplished in the fraction of a second—I cannot tell. But this I do knowthat since you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed fromthis earth I have lost all respect for time—I am commencing to doubt that sucha thing exists other than in the weak, finite mind of man.

IV
DIAN THE BEAUTIFUL

When our guards aroused us from sleep we were much refreshed. They gave usfood. Strips of dried meat it was, but it put new life and strength into us, sothat now we too marched with high-held heads, and took noble strides. At leastI did, for I was young and proud; but poor Perry hated walking. On earth I hadoften seen him call a cab to travel a square—he was paying for it now, and hisold legs wobbled so that I put my arm about him and half carried him throughthe balance of those frightful marches.

The country began to change at last, and we wound up out of the level plainthrough mighty mountains of virgin granite. The tropical verdure of thelowlands was replaced by hardier vegetation, but even here the effects ofconstant heat and light were apparent in the immensity of the trees and theprofusion of foliage and blooms. Crystal streams roared through their rockychannels, fed by the perpetual snows which we could see far above us. Above thesnowcapped heights hung masses of heavy clouds. It was these, Perry explained,which evidently served the double purpose of replenishing the melting snows andprotecting them from the direct rays of the sun.

By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in which ourguards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the rather charmingtongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead of me in the chain gang was a youngwoman. Three feet of chain linked us together in a forced companionship whichI, at least, soon rejoiced in. For I found her a willing teacher, and from herI learned the language of her tribe, and much of the life and customs of theinner world—at least that part of it with which she was familiar.

She told me that she was called Dian the Beautiful, and that she belonged tothe tribe of Amoz, which dwells in the cliffs above the Darel Az, or shallowsea.

“How came you here?” I asked her.

“I was running away from Jubal the Ugly One,” she answered, as though that wasexplanation quite sufficient.

“Who is Jubal the Ugly One?” I asked. “And why did you run away from him?”

She looked at me in surprise.

“Why DOES a woman run away from a man?” she answered my question with another.

“They do not, where I come from,” I replied. “Sometimes they run after them.”

But she could not understand. Nor could I get her to grasp the fact that I wasof another world. She was quite as positive that creation was originated solelyto produce her own kind and the world she lived in as are many of the outerworld.

“But Jubal,” I insisted. “Tell me about him, and why you ran away to be chainedby the neck and scourged across the face of a world.”

“Jubal the Ugly One placed his trophy before my father’s house. It was the headof a mighty tandor. It remained there and no greater trophy was placed besideit. So I knew that Jubal the Ugly One would come and take me as his mate. Noneother so powerful wished me, or they would have slain a mightier beast and thushave won me from Jubal. My father is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but asadok tossed him, and never again had he the full use of his right arm. Mybrother, Dacor the Strong One, had gone to the land of Sari to steal a mate forhimself. Thus there was none, father, brother, or lover, to save me from Jubalthe Ugly One, and I ran away and hid among the hills that skirt the land ofAmoz. And there these Sagoths found me and made me captive.”

“What will they do with you?” I asked. “Where are they taking us?”

Again she looked her incredulity.

“I can almost believe that you are of another world,” she said, “for otherwisesuch ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really mean that you do not know thatthe Sagoths are the creatures of the Mahars—the mighty Mahars who think theyown Pellucidar and all that walks or grows upon its surface, or creeps orburrows beneath, or swims within its lakes and oceans, or flies through itsair? Next you will be telling me that you never before heard of the Mahars!”

I was loath to do it, and further incur her scorn; but there was no alternativeif I were to absorb knowledge, so I made a clean breast of my pitiful ignoranceas to the mighty Mahars. She was shocked. But she did her very best toenlighten me, though much that she said was as Greek would have been to her.She described the Mahars largely by comparisons. In this way they were likeunto thipdars, in that to the hairless lidi.

About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had wings, andwebbed feet; lived in cities built beneath the ground; could swim under waterfor great distances, and were very, very wise. The Sagoths were their weaponsof offense and defense, and the races like herself were their hands andfeet—they were the slaves and servants who did all the manual labor. The Maharswere the heads—the brains—of the inner world. I longed to see this wondrousrace of supermen.

Perry learned the language with me. When we halted, as we occasionally did,though sometimes the halts seemed ages apart, he would join in theconversation, as would Ghak the Hairy One, he who was chained just ahead ofDian the Beautiful. Ahead of Ghak was Hooja the Sly One. He too entered theconversation occasionally. Most of his remarks were directed toward Dian theBeautiful. It didn’t take half an eye to see that he had developed a bad case;but the girl appeared totally oblivious to his thinly veiled advances. Did Isay thinly veiled? There is a race of men in New Zealand, or Australia, I haveforgotten which, who indicate their preference for the lady of their affectionsby banging her over the head with a bludgeon. By comparison with this methodHooja’s lovemaking might be called thinly veiled. At first it caused me toblush violently although I have seen several Old Years out at Rectors, and inother less fashionable places off Broadway, and in Vienna, and Hamburg.

But the girl! She was magnificent. It was easy to see that she consideredherself as entirely above and apart from her present surroundings and company.She talked with me, and with Perry, and with the taciturn Ghak because we wererespectful; but she couldn’t even see Hooja the Sly One, much less hear him,and that made him furious. He tried to get one of the Sagoths to move the girlup ahead of him in the slave gang, but the fellow only poked him with his spearand told him that he had selected the girl for his own property—that he wouldbuy her from the Mahars as soon as they reached Phutra. Phutra, it seemed, wasthe city of our destination.

After passing over the first chain of mountains we skirted a salt sea, uponwhose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like creatures there were withlong necks stretching ten and more feet above their enormous bodies and whosesnake heads were split with gaping mouths bristling with countless fangs. Therewere huge tortoises too, paddling about among these other reptiles, which Perrysaid were Plesiosaurs of the Lias. I didn’t question his veracity—they mighthave been most anything.

Dian told me they were tandorazes, or tandors of the sea, and that the other,and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from the deep to do battlewith them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths—Perry called them Ichthyosaurs. Theyresembled a whale with the head of an alligator.

I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school—about all thatremained was an impression of horror that the illustrations of restoredprehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined belief that any manwith a pig’s shank and a vivid imagination could “restore” most any sort ofpaleolithic monster he saw fit, and take rank as a first class paleontologist.But when I saw these sleek, shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as theyemerged from the ocean, shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters rollfrom their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided hither andthither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I saw them meet,open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic and interminable warring Irealized how futile is man’s poor, weak imagination by comparison with Nature’sincredible genius.

And Perry! He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself.

“David,” he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside that awfulsea. “David, I used to teach geology, and I thought that I believed what Itaught; but now I see that I did not believe it—that it is impossible for manto believe such things as these unless he sees them with his own eyes. We takethings for granted, perhaps, because we are told them over and over again, andhave no way of disproving them—like religions, for example; but we don’tbelieve them, we only think we do. If you ever get back to the outer world youwill find that the geologists and paleontologists will be the first to set youdown a liar, for they know that no such creatures as they restore ever existed.It is all right to IMAGINE them as existing in an equally imaginary epoch—butnow? poof!”

At the next halt Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack chain to permithim to worm himself back quite close to Dian. We were all standing, and as heedged near the girl she turned her back upon him in such a truly earthlyfeminine manner that I could scarce repress a smile; but it was a short-livedsmile for on the instant the Sly One’s hand fell upon the girl’s bare arm,jerking her roughly toward him.

I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics which prevailedwithin Pellucidar; but even so I did not need the appealing look which the girlshot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence my subsequent act. What theSly One’s intention was I paused not to inquire; but instead, before he couldlay hold of her with his other hand, I placed a right to the point of his jawthat felled him in his tracks.

A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and the Sagothswho had witnessed the brief drama; not, as I later learned, because I hadchampioned the girl, but for the neat and, to them, astounding method by whichI had bested Hooja.

And the girl? At first she looked at me with wide, wondering eyes, and then shedropped her head, her face half averted, and a delicate flush suffused hercheek. For a moment she stood thus in silence, and then her head went high, andshe turned her back upon me as she had upon Hooja. Some of the prisonerslaughed, and I saw the face of Ghak the Hairy One go very black as he looked atme searchingly. And what I could see of Dian’s cheek went suddenly from red towhite.

Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that in some wayI had offended Dian the Beautiful I could not prevail upon her to talk with methat I might learn wherein I had erred—in fact I might quite as well have beenaddressing a sphinx for all the attention I got. At last my own foolish pridestepped in and prevented my making any further attempts, and thus acompanionship that without my realizing it had come to mean a great deal to mewas cut off. Thereafter I confined my conversation to Perry. Hooja did notrenew his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture near me.

Again the weary and apparently interminable marching became a perfect nightmareof horrors to me. The more firmly fixed became the realization that the girl’sfriendship had meant so much to me, the more I came to miss it; and the moreimpregnable the barrier of silly pride. But I was very young and would not askGhak for the explanation which I was sure he could give, and that might havemade everything all right again.

On the march, or during halts, Dian refused consistently to notice me—when hereyes wandered in my direction she looked either over my head or directlythrough me. At last I became desperate, and determined to swallow myself-esteem, and again beg her to tell me how I had offended, and how I mightmake reparation. I made up my mind that I should do this at the next halt. Wewere approaching another range of mountains at the time, and when we reachedthem, instead of winding across them through some high-flung pass we entered amighty natural tunnel—a series of labyrinthine grottoes, dark as Erebus.

The guards had no torches or light of any description. In fact we had seen noartificial light or sign of fire since we had entered Pellucidar. In a land ofperpetual noon there is no need of light above ground, yet I marveled that theyhad no means of lighting their way through these dark, subterranean passages.So we crept along at a snail’s pace, with much stumbling and falling—the guardskeeping up a singsong chant ahead of us, interspersed with certain high noteswhich I found always indicated rough places and turns.

Halts were now more frequent, but I did not wish to speak to Dian until I couldsee from the expression of her face how she was receiving my apologies. At lasta faint glow ahead forewarned us of the end of the tunnel, for which I for onewas devoutly thankful. Then at a sudden turn we emerged into the full light ofthe noonday sun.

But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a realcatastrophe—Dian was gone, and with her a half-dozen other prisoners. Theguards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to behold. Theirawesome, bestial faces were contorted in the most diabolical expressions, asthey accused each other of responsibility for the loss. Finally they fell uponus, beating us with their spear shafts, and hatchets. They had already killedtwo near the head of the line, and were like to have finished the balance of uswhen their leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all mylife had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of bestial rage—I thanked Godthat Dian had not been one of those left to endure it.

Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me each alternate one hadbeen freed commencing with Dian. Hooja was gone. Ghak remained. What could itmean? How had it been accomplished? The commander of the guards wasinvestigating. Soon he discovered that the rude locks which had held theneckbands in place had been deftly picked.

“Hooja the Sly One,” murmured Ghak, who was now next to me in line. “He hastaken the girl that you would not have,” he continued, glancing at me.

“That I would not have!” I cried. “What do you mean?”

He looked at me closely for a moment.

“I have doubted your story that you are from another world,” he said at last,“but yet upon no other grounds could your ignorance of the ways of Pellucidarbe explained. Do you really mean that you do not know that you offended theBeautiful One, and how?”

“I do not know, Ghak,” I replied.

“Then shall I tell you. When a man of Pellucidar intervenes between another manand the woman the other man would have, the woman belongs to the victor. Dianthe Beautiful belongs to you. You should have claimed her or released her. Hadyou taken her hand, it would have indicated your desire to make her your mate,and had you raised her hand above her head and then dropped it, it would havemeant that you did not wish her for a mate and that you released her from allobligation to you. By doing neither you have put upon her the greatest affrontthat a man may put upon a woman. Now she is your slave. No man will take her asmate, or may take her honorably, until he shall have overcome you in combat,and men do not choose slave women as their mates—at least not the men ofPellucidar.”

“I did not know, Ghak,” I cried. “I did not know. Not for all Pellucidar wouldI have harmed Dian the Beautiful by word, or look, or act of mine. I do notwant her as my slave. I do not want her as my—” but here I stopped. The visionof that sweet and innocent face floated before me amidst the soft mists ofimagination, and where I had on the second believed that I clung only to thememory of a gentle friendship I had lost, yet now it seemed that it would havebeen disloyalty to her to have said that I did not want Dian the Beautiful asmy mate. I had not thought of her except as a welcome friend in a strange,cruel world. Even now I did not think that I loved her.

I believe Ghak must have read the truth more in my expression than in my words,for presently he laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Man of another world,” he said, “I believe you. Lips may lie, but when theheart speaks through the eyes it tells only the truth. Your heart has spoken tome. I know now that you meant no affront to Dian the Beautiful. She is not ofmy tribe; but her mother is my sister. She does not know it—her mother wasstolen by Dian’s father who came with many others of the tribe of Amoz tobattle with us for our women—the most beautiful women of Pellucidar. Then washer father king of Amoz, and her mother was daughter of the king of Sari—towhose power I, his son, have succeeded. Dian is the daughter of kings, thoughher father is no longer king since the sadok tossed him and Jubal the Ugly Onewrested his kingship from him. Because of her lineage the wrong you did her wasgreatly magnified in the eyes of all who saw it. She will never forgive you.”

I asked Ghak if there was not some way in which I could release the girl fromthe bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon her.

“If ever you find her, yes,” he answered. “Merely to raise her hand above herhead and drop it in the presence of others is sufficient to release her; buthow may you ever find her, you who are doomed to a life of slavery yourself inthe buried city of Phutra?”

“Is there no escape?” I asked.

“Hooja the Sly One escaped and took the others with him,” replied Ghak. “Butthere are no more dark places on the way to Phutra, and once there it is not soeasy—the Mahars are very wise. Even if one escaped from Phutra there are thethipdars—they would find you, and then—” the Hairy One shuddered. “No, you willnever escape the Mahars.”

It was a cheerful prospect. I asked Perry what he thought about it; but he onlyshrugged his shoulders and continued a longwinded prayer he had been at forsome time. He was wont to say that the only redeeming feature of our captivitywas the ample time it gave him for the improvisation of prayers—it was becomingan obsession with him. The Sagoths had begun to take notice of his habit ofdeclaiming throughout entire marches. One of them asked him what he wassaying—to whom he was talking. The question gave me an idea, so I answeredquickly before Perry could say anything.

“Do not interrupt him,” I said. “He is a very holy man in the world from whichwe come. He is speaking to spirits which you cannot see—do not interrupt him orthey will spring out of the air upon you and rend you limb from limb—likethat,” and I jumped toward the great brute with a loud “Boo!” that sent himstumbling backward.

I took a long chance, I realized, but if we could make any capital out ofPerry’s harmless mania I wanted to make it while the making was prime. Itworked splendidly. The Sagoths treated us both with marked respect during thebalance of the journey, and then passed the word along to their masters, theMahars.

Two marches after this episode we came to the city of Phutra. The entrance toit was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which guarded a flight of stepsleading to the buried city. Sagoths were on guard here as well as at a hundredor more other towers scattered about over a large plain.

V
SLAVES

As we descended the broad staircase which led to the main avenue of Phutra Icaught my first sight of the dominant race of the inner world. Involuntarily Ishrank back as one of the creatures approached to inspect us. A more hideousthing it would be impossible to imagine. The all-powerful Mahars of Pellucidarare great reptiles, some six or eight feet in length, with long narrow headsand great round eyes. Their beak-like mouths are lined with sharp, white fangs,and the backs of their huge, lizard bodies are serrated into bony ridges fromtheir necks to the end of their long tails. Their feet are equipped with threewebbed toes, while from the fore feet membranous wings, which are attached totheir bodies just in front of the hind legs, protrude at an angle of 45 degreestoward the rear, ending in sharp points several feet above their bodies.

I glanced at Perry as the thing passed me to inspect him. The old man wasgazing at the horrid creature with wide astonished eyes. When it passed on, heturned to me.

“A rhamphorhynchus of the Middle Olitic, David,” he said, “but, gad, howenormous! The largest remains we ever have discovered have never indicated asize greater than that attained by an ordinary crow.”

As we continued on through the main avenue of Phutra we saw many thousand ofthe creatures coming and going upon their daily duties. They paid but littleattention to us. Phutra is laid out underground with a regularity thatindicates remarkable engineering skill. It is hewn from solid limestone strata.The streets are broad and of a uniform height of twenty feet. At intervalstubes pierce the roof of this underground city, and by means of lenses andreflectors transmit the sunlight, softened and diffused, to dispel what wouldotherwise be Cimmerian darkness. In like manner air is introduced.

Perry and I were taken, with Ghak, to a large public building, where one of theSagoths who had formed our guard explained to a Maharan official thecircumstances surrounding our capture. The method of communication betweenthese two was remarkable in that no spoken words were exchanged. They employeda species of sign language. As I was to learn later, the Mahars have no ears,not any spoken language. Among themselves they communicate by means of whatPerry says must be a sixth sense which is cognizant of a fourth dimension.

I never did quite grasp him, though he endeavored to explain it to me uponnumerous occasions. I suggested telepathy, but he said no, that it was nottelepathy since they could only communicate when in each others’ presence, norcould they talk with the Sagoths or the other inhabitants of Pellucidar by thesame method they used to converse with one another.

“What they do,” said Perry, “is to project their thoughts into the fourthdimension, when they become appreciable to the sixth sense of their listener.Do I make myself quite clear?”

“You do not, Perry,” I replied. He shook his head in despair, and returned tohis work. They had set us to carrying a great accumulation of Maharanliterature from one apartment to another, and there arranging it upon shelves.I suggested to Perry that we were in the public library of Phutra, but later,as he commenced to discover the key to their written language, he assured methat we were handling the ancient archives of the race.

During this period my thoughts were continually upon Dian the Beautiful. I was,of course, glad that she had escaped the Mahars, and the fate that had beensuggested by the Sagoth who had threatened to purchase her upon our arrival atPhutra. I often wondered if the little party of fugitives had been overtaken bythe guards who had returned to search for them. Sometimes I was not so sure butthat I should have been more contented to know that Dian was here in Phutra,than to think of her at the mercy of Hooja the Sly One. Ghak, Perry, and Ioften talked together of possible escape, but the Sarian was so steeped in hislifelong belief that no one could escape from the Mahars except by a miracle,that he was not much aid to us—his attitude was of one who waits for themiracle to come to him.

At my suggestion Perry and I fashioned some swords of scraps of iron which wediscovered among some rubbish in the cells where we slept, for we werepermitted almost unrestrained freedom of action within the limits of thebuilding to which we had been assigned. So great were the number of slaves whowaited upon the inhabitants of Phutra that none of us was apt to beoverburdened with work, nor were our masters unkind to us.

We hid our new weapons beneath the skins which formed our beds, and then Perryconceived the idea of making bows and arrows—weapons apparently unknown withinPellucidar. Next came shields; but these I found it easier to steal from thewalls of the outer guardroom of the building.

We had completed these arrangements for our protection after leaving Phutrawhen the Sagoths who had been sent to recapture the escaped prisoners returnedwith four of them, of whom Hooja was one. Dian and two others had eluded them.It so happened that Hooja was confined in the same building with us. He toldGhak that he had not seen Dian or the others after releasing them within thedark grotto. What had become of them he had not the faintest conception—theymight be wandering yet, lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not dead fromstarvation.

I was now still further apprehensive as to the fate of Dian, and at this time,I imagine, came the first realization that my affection for the girl might beprompted by more than friendship. During my waking hours she was constantly thesubject of my thoughts, and when I slept her dear face haunted my dreams. Morethan ever was I determined to escape the Mahars.

“Perry,” I confided to the old man, “if I have to search every inch of thisdiminutive world I am going to find Dian the Beautiful and right the wrong Iunintentionally did her.” That was the excuse I made for Perry’s benefit.

“Diminutive world!” he scoffed. “You don’t know what you are talking about, myboy,” and then he showed me a map of Pellucidar which he had recentlydiscovered among the manuscript he was arranging.

“Look,” he cried, pointing to it, “this is evidently water, and all this land.Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans areupon the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of oceanfollow the general lines of the continents of the outer world.

“We know that the crust of the globe is 500 miles in thickness; then the insidediameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the superficial area165,480,000 square miles. Three-fourths of this is land. Think of it! A landarea of 124,110,000 square miles! Our own world contains but 53,000,000 squaremiles of land, the balance of its surface being covered by water. Just as weoften compare nations by their relative land areas, so if we compare these twoworlds in the same way we have the strange anomaly of a larger world within asmaller one!

“Where within vast Pellucidar would you search for your Dian? Without stars, ormoon, or changing sun how could you find her even though you knew where shemight be found?”

The proposition was a corker. It quite took my breath away; but I found that itleft me all the more determined to attempt it.

“If Ghak will accompany us we may be able to do it,” I suggested.

Perry and I sought him out and put the question straight to him.

“Ghak,” I said, “we are determined to escape from this bondage. Will youaccompany us?”

“They will set the thipdars upon us,” he said, “and then we shall be killed;but—” he hesitated—“I would take the chance if I thought that I might possiblyescape and return to my own people.”

“Could you find your way back to your own land?” asked Perry. “And could youaid David in his search for Dian?”

“Yes.”

“But how,” persisted Perry, “could you travel to strange country withoutheavenly bodies or a compass to guide you?”

Ghak didn’t know what Perry meant by heavenly bodies or a compass, but heassured us that you might blindfold any man of Pellucidar and carry him to thefarthermost corner of the world, yet he would be able to come directly to hisown home again by the shortest route. He seemed surprised to think that wefound anything wonderful in it. Perry said it must be some sort of hominginstinct such as is possessed by certain breeds of earthly pigeons. I didn’tknow, of course, but it gave me an idea.

“Then Dian could have found her way directly to her own people?” I asked.

“Surely,” replied Ghak, “unless some mighty beast of prey killed her.”

I was for making the attempted escape at once, but both Perry and Ghakcounseled waiting for some propitious accident which would insure us some smalldegree of success. I didn’t see what accident could befall a whole community ina land of perpetual daylight where the inhabitants had no fixed habits ofsleep. Why, I am sure that some of the Mahars never sleep, while others may, atlong intervals, crawl into the dark recesses beneath their dwellings and curlup in protracted slumber. Perry says that if a Mahar stays awake for threeyears he will make up all his lost sleep in a long year’s snooze. That may beall true, but I never saw but three of them asleep, and it was the sight ofthese three that gave me a suggestion for our means of escape.

I had been searching about far below the levels that we slaves were supposed tofrequent—possibly fifty feet beneath the main floor of the building—among anetwork of corridors and apartments, when I came suddenly upon three Maharscurled up upon a bed of skins. At first I thought they were dead, but latertheir regular breathing convinced me of my error. Like a flash the thought cameto me of the marvelous opportunity these sleeping reptiles offered as a meansof eluding the watchfulness of our captors and the Sagoth guards.

Hastening back to Perry where he pored over a musty pile of, to me, meaninglesshieroglyphics, I explained my plan to him. To my surprise he was horrified.

“It would be murder, David,” he cried.

“Murder to kill a reptilian monster?” I asked in astonishment.

“Here they are not monsters, David,” he replied. “Here they are the dominantrace—we are the ‘monsters’—the lower orders. In Pellucidar evolution hasprogressed along different lines than upon the outer earth. These terribleconvulsions of nature time and time again wiped out the existing species—butfor this fact some monster of the Saurozoic epoch might rule today upon our ownworld. We see here what might well have occurred in our own history hadconditions been what they have been here.

“Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust. Here man hasbut reached a stage analogous to the Stone Age of our own world’s history, butfor countless millions of years these reptiles have been progressing. Possiblyit is the sixth sense which I am sure they possess that has given them anadvantage over the other and more frightfully armed of their fellows; but thiswe may never know. They look upon us as we look upon the beasts of our fields,and I learn from their written records that other races of Mahars feed uponmen—they keep them in great droves, as we keep cattle. They breed them mostcarefully, and when they are quite fat, they kill and eat them.”

I shuddered.

“What is there horrible about it, David?” the old man asked. “They understandus no better than we understand the lower animals of our own world. Why, I havecome across here very learned discussions of the question as to whether gilaks,that is men, have any means of communication. One writer claims that we do noteven reason—that our every act is mechanical, or instinctive. The dominant raceof Pellucidar, David, have not yet learned that men converse among themselves,or reason. Because we do not converse as they do it is beyond them to imaginethat we converse at all. It is thus that we reason in relation to the brutes ofour own world. They know that the Sagoths have a spoken language, but theycannot comprehend it, or how it manifests itself, since they have no auditoryapparatus. They believe that the motions of the lips alone convey the meaning.That the Sagoths can communicate with us is incomprehensible to them.

“Yes, David,” he concluded, “it would entail murder to carry out your plan.”

“Very well then, Perry.” I replied. “I shall become a murderer.”

He got me to go over the plan again most carefully, and for some reason whichwas not at the time clear to me insisted upon a very careful description of theapartments and corridors I had just explored.

“I wonder, David,” he said at length, “as you are determined to carry out yourwild scheme, if we could not accomplish something of very real and lastingbenefit for the human race of Pellucidar at the same time. Listen, I havelearned much of a most surprising nature from these archives of the Mahars.That you may appreciate my plan I shall briefly outline the history of therace.

“Once the males were all-powerful, but ages ago the females, little by little,assumed the mastery. For other ages no noticeable change took place in the raceof Mahars. It continued to progress under the intelligent and beneficent ruleof the ladies. Science took vast strides. This was especially true of thesciences which we know as biology and eugenics. Finally a certain femalescientist announced the fact that she had discovered a method whereby eggsmight be fertilized by chemical means after they were laid—all true reptiles,you know, are hatched from eggs.

“What happened? Immediately the necessity for males ceased to exist—the racewas no longer dependent upon them. More ages elapsed until at the present timewe find a race consisting exclusively of females. But here is the point. Thesecret of this chemical formula is kept by a single race of Mahars. It is inthe city of Phutra, and unless I am greatly in error I judge from yourdescription of the vaults through which you passed today that it lies hidden inthe cellar of this building.

“For two reasons they hide it away and guard it jealously. First, because uponit depends the very life of the race of Mahars, and second, owing to the factthat when it was public property as at first so many were experimenting with itthat the danger of over-population became very grave.

“David, if we can escape, and at the same time take with us this great secretwhat will we not have accomplished for the human race within Pellucidar!” Thevery thought of it fairly overpowered me. Why, we two would be the means ofplacing the men of the inner world in their rightful place among createdthings. Only the Sagoths would then stand between them and absolute supremacy,and I was not quite sure but that the Sagoths owed all their power to thegreater intelligence of the Mahars—I could not believe that these gorilla-likebeasts were the mental superiors of the human race of Pellucidar.

“Why, Perry,” I exclaimed, “you and I may reclaim a whole world! Together wecan lead the races of men out of the darkness of ignorance into the light ofadvancement and civilization. At one step we may carry them from the Age ofStone to the twentieth century. It’s marvelous—absolutely marvelous just tothink about it.”

“David,” said the old man, “I believe that God sent us here for just thatpurpose—it shall be my life work to teach them His word—to lead them into thelight of His mercy while we are training their hearts and hands in the ways ofculture and civilization.”

“You are right, Perry,” I said, “and while you are teaching them to pray I’llbe teaching them to fight, and between us we’ll make a race of men that will bean honor to us both.”

Ghak had entered the apartment some time before we concluded our conversation,and now he wanted to know what we were so excited about. Perry thought we hadbest not tell him too much, and so I only explained that I had a plan forescape. When I had outlined it to him, he seemed about as horror-struck asPerry had been; but for a different reason. The Hairy One only considered thehorrible fate that would be ours were we discovered; but at last I prevailedupon him to accept my plan as the only feasible one, and when I had assured himthat I would take all the responsibility for it were we captured, he accorded areluctant assent.

VI
THE BEGINNING OF HORROR

Within Pellucidar one time is as good as another. There were no nights to maskour attempted escape. All must be done in broad daylight—all but the work I hadto do in the apartment beneath the building. So we determined to put our planto an immediate test lest the Mahars who made it possible should awake before Ireached them; but we were doomed to disappointment, for no sooner had wereached the main floor of the building on our way to the pits beneath, than weencountered hurrying bands of slaves being hastened under strong Sagoth guardout of the edifice to the avenue beyond.

Other Sagoths were darting hither and thither in search of other slaves, andthe moment that we appeared we were pounced upon and hustled into the line ofmarching humans.

What the purpose or nature of the general exodus we did not know, but presentlythrough the line of captives ran the rumor that two escaped slaves had beenrecaptured—a man and a woman—and that we were marching to witness theirpunishment, for the man had killed a Sagoth of the detachment that had pursuedand overtaken them.

At the intelligence my heart sprang to my throat, for I was sure that the twowere of those who escaped in the dark grotto with Hooja the Sly One, and thatDian must be the woman. Ghak thought so too, as did Perry.

“Is there naught that we may do to save her?” I asked Ghak.

“Naught,” he replied.

Along the crowded avenue we marched, the guards showing unusual cruelty towardus, as though we, too, had been implicated in the murder of their fellow. Theoccasion was to serve as an object-lesson to all other slaves of the danger andfutility of attempted escape, and the fatal consequences of taking the life ofa superior being, and so I imagine that Sagoths felt amply justified in makingthe entire proceeding as uncomfortable and painful to us as possible.

They jabbed us with their spears and struck at us with the hatchets at theleast provocation, and at no provocation at all. It was a most uncomfortablehalf-hour that we spent before we were finally herded through a low entranceinto a huge building the center of which was given up to a good-sized arena.Benches surrounded this open space upon three sides, and along the fourth wereheaped huge bowlders which rose in receding tiers toward the roof.

At first I couldn’t make out the purpose of this mighty pile of rock, unless itwere intended as a rough and picturesque background for the scenes which wereenacted in the arena before it, but presently, after the wooden benches hadbeen pretty well filled by slaves and Sagoths, I discovered the purpose of thebowlders, for then the Mahars began to file into the enclosure.

They marched directly across the arena toward the rocks upon the opposite side,where, spreading their bat-like wings, they rose above the high wall of thepit, settling down upon the bowlders above. These were the reserved seats, theboxes of the elect.

Reptiles that they are, the rough surface of a great stone is to them as plushas upholstery to us. Here they lolled, blinking their hideous eyes, anddoubtless conversing with one another in their sixth-sense-fourth-dimensionlanguage.

For the first time I beheld their queen. She differed from the others in nofeature that was appreciable to my earthly eyes, in fact all Mahars look aliketo me: but when she crossed the arena after the balance of her female subjectshad found their bowlders, she was preceded by a score of huge Sagoths, thelargest I ever had seen, and on either side of her waddled a huge thipdar,while behind came another score of Sagoth guardsmen.

At the barrier the Sagoths clambered up the steep side with truly apelikeagility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon her wings with her twofrightful dragons close beside her, and settled down upon the largest bowlderof them all in the exact center of that side of the amphitheater which isreserved for the dominant race. Here she squatted, a most repulsive anduninteresting queen; though doubtless quite as well assured of her beauty anddivine right to rule as the proudest monarch of the outer world.

And then the music started—music without sound! The Mahars cannot hear, so thedrums and fifes and horns of earthly bands are unknown among them. The “band”consists of a score or more Mahars. It filed out in the center of the arenawhere the creatures upon the rocks might see it, and there it performed forfifteen or twenty minutes.

Their technic consisted in waving their tails and moving their heads in aregular succession of measured movements resulting in a cadence which evidentlypleased the eye of the Mahar as the cadence of our own instrumental musicpleases our ears. Sometimes the band took measured steps in unison to one sideor the other, or backward and again forward—it all seemed very silly andmeaningless to me, but at the end of the first piece the Mahars upon the rocksshowed the first indications of enthusiasm that I had seen displayed by thedominant race of Pellucidar. They beat their great wings up and down, and smotetheir rocky perches with their mighty tails until the ground shook. Then theband started another piece, and all was again as silent as the grave. That wasone great beauty about Mahar music—if you didn’t happen to like a piece thatwas being played all you had to do was shut your eyes.

When the band had exhausted its repertory it took wing and settled upon therocks above and behind the queen. Then the business of the day was on. A manand woman were pushed into the arena by a couple of Sagoth guardsmen. I leanedforward in my seat to scrutinize the female—hoping against hope that she mightprove to be another than Dian the Beautiful. Her back was toward me for awhile, and the sight of the great mass of raven hair piled high upon her headfilled me with alarm.

Presently a door in one side of the arena wall was opened to admit a huge,shaggy, bull-like creature.

“A Bos,” whispered Perry, excitedly. “His kind roamed the outer crust with thecave bear and the mammoth ages and ages ago. We have been carried back amillion years, David, to the childhood of a planet—is it not wondrous?”

But I saw only the raven hair of a half-naked girl, and my heart stood still indumb misery at the sight of her, nor had I any eyes for the wonders of naturalhistory. But for Perry and Ghak I should have leaped to the floor of the arenaand shared whatever fate lay in store for this priceless treasure of the StoneAge.

With the advent of the Bos—they call the thing a thag within Pellucidar—twospears were tossed into the arena at the feet of the prisoners. It seemed to methat a bean shooter would have been as effective against the mighty monster asthese pitiful weapons.

As the animal approached the two, bellowing and pawing the ground with thestrength of many earthly bulls, another door directly beneath us was opened,and from it issued the most terrific roar that ever had fallen upon my outragedears. I could not at first see the beast from which emanated this fearsomechallenge, but the sound had the effect of bringing the two victims around witha sudden start, and then I saw the girl’s face—she was not Dian! I could havewept for relief.

And now, as the two stood frozen in terror, I saw the author of that fearsomesound creeping stealthily into view. It was a huge tiger—such as hunted thegreat Bos through the jungles primeval when the world was young. In contour andmarkings it was not unlike the noblest of the Bengals of our own world, but asits dimensions were exaggerated to colossal proportions so too were itscolorings exaggerated. Its vivid yellows fairly screamed aloud; its whites wereas eider down; its blacks glossy as the finest anthracite coal, and its coatlong and shaggy as a mountain goat. That it is a beautiful animal there is nogainsaying, but if its size and colors are magnified here within Pellucidar, sois the ferocity of its disposition. It is not the occasional member of itsspecies that is a man hunter—all are man hunters; but they do not confine theirforaging to man alone, for there is no flesh or fish within Pellucidar thatthey will not eat with relish in the constant efforts which they make tofurnish their huge carcasses with sufficient sustenance to maintain theirmighty thews.

Upon one side of the doomed pair the thag bellowed and advanced, and upon theother tarag, the frightful, crept toward them with gaping mouth and drippingfangs.

The man seized the spears, handing one of them to the woman. At the sound ofthe roaring of the tiger the bull’s bellowing became a veritable frenzy ofrageful noise. Never in my life had I heard such an infernal din as the twobrutes made, and to think it was all lost upon the hideous reptiles for whomthe show was staged!

The thag was charging now from one side, and the tarag from the other. The twopuny things standing between them seemed already lost, but at the very momentthat the beasts were upon them the man grasped his companion by the arm andtogether they leaped to one side, while the frenzied creatures came togetherlike locomotives in collision.

There ensued a battle royal which for sustained and frightful ferocitytranscends the power of imagination or description. Time and again the colossalbull tossed the enormous tiger high into the air, but each time that the hugecat touched the ground he returned to the encounter with apparentlyundiminished strength, and seemingly increased ire.

For a while the man and woman busied themselves only with keeping out of theway of the two creatures, but finally I saw them separate and each creepstealthily toward one of the combatants. The tiger was now upon the bull’sbroad back, clinging to the huge neck with powerful fangs while its long,strong talons ripped the heavy hide into shreds and ribbons.

For a moment the bull stood bellowing and quivering with pain and rage, itscloven hoofs widespread, its tail lashing viciously from side to side, andthen, in a mad orgy of bucking it went careening about the arena in frenziedattempt to unseat its rending rider. It was with difficulty that the girlavoided the first mad rush of the wounded animal.

All its efforts to rid itself of the tiger seemed futile, until in desperationit threw itself upon the ground, rolling over and over. A little of this sodisconcerted the tiger, knocking its breath from it I imagine, that it lost itshold and then, quick as a cat, the great thag was up again and had buried thosemighty horns deep in the tarag’s abdomen, pinning him to the floor of thearena.

The great cat clawed at the shaggy head until eyes and ears were gone, andnaught but a few strips of ragged, bloody flesh remained upon the skull. Yetthrough all the agony of that fearful punishment the thag still stoodmotionless pinning down his adversary, and then the man leaped in, seeing thatthe blind bull would be the least formidable enemy, and ran his spear throughthe tarag’s heart.

As the animal’s fierce clawing ceased, the bull raised his gory, sightlesshead, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena. With great leapsand bounds he came, straight toward the arena wall directly beneath where wesat, and then accident carried him, in one of his mighty springs, completelyover the barrier into the midst of the slaves and Sagoths just in front of us.Swinging his bloody horns from side to side the beast cut a wide swath beforehim straight upward toward our seats. Before him slaves and gorilla-men foughtin mad stampede to escape the menace of the creature’s death agonies, for suchonly could that frightful charge have been.

Forgetful of us, our guards joined in the general rush for the exits, many ofwhich pierced the wall of the amphitheater behind us. Perry, Ghak, and I becameseparated in the chaos which reigned for a few moments after the beast clearedthe wall of the arena, each intent upon saving his own hide.

I ran to the right, passing several exits choked with the fear mad mob thatwere battling to escape. One would have thought that an entire herd of thagswas loose behind them, rather than a single blinded, dying beast; but such isthe effect of panic upon a crowd.

VII
FREEDOM

Once out of the direct path of the animal, fear of it left me, but anotheremotion as quickly gripped me—hope of escape that the demoralized condition ofthe guards made possible for the instant.

I thought of Perry, and but for the hope that I might better encompass hisrelease if myself free I should have put the thought of freedom from me atonce. As it was I hastened on toward the right searching for an exit towardwhich no Sagoths were fleeing, and at last I found it—a low, narrow apertureleading into a dark corridor.

Without thought of the possible consequence, I darted into the shadows of thetunnel, feeling my way along through the gloom for some distance. The noises ofthe amphitheater had grown fainter and fainter until now all was as silent asthe tomb about me. Faint light filtered from above through occasionalventilating and lighting tubes, but it was scarce sufficient to enable my humaneyes to cope with the darkness, and so I was forced to move with extreme care,feeling my way along step by step with a hand upon the wall beside me.

Presently the light increased and a moment later, to my delight, I came upon aflight of steps leading upward, at the top of which the brilliant light of thenoonday sun shone through an opening in the ground.

Cautiously I crept up the stairway to the tunnel’s end, and peering out saw thebroad plain of Phutra before me. The numerous lofty, granite towers which markthe several entrances to the subterranean city were all in front of me—behind,the plain stretched level and unbroken to the nearby foothills. I had come tothe surface, then, beyond the city, and my chances for escape seemed muchenhanced.

My first impulse was to await darkness before attempting to cross the plain, sodeeply implanted are habits of thought; but of a sudden I recollected theperpetual noonday brilliance which envelops Pellucidar, and with a smile Istepped forth into the daylight.

Rank grass, waist high, grows upon the plain of Phutra—the gorgeous floweringgrass of the inner world, each particular blade of which is tipped with a tiny,five-pointed blossom—brilliant little stars of varying colors that twinkle inthe green foliage to add still another charm to the weird, yet lovely,landscape.

But then the only aspect which attracted me was the distant hills in which Ihoped to find sanctuary, and so I hastened on, trampling the myriad beautiesbeneath my hurrying feet. Perry says that the force of gravity is less upon thesurface of the inner world than upon that of the outer. He explained it all tome once, but I was never particularly brilliant in such matters and so most ofit has escaped me. As I recall it the difference is due in some part to thecounter-attraction of that portion of the earth’s crust directly opposite thespot upon the face of Pellucidar at which one’s calculations are being made. Bethat as it may, it always seemed to me that I moved with greater speed andagility within Pellucidar than upon the outer surface—there was a certain airylightness of step that was most pleasing, and a feeling of bodily detachmentwhich I can only compare with that occasionally experienced in dreams.

And as I crossed Phutra’s flower-bespangled plain that time I seemed almost tofly, though how much of the sensation was due to Perry’s suggestion and howmuch to actuality I am sure I do not know. The more I thought of Perry the lesspleasure I took in my new-found freedom. There could be no liberty for mewithin Pellucidar unless the old man shared it with me, and only the hope thatI might find some way to encompass his release kept me from turning back toPhutra.

Just how I was to help Perry I could scarce imagine, but I hoped that somefortuitous circumstance might solve the problem for me. It was quite evidenthowever that little less than a miracle could aid me, for what could Iaccomplish in this strange world, naked and unarmed? It was even doubtful thatI could retrace my steps to Phutra should I once pass beyond view of the plain,and even were that possible, what aid could I bring to Perry no matter how farI wandered?

The case looked more and more hopeless the longer I viewed it, yet with astubborn persistency I forged ahead toward the foothills. Behind me no sign ofpursuit developed, before me I saw no living thing. It was as though I movedthrough a dead and forgotten world.

I have no idea, of course, how long it took me to reach the limit of the plain,but at last I entered the foothills, following a pretty little canyon upwardtoward the mountains. Beside me frolicked a laughing brooklet, hurrying uponits noisy way down to the silent sea. In its quieter pools I discovered manysmall fish, of four-or five-pound weight I should imagine. In appearance,except as to size and color, they were not unlike the whale of our own seas. AsI watched them playing about I discovered, not only that they suckled theiryoung, but that at intervals they rose to the surface to breathe as well as tofeed upon certain grasses and a strange, scarlet lichen which grew upon therocks just above the water line.

It was this last habit that gave me the opportunity I craved to capture one ofthese herbivorous cetaceans—that is what Perry calls them—and make as good ameal as one can on raw, warm-blooded fish; but I had become rather used, bythis time, to the eating of food in its natural state, though I still balked onthe eyes and entrails, much to the amusement of Ghak, to whom I always passedthese delicacies.

Crouching beside the brook, I waited until one of the diminutive purple whalesrose to nibble at the long grasses which overhung the water, and then, like thebeast of prey that man really is, I sprang upon my victim, appeasing my hungerwhile he yet wriggled to escape.

Then I drank from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face continuedmy flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered a rugged climb to thesummit of a long ridge. Beyond was a steep declivity to the shore of a placid,inland sea, upon the quiet surface of which lay several beautiful islands.

The view was charming in the extreme, and as no man or beast was to be seenthat might threaten my new-found liberty, I slid over the edge of the bluff,and half sliding, half falling, dropped into the delightful valley, the veryaspect of which seemed to offer a haven of peace and security.

The gently sloping beach along which I walked was thickly strewn with strangelyshaped, colored shells; some empty, others still housing as varied a multitudeof mollusks as ever might have drawn out their sluggish lives along the silentshores of the antediluvian seas of the outer crust. As I walked I could not butcompare myself with the first man of that other world, so complete the solitudewhich surrounded me, so primal and untouched the virgin wonders and beauties ofadolescent nature. I felt myself a second Adam wending my lonely way throughthe childhood of a world, searching for my Eve, and at the thought there rosebefore my mind’s eye the exquisite outlines of a perfect face surmounted by aloose pile of wondrous, raven hair.

As I walked, my eyes were bent upon the beach so that it was not until I hadcome quite upon it that I discovered that which shattered all my beautifuldream of solitude and safety and peace and primal overlordship. The thing was ahollowed log drawn upon the sands, and in the bottom of it lay a crude paddle.

The rude shock of awakening to what doubtless might prove some new form ofdanger was still upon me when I heard a rattling of loose stones from thedirection of the bluff, and turning my eyes in that direction I beheld theauthor of the disturbance, a great copper-colored man, running rapidly towardme.

There was that in the haste with which he came which seemed quite sufficientlymenacing, so that I did not need the added evidence of brandishing spear andscowling face to warn me that I was in no safe position, but whither to fleewas indeed a momentous question.

The speed of the fellow seemed to preclude the possibility of escaping him uponthe open beach. There was but a single alternative—the rude skiff—and with acelerity which equaled his, I pushed the thing into the sea and as it floatedgave a final shove and clambered in over the end.

A cry of rage rose from the owner of the primitive craft, and an instant laterhis heavy, stone-tipped spear grazed my shoulder and buried itself in the bowof the boat beyond. Then I grasped the paddle, and with feverish haste urgedthe awkward, wobbly thing out upon the surface of the sea.

A glance over my shoulder showed me that the copper-colored one had plunged inafter me and was swimming rapidly in pursuit. His mighty strokes bade fair toclose up the distance between us in short order, for at best I could make butslow progress with my unfamiliar craft, which nosed stubbornly in everydirection but that which I desired to follow, so that fully half my energy wasexpended in turning its blunt prow back into the course.

I had covered some hundred yards from shore when it became evident that mypursuer must grasp the stern of the skiff within the next half-dozen strokes.In a frenzy of despair, I bent to the grandfather of all paddles in a hopelesseffort to escape, and still the copper giant behind me gained and gained.

His hand was reaching upward for the stern when I saw a sleek, sinuous bodyshoot from the depths below. The man saw it too, and the look of terror thatoverspread his face assured me that I need have no further concern as to him,for the fear of certain death was in his look.

And then about him coiled the great, slimy folds of a hideous monster of thatprehistoric deep—a mighty serpent of the sea, with fanged jaws, and dartingforked tongue, with bulging eyes, and bony protuberances upon head and snoutthat formed short, stout horns.

As I looked at that hopeless struggle my eyes met those of the doomed man, andI could have sworn that in his I saw an expression of hopeless appeal. Butwhether I did or not there swept through me a sudden compassion for the fellow.He was indeed a brother-man, and that he might have killed me with pleasure hadhe caught me was forgotten in the extremity of his danger.

Unconsciously I had ceased paddling as the serpent rose to engage my pursuer,so now the skiff still drifted close beside the two. The monster seemed to bebut playing with his victim before he closed his awful jaws upon him anddragged him down to his dark den beneath the surface to devour him. The huge,snakelike body coiled and uncoiled about its prey. The hideous, gaping jawssnapped in the victim’s face. The forked tongue, lightning-like, ran in and outupon the copper skin.

Nobly the giant battled for his life, beating with his stone hatchet againstthe bony armor that covered that frightful carcass; but for all the damage heinflicted he might as well have struck with his open palm.

At last I could endure no longer to sit supinely by while a fellowman wasdragged down to a horrible death by that repulsive reptile. Embedded in theprow of the skiff lay the spear that had been cast after me by him whom Isuddenly desired to save. With a wrench I tore it loose, and standing uprightin the wobbly log drove it with all the strength of my two arms straight intothe gaping jaws of the hydrophidian.

With a loud hiss the creature abandoned its prey to turn upon me, but thespear, imbedded in its throat, prevented it from seizing me though it came nearto overturning the skiff in its mad efforts to reach me.

VIII
THE MAHAR TEMPLE

The aborigine, apparently uninjured, climbed quickly into the skiff, andseizing the spear with me helped to hold off the infuriated creature. Bloodfrom the wounded reptile was now crimsoning the waters about us and soon fromthe weakening struggles it became evident that I had inflicted a death woundupon it. Presently its efforts to reach us ceased entirely, and with a fewconvulsive movements it turned upon its back quite dead.

And then there came to me a sudden realization of the predicament in which Ihad placed myself. I was entirely within the power of the savage man whoseskiff I had stolen. Still clinging to the spear I looked into his face to findhim scrutinizing me intently, and there we stood for some several minutes, eachclinging tenaciously to the weapon the while we gazed in stupid wonderment ateach other.

What was in his mind I do not know, but in my own was merely the question as tohow soon the fellow would recommence hostilities.

Presently he spoke to me, but in a tongue which I was unable to translate. Ishook my head in an effort to indicate my ignorance of his language, at thesame time addressing him in the bastard tongue that the Sagoths use to conversewith the human slaves of the Mahars.

To my delight he understood and answered me in the same jargon.

“What do you want of my spear?” he asked.

“Only to keep you from running it through me,” I replied.

“I would not do that,” he said, “for you have just saved my life,” and withthat he released his hold upon it and squatted down in the bottom of the skiff.

“Who are you,” he continued, “and from what country do you come?”

I too sat down, laying the spear between us, and tried to explain how I came toPellucidar, and wherefrom, but it was as impossible for him to grasp or believethe strange tale I told him as I fear it is for you upon the outer crust tobelieve in the existence of the inner world. To him it seemed quite ridiculousto imagine that there was another world far beneath his feet peopled by beingssimilar to himself, and he laughed uproariously the more he thought upon it.But it was ever thus. That which has never come within the scope of our reallypitifully meager world-experience cannot be—our finite minds cannot grasp thatwhich may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain about usupon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which wends its tiny wayamong the bowlders of the universe—the speck of moist dirt we so proudly callthe World.

So I gave it up and asked him about himself. He said he was a Mezop, and thathis name was Ja.

“Who are the Mezops?” I asked. “Where do they live?”

He looked at me in surprise.

“I might indeed believe that you were from another world,” he said, “for who ofPellucidar could be so ignorant! The Mezops live upon the islands of the seas.In so far as I ever have heard no Mezop lives elsewhere, and no others thanMezops dwell upon islands, but of course it may be different in otherfar-distant lands. I do not know. At any rate in this sea and those near by itis true that only people of my race inhabit the islands.

“We are fishermen, though we be great hunters as well, often going to themainland in search of the game that is scarce upon all but the larger islands.And we are warriors also,” he added proudly. “Even the Sagoths of the Maharsfear us. Once, when Pellucidar was young, the Sagoths were wont to capture usfor slaves as they do the other men of Pellucidar, it is handed down fromfather to son among us that this is so; but we fought so desperately and slewso many Sagoths, and those of us that were captured killed so many Mahars intheir own cities that at last they learned that it were better to leave usalone, and later came the time that the Mahars became too indolent even tocatch their own fish, except for amusement, and then they needed us to supplytheir wants, and so a truce was made between the races. Now they give uscertain things which we are unable to produce in return for the fish that wecatch, and the Mezops and the Mahars live in peace.

“The great ones even come to our islands. It is there, far from the prying eyesof their own Sagoths, that they practice their religious rites in the templesthey have builded there with our assistance. If you live among us you willdoubtless see the manner of their worship, which is strange indeed, and mostunpleasant for the poor slaves they bring to take part in it.”

As Ja talked I had an excellent opportunity to inspect him more closely. He wasa huge fellow, standing I should say six feet six or seven inches, welldeveloped and of a coppery red not unlike that of our own North AmericanIndian, nor were his features dissimilar to theirs. He had the aquiline nosefound among many of the higher tribes, the prominent cheek bones, and blackhair and eyes, but his mouth and lips were better molded. All in all, Ja was animpressive and handsome creature, and he talked well too, even in the miserablemakeshift language we were compelled to use.

During our conversation Ja had taken the paddle and was propelling the skiffwith vigorous strokes toward a large island that lay some half-mile from themainland. The skill with which he handled his crude and awkward craft elicitedmy deepest admiration, since it had been so short a time before that I had madesuch pitiful work of it.

As we touched the pretty, level beach Ja leaped out and I followed him.Together we dragged the skiff far up into the bushes that grew beyond the sand.

“We must hide our canoes,” explained Ja, “for the Mezops of Luana are always atwar with us and would steal them if they found them,” he nodded toward anisland farther out at sea, and at so great a distance that it seemed but a blurhanging in the distant sky. The upward curve of the surface of Pellucidar wasconstantly revealing the impossible to the surprised eyes of the outer-earthly.To see land and water curving upward in the distance until it seemed to standon edge where it melted into the distant sky, and to feel that seas andmountains hung suspended directly above one’s head required such a completereversal of the perceptive and reasoning faculties as almost to stupefy one.

No sooner had we hidden the canoe than Ja plunged into the jungle, presentlyemerging into a narrow but well-defined trail which wound hither and thithermuch after the manner of the highways of all primitive folk, but there was onepeculiarity about this Mezop trail which I was later to find distinguished themfrom all other trails that I ever have seen within or without the earth.

It would run on, plain and clear and well defined to end suddenly in the midstof a tangle of matted jungle, then Ja would turn directly back in his tracksfor a little distance, spring into a tree, climb through it to the other side,drop onto a fallen log, leap over a low bush and alight once more upon adistinct trail which he would follow back for a short distance only to turndirectly about and retrace his steps until after a mile or less this newpathway ended as suddenly and mysteriously as the former section. Then he wouldpass again across some media which would reveal no spoor, to take up the brokenthread of the trail beyond.

As the purpose of this remarkable avenue dawned upon me I could not but admirethe native shrewdness of the ancient progenitor of the Mezops who hit upon thisnovel plan to throw his enemies from his track and delay or thwart them intheir attempts to follow him to his deep-buried cities.

To you of the outer earth it might seem a slow and tortuous method of travelingthrough the jungle, but were you of Pellucidar you would realize that time isno factor where time does not exist. So labyrinthine are the windings of thesetrails, so varied the connecting links and the distances which one must retraceone’s steps from the paths’ ends to find them that a Mezop often reaches man’sestate before he is familiar even with those which lead from his own city tothe sea.

In fact three-fourths of the education of the young male Mezop consists infamiliarizing himself with these jungle avenues, and the status of an adult islargely determined by the number of trails which he can follow upon his ownisland. The females never learn them, since from birth to death they neverleave the clearing in which the village of their nativity is situated exceptthey be taken to mate by a male from another village, or captured in war by theenemies of their tribe.

After proceeding through the jungle for what must have been upward of fivemiles we emerged suddenly into a large clearing in the exact center of whichstood as strange an appearing village as one might well imagine.

Large trees had been chopped down fifteen or twenty feet above the ground, andupon the tops of them spherical habitations of woven twigs, mud covered, hadbeen built. Each ball-like house was surmounted by some manner of carven image,which Ja told me indicated the identity of the owner.

Horizontal slits, six inches high and two or three feet wide, served to admitlight and ventilation. The entrances to the house were through small aperturesin the bases of the trees and thence upward by rude ladders through the hollowtrunks to the rooms above. The houses varied in size from two to several rooms.The largest that I entered was divided into two floors and eight apartments.

All about the village, between it and the jungle, lay beautifully cultivatedfields in which the Mezops raised such cereals, fruits, and vegetables as theyrequired. Women and children were working in these gardens as we crossed towardthe village. At sight of Ja they saluted deferentially, but to me they paid notthe slightest attention. Among them and about the outer verge of the cultivatedarea were many warriors. These too saluted Ja, by touching the points of theirspears to the ground directly before them.

Ja conducted me to a large house in the center of the village—the house witheight rooms—and taking me up into it gave me food and drink. There I met hismate, a comely girl with a nursing baby in her arms. Ja told her of how I hadsaved his life, and she was thereafter most kind and hospitable toward me, evenpermitting me to hold and amuse the tiny bundle of humanity whom Ja told mewould one day rule the tribe, for Ja, it seemed, was the chief of thecommunity.

We had eaten and rested, and I had slept, much to Ja’s amusement, for it seemedthat he seldom if ever did so, and then the red man proposed that I accompanyhim to the temple of the Mahars which lay not far from his village. “We are notsupposed to visit it,” he said; “but the great ones cannot hear and if we keepwell out of sight they need never know that we have been there. For my part Ihate them and always have, but the other chieftains of the island think it bestthat we continue to maintain the amicable relations which exist between the tworaces; otherwise I should like nothing better than to lead my warriors amongstthe hideous creatures and exterminate them—Pellucidar would be a better placeto live were there none of them.”

I wholly concurred in Ja’s belief, but it seemed that it might be a difficultmatter to exterminate the dominant race of Pellucidar. Thus conversing wefollowed the intricate trail toward the temple, which we came upon in a smallclearing surrounded by enormous trees similar to those which must haveflourished upon the outer crust during the carboniferous age.

Here was a mighty temple of hewn rock built in the shape of a rough oval withrounded roof in which were several large openings. No doors or windows werevisible in the sides of the structure, nor was there need of any, except oneentrance for the slaves, since, as Ja explained, the Mahars flew to and fromtheir place of ceremonial, entering and leaving the building by means of theapertures in the roof.

“But,” added Ja, “there is an entrance near the base of which even the Maharsknow nothing. Come,” and he led me across the clearing and about the end to apile of loose rock which lay against the foot of the wall. Here he removed acouple of large bowlders, revealing a small opening which led straight withinthe building, or so it seemed, though as I entered after Ja I discovered myselfin a narrow place of extreme darkness.

“We are within the outer wall,” said Ja. “It is hollow. Follow me closely.”

The red man groped ahead a few paces and then began to ascend a primitiveladder similar to that which leads from the ground to the upper stories of hishouse. We ascended for some forty feet when the interior of the space betweenthe walls commenced to grow lighter and presently we came opposite an openingin the inner wall which gave us an unobstructed view of the entire interior ofthe temple.

The lower floor was an enormous tank of clear water in which numerous hideousMahars swam lazily up and down. Artificial islands of granite rock dotted thisartificial sea, and upon several of them I saw men and women like myself.

“What are the human beings doing here?” I asked.

“Wait and you shall see,” replied Ja. “They are to take a leading part in theceremonies which will follow the advent of the queen. You may be thankful thatyou are not upon the same side of the wall as they.”

Scarcely had he spoken than we heard a great fluttering of wings above and amoment later a long procession of the frightful reptiles of Pellucidar wingedslowly and majestically through the large central opening in the roof andcircled in stately manner about the temple.

There were several Mahars first, and then at least twenty awe-inspiringpterodactyls—thipdars, they are called within Pellucidar. Behind these came thequeen, flanked by other thipdars as she had been when she entered theamphitheater at Phutra.

Three times they wheeled about the interior of the oval chamber, to settlefinally upon the damp, cold bowlders that fringe the outer edge of the pool. Inthe center of one side the largest rock was reserved for the queen, and hereshe took her place surrounded by her terrible guard.

All lay quiet for several minutes after settling to their places. One mighthave imagined them in silent prayer. The poor slaves upon the diminutiveislands watched the horrid creatures with wide eyes. The men, for the mostpart, stood erect and stately with folded arms, awaiting their doom; but thewomen and children clung to one another, hiding behind the males. They are anoble-looking race, these cave men of Pellucidar, and if our progenitors wereas they, the human race of the outer crust has deteriorated rather thanimproved with the march of the ages. All they lack is opportunity. We haveopportunity, and little else.

Now the queen moved. She raised her ugly head, looking about; then very slowlyshe crawled to the edge of her throne and slid noiselessly into the water. Upand down the long tank she swam, turning at the ends as you have seen captiveseals turn in their tiny tanks, turning upon their backs and diving below thesurface.

Nearer and nearer to the island she came until at last she remained at restbefore the largest, which was directly opposite her throne. Raising her hideoushead from the water she fixed her great, round eyes upon the slaves. They werefat and sleek, for they had been brought from a distant Mahar city where humanbeings are kept in droves, and bred and fattened, as we breed and fatten beefcattle.

The queen fixed her gaze upon a plump young maiden. Her victim tried to turnaway, hiding her face in her hands and kneeling behind a woman; but thereptile, with unblinking eyes, stared on with such fixity that I could havesworn her vision penetrated the woman, and the girl’s arms to reach at last thevery center of her brain.

Slowly the reptile’s head commenced to move to and fro, but the eyes neverceased to bore toward the frightened girl, and then the victim responded. Sheturned wide, fear-haunted eyes toward the Mahar queen, slowly she rose to herfeet, and then as though dragged by some unseen power she moved as one in atrance straight toward the reptile, her glassy eyes fixed upon those of hercaptor. To the water’s edge she came, nor did she even pause, but stepped intothe shallows beside the little island. On she moved toward the Mahar, who nowslowly retreated as though leading her victim on. The water rose to the girl’sknees, and still she advanced, chained by that clammy eye. Now the water was ather waist; now her armpits. Her fellows upon the island looked on in horror,helpless to avert her doom in which they saw a forecast of their own.

The Mahar sank now till only the long upper bill and eyes were exposed abovethe surface of the water, and the girl had advanced until the end of thatrepulsive beak was but an inch or two from her face, her horror-filled eyesriveted upon those of the reptile.

Now the water passed above the girl’s mouth and nose—her eyes and forehead allthat showed—yet still she walked on after the retreating Mahar. The queen’shead slowly disappeared beneath the surface and after it went the eyes of hervictim—only a slow ripple widened toward the shores to mark where the twovanished.

For a time all was silence within the temple. The slaves were motionless interror. The Mahars watched the surface of the water for the reappearance oftheir queen, and presently at one end of the tank her head rose slowly intoview. She was backing toward the surface, her eyes fixed before her as they hadbeen when she dragged the helpless girl to her doom.

And then to my utter amazement I saw the forehead and eyes of the maiden comeslowly out of the depths, following the gaze of the reptile just as when shehad disappeared beneath the surface. On and on came the girl until she stood inwater that reached barely to her knees, and though she had been beneath thesurface sufficient time to have drowned her thrice over there was noindication, other than her dripping hair and glistening body, that she had beensubmerged at all.

Again and again the queen led the girl into the depths and out again, until theuncanny weirdness of the thing got on my nerves so that I could have leapedinto the tank to the child’s rescue had I not taken a firm hold of myself.

Once they were below much longer than usual, and when they came to the surfaceI was horrified to see that one of the girl’s arms was gone—gnawed completelyoff at the shoulder—but the poor thing gave no indication of realizing pain,only the horror in her set eyes seemed intensified.

The next time they appeared the other arm was gone, and then the breasts, andthen a part of the face—it was awful. The poor creatures on the islandsawaiting their fate tried to cover their eyes with their hands to hide thefearful sight, but now I saw that they too were under the hypnotic spell of thereptiles, so that they could only crouch in terror with their eyes fixed uponthe terrible thing that was transpiring before them.

Finally the queen was under much longer than ever before, and when she rose shecame alone and swam sleepily toward her bowlder. The moment she mounted itseemed to be the signal for the other Mahars to enter the tank, and thencommenced, upon a larger scale, a repetition of the uncanny performance throughwhich the queen had led her victim.

Only the women and children fell prey to the Mahars—they being the weakest andmost tender—and when they had satisfied their appetite for human flesh, some ofthem devouring two and three of the slaves, there were only a score offull-grown men left, and I thought that for some reason these were to bespared, but such was far from the case, for as the last Mahar crawled to herrock the queen’s thipdars darted into the air, circled the temple once andthen, hissing like steam engines, swooped down upon the remaining slaves.

There was no hypnotism here—just the plain, brutal ferocity of the beast ofprey, tearing, rending, and gulping its meat, but at that it was less horriblethan the uncanny method of the Mahars. By the time the thipdars had disposed ofthe last of the slaves the Mahars were all asleep upon their rocks, and amoment later the great pterodactyls swung back to their posts beside the queen,and themselves dropped into slumber.

“I thought the Mahars seldom, if ever, slept,” I said to Ja.

“They do many things in this temple which they do not do elsewhere,” hereplied. “The Mahars of Phutra are not supposed to eat human flesh, yet slavesare brought here by thousands and almost always you will find Mahars on hand toconsume them. I imagine that they do not bring their Sagoths here, because theyare ashamed of the practice, which is supposed to obtain only among the leastadvanced of their race; but I would wager my canoe against a broken paddle thatthere is no Mahar but eats human flesh whenever she can get it.”

“Why should they object to eating human flesh,” I asked, “if it is true thatthey look upon us as lower animals?”

“It is not because they consider us their equals that they are supposed to lookwith abhorrence upon those who eat our flesh,” replied Ja; “it is merely thatwe are warm-blooded animals. They would not think of eating the meat of a thag,which we consider such a delicacy, any more than I would think of eating asnake. As a matter of fact it is difficult to explain just why this sentimentshould exist among them.”

“I wonder if they left a single victim,” I remarked, leaning far out of theopening in the rocky wall to inspect the temple better. Directly below me thewater lapped the very side of the wall, there being a break in the bowlders atthis point as there was at several other places about the side of the temple.

My hands were resting upon a small piece of granite which formed a part of thewall, and all my weight upon it proved too much for it. It slipped and I lungedforward. There was nothing to save myself and I plunged headforemost into thewater below.

Fortunately the tank was deep at this point, and I suffered no injury from thefall, but as I was rising to the surface my mind filled with the horrors of myposition as I thought of the terrible doom which awaited me the moment the eyesof the reptiles fell upon the creature that had disturbed their slumber.

As long as I could I remained beneath the surface, swimming rapidly in thedirection of the islands that I might prolong my life to the utmost. At last Iwas forced to rise for air, and as I cast a terrified glance in the directionof the Mahars and the thipdars I was almost stunned to see that not a singleone remained upon the rocks where I had last seen them, nor as I searched thetemple with my eyes could I discern any within it.

For a moment I was puzzled to account for the thing, until I realized that thereptiles, being deaf, could not have been disturbed by the noise my body madewhen it hit the water, and that as there is no such thing as time withinPellucidar there was no telling how long I had been beneath the surface. It wasa difficult thing to attempt to figure out by earthly standards—this matter ofelapsed time—but when I set myself to it I began to realize that I might havebeen submerged a second or a month or not at all. You have no conception of thestrange contradictions and impossibilities which arise when all methods ofmeasuring time, as we know them upon earth, are non-existent.

I was about to congratulate myself upon the miracle which had saved me for themoment, when the memory of the hypnotic powers of the Mahars filled me withapprehension lest they be practicing their uncanny art upon me to the end thatI merely imagined that I was alone in the temple. At the thought cold sweatbroke out upon me from every pore, and as I crawled from the water onto one ofthe tiny islands I was trembling like a leaf—you cannot imagine the awfulhorror which even the simple thought of the repulsive Mahars of Pellucidarinduces in the human mind, and to feel that you are in their power—that theyare crawling, slimy, and abhorrent, to drag you down beneath the waters anddevour you! It is frightful.

But they did not come, and at last I came to the conclusion that I was indeedalone within the temple. How long I should be alone was the next question toassail me as I swam frantically about once more in search of a means to escape.

Several times I called to Ja, but he must have left after I tumbled into thetank, for I received no response to my cries. Doubtless he had felt as certainof my doom when he saw me topple from our hiding place as I had, and lest hetoo should be discovered, had hastened from the temple and back to his village.

I knew that there must be some entrance to the building beside the doorways inthe roof, for it did not seem reasonable to believe that the thousands ofslaves which were brought here to feed the Mahars the human flesh they cravedwould all be carried through the air, and so I continued my search until atlast it was rewarded by the discovery of several loose granite blocks in themasonry at one end of the temple.

A little effort proved sufficient to dislodge enough of these stones to permitme to crawl through into the clearing, and a moment later I had scurried acrossthe intervening space to the dense jungle beyond.

Here I sank panting and trembling upon the matted grasses beneath the gianttrees, for I felt that I had escaped from the grinning fangs of death out ofthe depths of my own grave. Whatever dangers lay hidden in this island jungle,there could be none so fearsome as those which I had just escaped. I knew thatI could meet death bravely enough if it but came in the form of some familiarbeast or man—anything other than the hideous and uncanny Mahars.

IX
THE FACE OF DEATH

I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion. When I awoke I was very hungry, andafter busying myself searching for fruit for a while, I set off through thejungle to find the beach. I knew that the island was not so large but that Icould easily find the sea if I did but move in a straight line, but there camethe difficulty as there was no way in which I could direct my course and holdit, the sun, of course, being always directly above my head, and the trees sothickly set that I could see no distant object which might serve to guide me ina straight line.

As it was I must have walked for a great distance since I ate four times andslept twice before I reached the sea, but at last I did so, and my pleasure atthe sight of it was greatly enhanced by the chance discovery of a hidden canoeamong the bushes through which I had stumbled just prior to coming upon thebeach.

I can tell you that it did not take me long to pull that awkward craft down tothe water and shove it far out from shore. My experience with Ja had taught methat if I were to steal another canoe I must be quick about it and get farbeyond the owner’s reach as soon as possible.

I must have come out upon the opposite side of the island from that at which Jaand I had entered it, for the mainland was nowhere in sight. For a long time Ipaddled around the shore, though well out, before I saw the mainland in thedistance. At the sight of it I lost no time in directing my course toward it,for I had long since made up my mind to return to Phutra and give myself upthat I might be once more with Perry and Ghak the Hairy One.

I felt that I was a fool ever to have attempted to escape alone, especially inview of the fact that our plans were already well formulated to make a breakfor freedom together. Of course I realized that the chances of the success ofour proposed venture were slim indeed, but I knew that I never could enjoyfreedom without Perry so long as the old man lived, and I had learned that theprobability that I might find him was less than slight.

Had Perry been dead, I should gladly have pitted my strength and wit againstthe savage and primordial world in which I found myself. I could have lived inseclusion within some rocky cave until I had found the means to outfit myselfwith the crude weapons of the Stone Age, and then set out in search of herwhose image had now become the constant companion of my waking hours, and thecentral and beloved figure of my dreams.

But, to the best of my knowledge, Perry still lived and it was my duty and wishto be again with him, that we might share the dangers and vicissitudes of thestrange world we had discovered. And Ghak, too; the great, shaggy man had founda place in the hearts of us both, for he was indeed every inch a man and king.Uncouth, perhaps, and brutal, too, if judged too harshly by the standards ofeffete twentieth-century civilization, but withal noble, dignified, chivalrous,and loveable.

Chance carried me to the very beach upon which I had discovered Ja’s canoe, anda short time later I was scrambling up the steep bank to retrace my steps fromthe plain of Phutra. But my troubles came when I entered the canyon beyond thesummit, for here I found that several of them centered at the point where Icrossed the divide, and which one I had traversed to reach the pass I could notfor the life of me remember.

It was all a matter of chance and so I set off down that which seemed theeasiest going, and in this I made the same mistake that many of us do inselecting the path along which we shall follow out the course of our lives, andagain learned that it is not always best to follow the line of leastresistance.

By the time I had eaten eight meals and slept twice I was convinced that I wasupon the wrong trail, for between Phutra and the inland sea I had not slept atall, and had eaten but once. To retrace my steps to the summit of the divideand explore another canyon seemed the only solution of my problem, but a suddenwidening and levelness of the canyon just before me seemed to suggest that itwas about to open into a level country, and with the lure of discovery strongupon me I decided to proceed but a short distance farther before I turned back.

The next turn of the canyon brought me to its mouth, and before me I saw anarrow plain leading down to an ocean. At my right the side of the canyoncontinued to the water’s edge, the valley lying to my left, and the foot of itrunning gradually into the sea, where it formed a broad level beach.

Clumps of strange trees dotted the landscape here and there almost to thewater, and rank grass and ferns grew between. From the nature of the vegetationI was convinced that the land between the ocean and the foothills was swampy,though directly before me it seemed dry enough all the way to the sandy stripalong which the restless waters advanced and retreated.

Curiosity prompted me to walk down to the beach, for the scene was verybeautiful. As I passed along beside the deep and tangled vegetation of theswamp I thought that I saw a movement of the ferns at my left, but though Istopped a moment to look it was not repeated, and if anything lay hid there myeyes could not penetrate the dense foliage to discern it.

Presently I stood upon the beach looking out over the wide and lonely seaacross whose forbidding bosom no human being had yet ventured, to discover whatstrange and mysterious lands lay beyond, or what its invisible islands held ofriches, wonders, or adventure. What savage faces, what fierce and formidablebeasts were this very instant watching the lapping of the waves upon itsfarther shore! How far did it extend? Perry had told me that the seas ofPellucidar were small in comparison with those of the outer crust, but even sothis great ocean might stretch its broad expanse for thousands of miles. Forcountless ages it had rolled up and down its countless miles of shore, and yettoday it remained all unknown beyond the tiny strip that was visible from itsbeaches.

The fascination of speculation was strong upon me. It was as though I had beencarried back to the birth time of our own outer world to look upon its landsand seas ages before man had traversed either. Here was a new world, alluntouched. It called to me to explore it. I was dreaming of the excitement andadventure which lay before us could Perry and I but escape the Mahars, whensomething, a slight noise I imagine, drew my attention behind me.

As I turned, romance, adventure, and discovery in the abstract took wing beforethe terrible embodiment of all three in concrete form that I beheld advancingupon me.

A huge, slimy amphibian it was, with toad-like body and the mighty jaws of analligator. Its immense carcass must have weighed tons, and yet it moved swiftlyand silently toward me. Upon one hand was the bluff that ran from the canyon tothe sea, on the other the fearsome swamp from which the creature had sneakedupon me, behind lay the mighty untracked sea, and before me in the center ofthe narrow way that led to safety stood this huge mountain of terrible andmenacing flesh.

A single glance at the thing was sufficient to assure me that I was facing oneof those long-extinct, prehistoric creatures whose fossilized remains are foundwithin the outer crust as far back as the Triassic formation, a giganticlabyrinthodon. And there I was, unarmed, and, with the exception of a loincloth, as naked as I had come into the world. I could imagine how my firstancestor felt that distant, prehistoric morn that he encountered for the firsttime the terrifying progenitor of the thing that had me cornered now beside therestless, mysterious sea.

Unquestionably he had escaped, or I should not have been within Pellucidar orelsewhere, and I wished at that moment that he had handed down to me with thevarious attributes that I presumed I have inherited from him, the specificapplication of the instinct of self-preservation which saved him from the fatewhich loomed so close before me today.

To seek escape in the swamp or in the ocean would have been similar to jumpinginto a den of lions to escape one upon the outside. The sea and swamp both weredoubtless alive with these mighty, carnivorous amphibians, and if not, theindividual that menaced me would pursue me into either the sea or the swampwith equal facility.

There seemed nothing to do but stand supinely and await my end. I thought ofPerry—how he would wonder what had become of me. I thought of my friends of theouter world, and of how they all would go on living their lives in totalignorance of the strange and terrible fate that had overtaken me, or unguessingthe weird surroundings which had witnessed the last frightful agony of myextinction. And with these thoughts came a realization of how unimportant tothe life and happiness of the world is the existence of any one of us. We maybe snuffed out without an instant’s warning, and for a brief day our friendsspeak of us with subdued voices. The following morning, while the first worm isbusily engaged in testing the construction of our coffin, they are teeing upfor the first hole to suffer more acute sorrow over a sliced ball than they didover our, to us, untimely demise. The labyrinthodon was coming more slowly now.He seemed to realize that escape for me was impossible, and I could have swornthat his huge, fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable appreciation of mypredicament, or was it in anticipation of the juicy morsel which would so soonbe pulp between those formidable teeth?

He was about fifty feet from me when I heard a voice calling to me from thedirection of the bluff at my left. I looked and could have shouted in delightat the sight that met my eyes, for there stood Ja, waving frantically to me,and urging me to run for it to the cliff’s base.

I had no idea that I should escape the monster that had marked me for hisbreakfast, but at least I should not die alone. Human eyes would watch me end.It was cold comfort I presume, but yet I derived some slight peace of mind fromthe contemplation of it.

To run seemed ridiculous, especially toward that steep and unscalable cliff,and yet I did so, and as I ran I saw Ja, agile as a monkey, crawl down theprecipitous face of the rocks, clinging to small projections, and the toughcreepers that had found root-hold here and there.

The labyrinthodon evidently thought that Ja was coming to double his portion ofhuman flesh, so he was in no haste to pursue me to the cliff and frighten awaythis other tidbit. Instead he merely trotted along behind me.

As I approached the foot of the cliff I saw what Ja intended doing, but Idoubted if the thing would prove successful. He had come down to within twentyfeet of the bottom, and there, clinging with one hand to a small ledge, andwith his feet resting precariously upon tiny bushes that grew from the solidface of the rock, he lowered the point of his long spear until it hung some sixfeet above the ground.

To clamber up that slim shaft without dragging Ja down and precipitating bothto the same doom from which the copper-colored one was attempting to save meseemed utterly impossible, and as I came near the spear I told Ja so, and thatI could not risk him to try to save myself.

But he insisted that he knew what he was doing and was in no danger himself.

“The danger is still yours,” he called, “for unless you move much more rapidlythan you are now, the sithic will be upon you and drag you back before ever youare halfway up the spear—he can rear up and reach you with ease anywhere belowwhere I stand.”

Well, Ja should know his own business, I thought, and so I grasped the spearand clambered up toward the red man as rapidly as I could—being so far removedfrom my simian ancestors as I am. I imagine the slow-witted sithic, as Jacalled him, suddenly realized our intentions and that he was quite likely tolose all his meal instead of having it doubled as he had hoped.

When he saw me clambering up that spear he let out a hiss that fairly shook theground, and came charging after me at a terrific rate. I had reached the top ofthe spear by this time, or almost; another six inches would give me a hold onJa’s hand, when I felt a sudden wrench from below and glancing fearfullydownward saw the mighty jaws of the monster close on the sharp point of theweapon.

I made a frantic effort to reach Ja’s hand, the sithic gave a tremendous tugthat came near to jerking Ja from his frail hold on the surface of the rock,the spear slipped from his fingers, and still clinging to it I plunged feetforemost toward my executioner.

At the instant that he felt the spear come away from Ja’s hand the creaturemust have opened his huge jaws to catch me, for when I came down, stillclinging to the butt end of the weapon, the point yet rested in his mouth andthe result was that the sharpened end transfixed his lower jaw.

With the pain he snapped his mouth closed. I fell upon his snout, lost my holdupon the spear, rolled the length of his face and head, across his short neckonto his broad back and from there to the ground.

Scarce had I touched the earth than I was upon my feet, dashing madly for thepath by which I had entered this horrible valley. A glance over my shouldershowed me the sithic engaged in pawing at the spear stuck through his lowerjaw, and so busily engaged did he remain in this occupation that I had gainedthe safety of the cliff top before he was ready to take up the pursuit. When hedid not discover me in sight within the valley he dashed, hissing, into therank vegetation of the swamp and that was the last I saw of him.

X
PHUTRA AGAIN

I hastened to the cliff edge above Ja and helped him to a secure footing. Hewould not listen to any thanks for his attempt to save me, which had come sonear miscarrying.

“I had given you up for lost when you tumbled into the Mahar temple,” he said,“for not even I could save you from their clutches, and you may imagine mysurprise when on seeing a canoe dragged up upon the beach of the mainland Idiscovered your own footprints in the sand beside it.

“I immediately set out in search of you, knowing as I did that you must beentirely unarmed and defenseless against the many dangers which lurk upon themainland both in the form of savage beasts and reptiles, and men as well. I hadno difficulty in tracking you to this point. It is well that I arrived when Idid.”

“But why did you do it?” I asked, puzzled at this show of friendship on thepart of a man of another world and a different race and color.

“You saved my life,” he replied; “from that moment it became my duty to protectand befriend you. I would have been no true Mezop had I evaded my plain duty;but it was a pleasure in this instance for I like you. I wish that you wouldcome and live with me. You shall become a member of my tribe. Among us there isthe best of hunting and fishing, and you shall have, to choose a mate from, themost beautiful girls of Pellucidar. Will you come?”

I told him about Perry then, and Dian the Beautiful, and how my duty was tothem first. Afterward I should return and visit him—if I could ever find hisisland.

“Oh, that is easy, my friend,” he said. “You need merely to come to the foot ofthe highest peak of the Mountains of the Clouds. There you will find a riverwhich flows into the Lural Az. Directly opposite the mouth of the river youwill see three large islands far out, so far that they are barely discernible,the one to the extreme left as you face them from the mouth of the river isAnoroc, where I rule the tribe of Anoroc.”

“But how am I to find the Mountains of the Clouds?” I asked. “Men say that theyare visible from half Pellucidar,” he replied.

“How large is Pellucidar?” I asked, wondering what sort of theory theseprimitive men had concerning the form and substance of their world.

“The Mahars say it is round, like the inside of a tola shell,” he answered,“but that is ridiculous, since, were it true, we should fall back were we totravel far in any direction, and all the waters of Pellucidar would run to onespot and drown us. No, Pellucidar is quite flat and extends no man knows howfar in all directions. At the edges, so my ancestors have reported and handeddown to me, is a great wall that prevents the earth and waters from escapingover into the burning sea whereon Pellucidar floats; but I never have been sofar from Anoroc as to have seen this wall with my own eyes. However, it isquite reasonable to believe that this is true, whereas there is no reason atall in the foolish belief of the Mahars. According to them Pellucidarians wholive upon the opposite side walk always with their heads pointed downward!” andJa laughed uproariously at the very thought.

It was plain to see that the human folk of this inner world had not advancedfar in learning, and the thought that the ugly Mahars had so outstripped themwas a very pathetic one indeed. I wondered how many ages it would take to liftthese people out of their ignorance even were it given to Perry and me toattempt it. Possibly we would be killed for our pains as were those men of theouter world who dared challenge the dense ignorance and superstitions of theearth’s younger days. But it was worth the effort if the opportunity everpresented itself.

And then it occurred to me that here was an opportunity—that I might make asmall beginning upon Ja, who was my friend, and thus note the effect of myteaching upon a Pellucidarian.

“Ja,” I said, “what would you say were I to tell you that in so far as theMahars’ theory of the shape of Pellucidar is concerned it is correct?”

“I would say,” he replied, “that either you are a fool, or took me for one.”

“But, Ja,” I insisted, “if their theory is incorrect how do you account for thefact that I was able to pass through the earth from the outer crust toPellucidar. If your theory is correct all is a sea of flame beneath us, whereinno peoples could exist, and yet I come from a great world that is covered withhuman beings, and beasts, and birds, and fishes in mighty oceans.”

“You live upon the under side of Pellucidar, and walk always with your headpointed downward?” he scoffed. “And were I to believe that, my friend, I shouldindeed be mad.”

I attempted to explain the force of gravity to him, and by the means of thedropped fruit to illustrate how impossible it would be for a body to fall offthe earth under any circumstances. He listened so intently that I thought I hadmade an impression, and started the train of thought that would lead him to apartial understanding of the truth. But I was mistaken.

“Your own illustration,” he said finally, “proves the falsity of your theory.”He dropped a fruit from his hand to the ground. “See,” he said, “withoutsupport even this tiny fruit falls until it strikes something that stops it. IfPellucidar were not supported upon the flaming sea it too would fall as thefruit falls—you have proven it yourself!” He had me, that time—you could see itin his eye.

It seemed a hopeless job and I gave it up, temporarily at least, for when Icontemplated the necessity explanation of our solar system and the universe Irealized how futile it would be to attempt to picture to Ja or any otherPellucidarian the sun, the moon, the planets, and the countless stars. Thoseborn within the inner world could no more conceive of such things than can weof the outer crust reduce to factors appreciable to our finite minds such termsas space and eternity.

“Well, Ja,” I laughed, “whether we be walking with our feet up or down, here weare, and the question of greatest importance is not so much where we came fromas where we are going now. For my part I wish that you could guide me to Phutrawhere I may give myself up to the Mahars once more that my friends and I maywork out the plan of escape which the Sagoths interrupted when they gathered ustogether and drove us to the arena to witness the punishment of the slaves whokilled the guardsman. I wish now that I had not left the arena for by this timemy friends and I might have made good our escape, whereas this delay may meanthe wrecking of all our plans, which depended for their consummation upon thecontinued sleep of the three Mahars who lay in the pit beneath the building inwhich we were confined.”

“You would return to captivity?” cried Ja.

“My friends are there,” I replied, “the only friends I have in Pellucidar,except yourself. What else may I do under the circumstances?”

He thought for a moment in silence. Then he shook his head sorrowfully.

“It is what a brave man and a good friend should do,” he said; “yet it seemsmost foolish, for the Mahars will most certainly condemn you to death forrunning away, and so you will be accomplishing nothing for your friends byreturning. Never in all my life have I heard of a prisoner returning to theMahars of his own free will. There are but few who escape them, though some do,and these would rather die than be recaptured.”

“I see no other way, Ja,” I said, “though I can assure you that I would rathergo to Sheol after Perry than to Phutra. However, Perry is much too pious tomake the probability at all great that I should ever be called upon to rescuehim from the former locality.”

Ja asked me what Sheol was, and when I explained, as best I could, he said,“You are speaking of Molop Az, the flaming sea upon which Pellucidar floats.All the dead who are buried in the ground go there. Piece by piece they arecarried down to Molop Az by the little demons who dwell there. We know thisbecause when graves are opened we find that the bodies have been partially orentirely borne off. That is why we of Anoroc place our dead in high trees wherethe birds may find them and bear them bit by bit to the Dead World above theLand of Awful Shadow. If we kill an enemy we place his body in the ground thatit may go to Molop Az.”

As we talked we had been walking up the canyon down which I had come to thegreat ocean and the sithic. Ja did his best to dissuade me from returning toPhutra, but when he saw that I was determined to do so, he consented to guideme to a point from which I could see the plain where lay the city. To mysurprise the distance was but short from the beach where I had again met Ja. Itwas evident that I had spent much time following the windings of a tortuouscanyon, while just beyond the ridge lay the city of Phutra near to which I musthave come several times.

As we topped the ridge and saw the granite gate towers dotting the floweredplain at our feet Ja made a final effort to persuade me to abandon my madpurpose and return with him to Anoroc, but I was firm in my resolve, and atlast he bid me good-bye, assured in his own mind that he was looking upon mefor the last time.

I was sorry to part with Ja, for I had come to like him very much indeed. Withhis hidden city upon the island of Anoroc as a base, and his savage warriors asescort Perry and I could have accomplished much in the line of exploration, andI hoped that were we successful in our effort to escape we might return toAnoroc later.

There was, however, one great thing to be accomplished first—at least it wasthe great thing to me—the finding of Dian the Beautiful. I wanted to makeamends for the affront I had put upon her in my ignorance, and I wantedto—well, I wanted to see her again, and to be with her.

Down the hillside I made my way into the gorgeous field of flowers, and thenacross the rolling land toward the shadowless columns that guard the ways toburied Phutra. At a quarter-mile from the nearest entrance I was discovered bythe Sagoth guard, and in an instant four of the gorilla-men were dashing towardme.

Though they brandished their long spears and yelled like wild Comanches I paidnot the slightest attention to them, walking quietly toward them as thoughunaware of their existence. My manner had the effect upon them that I hadhoped, and as we came quite near together they ceased their savage shouting. Itwas evident that they had expected me to turn and flee at sight of them, thuspresenting that which they most enjoyed, a moving human target at which to casttheir spears.

“What do you here?” shouted one, and then as he recognized me, “Ho! It is theslave who claims to be from another world—he who escaped when the thag ranamuck within the amphitheater. But why do you return, having once made goodyour escape?”

“I did not ‘escape’,” I replied. “I but ran away to avoid the thag, as didothers, and coming into a long passage I became confused and lost my way in thefoothills beyond Phutra. Only now have I found my way back.”

“And you come of your free will back to Phutra!” exclaimed one of theguardsmen.

“Where else might I go?” I asked. “I am a stranger within Pellucidar and knowno other where than Phutra. Why should I not desire to be in Phutra? Am I notwell fed and well treated? Am I not happy? What better lot could man desire?”

The Sagoths scratched their heads. This was a new one on them, and so beingstupid brutes they took me to their masters whom they felt would be betterfitted to solve the riddle of my return, for riddle they still considered it.

I had spoken to the Sagoths as I had for the purpose of throwing them off thescent of my purposed attempt at escape. If they thought that I was so satisfiedwith my lot within Phutra that I would voluntarily return when I had once hadso excellent an opportunity to escape, they would never for an instant imaginethat I could be occupied in arranging another escape immediately upon my returnto the city.

So they led me before a slimy Mahar who clung to a slimy rock within the largeroom that was the thing’s office. With cold, reptilian eyes the creature seemedto bore through the thin veneer of my deceit and read my inmost thoughts. Itheeded the story which the Sagoths told of my return to Phutra, watching thegorilla-men’s lips and fingers during the recital. Then it questioned methrough one of the Sagoths.

“You say that you returned to Phutra of your own free will, because you thinkyourself better off here than elsewhere—do you not know that you may be thenext chosen to give up your life in the interests of the wonderful scientificinvestigations that our learned ones are continually occupied with?”

I hadn’t heard of anything of that nature, but I thought best not to admit it.

“I could be in no more danger here,” I said, “than naked and unarmed in thesavage jungles or upon the lonely plains of Pellucidar. I was fortunate, Ithink, to return to Phutra at all. As it was I barely escaped death within thejaws of a huge sithic. No, I am sure that I am safer in the hands ofintelligent creatures such as rule Phutra. At least such would be the case inmy own world, where human beings like myself rule supreme. There the higherraces of man extend protection and hospitality to the stranger within theirgates, and being a stranger here I naturally assumed that a like courtesy wouldbe accorded me.”

The Mahar looked at me in silence for some time after I ceased speaking and theSagoth had translated my words to his master. The creature seemed deep inthought. Presently he communicated some message to the Sagoth. The latterturned, and motioning me to follow him, left the presence of the reptile.Behind and on either side of me marched the balance of the guard.

“What are they going to do with me?” I asked the fellow at my right.

“You are to appear before the learned ones who will question you regarding thisstrange world from which you say you come.”

After a moment’s silence he turned to me again.

“Do you happen to know,” he asked, “what the Mahars do to slaves who lie tothem?”

“No,” I replied, “nor does it interest me, as I have no intention of lying tothe Mahars.”

“Then be careful that you don’t repeat the impossible tale you told Sol-to-tojust now—another world, indeed, where human beings rule!” he concluded in finescorn.

“But it is the truth,” I insisted. “From where else then did I come? I am notof Pellucidar. Anyone with half an eye could see that.”

“It is your misfortune then,” he remarked dryly, “that you may not be judged byone with but half an eye.”

“What will they do with me,” I asked, “if they do not have a mind to believeme?”

“You may be sentenced to the arena, or go to the pits to be used in researchwork by the learned ones,” he replied.

“And what will they do with me there?” I persisted.

“No one knows except the Mahars and those who go to the pits with them, but asthe latter never return, their knowledge does them but little good. It is saidthat the learned ones cut up their subjects while they are yet alive, thuslearning many useful things. However I should not imagine that it would provevery useful to him who was being cut up; but of course this is all butconjecture. The chances are that ere long you will know much more about it thanI,” and he grinned as he spoke. The Sagoths have a well-developed sense ofhumor.

“And suppose it is the arena,” I continued; “what then?”

“You saw the two who met the tarag and the thag the time that you escaped?” hesaid.

“Yes.”

“Your end in the arena would be similar to what was intended for them,” heexplained, “though of course the same kinds of animals might not be employed.”

“It is sure death in either event?” I asked.

“What becomes of those who go below with the learned ones I do not know, nordoes any other,” he replied; “but those who go to the arena may come out aliveand thus regain their liberty, as did the two whom you saw.”

“They gained their liberty? And how?”

“It is the custom of the Mahars to liberate those who remain alive within thearena after the beasts depart or are killed. Thus it has happened that severalmighty warriors from far distant lands, whom we have captured on our slaveraids, have battled the brutes turned in upon them and slain them, therebywinning their freedom. In the instance which you witnessed the beasts killedeach other, but the result was the same—the man and woman were liberated,furnished with weapons, and started on their homeward journey. Upon the leftshoulder of each a mark was burned—the mark of the Mahars—which will foreverprotect these two from slaving parties.”

“There is a slender chance for me then if I be sent to the arena, and none atall if the learned ones drag me to the pits?”

“You are quite right,” he replied; “but do not felicitate yourself too quicklyshould you be sent to the arena, for there is scarce one in a thousand whocomes out alive.”

To my surprise they returned me to the same building in which I had beenconfined with Perry and Ghak before my escape. At the doorway I was turned overto the guards there.

“He will doubtless be called before the investigators shortly,” said he who hadbrought me back, “so have him in readiness.”

The guards in whose hands I now found myself, upon hearing that I had returnedof my own volition to Phutra evidently felt that it would be safe to give meliberty within the building as had been the custom before I had escaped, and soI was told to return to whatever duty had been mine formerly.

My first act was to hunt up Perry, whom I found poring as usual over the greattomes that he was supposed to be merely dusting and rearranging upon newshelves.

As I entered the room he glanced up and nodded pleasantly to me, only to resumehis work as though I had never been away at all. I was both astonished and hurtat his indifference. And to think that I was risking death to return to himpurely from a sense of duty and affection!

“Why, Perry!” I exclaimed, “haven’t you a word for me after my long absence?”

“Long absence!” he repeated in evident astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Are you crazy, Perry? Do you mean to say that you have not missed me sincethat time we were separated by the charging thag within the arena?”

“‘That time’,” he repeated. “Why man, I have but just returned from the arena!You reached here almost as soon as I. Had you been much later I should indeedhave been worried, and as it is I had intended asking you about how you escapedthe beast as soon as I had completed the translation of this most interestingpassage.”

“Perry, you ARE mad,” I exclaimed. “Why, the Lord only knows how long I havebeen away. I have been to other lands, discovered a new race of humans withinPellucidar, seen the Mahars at their worship in their hidden temple, and barelyescaped with my life from them and from a great labyrinthodon that I metafterward, following my long and tedious wanderings across an unknown world. Imust have been away for months, Perry, and now you barely look up from yourwork when I return and insist that we have been separated but a moment. Is thatany way to treat a friend? I’m surprised at you, Perry, and if I’d thought fora moment that you cared no more for me than this I should not have returned tochance death at the hands of the Mahars for your sake.”

The old man looked at me for a long time before he spoke. There was a puzzledexpression upon his wrinkled face, and a look of hurt sorrow in his eyes.

“David, my boy,” he said, “how could you for a moment doubt my love for you?There is something strange here that I cannot understand. I know that I am notmad, and I am equally sure that you are not; but how in the world are we toaccount for the strange hallucinations that each of us seems to harbor relativeto the passage of time since last we saw each other. You are positive thatmonths have gone by, while to me it seems equally certain that not more than anhour ago I sat beside you in the amphitheater. Can it be that both of us areright and at the same time both are wrong? First tell me what time is, and thenmaybe I can solve our problem. Do you catch my meaning?”

I didn’t and said so.

“Yes,” continued the old man, “we are both right. To me, bent over my bookhere, there has been no lapse of time. I have done little or nothing to wastemy energies and so have required neither food nor sleep, but you, on thecontrary, have walked and fought and wasted strength and tissue which mustneeds be rebuilt by nutriment and food, and so, having eaten and slept manytimes since last you saw me you naturally measure the lapse of time largely bythese acts. As a matter of fact, David, I am rapidly coming to the convictionthat there is no such thing as time—surely there can be no time here withinPellucidar, where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, theMahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here in alltheir literary works but a single tense, the present. There seems to be neitherpast nor future with them. Of course it is impossible for our outer-earthlyminds to grasp such a condition, but our recent experiences seem to demonstrateits existence.”

It was too big a subject for me, and I said so, but Perry seemed to enjoynothing better than speculating upon it, and after listening with interest tomy account of the adventures through which I had passed he returned once moreto the subject, which he was enlarging upon with considerable fluency when hewas interrupted by the entrance of a Sagoth.

“Come!” commanded the intruder, beckoning to me. “The investigators would speakwith you.”

“Good-bye, Perry!” I said, clasping the old man’s hand. “There may be nothingbut the present and no such thing as time, but I feel that I am about to take atrip into the hereafter from which I shall never return. If you and Ghak shouldmanage to escape I want you to promise me that you will find Dian the Beautifuland tell her that with my last words I asked her forgiveness for theunintentional affront I put upon her, and that my one wish was to be sparedlong enough to right the wrong that I had done her.”

Tears came to Perry’s eyes.

“I cannot believe but that you will return, David,” he said. “It would be awfulto think of living out the balance of my life without you among these hatefuland repulsive creatures. If you are taken away I shall never escape, for I feelthat I am as well off here as I should be anywhere within this buried world.Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!” and then his old voice faltered and broke, and ashe hid his face in his hands the Sagoth guardsman grasped me roughly by theshoulder and hustled me from the chamber.

XI
FOUR DEAD MAHARS

A moment later I was standing before a dozen Mahars—the social investigators ofPhutra. They asked me many questions, through a Sagoth interpreter. I answeredthem all truthfully. They seemed particularly interested in my account of theouter earth and the strange vehicle which had brought Perry and me toPellucidar. I thought that I had convinced them, and after they had sat insilence for a long time following my examination, I expected to be orderedreturned to my quarters.

During this apparent silence they were debating through the medium of strange,unspoken language the merits of my tale. At last the head of the tribunalcommunicated the result of their conference to the officer in charge of theSagoth guard.

“Come,” he said to me, “you are sentenced to the experimental pits for havingdared to insult the intelligence of the mighty ones with the ridiculous taleyou have had the temerity to unfold to them.”

“Do you mean that they do not believe me?” I asked, totally astonished.

“Believe you!” he laughed. “Do you mean to say that you expected any one tobelieve so impossible a lie?”

It was hopeless, and so I walked in silence beside my guard down through thedark corridors and runways toward my awful doom. At a low level we came upon anumber of lighted chambers in which we saw many Mahars engaged in variousoccupations. To one of these chambers my guard escorted me, and before leavingthey chained me to a side wall. There were other humans similarly chained. Upona long table lay a victim even as I was ushered into the room. Several Maharsstood about the poor creature holding him down so that he could not move.Another, grasping a sharp knife with her three-toed fore foot, was laying openthe victim’s chest and abdomen. No anesthetic had been administered and theshrieks and groans of the tortured man were terrible to hear. This, indeed, wasvivisection with a vengeance. Cold sweat broke out upon me as I realized thatsoon my turn would come. And to think that where there was no such thing astime I might easily imagine that my suffering was enduring for months beforedeath finally released me!

The Mahars had paid not the slightest attention to me as I had been broughtinto the room. So deeply immersed were they in their work that I am sure theydid not even know that the Sagoths had entered with me. The door was close by.Would that I could reach it! But those heavy chains precluded any suchpossibility. I looked about for some means of escape from my bonds. Upon thefloor between me and the Mahars lay a tiny surgical instrument which one ofthem must have dropped. It looked not unlike a button-hook, but was muchsmaller, and its point was sharpened. A hundred times in my boyhood days had Ipicked locks with a buttonhook. Could I but reach that little bit of polishedsteel I might yet effect at least a temporary escape.

Crawling to the limit of my chain, I found that by reaching one hand as far outas I could my fingers still fell an inch short of the coveted instrument. Itwas tantalizing! Stretch every fiber of my being as I would, I could not quitemake it.

At last I turned about and extended one foot toward the object. My heart cameto my throat! I could just touch the thing! But suppose that in my effort todrag it toward me I should accidentally shove it still farther away and thusentirely out of reach! Cold sweat broke out upon me from every pore. Slowly andcautiously I made the effort. My toes dropped upon the cold metal. Gradually Iworked it toward me until I felt that it was within reach of my hand and amoment later I had turned about and the precious thing was in my grasp.

Assiduously I fell to work upon the Mahar lock that held my chain. It waspitifully simple. A child might have picked it, and a moment later I was free.The Mahars were now evidently completing their work at the table. One alreadyturned away and was examining other victims, evidently with the intention ofselecting the next subject.

Those at the table had their backs toward me. But for the creature walkingtoward us I might have escaped that moment. Slowly the thing approached me,when its attention was attracted by a huge slave chained a few yards to myright. Here the reptile stopped and commenced to go over the poor devilcarefully, and as it did so its back turned toward me for an instant, and inthat instant I gave two mighty leaps that carried me out of the chamber intothe corridor beyond, down which I raced with all the speed I could command.

Where I was, or whither I was going, I knew not. My only thought was to placeas much distance as possible between me and that frightful chamber of torture.

Presently I reduced my speed to a brisk walk, and later realizing the danger ofrunning into some new predicament, were I not careful, I moved still moreslowly and cautiously. After a time I came to a passage that seemed in somemysterious way familiar to me, and presently, chancing to glance within achamber which led from the corridor I saw three Mahars curled up in slumberupon a bed of skins. I could have shouted aloud in joy and relief. It was thesame corridor and the same Mahars that I had intended to have lead so importanta role in our escape from Phutra. Providence had indeed been kind to me, forthe reptiles still slept.

My one great danger now lay in returning to the upper levels in search of Perryand Ghak, but there was nothing else to be done, and so I hastened upward. WhenI came to the frequented portions of the building, I found a large burden ofskins in a corner and these I lifted to my head, carrying them in such a waythat ends and corners fell down about my shoulders completely hiding my face.Thus disguised I found Perry and Ghak together in the chamber where we had beenwont to eat and sleep.

Both were glad to see me, it was needless to say, though of course they hadknown nothing of the fate that had been meted out to me by my judges. It wasdecided that no time should now be lost before attempting to put our plan ofescape to the test, as I could not hope to remain hidden from the Sagoths long,nor could I forever carry that bale of skins about upon my head withoutarousing suspicion. However it seemed likely that it would carry me once moresafely through the crowded passages and chambers of the upper levels, and so Iset out with Perry and Ghak—the stench of the illy cured pelts fairly chokingme.

Together we repaired to the first tier of corridors beneath the main floor ofthe buildings, and here Perry and Ghak halted to await me. The buildings arecut out of the solid limestone formation. There is nothing at all remarkableabout their architecture. The rooms are sometimes rectangular, sometimescircular, and again oval in shape. The corridors which connect them are narrowand not always straight. The chambers are lighted by diffused sunlightreflected through tubes similar to those by which the avenues are lighted. Thelower the tiers of chambers, the darker. Most of the corridors are entirelyunlighted. The Mahars can see quite well in semidarkness.

Down to the main floor we encountered many Mahars, Sagoths, and slaves; but noattention was paid to us as we had become a part of the domestic life of thebuilding. There was but a single entrance leading from the place into theavenue and this was well guarded by Sagoths—this doorway alone were weforbidden to pass. It is true that we were not supposed to enter the deepercorridors and apartments except on special occasions when we were instructed todo so; but as we were considered a lower order without intelligence there waslittle reason to fear that we could accomplish any harm by so doing, and so wewere not hindered as we entered the corridor which led below.

Wrapped in a skin I carried three swords, and the two bows, and the arrowswhich Perry and I had fashioned. As many slaves bore skin-wrapped burdens toand fro my load attracted no comment. Where I left Ghak and Perry there were noother creatures in sight, and so I withdrew one sword from the package, andleaving the balance of the weapons with Perry, started on alone toward thelower levels.

Having come to the apartment in which the three Mahars slept I entered silentlyon tiptoe, forgetting that the creatures were without the sense of hearing.With a quick thrust through the heart I disposed of the first but my secondthrust was not so fortunate, so that before I could kill the next of my victimsit had hurled itself against the third, who sprang quickly up, facing me withwide-distended jaws. But fighting is not the occupation which the race ofMahars loves, and when the thing saw that I already had dispatched two of itscompanions, and that my sword was red with their blood, it made a dash toescape me. But I was too quick for it, and so, half hopping, half flying, itscurried down another corridor with me close upon its heels.

Its escape meant the utter ruin of our plan, and in all probability my instantdeath. This thought lent wings to my feet; but even at my best I could do nomore than hold my own with the leaping thing before me.

Of a sudden it turned into an apartment on the right of the corridor, and aninstant later as I rushed in I found myself facing two of the Mahars. The onewho had been there when we entered had been occupied with a number of metalvessels, into which had been put powders and liquids as I judged from the arrayof flasks standing about upon the bench where it had been working. In aninstant I realized what I had stumbled upon. It was the very room for thefinding of which Perry had given me minute directions. It was the buriedchamber in which was hidden the Great Secret of the race of Mahars. And on thebench beside the flasks lay the skin-bound book which held the only copy of thething I was to have sought, after dispatching the three Mahars in their sleep.

There was no exit from the room other than the doorway in which I now stoodfacing the two frightful reptiles. Cornered, I knew that they would fight likedemons, and they were well equipped to fight if fight they must. Together theylaunched themselves upon me, and though I ran one of them through the heart onthe instant, the other fastened its gleaming fangs about my sword arm above theelbow, and then with her sharp talons commenced to rake me about the body,evidently intent upon disemboweling me. I saw that it was useless to hope thatI might release my arm from that powerful, viselike grip which seemed to besevering my arm from my body. The pain I suffered was intense, but it onlyserved to spur me to greater efforts to overcome my antagonist.

Back and forth across the floor we struggled—the Mahar dealing me terrific,cutting blows with her fore feet, while I attempted to protect my body with myleft hand, at the same time watching for an opportunity to transfer my bladefrom my now useless sword hand to its rapidly weakening mate. At last I wassuccessful, and with what seemed to me my last ounce of strength I ran theblade through the ugly body of my foe.

Soundless, as it had fought, it died, and though weak from pain and loss ofblood, it was with an emotion of triumphant pride that I stepped across itsconvulsively stiffening corpse to snatch up the most potent secret of a world.A single glance assured me it was the very thing that Perry had described tome.

And as I grasped it did I think of what it meant to the human race ofPellucidar—did there flash through my mind the thought that countlessgenerations of my own kind yet unborn would have reason to worship me for thething that I had accomplished for them? I did not. I thought of a beautifuloval face, gazing out of limpid eyes, through a waving mass of jet-black hair.I thought of red, red lips, God-made for kissing. And of a sudden, apropos ofnothing, standing there alone in the secret chamber of the Mahars ofPellucidar, I realized that I loved Dian the Beautiful.

XII
PURSUIT

For an instant I stood there thinking of her, and then, with a sigh, I tuckedthe book in the thong that supported my loin cloth, and turned to leave theapartment. At the bottom of the corridor which leads aloft from the lowerchambers I whistled in accordance with the prearranged signal which was toannounce to Perry and Ghak that I had been successful. A moment later theystood beside me, and to my surprise I saw that Hooja the Sly One accompaniedthem.

“He joined us,” explained Perry, “and would not be denied. The fellow is a fox.He scents escape, and rather than be thwarted of our chance now I told him thatI would bring him to you, and let you decide whether he might accompany us.”

I had no love for Hooja, and no confidence in him. I was sure that if hethought it would profit him he would betray us; but I saw no way out of it now,and the fact that I had killed four Mahars instead of only the three I hadexpected to, made it possible to include the fellow in our scheme of escape.

“Very well,” I said, “you may come with us, Hooja; but at the first intimationof treachery I shall run my sword through you. Do you understand?”

He said that he did.

Some time later we had removed the skins from the four Mahars, and so succeededin crawling inside of them ourselves that there seemed an excellent chance forus to pass unnoticed from Phutra. It was not an easy thing to fasten the hidestogether where we had split them along the belly to remove them from theircarcasses, but by remaining out until the others had all been sewed in with myhelp, and then leaving an aperture in the breast of Perry’s skin through whichhe could pass his hands to sew me up, we were enabled to accomplish our designto really much better purpose than I had hoped. We managed to keep the headserect by passing our swords up through the necks, and by the same means wereenabled to move them about in a life-like manner. We had our greatestdifficulty with the webbed feet, but even that problem was finally solved, sothat when we moved about we did so quite naturally. Tiny holes punctured in thebaggy throats into which our heads were thrust permitted us to see well enoughto guide our progress.

Thus we started up toward the main floor of the building. Ghak headed thestrange procession, then came Perry, followed by Hooja, while I brought up therear, after admonishing Hooja that I had so arranged my sword that I couldthrust it through the head of my disguise into his vitals were he to show anyindication of faltering.

As the noise of hurrying feet warned me that we were entering the busycorridors of the main level, my heart came up into my mouth. It is with nosense of shame that I admit that I was frightened—never before in my life, norsince, did I experience any such agony of soulsearing fear and suspense asenveloped me. If it be possible to sweat blood, I sweat it then.

Slowly, after the manner of locomotion habitual to the Mahars, when they arenot using their wings, we crept through throngs of busy slaves, Sagoths, andMahars. After what seemed an eternity we reached the outer door which leadsinto the main avenue of Phutra. Many Sagoths loitered near the opening. Theyglanced at Ghak as he padded between them. Then Perry passed, and then Hooja.Now it was my turn, and then in a sudden fit of freezing terror I realized thatthe warm blood from my wounded arm was trickling down through the dead foot ofthe Mahar skin I wore and leaving its tell-tale mark upon the pavement, for Isaw a Sagoth call a companion’s attention to it.

The guard stepped before me and pointing to my bleeding foot spoke to me in thesign language which these two races employ as a means of communication. Evenhad I known what he was saying I could not have replied with the dead thingthat covered me. I once had seen a great Mahar freeze a presumptuous Sagothwith a look. It seemed my only hope, and so I tried it. Stopping in my tracks Imoved my sword so that it made the dead head appear to turn inquiring eyes uponthe gorilla-man. For a long moment I stood perfectly still, eyeing the fellowwith those dead eyes. Then I lowered the head and started slowly on. For amoment all hung in the balance, but before I touched him the guard stepped toone side, and I passed on out into the avenue.

On we went up the broad street, but now we were safe for the very numbers ofour enemies that surrounded us on all sides. Fortunately, there was a greatconcourse of Mahars repairing to the shallow lake which lies a mile or morefrom the city. They go there to indulge their amphibian proclivities in divingfor small fish, and enjoying the cool depths of the water. It is a fresh-waterlake, shallow, and free from the larger reptiles which make the use of thegreat seas of Pellucidar impossible for any but their own kind.

In the thick of the crowd we passed up the steps and out onto the plain. Forsome distance Ghak remained with the stream that was traveling toward the lake,but finally, at the bottom of a little gully he halted, and there we remaineduntil all had passed and we were alone. Then, still in our disguises, we setoff directly away from Phutra.

The heat of the vertical rays of the sun was fast making our horrible prisonsunbearable, so that after passing a low divide, and entering a shelteringforest, we finally discarded the Mahar skins that had brought us thus far insafety.

I shall not weary you with the details of that bitter and galling flight. Howwe traveled at a dogged run until we dropped in our tracks. How we were besetby strange and terrible beasts. How we barely escaped the cruel fangs of lionsand tigers the size of which would dwarf into pitiful insignificance thegreatest felines of the outer world.

On and on we raced, our one thought to put as much distance between ourselvesand Phutra as possible. Ghak was leading us to his own land—the land of Sari.No sign of pursuit had developed, and yet we were sure that somewhere behind usrelentless Sagoths were dogging our tracks. Ghak said they never failed to huntdown their quarry until they had captured it or themselves been turned back bya superior force.

Our only hope, he said, lay in reaching his tribe which was quite strong enoughin their mountain fastness to beat off any number of Sagoths.

At last, after what seemed months, and may, I now realize, have been years, wecame in sight of the dun escarpment which buttressed the foothills of Sari. Atalmost the same instant, Hooja, who looked ever quite as much behind as before,announced that he could see a body of men far behind us topping a low ridge inour wake. It was the long-expected pursuit.

I asked Ghak if we could make Sari in time to escape them.

“We may,” he replied; “but you will find that the Sagoths can move withincredible swiftness, and as they are almost tireless they are doubtless muchfresher than we. Then—” he paused, glancing at Perry.

I knew what he meant. The old man was exhausted. For much of the period of ourflight either Ghak or I had half supported him on the march. With such ahandicap, less fleet pursuers than the Sagoths might easily overtake us beforewe could scale the rugged heights which confronted us.

“You and Hooja go on ahead,” I said. “Perry and I will make it if we are able.We cannot travel as rapidly as you two, and there is no reason why all shouldbe lost because of that. It can’t be helped—we have simply to face it.”

“I will not desert a companion,” was Ghak’s simple reply. I hadn’t known thatthis great, hairy, primeval man had any such nobility of character stowed awayinside him. I had always liked him, but now to my liking was added honor andrespect. Yes, and love.

But still I urged him to go on ahead, insisting that if he could reach hispeople he might be able to bring out a sufficient force to drive off theSagoths and rescue Perry and myself.

No, he wouldn’t leave us, and that was all there was to it, but he suggestedthat Hooja might hurry on and warn the Sarians of the king’s danger. It didn’trequire much urging to start Hooja—the naked idea was enough to send himleaping on ahead of us into the foothills which we now had reached.

Perry realized that he was jeopardizing Ghak’s life and mine and the old fellowfairly begged us to go on without him, although I knew that he was suffering aperfect anguish of terror at the thought of falling into the hands of theSagoths. Ghak finally solved the problem, in part, by lifting Perry in hispowerful arms and carrying him. While the act cut down Ghak’s speed he stillcould travel faster thus than when half supporting the stumbling old man.

XIII
THE SLY ONE

The Sagoths were gaining on us rapidly, for once they had sighted us they hadgreatly increased their speed. On and on we stumbled up the narrow canyon thatGhak had chosen to approach the heights of Sari. On either side roseprecipitous cliffs of gorgeous, parti-colored rock, while beneath our feet athick mountain grass formed a soft and noiseless carpet. Since we had enteredthe canyon we had had no glimpse of our pursuers, and I was commencing to hopethat they had lost our trail and that we would reach the now rapidly nearingcliffs in time to scale them before we should be overtaken.

Ahead we neither saw nor heard any sign which might betoken the success ofHooja’s mission. By now he should have reached the outposts of the Sarians, andwe should at least hear the savage cries of the tribesmen as they swarmed toarms in answer to their king’s appeal for succor. In another moment thefrowning cliffs ahead should be black with primeval warriors. But nothing ofthe kind happened—as a matter of fact the Sly One had betrayed us. At themoment that we expected to see Sarian spearmen charging to our relief atHooja’s back, the craven traitor was sneaking around the outskirts of thenearest Sarian village, that he might come up from the other side when it wastoo late to save us, claiming that he had become lost among the mountains.

Hooja still harbored ill will against me because of the blow I had struck inDian’s protection, and his malevolent spirit was equal to sacrificing us allthat he might be revenged upon me.

As we drew nearer the barrier cliffs and no sign of rescuing Sarians appearedGhak became both angry and alarmed, and presently as the sound of rapidlyapproaching pursuit fell upon our ears, he called to me over his shoulder thatwe were lost.

A backward glance gave me a glimpse of the first of the Sagoths at the far endof a considerable stretch of canyon through which we had just passed, and thena sudden turning shut the ugly creature from my view; but the loud howl oftriumphant rage which rose behind us was evidence that the gorilla-man hadsighted us.

Again the canyon veered sharply to the left, but to the right another branchran on at a lesser deviation from the general direction, so that appeared morelike the main canyon than the lefthand branch. The Sagoths were now not overtwo hundred and fifty yards behind us, and I saw that it was hopeless for us toexpect to escape other than by a ruse. There was a bare chance of saving Ghakand Perry, and as I reached the branching of the canyon I took the chance.

Pausing there I waited until the foremost Sagoth hove into sight. Ghak andPerry had disappeared around a bend in the left-hand canyon, and as theSagoth’s savage yell announced that he had seen me I turned and fled up theright-hand branch. My ruse was successful, and the entire party of man-huntersraced headlong after me up one canyon while Ghak bore Perry to safety up theother.

Running has never been my particular athletic forte, and now when my very lifedepended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on theoccasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head therooter’s raucous and reproachful cries of “Ice Wagon,” and “Call a cab.”

The Sagoths were gaining on me rapidly. There was one in particular, fleeterthan his fellows, who was perilously close. The canyon had become a rocky slit,rising roughly at a steep angle toward what seemed a pass between two abuttingpeaks. What lay beyond I could not even guess—possibly a sheer drop of hundredsof feet into the corresponding valley upon the other side. Could it be that Ihad plunged into a cul-de-sac?

Realizing that I could not hope to outdistance the Sagoths to the top of thecanyon I had determined to risk all in an attempt to check them temporarily,and to this end had unslung my rudely made bow and plucked an arrow from theskin quiver which hung behind my shoulder. As I fitted the shaft with my righthand I stopped and wheeled toward the gorilla-man.

In the world of my birth I never had drawn a shaft, but since our escape fromPhutra I had kept the party supplied with small game by means of my arrows, andso, through necessity, had developed a fair degree of accuracy. During ourflight from Phutra I had restrung my bow with a piece of heavy gut taken from ahuge tiger which Ghak and I had worried and finally dispatched with arrows,spear, and sword. The hard wood of the bow was extremely tough and this, withthe strength and elasticity of my new string, gave me unwonted confidence in myweapon.

Never had I greater need of steady nerves than then—never were my nerves andmuscles under better control. I sighted as carefully and deliberately as thoughat a straw target. The Sagoth had never before seen a bow and arrow, but of asudden it must have swept over his dull intellect that the thing I held towardhim was some sort of engine of destruction, for he too came to a halt,simultaneously swinging his hatchet for a throw. It is one of the many methodsin which they employ this weapon, and the accuracy of aim which they achieve,even under the most unfavorable circumstances, is little short of miraculous.

My shaft was drawn back its full length—my eye had centered its sharp pointupon the left breast of my adversary; and then he launched his hatchet and Ireleased my arrow. At the instant that our missiles flew I leaped to one side,but the Sagoth sprang forward to follow up his attack with a spear thrust. Ifelt the swish of the hatchet as it grazed my head, and at the same instant myshaft pierced the Sagoth’s savage heart, and with a single groan he lungedalmost at my feet—stone dead. Close behind him were two more—fifty yardsperhaps—but the distance gave me time to snatch up the dead guardsman’s shield,for the close call his hatchet had just given me had borne in upon me theurgent need I had for one. Those which I had purloined at Phutra we had notbeen able to bring along because their size precluded our concealing themwithin the skins of the Mahars which had brought us safely from the city.

With the shield slipped well up on my left arm I let fly with another arrow,which brought down a second Sagoth, and then as his fellow’s hatchet spedtoward me I caught it upon the shield, and fitted another shaft for him; but hedid not wait to receive it. Instead, he turned and retreated toward the mainbody of gorilla-men. Evidently he had seen enough of me for the moment.

Once more I took up my flight, nor were the Sagoths apparently overanxious topress their pursuit so closely as before. Unmolested I reached the top of thecanyon where I found a sheer drop of two or three hundred feet to the bottom ofa rocky chasm; but on the left a narrow ledge rounded the shoulder of theoverhanging cliff. Along this I advanced, and at a sudden turning, a few yardsbeyond the canyon’s end, the path widened, and at my left I saw the opening toa large cave. Before, the ledge continued until it passed from sight aboutanother projecting buttress of the mountain.

Here, I felt, I could defy an army, for but a single foeman could advance uponme at a time, nor could he know that I was awaiting him until he came full uponme around the corner of the turn. About me lay scattered stones crumbled fromthe cliff above. They were of various sizes and shapes, but enough were ofhandy dimensions for use as ammunition in lieu of my precious arrows. Gatheringa number of stones into a little pile beside the mouth of the cave I waited theadvance of the Sagoths.

As I stood there, tense and silent, listening for the first faint sound thatshould announce the approach of my enemies, a slight noise from within thecave’s black depths attracted my attention. It might have been produced by themoving of the great body of some huge beast rising from the rock floor of itslair. At almost the same instant I thought that I caught the scraping of hidesandals upon the ledge beyond the turn. For the next few seconds my attentionwas considerably divided.

And then from the inky blackness at my right I saw two flaming eyes glaringinto mine. They were on a level that was over two feet above my head. It istrue that the beast who owned them might be standing upon a ledge within thecave, or that it might be rearing up upon its hind legs; but I had seen enoughof the monsters of Pellucidar to know that I might be facing some new andfrightful Titan whose dimensions and ferocity eclipsed those of any I had seenbefore.

Whatever it was, it was coming slowly toward the entrance of the cave, and now,deep and forbidding, it uttered a low and ominous growl. I waited no longer todispute possession of the ledge with the thing which owned that voice. Thenoise had not been loud—I doubt if the Sagoths heard it at all—but thesuggestion of latent possibilities behind it was such that I knew it would onlyemanate from a gigantic and ferocious beast.

As I backed along the ledge I soon was past the mouth of the cave, where I nolonger could see those fearful flaming eyes, but an instant later I caughtsight of the fiendish face of a Sagoth as it warily advanced beyond the cliff’sturn on the far side of the cave’s mouth. As the fellow saw me he leaped alongthe ledge in pursuit, and after him came as many of his companions as couldcrowd upon each other’s heels. At the same time the beast emerged from thecave, so that he and the Sagoths came face to face upon that narrow ledge.

The thing was an enormous cave bear, rearing its colossal bulk fully eight feetat the shoulder, while from the tip of its nose to the end of its stubby tailit was fully twelve feet in length. As it sighted the Sagoths it emitted a mostfrightful roar, and with open mouth charged full upon them. With a cry ofterror the foremost gorilla-man turned to escape, but behind him he ran fullupon his on-rushing companions.

The horror of the following seconds is indescribable. The Sagoth nearest thecave bear, finding his escape blocked, turned and leaped deliberately to anawful death upon the jagged rocks three hundred feet below. Then those giantjaws reached out and gathered in the next—there was a sickening sound ofcrushing bones, and the mangled corpse was dropped over the cliff’s edge. Nordid the mighty beast even pause in his steady advance along the ledge.

Shrieking Sagoths were now leaping madly over the precipice to escape him, andthe last I saw he rounded the turn still pursuing the demoralized remnant ofthe man hunters. For a long time I could hear the horrid roaring of the bruteintermingled with the screams and shrieks of his victims, until finally theawful sounds dwindled and disappeared in the distance.

Later I learned from Ghak, who had finally come to his tribesmen and returnedwith a party to rescue me, that the ryth, as it is called, pursued the Sagothsuntil it had exterminated the entire band. Ghak was, of course, positive that Ihad fallen prey to the terrible creature, which, within Pellucidar, is trulythe king of beasts.

Not caring to venture back into the canyon, where I might fall prey either tothe cave bear or the Sagoths I continued on along the ledge, believing that byfollowing around the mountain I could reach the land of Sari from anotherdirection. But I evidently became confused by the twisting and turning of thecanyons and gullies, for I did not come to the land of Sari then, nor for along time thereafter.

XIV
THE GARDEN OF EDEN

With no heavenly guide, it is little wonder that I became confused and lost inthe labyrinthine maze of those mighty hills. What, in reality, I did was topass entirely through them and come out above the valley upon the farther side.I know that I wandered for a long time, until tired and hungry I came upon asmall cave in the face of the limestone formation which had taken the place ofthe granite farther back.

The cave which took my fancy lay halfway up the precipitous side of a loftycliff. The way to it was such that I knew no extremely formidable beast couldfrequent it, nor was it large enough to make a comfortable habitat for any butthe smaller mammals or reptiles. Yet it was with the utmost caution that Icrawled within its dark interior.

Here I found a rather large chamber, lighted by a narrow cleft in the rockabove which let the sunlight filter in in sufficient quantities partially todispel the utter darkness which I had expected. The cave was entirely empty,nor were there any signs of its having been recently occupied. The opening wascomparatively small, so that after considerable effort I was able to lug up abowlder from the valley below which entirely blocked it.

Then I returned again to the valley for an armful of grasses and on this tripwas fortunate enough to knock over an orthopi, the diminutive horse ofPellucidar, a little animal about the size of a fox terrier, which abounds inall parts of the inner world. Thus, with food and bedding I returned to mylair, where after a meal of raw meat, to which I had now become quiteaccustomed, I dragged the bowlder before the entrance and curled myself upon abed of grasses—a naked, primeval, cave man, as savagely primitive as myprehistoric progenitors.

I awoke rested but hungry, and pushing the bowlder aside crawled out upon thelittle rocky shelf which was my front porch. Before me spread a small butbeautiful valley, through the center of which a clear and sparkling river woundits way down to an inland sea, the blue waters of which were just visiblebetween the two mountain ranges which embraced this little paradise. The sidesof the opposite hills were green with verdure, for a great forest clothed themto the foot of the red and yellow and copper green of the towering crags whichformed their summit. The valley itself was carpeted with a luxuriant grass,while here and there patches of wild flowers made great splashes of vivid coloragainst the prevailing green.

Dotted over the face of the valley were little clusters of palmlike trees—threeor four together as a rule. Beneath these stood antelope, while others grazedin the open, or wandered gracefully to a nearby ford to drink. There wereseveral species of this beautiful animal, the most magnificent somewhatresembling the giant eland of Africa, except that their spiral horns form acomplete curve backward over their ears and then forward again beneath them,ending in sharp and formidable points some two feet before the face and abovethe eyes. In size they remind one of a pure bred Hereford bull, yet they arevery agile and fast. The broad yellow bands that stripe the dark roan of theircoats made me take them for zebra when I first saw them. All in all they arehandsome animals, and added the finishing touch to the strange and lovelylandscape that spread before my new home.

I had determined to make the cave my headquarters, and with it as a base make asystematic exploration of the surrounding country in search of the land ofSari. First I devoured the remainder of the carcass of the orthopi I had killedbefore my last sleep. Then I hid the Great Secret in a deep niche at the backof my cave, rolled the bowlder before my front door, and with bow, arrows,sword, and shield scrambled down into the peaceful valley.

The grazing herds moved to one side as I passed through them, the littleorthopi evincing the greatest wariness and galloping to safest distances. Allthe animals stopped feeding as I approached, and after moving to what theyconsidered a safe distance stood contemplating me with serious eyes andup-cocked ears. Once one of the old bull antelopes of the striped specieslowered his head and bellowed angrily—even taking a few steps in my direction,so that I thought he meant to charge; but after I had passed, he resumedfeeding as though nothing had disturbed him.

Near the lower end of the valley I passed a number of tapirs, and across theriver saw a great sadok, the enormous double-horned progenitor of the modernrhinoceros. At the valley’s end the cliffs upon the left ran out into the sea,so that to pass around them as I desired to do it was necessary to scale themin search of a ledge along which I might continue my journey. Some fifty feetfrom the base I came upon a projection which formed a natural path along theface of the cliff, and this I followed out over the sea toward the cliff’s end.

Here the ledge inclined rapidly upward toward the top of the cliffs—the stratumwhich formed it evidently having been forced up at this steep angle when themountains behind it were born. As I climbed carefully up the ascent myattention suddenly was attracted aloft by the sound of strange hissing, andwhat resembled the flapping of wings.

And at the first glance there broke upon my horrified vision the most frightfulthing I had seen even within Pellucidar. It was a giant dragon such as ispictured in the legends and fairy tales of earth folk. Its huge body must havemeasured forty feet in length, while the batlike wings that supported it inmidair had a spread of fully thirty. Its gaping jaws were armed with long,sharp teeth, and its claw equipped with horrible talons.

The hissing noise which had first attracted my attention was issuing from itsthroat, and seemed to be directed at something beyond and below me which Icould not see. The ledge upon which I stood terminated abruptly a few pacesfarther on, and as I reached the end I saw the cause of the reptile’sagitation.

Some time in past ages an earthquake had produced a fault at this point, sothat beyond the spot where I stood the strata had slipped down a matter oftwenty feet. The result was that the continuation of my ledge lay twenty feetbelow me, where it ended as abruptly as did the end upon which I stood.

And here, evidently halted in flight by this insurmountable break in the ledge,stood the object of the creature’s attack—a girl cowering upon the narrowplatform, her face buried in her arms, as though to shut out the sight of thefrightful death which hovered just above her.

The dragon was circling lower, and seemed about to dart in upon its prey. Therewas no time to be lost, scarce an instant in which to weigh the possiblechances that I had against the awfully armed creature; but the sight of thatfrightened girl below me called out to all that was best in me, and theinstinct for protection of the other sex, which nearly must have equaled theinstinct of self-preservation in primeval man, drew me to the girl’s side likean irresistible magnet.

Almost thoughtless of the consequences, I leaped from the end of the ledge uponwhich I stood, for the tiny shelf twenty feet below. At the same instant thedragon darted in toward the girl, but my sudden advent upon the scene must havestartled him for he veered to one side, and then rose above us once more.

The noise I made as I landed beside her convinced the girl that the end hadcome, for she thought I was the dragon; but finally when no cruel fangs closedupon her she raised her eyes in astonishment. As they fell upon me theexpression that came into them would be difficult to describe; but her feelingscould scarcely have been one whit more complicated than my own—for the wideeyes that looked into mine were those of Dian the Beautiful.

“Dian!” I cried. “Dian! Thank God that I came in time.”

“You?” she whispered, and then she hid her face again; nor could I tell whethershe were glad or angry that I had come.

Once more the dragon was sweeping toward us, and so rapidly that I had no timeto unsling my bow. All that I could do was to snatch up a rock, and hurl it atthe thing’s hideous face. Again my aim was true, and with a hiss of pain andrage the reptile wheeled once more and soared away.

Quickly I fitted an arrow now that I might be ready at the next attack, and asI did so I looked down at the girl, so that I surprised her in a surreptitiousglance which she was stealing at me; but immediately, she again covered herface with her hands.

“Look at me, Dian,” I pleaded. “Are you not glad to see me?”

She looked straight into my eyes.

“I hate you,” she said, and then, as I was about to beg for a fair hearing shepointed over my shoulder. “The thipdar comes,” she said, and I turned again tomeet the reptile.

So this was a thipdar. I might have known it. The cruel bloodhound of theMahars. The long-extinct pterodactyl of the outer world. But this time I met itwith a weapon it never had faced before. I had selected my longest arrow, andwith all my strength had bent the bow until the very tip of the shaft restedupon the thumb of my left hand, and then as the great creature darted toward usI let drive straight for that tough breast.

Hissing like the escape valve of a steam engine, the mighty creature fellturning and twisting into the sea below, my arrow buried completely in itscarcass. I turned toward the girl. She was looking past me. It was evident thatshe had seen the thipdar die.

“Dian,” I said, “won’t you tell me that you are not sorry that I have foundyou?”

“I hate you,” was her only reply; but I imagined that there was less vehemencein it than before—yet it might have been but my imagination.

“Why do you hate me, Dian?” I asked, but she did not answer me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, “and what has happened to you since Hoojafreed you from the Sagoths?”

At first I thought that she was going to ignore me entirely, but finally shethought better of it.

“I was again running away from Jubal the Ugly One,” she said. “After I escapedfrom the Sagoths I made my way alone back to my own land; but on account ofJubal I did not dare enter the villages or let any of my friends know that Ihad returned for fear that Jubal might find out. By watching for a long time Ifound that my brother had not yet returned, and so I continued to live in acave beside a valley which my race seldom frequents, awaiting the time that heshould come back and free me from Jubal.

“But at last one of Jubal’s hunters saw me as I was creeping toward my father’scave to see if my brother had yet returned and he gave the alarm and Jubal setout after me. He has been pursuing me across many lands. He cannot be farbehind me now. When he comes he will kill you and carry me back to his cave. Heis a terrible man. I have gone as far as I can go, and there is no escape,” andshe looked hopelessly up at the continuation of the ledge twenty feet above us.

“But he shall not have me,” she suddenly cried, with great vehemence. “The seais there”—she pointed over the edge of the cliff—“and the sea shall have merather than Jubal.”

“But I have you now Dian,” I cried; “nor shall Jubal, nor any other have you,for you are mine,” and I seized her hand, nor did I lift it above her head andlet it fall in token of release.

She had risen to her feet, and was looking straight into my eyes with levelgaze.

“I do not believe you,” she said, “for if you meant it you would have done thiswhen the others were present to witness it—then I should truly have been yourmate; now there is no one to see you do it, for you know that without witnessesyour act does not bind you to me,” and she withdrew her hand from mine andturned away.

I tried to convince her that I was sincere, but she simply couldn’t forget thehumiliation that I had put upon her on that other occasion.

“If you mean all that you say you will have ample chance to prove it,” shesaid, “if Jubal does not catch and kill you. I am in your power, and thetreatment you accord me will be the best proof of your intentions toward me. Iam not your mate, and again I tell you that I hate you, and that I should beglad if I never saw you again.”

Dian certainly was candid. There was no gainsaying that. In fact I found candorand directness to be quite a marked characteristic of the cave men ofPellucidar. Finally I suggested that we make some attempt to gain my cave,where we might escape the searching Jubal, for I am free to admit that I had noconsiderable desire to meet the formidable and ferocious creature, of whosemighty prowess Dian had told me when I first met her. He it was who, armed witha puny knife, had met and killed a cave bear in a hand-to-hand struggle. It wasJubal who could cast his spear entirely through the armored carcass of thesadok at fifty paces. It was he who had crushed the skull of a charging dyrythwith a single blow of his war club. No, I was not pining to meet the UglyOne—and it was quite certain that I should not go out and hunt for him; but thematter was taken out of my hands very quickly, as is often the way, and I didmeet Jubal the Ugly One face to face.

This is how it happened. I had led Dian back along the ledge the way she hadcome, searching for a path that would lead us to the top of the cliff, for Iknew that we could then cross over to the edge of my own little valley, where Ifelt certain we should find a means of ingress from the cliff top. As weproceeded along the ledge I gave Dian minute directions for finding my caveagainst the chance of something happening to me. I knew that she would be quitesafely hidden away from pursuit once she gained the shelter of my lair, and thevalley would afford her ample means of sustenance.

Also, I was very much piqued by her treatment of me. My heart was sad andheavy, and I wanted to make her feel badly by suggesting that somethingterrible might happen to me—that I might, in fact, be killed. But it didn’twork worth a cent, at least as far as I could perceive. Dian simply shruggedthose magnificent shoulders of hers, and murmured something to the effect thatone was not rid of trouble so easily as that.

For a while I kept still. I was utterly squelched. And to think that I hadtwice protected her from attack—the last time risking my life to save hers. Itwas incredible that even a daughter of the Stone Age could be so ungrateful—soheartless; but maybe her heart partook of the qualities of her epoch.

Presently we found a rift in the cliff which had been widened and extended bythe action of the water draining through it from the plateau above. It gave usa rather rough climb to the summit, but finally we stood upon the level mesawhich stretched back for several miles to the mountain range. Behind us lay thebroad inland sea, curving upward in the horizonless distance to merge into theblue of the sky, so that for all the world it looked as though the sea lappedback to arch completely over us and disappear beyond the distant mountains atour backs—the weird and uncanny aspect of the seascapes of Pellucidar balkdescription.

At our right lay a dense forest, but to the left the country was open and clearto the plateau’s farther verge. It was in this direction that our way led, andwe had turned to resume our journey when Dian touched my arm. I turned to her,thinking that she was about to make peace overtures; but I was mistaken.

“Jubal,” she said, and nodded toward the forest.

I looked, and there, emerging from the dense wood, came a perfect whale of aman. He must have been seven feet tall, and proportioned accordingly. He stillwas too far off to distinguish his features.

“Run,” I said to Dian. “I can engage him until you get a good start. Maybe Ican hold him until you have gotten entirely away,” and then, without a backwardglance, I advanced to meet the Ugly One. I had hoped that Dian would have akind word to say to me before she went, for she must have known that I wasgoing to my death for her sake; but she never even so much as bid me good-bye,and it was with a heavy heart that I strode through the flower-bespangled grassto my doom.

When I had come close enough to Jubal to distinguish his features I understoodhow it was that he had earned the sobriquet of Ugly One. Apparently somefearful beast had ripped away one entire side of his face. The eye was gone,the nose, and all the flesh, so that his jaws and all his teeth were exposedand grinning through the horrible scar.

Formerly he may have been as good to look upon as the others of his handsomerace, and it may be that the terrible result of this encounter had tended tosour an already strong and brutal character. However this may be it is quitecertain that he was not a pretty sight, and now that his features, or whatremained of them, were distorted in rage at the sight of Dian with anothermale, he was indeed most terrible to see—and much more terrible to meet.

He had broken into a run now, and as he advanced he raised his mighty spear,while I halted and fitting an arrow to my bow took as steady aim as I could. Iwas somewhat longer than usual, for I must confess that the sight of this awfulman had wrought upon my nerves to such an extent that my knees were anythingbut steady. What chance had I against this mighty warrior for whom even thefiercest cave bear had no terrors! Could I hope to best one who slaughtered thesadok and dyryth singlehanded! I shuddered; but, in fairness to myself, my fearwas more for Dian than for my own fate.

And then the great brute launched his massive stone-tipped spear, and I raisedmy shield to break the force of its terrific velocity. The impact hurled me tomy knees, but the shield had deflected the missile and I was unscathed. Jubalwas rushing upon me now with the only remaining weapon that he carried—amurderous-looking knife. He was too close for a careful bowshot, but I letdrive at him as he came, without taking aim. My arrow pierced the fleshy partof his thigh, inflicting a painful but not disabling wound. And then he wasupon me.

My agility saved me for the instant. I ducked beneath his raised arm, and whenhe wheeled to come at me again he found a sword’s point in his face. And amoment later he felt an inch or two of it in the muscles of his knife arm, sothat thereafter he went more warily.

It was a duel of strategy now—the great, hairy man maneuvering to get inside myguard where he could bring those giant thews to play, while my wits weredirected to the task of keeping him at arm’s length. Thrice he rushed me, andthrice I caught his knife blow upon my shield. Each time my sword found hisbody—once penetrating to his lung. He was covered with blood by this time, andthe internal hemorrhage induced paroxysms of coughing that brought the redstream through the hideous mouth and nose, covering his face and breast withbloody froth. He was a most unlovely spectacle, but he was far from dead.

As the duel continued I began to gain confidence, for, to be perfectly candid,I had not expected to survive the first rush of that monstrous engine ofungoverned rage and hatred. And I think that Jubal, from utter contempt of me,began to change to a feeling of respect, and then in his primitive mind thereevidently loomed the thought that perhaps at last he had met his master, andwas facing his end.

At any rate it is only upon this hypothesis that I can account for his nextact, which was in the nature of a last resort—a sort of forlorn hope, whichcould only have been born of the belief that if he did not kill me quickly Ishould kill him. It happened on the occasion of his fourth charge, when,instead of striking at me with his knife, he dropped that weapon, and seizingmy sword blade in both his hands wrenched the weapon from my grasp as easily asfrom a babe.

Flinging it far to one side he stood motionless for just an instant glaringinto my face with such a horrid leer of malignant triumph as to almost unnerveme—then he sprang for me with his bare hands. But it was Jubal’s day to learnnew methods of warfare. For the first time he had seen a bow and arrows, neverbefore that duel had he beheld a sword, and now he learned what a man who knowsmay do with his bare fists.

As he came for me, like a great bear, I ducked again beneath his outstretchedarm, and as I came up planted as clean a blow upon his jaw as ever you haveseen. Down went that great mountain of flesh sprawling upon the ground. He wasso surprised and dazed that he lay there for several seconds before he made anyattempt to rise, and I stood over him with another dose ready when he shouldgain his knees.

Up he came at last, almost roaring in his rage and mortification; but he didn’tstay up—I let him have a left fair on the point of the jaw that sent himtumbling over on his back. By this time I think Jubal had gone mad with hate,for no sane man would have come back for more as many times as he did. Timeafter time I bowled him over as fast as he could stagger up, until toward thelast he lay longer on the ground between blows, and each time came up weakerthan before.

He was bleeding very profusely now from the wound in his lungs, and presently aterrific blow over the heart sent him reeling heavily to the ground, where helay very still, and somehow I knew at once that Jubal the Ugly One would neverget up again. But even as I looked upon that massive body lying there so grimand terrible in death, I could not believe that I, single-handed, had bestedthis slayer of fearful beasts—this gigantic ogre of the Stone Age.

Picking up my sword I leaned upon it, looking down on the dead body of myfoeman, and as I thought of the battle I had just fought and won a great ideawas born in my brain—the outcome of this and the suggestion that Perry had madewithin the city of Phutra. If skill and science could render a comparativepygmy the master of this mighty brute, what could not the brute’s fellowsaccomplish with the same skill and science. Why all Pellucidar would be attheir feet—and I would be their king and Dian their queen.

Dian! A little wave of doubt swept over me. It was quite within thepossibilities of Dian to look down upon me even were I king. She was quite themost superior person I ever had met—with the most convincing way of letting youknow that she was superior. Well, I could go to the cave, and tell her that Ihad killed Jubal, and then she might feel more kindly toward me, since I hadfreed her of her tormentor. I hoped that she had found the cave easily—it wouldbe terrible had I lost her again, and I turned to gather up my shield and bowto hurry after her, when to my astonishment I found her standing not ten pacesbehind me.

“Girl!” I cried, “what are you doing here? I thought that you had gone to thecave, as I told you to do.”

Up went her head, and the look that she gave me took all the majesty out of me,and left me feeling more like the palace janitor—if palaces have janitors.

“As you told me to do!” she cried, stamping her little foot. “I do as I please.I am the daughter of a king, and furthermore, I hate you.”

I was dumbfounded—this was my thanks for saving her from Jubal! I turned andlooked at the corpse. “May be that I saved you from a worse fate, old man,” Isaid, but I guess it was lost on Dian, for she never seemed to notice it atall.

“Let us go to my cave,” I said, “I am tired and hungry.”

She followed along a pace behind me, neither of us speaking. I was too angry,and she evidently didn’t care to converse with the lower orders. I was mad allthe way through, as I had certainly felt that at least a word of thanks shouldhave rewarded me, for I knew that even by her own standards, I must have done avery wonderful thing to have killed the redoubtable Jubal in a hand-to-handencounter.

We had no difficulty in finding my lair, and then I went down into the valleyand bowled over a small antelope, which I dragged up the steep ascent to theledge before the door. Here we ate in silence. Occasionally I glanced at her,thinking that the sight of her tearing at raw flesh with her hands and teethlike some wild animal would cause a revulsion of my sentiments toward her; butto my surprise I found that she ate quite as daintily as the most civilizedwoman of my acquaintance, and finally I found myself gazing in foolish raptureat the beauties of her strong, white teeth. Such is love.

After our repast we went down to the river together and bathed our hands andfaces, and then after drinking our fill went back to the cave. Without a word Icrawled into the farthest corner and, curling up, was soon asleep.

When I awoke I found Dian sitting in the doorway looking out across the valley.As I came out she moved to one side to let me pass, but she had no word for me.I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t. Every time I looked at her something cameup in my throat, so that I nearly choked. I had never been in love before, butI did not need any aid in diagnosing my case—I certainly had it and had it bad.God, how I loved that beautiful, disdainful, tantalizing, prehistoric girl!

After we had eaten again I asked Dian if she intended returning to her tribenow that Jubal was dead, but she shook her head sadly, and said that she didnot dare, for there was still Jubal’s brother to be considered—his oldestbrother.

“What has he to do with it?” I asked. “Does he too want you, or has the optionon you become a family heirloom, to be passed on down from generation togeneration?”

She was not quite sure as to what I meant.

“It is probable,” she said, “that they all will want revenge for the death ofJubal—there are seven of them—seven terrible men. Someone may have to kill themall, if I am to return to my people.”

It began to look as though I had assumed a contract much too large for me—aboutseven sizes, in fact.

“Had Jubal any cousins?” I asked. It was just as well to know the worst atonce.

“Yes,” replied Dian, “but they don’t count—they all have mates. Jubal’sbrothers have no mates because Jubal could get none for himself. He was so uglythat women ran away from him—some have even thrown themselves from the cliffsof Amoz into the Darel Az rather than mate with the Ugly One.”

“But what had that to do with his brothers?” I asked.

“I forget that you are not of Pellucidar,” said Dian, with a look of pity mixedwith contempt, and the contempt seemed to be laid on a little thicker than thecircumstance warranted—as though to make quite certain that I shouldn’toverlook it. “You see,” she continued, “a younger brother may not take a mateuntil all his older brothers have done so, unless the older brother waives hisprerogative, which Jubal would not do, knowing that as long as he kept themsingle they would be all the keener in aiding him to secure a mate.”

Noticing that Dian was becoming more communicative I began to entertain hopesthat she might be warming up toward me a bit, although upon what slender threadI hung my hopes I soon discovered.

“As you dare not return to Amoz,” I ventured, “what is to become of you sinceyou cannot be happy here with me, hating me as you do?”

“I shall have to put up with you,” she replied coldly, “until you see fit to goelsewhere and leave me in peace, then I shall get along very well alone.”

I looked at her in utter amazement. It seemed incredible that even aprehistoric woman could be so cold and heartless and ungrateful. Then I arose.

“I shall leave you NOW,” I said haughtily, “I have had quite enough of youringratitude and your insults,” and then I turned and strode majestically downtoward the valley. I had taken a hundred steps in absolute silence, and thenDian spoke.

“I hate you!” she shouted, and her voice broke—in rage, I thought.

I was absolutely miserable, but I hadn’t gone too far when I began to realizethat I couldn’t leave her alone there without protection, to hunt her own foodamid the dangers of that savage world. She might hate me, and revile me, andheap indignity after indignity upon me, as she already had, until I should havehated her; but the pitiful fact remained that I loved her, and I couldn’t leaveher there alone.

The more I thought about it the madder I got, so that by the time I reached thevalley I was furious, and the result of it was that I turned right around andwent up that cliff again as fast as I had come down. I saw that Dian had leftthe ledge and gone within the cave, but I bolted right in after her. She waslying upon her face on the pile of grasses I had gathered for her bed. When sheheard me enter she sprang to her feet like a tigress.

“I hate you!” she cried.

Coming from the brilliant light of the noonday sun into the semidarkness of thecave I could not see her features, and I was rather glad, for I disliked tothink of the hate that I should have read there.

I never said a word to her at first. I just strode across the cave and graspedher by the wrists, and when she struggled, I put my arm around her so as topinion her hands to her sides. She fought like a tigress, but I took my freehand and pushed her head back—I imagine that I had suddenly turned brute, thatI had gone back a thousand million years, and was again a veritable cave mantaking my mate by force—and then I kissed that beautiful mouth again and again.

“Dian,” I cried, shaking her roughly, “I love you. Can’t you understand that Ilove you? That I love you better than all else in this world or my own? That Iam going to have you? That love like mine cannot be denied?”

I noticed that she lay very still in my arms now, and as my eyes becameaccustomed to the light I saw that she was smiling—a very contented, happysmile. I was thunderstruck. Then I realized that, very gently, she was tryingto disengage her arms, and I loosened my grip upon them so that she could doso. Slowly they came up and stole about my neck, and then she drew my lips downto hers once more and held them there for a long time. At last she spoke.

“Why didn’t you do this at first, David? I have been waiting so long.”

“What!” I cried. “You said that you hated me!”

“Did you expect me to run into your arms, and say that I loved you before Iknew that you loved me?” she asked.

“But I have told you right along that I love you,” I said. “Love speaks inacts,” she replied. “You could have made your mouth say what you wished it tosay, but just now when you came and took me in your arms your heart spoke tomine in the language that a woman’s heart understands. What a silly man youare, David.”

“Then you haven’t hated me at all, Dian?” I asked.

“I have loved you always,” she whispered, “from the first moment that I sawyou, although I did not know it until that time you struck down Hooja the SlyOne, and then spurned me.”

“But I didn’t spurn you, dear,” I cried. “I didn’t know your ways—I doubt if Ido now. It seems incredible that you could have reviled me so, and yet havecared for me all the time.”

“You might have known,” she said, “when I did not run away from you that it wasnot hate which chained me to you. While you were battling with Jubal, I couldhave run to the edge of the forest, and when I learned the outcome of thecombat it would have been a simple thing to have eluded you and returned to myown people.”

“But Jubal’s brothers—and cousins—” I reminded her, “how about them?”

She smiled, and hid her face on my shoulder.

“I had to tell you SOMETHING, David,” she whispered. “I must needs have SOMEexcuse for remaining near you.”

“You little sinner!” I exclaimed. “And you have caused me all this anguish fornothing!”

“I have suffered even more,” she answered simply, “for I thought that you didnot love me, and I was helpless. I couldn’t come to you and demand that my lovebe returned, as you have just come to me. Just now when you went away hope wentwith you. I was wretched, terrified, miserable, and my heart was breaking. Iwept, and I have not done that before since my mother died,” and now I saw thatthere was the moisture of tears about her eyes. It was near to making me crymyself when I thought of all that poor child had been through. Motherless andunprotected; hunted across a savage, primeval world by that hideous brute of aman; exposed to the attacks of the countless fearsome denizens of itsmountains, its plains, and its jungles—it was a miracle that she had survivedit all.

To me it was a revelation of the things my early forebears must have enduredthat the human race of the outer crust might survive. It made me very proud tothink that I had won the love of such a woman. Of course she couldn’t read orwrite; there was nothing cultured or refined about her as you judge culture andrefinement; but she was the essence of all that is best in woman, for she wasgood, and brave, and noble, and virtuous. And she was all these things in spiteof the fact that their observance entailed suffering and danger and possibledeath.

How much easier it would have been to have gone to Jubal in the first place!She would have been his lawful mate. She would have been queen in her ownland—and it meant just as much to the cave woman to be a queen in the Stone Ageas it does to the woman of today to be a queen now; it’s all comparative gloryany way you look at it, and if there were only half-naked savages on the outercrust today, you’d find that it would be considerable glory to be the wife of aDahomey chief.

I couldn’t help but compare Dian’s action with that of a splendid young woman Ihad known in New York—I mean splendid to look at and to talk to. She had beenhead over heels in love with a chum of mine—a clean, manly chap—but she hadmarried a broken-down, disreputable old debauchee because he was a count insome dinky little European principality that was not even accorded adistinctive color by Rand McNally.

Yes, I was mighty proud of Dian.

After a time we decided to set out for Sari, as I was anxious to see Perry, andto know that all was right with him. I had told Dian about our plan ofemancipating the human race of Pellucidar, and she was fairly wild over it. Shesaid that if Dacor, her brother, would only return he could easily be king ofAmoz, and that then he and Ghak could form an alliance. That would give us aflying start, for the Sarians and the Amozites were both very powerful tribes.Once they had been armed with swords, and bows and arrows, and trained in theiruse we were confident that they could overcome any tribe that seemeddisinclined to join the great army of federated states with which we wereplanning to march upon the Mahars.

I explained the various destructive engines of war which Perry and I couldconstruct after a little experimentation—gunpowder, rifles, cannon, and thelike, and Dian would clap her hands, and throw her arms about my neck, and tellme what a wonderful thing I was. She was beginning to think that I wasomnipotent although I really hadn’t done anything but talk—but that is the waywith women when they love. Perry used to say that if a fellow was one-tenth asremarkable as his wife or mother thought him, he would have the world by thetail with a down-hill drag.

The first time we started for Sari I stepped into a nest of poisonous vipersbefore we reached the valley. A little fellow stung me on the ankle, and Dianmade me come back to the cave. She said that I mustn’t exercise, or it mightprove fatal—if it had been a full-grown snake that struck me she said, Iwouldn’t have moved a single pace from the nest—I’d have died in my tracks, sovirulent is the poison. As it was I must have been laid up for quite a while,though Dian’s poultices of herbs and leaves finally reduced the swelling anddrew out the poison.

The episode proved most fortunate, however, as it gave me an idea which added athousand-fold to the value of my arrows as missiles of offense and defense. Assoon as I was able to be about again, I sought out some adult vipers of thespecies which had stung me, and having killed them, I extracted their virus,smearing it upon the tips of several arrows. Later I shot a hyaenodon with oneof these, and though my arrow inflicted but a superficial flesh wound the beastcrumpled in death almost immediately after he was hit.

We now set out once more for the land of the Sarians, and it was with feelingsof sincere regret that we bade good-bye to our beautiful Garden of Eden, in thecomparative peace and harmony of which we had lived the happiest moments of ourlives. How long we had been there I did not know, for as I have told you, timehad ceased to exist for me beneath that eternal noonday sun—it may have been anhour, or a month of earthly time; I do not know.

XV
BACK TO EARTH

We crossed the river and passed through the mountains beyond, and finally wecame out upon a great level plain which stretched away as far as the eye couldreach. I cannot tell you in what direction it stretched even if you would careto know, for all the while that I was within Pellucidar I never discovered anybut local methods of indicating direction—there is no north, no south, no east,no west. UP is about the only direction which is well defined, and that, ofcourse, is DOWN to you of the outer crust. Since the sun neither rises nor setsthere is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects such as highmountains, forests, lakes, and seas.

The plain which lies beyond the white cliffs which flank the Darel Az upon theshore nearest the Mountains of the Clouds is about as near to any direction asany Pellucidarian can come. If you happen not to have heard of the Darel Az, orthe white cliffs, or the Mountains of the Clouds you feel that there issomething lacking, and long for the good old understandable northeast andsouthwest of the outer world.

We had barely entered the great plain when we discovered two enormous animalsapproaching us from a great distance. So far were they that we could notdistinguish what manner of beasts they might be, but as they came closer, I sawthat they were enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long, with tinyheads perched at the top of very long necks. Their heads must have been quiteforty feet from the ground. The beasts moved very slowly—that is their actionwas slow—but their strides covered such a great distance that in reality theytraveled considerably faster than a man walks.

As they drew still nearer we discovered that upon the back of each sat a humanbeing. Then Dian knew what they were, though she never before had seen one.

“They are lidis from the land of the Thorians,” she cried. “Thoria lies at theouter verge of the Land of Awful Shadow. The Thorians alone of all the races ofPellucidar ride the lidi, for nowhere else than beside the dark country arethey found.”

“What is the Land of Awful Shadow?” I asked.

“It is the land which lies beneath the Dead World,” replied Dian; “the DeadWorld which hangs forever between the sun and Pellucidar above the Land ofAwful Shadow. It is the Dead World which makes the great shadow upon thisportion of Pellucidar.”

I did not fully understand what she meant, nor am I sure that I do yet, for Ihave never been to that part of Pellucidar from which the Dead World isvisible; but Perry says that it is the moon of Pellucidar—a tiny planet withina planet—and that it revolves around the earth’s axis coincidently with theearth, and thus is always above the same spot within Pellucidar.

I remember that Perry was very much excited when I told him about this DeadWorld, for he seemed to think that it explained the hitherto inexplicablephenomena of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes.

When the two upon the lidis had come quite close to us we saw that one was aman and the other a woman. The former had held up his two hands, palms towardus, in sign of peace, and I had answered him in kind, when he suddenly gave acry of astonishment and pleasure, and slipping from his enormous mount ranforward toward Dian, throwing his arms about her.

In an instant I was white with jealousy, but only for an instant; since Dianquickly drew the man toward me, telling him that I was David, her mate.

“And this is my brother, Dacor the Strong One, David,” she said to me.

It appeared that the woman was Dacor’s mate. He had found none to his likingamong the Sari, nor farther on until he had come to the land of the Thoria, andthere he had found and fought for this very lovely Thorian maiden whom he wasbringing back to his own people.

When they had heard our story and our plans they decided to accompany us toSari, that Dacor and Ghak might come to an agreement relative to an alliance,as Dacor was quite as enthusiastic about the proposed annihilation of theMahars and Sagoths as either Dian or I.

After a journey which was, for Pellucidar, quite uneventful, we came to thefirst of the Sarian villages which consists of between one and two hundredartificial caves cut into the face of a great cliff. Here to our immensedelight, we found both Perry and Ghak. The old man was quite overcome at sightof me for he had long since given me up as dead.

When I introduced Dian as my wife, he didn’t quite know what to say, but heafterward remarked that with the pick of two worlds I could not have donebetter.

Ghak and Dacor reached a very amicable arrangement, and it was at a council ofthe head men of the various tribes of the Sari that the eventual form ofgovernment was tentatively agreed upon. Roughly, the various kingdoms were toremain virtually independent, but there was to be one great overlord, oremperor. It was decided that I should be the first of the dynasty of theemperors of Pellucidar.

We set about teaching the women how to make bows and arrows, and poisonpouches. The young men hunted the vipers which provided the virus, and it wasthey who mined the iron ore, and fashioned the swords under Perry’s direction.Rapidly the fever spread from one tribe to another until representatives fromnations so far distant that the Sarians had never even heard of them came in totake the oath of allegiance which we required, and to learn the art of makingthe new weapons and using them.

We sent our young men out as instructors to every nation of the federation, andthe movement had reached colossal proportions before the Mahars discovered it.The first intimation they had was when three of their great slave caravans wereannihilated in rapid succession. They could not comprehend that the lowerorders had suddenly developed a power which rendered them really formidable.

In one of the skirmishes with slave caravans some of our Sarians took a numberof Sagoth prisoners, and among them were two who had been members of the guardswithin the building where we had been confined at Phutra. They told us that theMahars were frantic with rage when they discovered what had taken place in thecellars of the buildings. The Sagoths knew that something very terrible hadbefallen their masters, but the Mahars had been most careful to see that noinkling of the true nature of their vital affliction reached beyond their ownrace. How long it would take for the race to become extinct it was impossibleeven to guess; but that this must eventually happen seemed inevitable.

The Mahars had offered fabulous rewards for the capture of any one of us alive,and at the same time had threatened to inflict the direst punishment uponwhomever should harm us. The Sagoths could not understand these seeminglyparadoxical instructions, though their purpose was quite evident to me. TheMahars wanted the Great Secret, and they knew that we alone could deliver it tothem.

Perry’s experiments in the manufacture of gunpowder and the fashioning ofrifles had not progressed as rapidly as we had hoped—there was a whole lotabout these two arts which Perry didn’t know. We were both assured that thesolution of these problems would advance the cause of civilization withinPellucidar thousands of years at a single stroke. Then there were various otherarts and sciences which we wished to introduce, but our combined knowledge ofthem did not embrace the mechanical details which alone could render them ofcommercial, or practical value.

“David,” said Perry, immediately after his latest failure to produce gunpowderthat would even burn, “one of us must return to the outer world and bring backthe information we lack. Here we have all the labor and materials forreproducing anything that ever has been produced above—what we lack isknowledge. Let us go back and get that knowledge in the shape of books—thenthis world will indeed be at our feet.”

And so it was decided that I should return in the prospector, which still layupon the edge of the forest at the point where we had first penetrated to thesurface of the inner world. Dian would not listen to any arrangement for mygoing which did not include her, and I was not sorry that she wished toaccompany me, for I wanted her to see my world, and I wanted my world to seeher.

With a large force of men we marched to the great iron mole, which Perry soonhad hoisted into position with its nose pointed back toward the outer crust. Hewent over all the machinery carefully. He replenished the air tanks, andmanufactured oil for the engine. At last everything was ready, and we wereabout to set out when our pickets, a long, thin line of which had surroundedour camp at all times, reported that a great body of what appeared to beSagoths and Mahars were approaching from the direction of Phutra.

Dian and I were ready to embark, but I was anxious to witness the first clashbetween two fair-sized armies of the opposing races of Pellucidar. I realizedthat this was to mark the historic beginning of a mighty struggle forpossession of a world, and as the first emperor of Pellucidar I felt that itwas not alone my duty, but my right, to be in the thick of that momentousstruggle.

As the opposing army approached we saw that there were many Mahars with theSagoth troops—an indication of the vast importance which the dominant raceplaced upon the outcome of this campaign, for it was not customary with them totake active part in the sorties which their creatures made for slaves—the onlyform of warfare which they waged upon the lower orders.

Ghak and Dacor were both with us, having come primarily to view the prospector.I placed Ghak with some of his Sarians on the right of our battle line. Dacortook the left, while I commanded the center. Behind us I stationed a sufficientreserve under one of Ghak’s head men. The Sagoths advanced steadily withmenacing spears, and I let them come until they were within easy bowshot beforeI gave the word to fire.

At the first volley of poison-tipped arrows the front ranks of the gorilla-mencrumpled to the ground; but those behind charged over the prostrate forms oftheir comrades in a wild, mad rush to be upon us with their spears. A secondvolley stopped them for an instant, and then my reserve sprang through theopenings in the firing line to engage them with sword and shield. The clumsyspears of the Sagoths were no match for the swords of the Sarian and Amozite,who turned the spear thrusts aside with their shields and leaped to closequarters with their lighter, handier weapons.

Ghak took his archers along the enemy’s flank, and while the swordsmen engagedthem in front, he poured volley after volley into their unprotected left. TheMahars did little real fighting, and were more in the way than otherwise,though occasionally one of them would fasten its powerful jaw upon the arm orleg of a Sarian.

The battle did not last a great while, for when Dacor and I led our men in uponthe Sagoth’s right with naked swords they were already so demoralized that theyturned and fled before us. We pursued them for some time, taking many prisonersand recovering nearly a hundred slaves, among whom was Hooja the Sly One.

He told me that he had been captured while on his way to his own land; but thathis life had been spared in hope that through him the Mahars would learn thewhereabouts of their Great Secret. Ghak and I were inclined to think that theSly One had been guiding this expedition to the land of Sari, where he thoughtthat the book might be found in Perry’s possession; but we had no proof of thisand so we took him in and treated him as one of us, although none liked him.And how he rewarded my generosity you will presently learn.

There were a number of Mahars among our prisoners, and so fearful were our ownpeople of them that they would not approach them unless completely covered fromthe sight of the reptiles by a piece of skin. Even Dian shared the popularsuperstition regarding the evil effects of exposure to the eyes of angryMahars, and though I laughed at her fears I was willing enough to humor them ifit would relieve her apprehension in any degree, and so she sat apart from theprospector, near which the Mahars had been chained, while Perry and I againinspected every portion of the mechanism.

At last I took my place in the driving seat, and called to one of the menwithout to fetch Dian. It happened that Hooja stood quite close to the doorwayof the prospector, so that it was he who, without my knowledge, went to bringher; but how he succeeded in accomplishing the fiendish thing he did, I cannotguess, unless there were others in the plot to aid him. Nor can I believe that,since all my people were loyal to me and would have made short work of Hoojahad he suggested the heartless scheme, even had he had time to acquaint anotherwith it. It was all done so quickly that I may only believe that it was theresult of sudden impulse, aided by a number of, to Hooja, fortuitouscircumstances occurring at precisely the right moment.

All I know is that it was Hooja who brought Dian to the prospector, stillwrapped from head to toe in the skin of an enormous cave lion which covered hersince the Mahar prisoners had been brought into camp. He deposited his burdenin the seat beside me. I was all ready to get under way. The good-byes had beensaid. Perry had grasped my hand in the last, long farewell. I closed and barredthe outer and inner doors, took my seat again at the driving mechanism, andpulled the starting lever.

As before on that far-gone night that had witnessed our first trial of the ironmonster, there was a frightful roaring beneath us—the giant frame trembled andvibrated—there was a rush of sound as the loose earth passed up through thehollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake.Once more the thing was off.

But on the instant of departure I was nearly thrown from my seat by the suddenlurching of the prospector. At first I did not realize what had happened, butpresently it dawned upon me that just before entering the crust the toweringbody had fallen through its supporting scaffolding, and that instead ofentering the ground vertically we were plunging into it at a different angle.Where it would bring us out upon the upper crust I could not even conjecture.And then I turned to note the effect of this strange experience upon Dian. Shestill sat shrouded in the great skin.

“Come, come,” I cried, laughing, “come out of your shell. No Mahar eyes canreach you here,” and I leaned over and snatched the lion skin from her. Andthen I shrank back upon my seat in utter horror.

The thing beneath the skin was not Dian—it was a hideous Mahar. Instantly Irealized the trick that Hooja had played upon me, and the purpose of it. Rid ofme, forever as he doubtless thought, Dian would be at his mercy. Frantically Itore at the steering wheel in an effort to turn the prospector back towardPellucidar; but, as on that other occasion, I could not budge the thing a hair.

It is needless to recount the horrors or the monotony of that journey. Itvaried but little from the former one which had brought us from the outer tothe inner world. Because of the angle at which we had entered the ground thetrip required nearly a day longer, and brought me out here upon the sand of theSahara instead of in the United States as I had hoped.

For months I have been waiting here for a white man to come. I dared not leavethe prospector for fear I should never be able to find it again—the shiftingsands of the desert would soon cover it, and then my only hope of returning tomy Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone forever.

That I ever shall see her again seems but remotely possible, for how may I knowupon what part of Pellucidar my return journey may terminate—and how, without anorth or south or an east or a west may I hope ever to find my way across thatvast world to the tiny spot where my lost love lies grieving for me?

That is the story as David Innes told it to me in the goat-skin tent upon therim of the great Sahara Desert. The next day he took me out to see theprospector—it was precisely as he had described it. So huge was it that itcould have been brought to this inaccessible part of the world by no means oftransportation that existed there—it could only have come in the way that DavidInnes said it came—up through the crust of the earth from the inner world ofPellucidar.

I spent a week with him, and then, abandoning my lion hunt, returned directlyto the coast and hurried to London where I purchased a great quantity of stuffwhich he wished to take back to Pellucidar with him. There were books, rifles,revolvers, ammunition, cameras, chemicals, telephones, telegraph instruments,wire, tools and more books—books upon every subject under the sun. He said hewanted a library with which they could reproduce the wonders of the twentiethcentury in the Stone Age and if quantity counts for anything I got it for him.

I took the things back to Algeria myself, and accompanied them to the end ofthe railroad; but from here I was recalled to America upon important business.However, I was able to employ a very trustworthy man to take charge of thecaravan—the same guide, in fact, who had accompanied me on the previous tripinto the Sahara—and after writing a long letter to Innes in which I gave him myAmerican address, I saw the expedition head south.

Among the other things which I sent to Innes was over five hundred miles ofdouble, insulated wire of a very fine gauge. I had it packed on a special reelat his suggestion, as it was his idea that he could fasten one end here beforehe left and by paying it out through the end of the prospector lay a telegraphline between the outer and inner worlds. In my letter I told him to be sure tomark the terminus of the line very plainly with a high cairn, in case I was notable to reach him before he set out, so that I might easily find andcommunicate with him should he be so fortunate as to reach Pellucidar.

I received several letters from him after I returned to America—in fact he tookadvantage of every northward-passing caravan to drop me word of some sort. Hislast letter was written the day before he intended to depart. Here it is.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Tomorrow I shall set out in quest of Pellucidar and Dian. That is if the Arabsdon’t get me. They have been very nasty of late. I don’t know the cause, but ontwo occasions they have threatened my life. One, more friendly than the rest,told me today that they intended attacking me tonight. It would be unfortunateshould anything of that sort happen now that I am so nearly ready to depart.

However, maybe I will be as well off, for the nearer the hour approaches, theslenderer my chances for success appear.

Here is the friendly Arab who is to take this letter north for me, so good-bye,and God bless you for your kindness to me.

The Arab tells me to hurry, for he sees a cloud of sand to the south—he thinksit is the party coming to murder me, and he doesn’t want to be found with me.So good-bye again.

Yours,    
DAVID INNES.

A year later found me at the end of the railroad once more, headed for the spotwhere I had left Innes. My first disappointment was when I discovered that myold guide had died within a few weeks of my return, nor could I find any memberof my former party who could lead me to the same spot.

For months I searched that scorching land, interviewing countless desert sheiksin the hope that at last I might find one who had heard of Innes and hiswonderful iron mole. Constantly my eyes scanned the blinding waste of sand forthe rocky cairn beneath which I was to find the wires leading to Pellucidar—butalways was I unsuccessful.

And always do these awful questions harass me when I think of David Innes andhis strange adventures.

Did the Arabs murder him, after all, just on the eve of his departure? Or, didhe again turn the nose of his iron monster toward the inner world? Did he reachit, or lies he somewhere buried in the heart of the great crust? And if he didcome again to Pellucidar was it to break through into the bottom of one of hergreat island seas, or among some savage race far, far from the land of hisheart’s desire?

Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara, at the end oftwo tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost cairn? I wonder.

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