[Illustration]




At the Earth’s Core

By Edgar Rice Burroughs




CONTENTS

 PROLOG
 CHAPTER I. TOWARD THE ETERNAL FIRES
 CHAPTER II. A STRANGE WORLD
 CHAPTER III. A CHANGE OF MASTERS
 CHAPTER IV. DIAN THE BEAUTIFUL
 CHAPTER V. SLAVES
 CHAPTER VI. THE BEGINNING OF HORROR
 CHAPTER VII. FREEDOM
 CHAPTER VIII. THE MAHAR TEMPLE
 CHAPTER IX. THE FACE OF DEATH
 CHAPTER X. PHUTRA AGAIN
 CHAPTER XI. FOUR DEAD MAHARS
 CHAPTER XII. PURSUIT
 CHAPTER XIII. THE SLY ONE
 CHAPTER XIV. THE GARDEN OF EDEN
 CHAPTER XV. BACK TO EARTH




PROLOG


In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to
believe this story. 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 of it to a Fellow of the Royal
Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London.

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

The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed before I was half
through!—it is all that saved him from exploding—and my dreams of an
Honorary Fellowship, 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 of the Royal Geological Society, had you and he heard it from
the lips of the man who told it to me. Had you seen, as I did, the fire
of truth in those gray eyes; had you felt the ring of sincerity in that
quiet voice; had you realized the pathos of it all—you, too, would
believe. You would not have needed the final ocular proof that I
had—the weird rhamphorhynchus-like creature which he had brought back
with him from the inner world.

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

I had come down from the north to hunt lion. My party consisted of a
dozen children of the desert—I was the only “white” man. As we
approached the little clump of verdure I saw the man come from his tent
and with hand-shaded eyes peer 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
watching you 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 the face, 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 are mistaken, or that you are but joking.”

“I am telling you the truth, my friend,” I replied. “Why should I
deceive a stranger, 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 most it could be scarce more than one!” That night he told me his
story—the story that 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. My father was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died.
All his property was to be mine when I had attained my
majority—provided that I had devoted the two years intervening in close
application to the great business I was to inherit.

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

Then Perry interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had
devoted the better part of a long life to the perfection of a
mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation he studied
paleontology. I looked over his plans, listened to his arguments,
inspected his working model—and then, convinced, I advanced 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 the desert now—about two miles from here. Tomorrow you may care to
ride out and see it. Roughly, it is a steel cylinder a hundred feet
long, and jointed so that it may turn and twist through solid rock if
need be. At one end is a mighty revolving drill operated by an engine
which Perry said generated more power to the cubic inch than any other
engine did to the cubic foot. I remember that he used to claim that
that invention alone would make us fabulously wealthy—we were going to
make the whole thing public after the successful issue of our first
secret trial—but Perry never returned from that trial trip, and I only
after ten years.

I recall as it were but yesterday the night of that momentous occasion
upon which we were to test the practicality of that wondrous invention.
It was near midnight 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 the bare earth of the floor. We passed through
the doors into the outer jacket, secured them, and then passing on into
the cabin, which contained the controlling mechanism within the inner
tube, switched on the electric lights.

Perry looked to his generator; to the great tanks that held the
life-giving chemicals with which he was to manufacture fresh air to
replace that which we consumed 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
transmitted its marvelous velocity to the giant drill at the nose of
his strange craft.

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

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

The noise was deafening. The sensation was frightful. For a full minute
neither of us could do aught but cling with the proverbial desperation
of the drowning man to the handrails of our swinging seats. Then Perry
glanced at the thermometer.

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

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

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

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

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

I wormed my way to the old man’s side with never a doubt but that the
great wheel 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 and despair of my fellows. And for that very
reason it had waxed even greater than nature had intended, since my
natural pride in my great strength had led me to care 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 since childhood.

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 as unavailing 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 my seat. There was no need for words—at least none that I could
imagine, unless Perry desired to pray. And I was quite sure that he
would, for he never left an opportunity neglected where he might
sandwich in a prayer. He prayed when he arose in the morning, he prayed
before he ate, he prayed when he had finished eating, and before he
went to bed at night he prayed again. In between he often found excuses
to pray even when the provocation seemed far-fetched to my worldly
eyes—now that he was about to die I felt positive that I should witness
a perfect orgy of prayer—if one may allude with such a simile to so
solemn an act.

But to my astonishment I discovered that with death staring him in the
face Abner Perry was transformed into a new being. From his lips there
flowed—not prayer—but a clear and limpid stream of undiluted profanity,
and it was all directed at that quietly stubborn piece of unyielding
mechanism.

“I should think, Perry,” I chided, “that a man of your professed
religiousness would 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
comparison with the loss the world must suffer. Why, David within this
iron cylinder we have demonstrated possibilities that science has
scarce dreamed. We have harnessed a new principle, and with it animated
a piece of steel with the power of ten thousand men. That two lives
will be snuffed out is nothing to the world calamity that entombs in
the bowels of the earth the discoveries that I have made and proved in
the successful construction of the thing that is now carrying us
farther and farther toward the eternal central fires.”

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

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

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

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

“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 no
instrument 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 my eyes 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,” was his 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 distance beneath the surface. Another
finds that the phenomena of precession and nutation require that the
earth, if not entirely solid, must at least have a shell not less than
eight hundred to a thousand miles in thickness. So there you 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 best our fuel will suffice to carry us but three or four days,
while our atmosphere cannot last to exceed three. Neither, then, is
sufficient to bear us in safety through eight thousand miles of rock to
the antipodes.”

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

“Quite correct, David. Are you frightened?”

“I do not know. It all has come so suddenly that I scarce believe that
either of us realizes the real terrors of our position. I feel that I
should be reduced to panic; but yet I am not. I imagine that the shock
has been so great as 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 nearly four miles. I told Perry, and he smiled.

“We have shattered one theory at least,” was his only comment, and then
he returned 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 those of 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 to swing the earth itself. At my suggestion Perry stopped the
generator, and as we came to rest I again threw all my strength into a
supreme effort to move the thing even a hair’s breadth—but the results
were as barren as when we had been traveling at top speed.

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

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

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

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

“Ninety miles and 153 degrees,” I replied.

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

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

“But my boy,” he continued, “doesn’t that temperature reading mean
anything to you? 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 when our 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 must admit that for some unaccountable
reason the stationary temperature did renew my waning hope. What I
hoped for I could not have explained, nor did I try. The very fact, as
Perry took pains to explain, of the blasting of several very exact and
learned scientific hypotheses made it apparent that we could not know
what lay before us within the bowels of the earth, and so we might
continue to hope for the best, at least until we were dead—when hope
would no longer be essential to our happiness. It was very good, and
logical reasoning, and so I embraced it.

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

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

Slowly it rose once more until we were convinced that at last we were
nearing the molten interior of the earth. At four hundred miles the
temperature had reached 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
heat seemed to our distorted imaginations much greater than it really
was. For another hour I saw that pitiless column of mercury rise and
rise until at four hundred and ten miles it stood at 153 degrees. Now
it was that we began to hang upon those readings in almost breathless
anxiety.

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

Already the air tanks were at low ebb—there was barely enough of the
precious gases to sustain us for another twelve hours. But would we be
alive to know or care? 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 152 degrees 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 not be by fire—that is all that I have feared. I can face the
thought of any death but that.”

Down, down went the mercury until it stood as low as it had seven miles
from the surface of the earth, and then of a sudden the realization
broke upon us that death was very near. Perry was the first to discover
it. I saw him fussing with the valves that regulate the air supply. And
at the same time I experienced 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 and closed his eyes.

“Good-bye, Perry, and good luck to you,” I answered, smiling back at
him. But I fought 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 me upon all sides. At first I found that by climbing high
into the framework above me I could find more of the precious
life-giving elements, and for a while these sustained me. It must have
been an hour after Perry had succumbed that I at last came to the
realization that I could no longer carry on this unequal struggle
against the inevitable.

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

I put my nose to the intake pipe through which samples were to have
been taken during the passage of the prospector through the earth, and
my fondest hopes were realized—a flood of fresh air was pouring into
the iron cabin. The reaction 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 the crossbeam to which I had been clinging, and fell with a crash
to the floor of the cabin, the shock brought me to myself.

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

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

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

“It means that we’re back at the surface all right, Perry,” I cried;
“but where, 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 I been unconscious?”

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

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

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

“We couldn’t have turned in the ice stratum, Perry, I know as well as
you,” I replied; “but the fact remains that we did, for here we are
this minute at the surface 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 up all hope of ever seeing again,” and so saying I
lifted the bars from the inner door, and swung it open. There was quite
a quantity of loose material in the jacket, and this I had to remove
with a shovel to get at the opposite door in the outer shell.

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

“Something seems to have gone wrong either with our calculations or the
chronometer,” I said. Perry shook his head—there was a strange
expression in his 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 once weird and beautiful. Before us a low and level shore stretched
down to a silent sea. As far as the eye could reach the surface of the
water was dotted with countless tiny isles—some of towering, barren,
granitic rock—others resplendent in gorgeous trappings of tropical
vegetation, myriad starred with the magnificent splendor of vivid
blooms.

Behind us rose a dark and forbidding wood of giant arborescent ferns
intermingled with the commoner types of a primeval tropical forest.
Huge creepers depended in great loops from tree to tree, dense
under-brush overgrew a tangled mass of fallen trunks and branches. Upon
the outer verge we could see the 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 in deep 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 is heaven?” He smiled, and turning, pointing to the nose of the
prospector protruding from the ground at our backs.

“But for that, David, I might believe that we were indeed come to the
country beyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory
untenable—it, certainly, could never have gone to heaven. However I am
willing to concede that we actually may be in another world from that
which we have always known. If we are 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 some
tropical 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 a bit of exploring up and down the coast—we may find a native who
can enlighten us.”

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 the
horizon?”

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

“A great light is commencing to break on me,” continued Perry, taking
out his watch. “I believe that I have partially solved the riddle. It
is now two o’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
the heaven. And such a sun! I had scarcely noticed it before. Fully
thrice the size of the sun I had known throughout my life, and
apparently so near that the sight 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 on my nerves.”

“I think that I may state quite positively, David,” he commenced, “that
we are—” but he got no further. From behind us in the vicinity of the
prospector there came the most thunderous, awe-inspiring roar that ever
had fallen upon my ears. 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 my eyes would quite entirely have banished it. Emerging from the
forest was a colossal beast which closely resembled a bear. It was
fully as large as the largest elephant and with great forepaws armed
with huge claws. Its nose, or snout, depended nearly a foot below its
lower jaw, much after the manner of a rudimentary 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 to Perry to suggest that it might be wise to seek other
surroundings—the idea had evidently occurred to Perry previously, for
he was already a hundred paces away, and with each second his
prodigious bounds increased the distance. I had never guessed what
latent speed possibilities the old gentleman possessed.

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

Notwithstanding our danger I could not help but laugh at Perry’s
frantic capers as he essayed to gain the safety of the lower branches
of the trees he now had reached. The stems were bare for a distance of
some fifteen feet—at least on those trees which Perry attempted to
ascend, for the suggestion of safety carried 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 to the ground
once more, and with each failure he cast a horrified glance over his
shoulder at the oncoming brute, simultaneously emitting terror-stricken
shrieks that awoke the echoes of the grim forest.

At length he spied a dangling creeper about the bigness of one’s wrist,
and when I reached the trees he was racing madly up it, hand over hand.
He had almost reached the lowest branch of the tree from which the
creeper depended when 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
close to us for comfort. Seizing Perry by the shoulder I dragged him to
his feet, and rushing to a smaller tree—one that he could easily
encircle with his arms and legs—I boosted him as far up as I could, and
then left him to his fate, for a glance over my shoulder revealed the
awful beast almost upon me.

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

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

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

The accompanying roar was all but drowned in Perry’s scream of fright,
and he came near tumbling headlong into the gaping jaws beneath him, so
precipitate was his impetuous haste to vacate the dangerous limb. It
was with a deep sigh of 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 the tree’s stem with his powerful paws he dragged down with
all the great weight of his 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 paws upward as the tree leaned more and
more from the perpendicular. Perry clung chattering in a panic of
terror. Higher and higher into the bending and swaying tree he
clambered. More and more rapidly was the tree top inclining toward the
ground.

I saw now why the great brute was armed with such enormous paws. The
use that he 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 entire trees must be stripped of their foliage. The
reason for its attacking us might easily be accounted for on the
supposition of an ugly disposition such as that which the fierce and
stupid rhinoceros of Africa possesses. But these were later
reflections. At the moment I was too frantic with apprehension on
Perry’s behalf to consider aught other than a means to save him from
the death that loomed so close.

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

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

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

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

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

My mammoth enemy was so close by this time that I knew I must feel the
weight of one of his terrible paws before I could rise, but to my
surprise the blow did not fall upon me. The howling and snapping and
barking of the new element which had been infused into the melee now
seemed centered quite close behind me, and as I raised myself upon my
hands and glanced around I saw what it was that 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 they seemed—that rushed growling and snapping in upon it from all
sides, so that they sank their white fangs into the slow brute and were
away again before it could reach them with its huge paws or sweeping
tail.

But these were not all that my startled eyes perceived. Chattering and
gibbering through the lower branches of the trees came a company of
manlike creatures evidently urging on the dog pack. They were to all
appearances strikingly similar in aspect to the Negro of Africa. Their
skins were very black, and their features much like those of the more
pronounced Negroid type except that the head receded more rapidly above
the eyes, leaving little or no forehead. Their arms were rather longer
and their legs shorter in proportion to the torso than in man, and
later I noticed that their great toes protruded at right angles from
their feet—because of their arboreal habits, I presume. Behind them
trailed long, slender tails which they used in climbing quite as much
as they did either their hands or feet.

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

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

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

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

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

In the meantime I had been straining my eyes to catch a glimpse of
Perry, but nowhere about could I see him, although the clump of trees
in which he had first taken refuge was in full view. I was much
exercised by fear that something had befallen him, and though I called
his name aloud several times there 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 most terrifying pace through the tree tops. Never have I experienced
such a journey before or since—even now I oftentimes awake from a deep
sleep haunted by the horrid remembrance of that awful experience.

From tree to tree the agile creatures sprang like flying squirrels,
while the cold sweat stood upon my brow as I glimpsed the depths
beneath, into which a single misstep on the part of either of my
bearers would hurl me. As they bore me along, my mind was occupied with
a thousand bewildering thoughts. What had become of Perry? Would I ever
see him again? What were the intentions of these half-human things into
whose hands I had fallen? Were they inhabitants of the same 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 reconcile
the things which I had seen to a belief that I was still in the world
of my birth. 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 we came 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 immediately answered from within, and a moment later
a swarm of creatures of the same strange race as those who had captured
me poured out to meet us. Again I was the 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 think that their treatment was
dictated by either cruelty or malice—I was a curiosity, a freak, a new
plaything, and their childish minds required the added evidence of all
their senses to back up the testimony of their eyes.

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

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

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

My guard halted before one of the huts into which I was pushed; then
two of the creatures squatted down before the entrance—to prevent my
escape, doubtless. Though where I should have escaped to I certainly
had not the remotest conception. I had no more than entered the dark
shadows of the interior than there 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
toward me and threw his arms about me.

He had seen me fall before the dyryth, and then he had been seized by a
number of the ape-creatures and borne through the tree tops to their
village. His captors had been as inquisitive as to his strange clothing
as had mine, with the 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
thing this season. I wonder what the creatures intend doing with us,
Perry. They don’t seem really savage. What do you suppose they can be?
You were about to tell me where we are when that great hairy frigate
bore down upon us—have you really any idea at all?”

“Yes, David,” he replied, “I know precisely where we are. We have made
a magnificent discovery, my boy! We have proved that the earth is
hollow. We have passed 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
us through the crust beneath our outer world. At that point it reached
the center of gravity of the five-hundred-mile-thick crust. Up to that
point we had been descending—direction is, of course, merely relative.
Then at the moment that our seats revolved—the thing that made you
believe that we had turned about and were speeding upward—we passed the
center of gravity and, though we did not alter the direction of our
progress, yet we were in reality moving upward—toward the surface of
the inner world. Does not the strange fauna and flora which we have
seen convince you that you are not in the world of your birth? And the
horizon—could it present the strange aspects which we both noted unless
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 five hundred miles of solid crust?”

“It is not the sun of the outer world that we see here. It is another
sun—an entirely different sun—that casts its eternal noonday effulgence
upon the face of the inner world. Look at it now, David—if you can see
it from the doorway of this 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. It cooled, and as it cooled it shrank. At length a thin crust of
solid matter formed upon its outer surface—a sort of shell; but within
it was partially molten matter and highly expanded gases. As it
continued to cool, what happened? Centrifugal force hurled the
particles of the nebulous center toward the crust as rapidly as they
approached a solid state. You have seen the same principle practically
applied in the modern cream separator. Presently there was only a small
super-heated core of gaseous matter remaining within a huge vacant
interior left by the contraction of the cooling gases. The equal
attraction of the solid crust from all directions maintained this
luminous core in the exact center of the hollow globe. What remains of
it is the sun you saw today—a relatively tiny thing at the exact center
of the earth. Equally to every part of this inner world it diffuses its
perpetual noonday light and torrid heat.

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

“But the grotesque inhabitants of this forest?” I urged. “Surely they
have no counterpart 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 have racked the outer crust, or they may be merely
the result of evolution along slightly different lines—either is quite
possible.”

Further speculation was interrupted by the appearance of several of our
captors before the entrance of the hut. Two of them entered and dragged
us forth. The perilous 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 a garment 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 do you suppose they intend doing with us?”

We were not long in learning. As on the occasion of our trip to the
village we were seized by a couple of the powerful creatures and
whirled away through the tree 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
we plunged toward instant death among the tangled deadwood beneath. But
on both occasions those lithe, powerful tails reached out and found
sustaining branches, 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 be the stubbing of one’s toe at a street
crossing in the outer world—they but laughed uproariously and sped on
with me.

For some time they continued through the forest—how long I could not
guess for I was learning, what was later borne very forcefully to my
mind, that time ceases to be a factor the moment means for measuring it
cease to exist. Our watches were gone, and we were living beneath a
stationary sun. Already I was puzzled to compute the period of time
which had elapsed since we broke through the crust of the inner world.
It might be hours, or it might be days—who in the world could tell
where it was always noon! By the sun, no time had elapsed—but my
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
short distance before us rose a few low, rocky hills. Toward these our
captors urged us, and after a short time led us through a narrow pass
into a tiny, circular valley. Here they got down to work, and we were
soon convinced that if we were not to die to make a Roman holiday, we
were to die for some other purpose. The attitude of our captors altered
immediately as they entered the natural arena within the rocky hills.
Their laughter ceased. Grim ferocity marked their bestial faces—bared
fangs menaced us.

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

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

At Andover, and later at Yale, I had pitched on winning ball teams. My
speed and control must both have been above the ordinary, for I made
such a record during my senior year at college that overtures were made
to me in behalf of one of the great major-league teams; but in the
tightest pitch that ever had confronted 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
absolute command, 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 back of 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
of spectators, so that for a moment I thought that the upsetting of
their champion was the cause; but in this I soon saw that I was
mistaken. As I looked, the ape-things broke in all directions toward
the surrounding hills, and then I distinguished the real cause of their
perturbation. Behind them, streaming through the pass which leads into
the valley, came a swarm of hairy men—gorilla-like creatures armed with
spears and hatchets, and bearing long, oval shields. Like demons they
set upon the ape-things, and before them the hyaenodon, which had now
regained its senses and its feet, fled howling with fright. Past us
swept the pursued and the pursuers, nor did the hairy ones accord us
more than a passing glance until the arena had been emptied of its
former occupants. Then they returned to us, and one who seemed to have
authority among them directed that we be brought with them.

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

But as we came closer, our hearts sank once more, for we discovered
that the poor wretches were chained neck to neck in a long line, and
that the gorilla-men were their guards. With little ceremony Perry and
I were chained at the 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
tiresome monotony of the long march across the sun-baked plain brought
on all the agonies consequent to a long-denied sleep. On and on we
stumbled beneath that hateful noonday sun. If we fell we were prodded
with a sharp point. Our companions in chains did not stumble. They
strode along proudly erect. Occasionally they would exchange words with
one another in a monosyllabic language. They were a noble-appearing
race with well-formed heads and perfect physiques. The men were heavily
bearded, tall and muscular; the women, smaller and more gracefully
molded, with great masses of raven hair caught into loose knots upon
their heads. The features of both sexes were well proportioned—there
was not a face among them that would have been called even plain if
judged by earthly standards. They wore no ornaments; but this I later
learned was due to the fact that their captors had stripped them of
everything of value. As garmenture the women possessed a single robe of
some light-colored, spotted hide, rather similar in appearance to a
leopard’s skin. This they wore either supported entirely about the
waist by a leathern thong, so that it hung partially below the knee on
one side, or possibly looped gracefully across one shoulder. Their feet
were shod with skin sandals. The men wore loin cloths of the hide of
some shaggy beast, long ends of which depended before and behind nearly
to the ground. In some instances these ends were finished with the
strong talons of the beast from which the hides had been taken.

Our guards, whom I already have described as gorilla-like men, were
rather lighter 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 faces were quite as brutal as those
of the few stuffed specimens of the gorilla which I had seen in the
museums at home.

Their only redeeming feature lay in the development of the head above
and back of the ears. In this respect they were not one whit less human
than we. They were 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 feet were shod with thick hide of some
mammoth creature of this inner world.

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

How far we marched I have no conception, nor has Perry. Both of us were
asleep much of the time for hours before a halt was called—then we
dropped in our tracks. I say “for hours,” but how may one measure time
where time does not exist! When our march commenced the sun stood at
zenith. When we halted our shadows still pointed toward nadir. Whether
an instant or an eternity of earthly time elapsed who may say. That
march may have occupied nine years and eleven months of the ten years
that I spent in the inner world, or it may have been accomplished in
the fraction of a second—I cannot tell. But this I do know that since
you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed from this
earth I have lost all respect for time—I am commencing to doubt that
such a 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
us food. Strips of dried meat it was, but it put new life and strength
into us, so that now we too marched with high-held heads, and took
noble strides. At least I did, for I was young and proud; but poor
Perry hated walking. On earth I had often seen him call a cab to travel
a square—he was paying for it now, and his old legs wobbled so that I
put my arm about him and half carried him through the balance of those
frightful marches.

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

By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in
which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the
rather charming tongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead of me in the
chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain linked us together in
a forced companionship which I, at least, soon rejoiced in. For I found
her a willing teacher, and from her I learned the language of her
tribe, and much of the life and customs of the inner 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 to the tribe of Amoz, which dwells in the cliffs above the
Darel Az, or shallow sea.

“How came you here?” I asked her.

“I was running away from Jubal the Ugly One,” she answered, as though
that was explanation 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 was of another world. She was quite as positive that creation
was originated solely to produce her own kind and the world she lived
in as are many of the outer world.

“But Jubal,” I insisted. “Tell me about him, and why you ran away to be
chained by 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 head of a mighty tandor. It remained there and no greater trophy
was placed beside it. So I knew that Jubal the Ugly One would come and
take me as his mate. None other so powerful wished me, or they would
have slain a mightier beast and thus have won me from Jubal. My father
is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but a sadok tossed him, and never
again had he the full use of his right arm. My brother, Dacor the
Strong One, had gone to the land of Sari to steal a mate for himself.
Thus there was none, father, brother, or lover, to save me from Jubal
the Ugly One, and I ran away and hid among the hills that skirt the
land of Amoz. 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
otherwise such ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really mean that you
do not know that the Sagoths are the creatures of the Mahars—the mighty
Mahars who think they own Pellucidar and all that walks or grows upon
its surface, or creeps or burrows beneath, or swims within its lakes
and oceans, or flies through its air? 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
alternative if I were to absorb knowledge, so I made a clean breast of
my pitiful ignorance as to the mighty Mahars. She was shocked. But she
did her very best to enlighten 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 like unto thipdars, in that to the
hairless lidi.

About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had
wings, and webbed feet; lived in cities built beneath the ground; could
swim under water for great distances, and were very, very wise. The
Sagoths were their weapons of offense and defense, and the races like
herself were their hands and feet—they were the slaves and servants who
did all the manual labor. The Mahars were the heads—the brains—of the
inner world. I longed to see this wondrous race 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 the
conversation, as would Ghak the Hairy One, he who was chained just
ahead of Dian the Beautiful. Ahead of Ghak was Hooja the Sly One. He
too entered the conversation occasionally. Most of his remarks were
directed toward Dian the Beautiful. 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 I say thinly veiled? There
is a race of men in New Zealand, or Australia, I have forgotten which,
who indicate their preference for the lady of their affections by
banging her over the head with a bludgeon. By comparison with this
method Hooja’s lovemaking might be called thinly veiled. At first it
caused me to blush violently although I have seen several Old Years out
at Rectors, and in other less fashionable places off Broadway, and in
Vienna, and Hamburg.

But the girl! She was magnificent. It was easy to see that she
considered herself 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 were respectful; 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 girl up ahead of him in the
slave gang, but the fellow only poked him with his spear and told him
that he had selected the girl for his own property—that he would buy
her from the Mahars as soon as they reached Phutra. Phutra, it seemed,
was the city of our destination.

After passing over the first chain of mountains we skirted a salt sea,
upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like creatures
there were with long necks stretching ten and more feet above their
enormous bodies and whose snake heads were split with gaping mouths
bristling with countless fangs. There were huge tortoises too, paddling
about among these other reptiles, which Perry said were Plesiosaurs of
the Lias. I didn’t question his veracity—they might have 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 battle with them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths—Perry
called them Ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of an
alligator.

I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school—about all
that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations of
restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined
belief that any man with a pig’s shank and a vivid imagination could
“restore” most any sort of paleolithic 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 they emerged from the ocean,
shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters roll from their
sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided hither and
thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I saw them meet,
open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic and interminable
warring I realized how futile is man’s poor, weak imagination by
comparison with Nature’s incredible genius.

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

“David,” he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside that
awful sea. “David, I used to teach geology, and I thought that I
believed what I taught; but now I see that I did not believe it—that it
is impossible for man to believe such things as these unless he sees
them with his own eyes. We take things for granted, perhaps, because we
are told them over and over again, and have no way of disproving
them—like religions, for example; but we don’t believe them, we only
think we do. If you ever get back to the outer world you will find that
the geologists and paleontologists will be the first to set you down 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—but now? poof!”

At the next halt Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack chain
to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Dian. We were all
standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her back upon him in
such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could scarce repress a
smile; but it was a short-lived smile 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
prevailed within Pellucidar; but even so I did not need the appealing
look which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence
my subsequent act. What the Sly One’s intention was I paused not to
inquire; but instead, before he could lay hold of her with his other
hand, I placed a right to the point of his jaw that felled him in his
tracks.

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

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

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

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

On the march, or during halts, Dian refused consistently to notice
me—when her eyes wandered in my direction she looked either over my
head or directly through me. At last I became desperate, and determined
to swallow my self-esteem, and again beg her to tell me how I had
offended, and how I might make reparation. I made up my mind that I
should do this at the next halt. We were approaching another range of
mountains at the time, and when we reached them, instead of winding
across them through some high-flung pass we entered a mighty 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 no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered
Pellucidar. In a land of perpetual noon there is no need of light above
ground, yet I marveled that they had 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 guards keeping up a
singsong chant ahead of us, interspersed with certain high notes which
I found always indicated rough places and turns.

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

But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a real
catastrophe—Dian was gone, and with her a half-dozen other prisoners.
The guards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to
behold. Their awesome, bestial faces were contorted in the most
diabolical expressions, as they accused each other of responsibility
for the loss. Finally they fell upon us, beating us with their spear
shafts, and hatchets. They had already killed two near the head of the
line, and were like to have finished the balance of us when their
leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all my life
had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of bestial rage—I thanked
God that 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 had been freed commencing with Dian. Hooja was gone. Ghak remained.
What could it mean? How had it been accomplished? The commander of the
guards was investigating. Soon he discovered that the rude locks which
had held the neckbands in place had been deftly picked.

“Hooja the Sly One,” murmured Ghak, who was now next to me in line. “He
has taken 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 Pellucidar be explained. Do you really mean that you do not know
that you offended the Beautiful One, and how?”

“I do not know, Ghak,” I replied.

“Then shall I tell you. When a man of Pellucidar intervenes between
another man and the woman the other man would have, the woman belongs
to the victor. Dian the Beautiful belongs to you. You should have
claimed her or released her. Had you 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 have meant that you
did not wish her for a mate and that you released her from all
obligation to you. By doing neither you have put upon her the greatest
affront that a man may put upon a woman. Now she is your slave. No man
will take her as mate, 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 of Pellucidar.”

“I did not know, Ghak,” I cried. “I did not know. Not for all
Pellucidar would I have harmed Dian the Beautiful by word, or look, or
act of mine. I do not want her as my slave. I do not want her as my—”
but here I stopped. The vision of that sweet and innocent face floated
before me amidst the soft mists of imagination, and where I had on the
second believed that I clung only to the memory of a gentle friendship
I had lost, yet now it seemed that it would have been disloyalty to her
to have said that I did not want Dian the Beautiful as my 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
the heart speaks through the eyes it tells only the truth. Your heart
has spoken to me. I know now that you meant no affront to Dian the
Beautiful. She is not of my tribe; but her mother is my sister. She
does not know it—her mother was stolen by Dian’s father who came with
many others of the tribe of Amoz to battle with us for our women—the
most beautiful women of Pellucidar. Then was her father king of Amoz,
and her mother was daughter of the king of Sari—to whose power I, his
son, have succeeded. Dian is the daughter of kings, though her father
is no longer king since the sadok tossed him and Jubal the Ugly One
wrested his kingship from him. Because of her lineage the wrong you did
her was greatly 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 from the bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon her.

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

“Is there no escape?” I asked.

“Hooja the Sly One escaped and took the others with him,” replied Ghak.
“But there are no more dark places on the way to Phutra, and once there
it is not so easy—the Mahars are very wise. Even if one escaped from
Phutra there are the thipdars—they would find you, and then—” the Hairy
One shuddered. “No, you will never escape the Mahars.”

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

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

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

Two marches after this episode we came to the city of Phutra. The
entrance to it was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which guarded
a flight of steps leading to the buried city. Sagoths were on guard
here as well as at a hundred or 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 I caught my first sight of the dominant race of the inner world.
Involuntarily I shrank back as one of the creatures approached to
inspect us. A more hideous thing it would be impossible to imagine. The
all-powerful Mahars of Pellucidar are great reptiles, some six or eight
feet in length, with long narrow heads and 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 from their
necks to the end of their long tails. Their feet are equipped with
three webbed toes, while from the fore feet membranous wings, which are
attached to their bodies just in front of the hind legs, protrude at an
angle of 45 degrees toward 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
was gazing at the horrid creature with wide astonished eyes. When it
passed on, he turned to me.

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

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

Perry and I were taken, with Ghak, to a large public building, where
one of the Sagoths who had formed our guard explained to a Maharan
official the circumstances surrounding our capture. The method of
communication between these two was remarkable in that no spoken words
were exchanged. They employed a 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 what Perry 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
upon numerous occasions. I suggested telepathy, but he said no, that it
was not telepathy since they could only communicate when in each
others’ presence, nor could they talk with the Sagoths or the other
inhabitants of Pellucidar by the same method they used to converse with
one another.

“What they do,” said Perry, “is to project their thoughts into the
fourth dimension, 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 to his work. They had set us to carrying a great accumulation
of Maharan literature 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 me that 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 been suggested by the Sagoth who had threatened to
purchase her upon our arrival at Phutra. I often wondered if the little
party of fugitives had been overtaken by the guards who had returned to
search for them. Sometimes I was not so sure but that 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 I often
talked together of possible escape, but the Sarian was so steeped in
his lifelong 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 the miracle to come to him.

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

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

We had completed these arrangements for our protection after leaving
Phutra when the Sagoths who had been sent to recapture the escaped
prisoners returned with 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 told Ghak that he had not seen Dian or
the others after releasing them within the dark grotto. What had become
of them he had not the faintest conception—they might be wandering yet,
lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not dead from starvation.

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 be prompted by more than friendship. During my waking
hours she was constantly the subject of my thoughts, and when I slept
her dear face haunted my dreams. More than ever was I determined to
escape the Mahars.

“Perry,” I confided to the old man, “if I have to search every inch of
this diminutive world I am going to find Dian the Beautiful and right
the wrong I unintentionally 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, my boy,” and then he showed me a map of Pellucidar which he had
recently discovered 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 are upon the outer crust, is land here. These
relatively small areas of ocean follow 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 inside diameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the
superficial area 165,480,000 square miles. Three-fourths of this is
land. Think of it! A land area of 124,110,000 square miles! Our own
world contains but 53,000,000 square miles of land, the balance of its
surface being covered by water. Just as we often compare nations by
their relative land areas, so if we compare these two worlds in the
same way we have the strange anomaly of a larger world within a smaller
one!

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

The proposition was a corker. It quite took my breath away; but I found
that it left 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
you accompany 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 possibly escape and return to my own people.”

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

“Yes.”

“But how,” persisted Perry, “could you travel to strange country
without heavenly bodies or a compass to guide you?”

Ghak didn’t know what Perry meant by heavenly bodies or a compass, but
he assured us that you might blindfold any man of Pellucidar and carry
him to the farthermost corner of the world, yet he would be able to
come directly to his own home again by the shortest route. He seemed
surprised to think that we found anything wonderful in it. Perry said
it must be some sort of homing instinct such as is possessed by certain
breeds of earthly pigeons. I didn’t know, 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 Ghak
counseled waiting for some propitious accident which would insure us
some small degree of success. I didn’t see what accident could befall a
whole community in a land of perpetual daylight where the inhabitants
had no fixed habits of sleep. Why, I am sure that some of the Mahars
never sleep, while others may, at long intervals, crawl into the dark
recesses beneath their dwellings and curl up in protracted slumber.
Perry says that if a Mahar stays awake for three years he will make up
all his lost sleep in a long year’s snooze. That may be all true, but I
never saw but three of them asleep, and it was the sight of these 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 to frequent—possibly fifty feet beneath the main floor of the
building—among a network of corridors and apartments, when I came
suddenly upon three Mahars curled up upon a bed of skins. At first I
thought they were dead, but later their regular breathing convinced me
of my error. Like a flash the thought came to me of the marvelous
opportunity these sleeping reptiles offered as a means of eluding the
watchfulness of our captors and the Sagoth guards.

Hastening back to Perry where he pored over a musty pile of, to me,
meaningless hieroglyphics, 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
dominant race—we are the ‘monsters’—the lower orders. In Pellucidar
evolution has progressed along different lines than upon the outer
earth. These terrible convulsions of nature time and time again wiped
out the existing species—but for this fact some monster of the
Saurozoic epoch might rule today upon our own world. We see here what
might well have occurred in our own history had conditions been what
they have been here.

“Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust. Here
man has but reached a stage analogous to the Stone Age of our own
world’s history, but for countless millions of years these reptiles
have been progressing. Possibly it is the sixth sense which I am sure
they possess that has given them an advantage over the other and more
frightfully armed of their fellows; but this we 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 upon men—they
keep them in great droves, as we keep cattle. They breed them most
carefully, 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
understand us no better than we understand the lower animals of our own
world. Why, I have come 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 not even reason—that our
every act is mechanical, or instinctive. The dominant race of
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 imagine that we converse at all. It is thus that we
reason in relation to the brutes of our own world. They know that the
Sagoths have a spoken language, but they cannot comprehend it, or how
it manifests itself, since they have no auditory apparatus. 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
which was not at the time clear to me insisted upon a very careful
description of the apartments and corridors I had just explored.

“I wonder, David,” he said at length, “as you are determined to carry
out your wild scheme, if we could not accomplish something of very real
and lasting benefit for the human race of Pellucidar at the same time.
Listen, I have learned 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 the race.

“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 race of Mahars. It continued to progress under the
intelligent and beneficent rule of the ladies. Science took vast
strides. This was especially true of the sciences which we know as
biology and eugenics. Finally a certain female scientist announced the
fact that she had discovered a method whereby eggs might 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
race was no longer dependent upon them. More ages elapsed until at the
present time we find a race consisting exclusively of females. But here
is the point. The secret of this chemical formula is kept by a single
race of Mahars. It is in the city of Phutra, and unless I am greatly in
error I judge from your description of the vaults through which you
passed today that it lies hidden in the cellar of this building.

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

“David, if we can escape, and at the same time take with us this great
secret what will we not have accomplished for the human race within
Pellucidar!” The very thought of it fairly overpowered me. Why, we two
would be the means of placing the men of the inner world in their
rightful place among created things. 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 the greater intelligence of the
Mahars—I could not believe that these gorilla-like beasts were the
mental superiors of the human race of Pellucidar.

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

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

“You are right, Perry,” I said, “and while you are teaching them to
pray I’ll be teaching them to fight, and between us we’ll make a race
of men that will be an 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 had best not tell him too much, and so I only
explained that I had a plan for escape. When I had outlined it to him,
he seemed about as horror-struck as Perry had been; but for a different
reason. The Hairy One only considered the horrible fate that would be
ours were we discovered; but at last I prevailed upon him to accept my
plan as the only feasible one, and when I had assured him that I would
take all the responsibility for it were we captured, he accorded a
reluctant assent.




VI
THE BEGINNING OF HORROR


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

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

What the purpose or nature of the general exodus we did not know, but
presently through the line of captives ran the rumor that two escaped
slaves had been recaptured—a man and a woman—and that we were marching
to witness their punishment, for the man had killed a Sagoth of the
detachment that had pursued and overtaken them.

At the intelligence my heart sprang to my throat, for I was sure that
the two were of those who escaped in the dark grotto with Hooja the Sly
One, and that Dian 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
toward us, as though we, too, had been implicated in the murder of
their fellow. The occasion was to serve as an object-lesson to all
other slaves of the danger and futility of attempted escape, and the
fatal consequences of taking the life of a superior being, and so I
imagine that Sagoths felt amply justified in making the entire
proceeding as uncomfortable and painful to us as possible.

They jabbed us with their spears and struck at us with the hatchets at
the least provocation, and at no provocation at all. It was a most
uncomfortable half-hour that we spent before we were finally herded
through a low entrance into 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 were heaped 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 it were intended as a rough and picturesque background for the
scenes which were enacted in the arena before it, but presently, after
the wooden benches had been pretty well filled by slaves and Sagoths, I
discovered the purpose of the bowlders, 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 the pit, settling down upon the bowlders above. These
were the reserved seats, the boxes of the elect.

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

For the first time I beheld their queen. She differed from the others
in no feature that was appreciable to my earthly eyes, in fact all
Mahars look alike to me: but when she crossed the arena after the
balance of her female subjects had found their bowlders, she was
preceded by a score of huge Sagoths, the largest 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
apelike agility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon her
wings with her two frightful dragons close beside her, and settled down
upon the largest bowlder of them all in the exact center of that side
of the amphitheater which is reserved for the dominant race. Here she
squatted, a most repulsive and uninteresting queen; though doubtless
quite as well assured of her beauty and divine right to rule as the
proudest monarch of the outer world.

And then the music started—music without sound! The Mahars cannot hear,
so the drums 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 arena where the creatures upon the rocks might see
it, and there it performed for fifteen or twenty minutes.

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

When the band had exhausted its repertory it took wing and settled upon
the rocks above and behind the queen. Then the business of the day was
on. A man and woman were pushed into the arena by a couple of Sagoth
guardsmen. I leaned forward in my seat to scrutinize the female—hoping
against hope that she might prove to be another than Dian the
Beautiful. Her back was toward me for a while, and the sight of the
great mass of raven hair piled high upon her head filled 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 the cave bear and the mammoth ages and ages ago. We have been
carried back a million 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 in dumb misery at the sight of her, nor had I any eyes for the
wonders of natural history. But for Perry and Ghak I should have leaped
to the floor of the arena and shared whatever fate lay in store for
this priceless treasure of the Stone Age.

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

As the animal approached the two, bellowing and pawing the ground with
the strength 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 outraged ears. I could not at first see the beast from
which emanated this fearsome challenge, but the sound had the effect of
bringing the two victims around with a sudden start, and then I saw the
girl’s face—she was not Dian! I could have wept for relief.

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

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

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

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

There ensued a battle royal which for sustained and frightful ferocity
transcends the power of imagination or description. Time and again the
colossal bull tossed the enormous tiger high into the air, but each
time that the huge cat touched the ground he returned to the encounter
with apparently undiminished strength, and seemingly increased ire.

For a while the man and woman busied themselves only with keeping out
of the way of the two creatures, but finally I saw them separate and
each creep stealthily toward one of the combatants. The tiger was now
upon the bull’s broad 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,
its cloven hoofs widespread, its tail lashing viciously from side to
side, and then, in a mad orgy of bucking it went careening about the
arena in frenzied attempt to unseat its rending rider. It was with
difficulty that the girl avoided the first mad rush of the wounded
animal.

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

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

As the animal’s fierce clawing ceased, the bull raised his gory,
sightless head, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena.
With great leaps and bounds he came, straight toward the arena wall
directly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one of
his mighty springs, completely over 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 before him straight upward
toward our seats. Before him slaves and gorilla-men fought in mad
stampede to escape the menace of the creature’s death agonies, for such
only could that frightful charge have been.

Forgetful of us, our guards joined in the general rush for the exits,
many of which pierced the wall of the amphitheater behind us. Perry,
Ghak, and I became separated in the chaos which reigned for a few
moments after the beast cleared the 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
that were battling to escape. One would have thought that an entire
herd of thags was loose behind them, rather than a single blinded,
dying beast; but such is the effect of panic upon a crowd.




VII
FREEDOM


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

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

Without thought of the possible consequence, I darted into the shadows
of the tunnel, feeling my way along through the gloom for some
distance. The noises of the amphitheater had grown fainter and fainter
until now all was as silent as the tomb about me. Faint light filtered
from above through occasional ventilating and lighting tubes, but it
was scarce sufficient to enable my human eyes 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 a flight of steps leading upward, at the top of which the
brilliant light of the noonday sun shone through an opening in the
ground.

Cautiously I crept up the stairway to the tunnel’s end, and peering out
saw the broad plain of Phutra before me. The numerous lofty, granite
towers which mark the 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 to the surface, then, beyond the city,
and my chances for escape seemed much enhanced.

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

Rank grass, waist high, grows upon the plain of Phutra—the gorgeous
flowering grass 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 in the 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 I hoped to find sanctuary, and so I hastened on, trampling the
myriad beauties beneath my hurrying feet. Perry says that the force of
gravity is less upon the surface of the inner world than upon that of
the outer. He explained it all to me once, but I was never particularly
brilliant in such matters and so most of it has escaped me. As I recall
it the difference is due in some part to the counter-attraction of that
portion of the earth’s crust directly opposite the spot upon the face
of Pellucidar at which one’s calculations are being made. Be that as it
may, it always seemed to me that I moved with greater speed and agility
within Pellucidar than upon the outer surface—there was a certain airy
lightness of step that was most pleasing, and a feeling of bodily
detachment which I can only compare with that occasionally experienced
in dreams.

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

Just how I was to help Perry I could scarce imagine, but I hoped that
some fortuitous circumstance might solve the problem for me. It was
quite evident however that little less than a miracle could aid me, for
what could I accomplish in this strange world, naked and unarmed? It
was even doubtful that I 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 far I wandered?

The case looked more and more hopeless the longer I viewed it, yet with
a stubborn persistency I forged ahead toward the foothills. Behind me
no sign of pursuit developed, before me I saw no living thing. It was
as though I moved through 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 upward toward the mountains. Beside me frolicked a
laughing brooklet, hurrying upon its noisy way down to the silent sea.
In its quieter pools I discovered many small 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. As I watched
them playing about I discovered, not only that they suckled their
young, but that at intervals they rose to the surface to breathe as
well as to feed upon certain grasses and a strange, scarlet lichen
which grew upon the rocks just above the water line.

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

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

Then I drank from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face
continued my flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered a
rugged climb to the summit 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
seen that 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 very aspect of which seemed to offer a haven of peace and
security.

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

As I walked, my eyes were bent upon the beach so that it was not until
I had come quite upon it that I discovered that which shattered all my
beautiful dream of solitude and safety and peace and primal
overlordship. The thing was a hollowed 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
of danger was still upon me when I heard a rattling of loose stones
from the direction of the bluff, and turning my eyes in that direction
I beheld the author of the disturbance, a great copper-colored man,
running rapidly toward me.

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

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

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

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

I had covered some hundred yards from shore when it became evident that
my pursuer 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 hopeless effort 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
body shoot from the depths below. The man saw it too, and the look of
terror that overspread 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 that prehistoric deep—a mighty serpent of the sea, with fanged jaws,
and darting forked tongue, with bulging eyes, and bony protuberances
upon head and snout that formed short, stout horns.

As I looked at that hopeless struggle my eyes met those of the doomed
man, and I could have sworn that in his I saw an expression of hopeless
appeal. But whether 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 had he 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 be but playing with his victim before he closed his
awful jaws upon him and dragged 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 jaws snapped in the victim’s face.
The forked tongue, lightning-like, ran in and out upon the copper skin.

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

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

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




VIII
THE MAHAR TEMPLE


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

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

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

Presently he spoke to me, but in a tongue which I was unable to
translate. I shook my head in an effort to indicate my ignorance of his
language, at the same time addressing him in the bastard tongue that
the Sagoths use to converse with 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
with that 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 to Pellucidar, and wherefrom, but it was as impossible for him to
grasp or believe the strange tale I told him as I fear it is for you
upon the outer crust to believe in the existence of the inner world. To
him it seemed quite ridiculous to imagine that there was another world
far beneath his feet peopled by beings similar 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 really pitifully
meager world-experience cannot be—our finite minds cannot grasp that
which may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain
about us upon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which
wends its tiny way among the bowlders of the universe—the speck of
moist dirt we so proudly call the World.

So I gave it up and asked him about himself. He said he was a Mezop,
and that his 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 of Pellucidar 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 than Mezops dwell upon islands, but of course
it may be different in other far-distant lands. I do not know. At any
rate in this sea and those near by it is true that only people of my
race inhabit the islands.

“We are fishermen, though we be great hunters as well, often going to
the mainland 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 Mahars fear us. Once, when Pellucidar was young, the
Sagoths were wont to capture us for slaves as they do the other men of
Pellucidar, it is handed down from father to son among us that this is
so; but we fought so desperately and slew so many Sagoths, and those of
us that were captured killed so many Mahars in their own cities that at
last they learned that it were better to leave us alone, and later came
the time that the Mahars became too indolent even to catch their own
fish, except for amusement, and then they needed us to supply their
wants, and so a truce was made between the races. Now they give us
certain things which we are unable to produce in return for the fish
that we catch, and the Mezops and the Mahars live in peace.

“The great ones even come to our islands. It is there, far from the
prying eyes of their own Sagoths, that they practice their religious
rites in the temples they have builded there with our assistance. If
you live among us you will doubtless see the manner of their worship,
which is strange indeed, and most unpleasant 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 was a huge fellow, standing I should say six feet six or
seven inches, well developed and of a coppery red not unlike that of
our own North American Indian, nor were his features dissimilar to
theirs. He had the aquiline nose found among many of the higher tribes,
the prominent cheek bones, and black hair and eyes, but his mouth and
lips were better molded. All in all, Ja was an impressive and handsome
creature, and he talked well too, even in the miserable makeshift
language we were compelled to use.

During our conversation Ja had taken the paddle and was propelling the
skiff with vigorous strokes toward a large island that lay some
half-mile from the mainland. The skill with which he handled his crude
and awkward craft elicited my deepest admiration, since it had been so
short a time before that I had made such 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 at war with us and would steal them if they found them,” he
nodded toward an island farther out at sea, and at so great a distance
that it seemed but a blur hanging in the distant sky. The upward curve
of the surface of Pellucidar was constantly 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 stand on edge where it melted
into the distant sky, and to feel that seas and mountains hung
suspended directly above one’s head required such a complete reversal
of the perceptive and reasoning faculties as almost to stupefy one.

No sooner had we hidden the canoe than Ja plunged into the jungle,
presently emerging into a narrow but well-defined trail which wound
hither and thither much after the manner of the highways of all
primitive folk, but there was one peculiarity about this Mezop trail
which I was later to find distinguished them from 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 midst of a tangle of matted jungle, then Ja would turn directly
back in his tracks for 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 a distinct trail which he would follow
back for a short distance only to turn directly about and retrace his
steps until after a mile or less this new pathway ended as suddenly and
mysteriously as the former section. Then he would pass again across
some media which would reveal no spoor, to take up the broken thread of
the trail beyond.

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

To you of the outer earth it might seem a slow and tortuous method of
traveling through the jungle, but were you of Pellucidar you would
realize that time is no factor where time does not exist. So
labyrinthine are the windings of these trails, so varied the connecting
links and the distances which one must retrace one’s steps from the
paths’ ends to find them that a Mezop often reaches man’s estate before
he is familiar even with those which lead from his own city to the sea.

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

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

Large trees had been chopped down fifteen or twenty feet above the
ground, and upon the tops of them spherical habitations of woven twigs,
mud covered, had been 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
admit light and ventilation. The entrances to the house were through
small apertures in the bases of the trees and thence upward by rude
ladders through the hollow trunks 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
cultivated fields in which the Mezops raised such cereals, fruits, and
vegetables as they required. Women and children were working in these
gardens as we crossed toward the village. At sight of Ja they saluted
deferentially, but to me they paid not the slightest attention. Among
them and about the outer verge of the cultivated area were many
warriors. These too saluted Ja, by touching the points of their spears
to the ground directly before them.

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

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

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

Here was a mighty temple of hewn rock built in the shape of a rough
oval with rounded roof in which were several large openings. No doors
or windows were visible in the sides of the structure, nor was there
need of any, except one entrance for the slaves, since, as Ja
explained, the Mahars flew to and from their place of ceremonial,
entering and leaving the building by means of the apertures in the
roof.

“But,” added Ja, “there is an entrance near the base of which even the
Mahars know nothing. Come,” and he led me across the clearing and about
the end to a pile of loose rock which lay against the foot of the wall.
Here he removed a couple of large bowlders, revealing a small opening
which led straight within the building, or so it seemed, though as I
entered after Ja I discovered myself in 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
primitive ladder similar to that which leads from the ground to the
upper stories of his house. We ascended for some forty feet when the
interior of the space between the walls commenced to grow lighter and
presently we came opposite an opening in the inner wall which gave us
an unobstructed view of the entire interior of the temple.

The lower floor was an enormous tank of clear water in which numerous
hideous Mahars swam lazily up and down. Artificial islands of granite
rock dotted this artificial 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 the ceremonies which will follow the advent of the queen. You may be
thankful that you 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 a moment later a long procession of the frightful reptiles of
Pellucidar winged slowly and majestically through the large central
opening in the roof and circled in stately manner about the temple.

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

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

All lay quiet for several minutes after settling to their places. One
might have imagined them in silent prayer. The poor slaves upon the
diminutive islands watched the horrid creatures with wide eyes. The
men, for the most part, stood erect and stately with folded arms,
awaiting their doom; but the women and children clung to one another,
hiding behind the males. They are a noble-looking race, these cave men
of Pellucidar, and if our progenitors were as they, the human race of
the outer crust has deteriorated rather than improved with the march of
the ages. All they lack is opportunity. We have opportunity, and little
else.

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

Nearer and nearer to the island she came until at last she remained at
rest before the largest, which was directly opposite her throne.
Raising her hideous head from the water she fixed her great, round eyes
upon the slaves. They were fat and sleek, for they had been brought
from a distant Mahar city where human beings are kept in droves, and
bred and fattened, as we breed and fatten beef cattle.

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

Slowly the reptile’s head commenced to move to and fro, but the eyes
never ceased to bore toward the frightened girl, and then the victim
responded. She turned wide, fear-haunted eyes toward the Mahar queen,
slowly she rose to her feet, and then as though dragged by some unseen
power she moved as one in a trance straight toward the reptile, her
glassy eyes fixed upon those of her captor. To the water’s edge she
came, nor did she even pause, but stepped into the shallows beside the
little island. On she moved toward the Mahar, who now slowly retreated
as though leading her victim on. The water rose to the girl’s knees,
and still she advanced, chained by that clammy eye. Now the water was
at her 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
above the surface of the water, and the girl had advanced until the end
of that repulsive beak was but an inch or two from her face, her
horror-filled eyes riveted upon those of the reptile.

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

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

And then to my utter amazement I saw the forehead and eyes of the
maiden come slowly out of the depths, following the gaze of the reptile
just as when she had disappeared beneath the surface. On and on came
the girl until she stood in water that reached barely to her knees, and
though she had been beneath the surface sufficient time to have drowned
her thrice over there was no indication, other than her dripping hair
and glistening body, that she had been submerged at all.

Again and again the queen led the girl into the depths and out again,
until the uncanny weirdness of the thing got on my nerves so that I
could have leaped into 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
surface I was horrified to see that one of the girl’s arms was
gone—gnawed completely off 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, and then a part of the face—it was awful. The poor creatures
on the islands awaiting their fate tried to cover their eyes with their
hands to hide the fearful sight, but now I saw that they too were under
the hypnotic spell of the reptiles, so that they could only crouch in
terror with their eyes fixed upon the terrible thing that was
transpiring before them.

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

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

There was no hypnotism here—just the plain, brutal ferocity of the
beast of prey, tearing, rending, and gulping its meat, but at that it
was less horrible than the uncanny method of the Mahars. By the time
the thipdars had disposed of the last of the slaves the Mahars were all
asleep upon their rocks, and a moment 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,” he
replied. “The Mahars of Phutra are not supposed to eat human flesh, yet
slaves are brought here by thousands and almost always you will find
Mahars on hand to consume them. I imagine that they do not bring their
Sagoths here, because they are ashamed of the practice, which is
supposed to obtain only among the least advanced of their race; but I
would wager my canoe against a broken paddle that there 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
that they look upon us as lower animals?”

“It is not because they consider us their equals that they are supposed
to look with abhorrence upon those who eat our flesh,” replied Ja; “it
is merely that we 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 a snake. As a matter of fact it is
difficult to explain just why this sentiment should exist among them.”

“I wonder if they left a single victim,” I remarked, leaning far out of
the opening in the rocky wall to inspect the temple better. Directly
below me the water lapped the very side of the wall, there being a
break in the bowlders at this 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 the wall, and all my weight upon it proved too much for it. It
slipped and I lunged forward. There was nothing to save myself and I
plunged headforemost into the water below.

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

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

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

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

But they did not come, and at last I came to the conclusion that I was
indeed alone within the temple. How long I should be alone was the next
question to assail 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 the tank, for I received no response to my cries. Doubtless he had
felt as certain of my doom when he saw me topple from our hiding place
as I had, and lest he too 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 in the roof, for it did not seem reasonable to believe that
the thousands of slaves which were brought here to feed the Mahars the
human flesh they craved would all be carried through the air, and so I
continued my search until at last it was rewarded by the discovery of
several loose granite blocks in the masonry at one end of the temple.

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

Here I sank panting and trembling upon the matted grasses beneath the
giant trees, for I felt that I had escaped from the grinning fangs of
death out of the 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 that I could meet death bravely enough if it
but came in the form of some familiar beast 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, and after busying myself searching for fruit for a while, I set
off through the jungle to find the beach. I knew that the island was
not so large but that I could easily find the sea if I did but move in
a straight line, but there came the difficulty as there was no way in
which I could direct my course and hold it, the sun, of course, being
always directly above my head, and the trees so thickly set that I
could see no distant object which might serve to guide me in a straight
line.

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

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

I must have come out upon the opposite side of the island from that at
which Ja and I had entered it, for the mainland was nowhere in sight.
For a long time I paddled around the shore, though well out, before I
saw the mainland in the distance. 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 up that 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 in view of the fact that our plans were already well
formulated to make a break for freedom together. Of course I realized
that the chances of the success of our proposed venture were slim
indeed, but I knew that I never could enjoy freedom without Perry so
long as the old man lived, and I had learned that the probability that
I might find him was less than slight.

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

But, to the best of my knowledge, Perry still lived and it was my duty
and wish to be again with him, that we might share the dangers and
vicissitudes of the strange world we had discovered. And Ghak, too; the
great, shaggy man had found a 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 of effete 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, and a short time later I was scrambling up the steep bank to
retrace my steps from the plain of Phutra. But my troubles came when I
entered the canyon beyond the summit, for here I found that several of
them centered at the point where I crossed the divide, and which one I
had traversed to reach the pass I could not for the life of me
remember.

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

By the time I had eaten eight meals and slept twice I was convinced
that I was upon the wrong trail, for between Phutra and the inland sea
I had not slept at all, and had eaten but once. To retrace my steps to
the summit of the divide and explore another canyon seemed the only
solution of my problem, but a sudden widening and levelness of the
canyon just before me seemed to suggest that it was about to open into
a level country, and with the lure of discovery strong upon 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 a narrow plain leading down to an ocean. At my right the side of
the canyon continued to the water’s edge, the valley lying to my left,
and the foot of it running gradually into the sea, where it formed a
broad level beach.

Clumps of strange trees dotted the landscape here and there almost to
the water, and rank grass and ferns grew between. From the nature of
the vegetation I 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 strip along which the restless waters advanced
and retreated.

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

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

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

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

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

A single glance at the thing was sufficient to assure me that I was
facing one of those long-extinct, prehistoric creatures whose
fossilized remains are found within the outer crust as far back as the
Triassic formation, a gigantic labyrinthodon. And there I was, unarmed,
and, with the exception of a loin cloth, as naked as I had come into
the world. I could imagine how my first ancestor felt that distant,
prehistoric morn that he encountered for the first time the terrifying
progenitor of the thing that had me cornered now beside the restless,
mysterious sea.

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

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

There seemed nothing to do but stand supinely and await my end. I
thought of Perry—how he would wonder what had become of me. I thought
of my friends of the outer world, and of how they all would go on
living their lives in total ignorance of the strange and terrible fate
that had overtaken me, or unguessing the weird surroundings which had
witnessed the last frightful agony of my extinction. And with these
thoughts came a realization of how unimportant to the life and
happiness of the world is the existence of any one of us. We may be
snuffed out without an instant’s warning, and for a brief day our
friends speak of us with subdued voices. The following morning, while
the first worm is busily engaged in testing the construction of our
coffin, they are teeing up for the first hole to suffer more acute
sorrow over a sliced ball than they did over 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 sworn that
his huge, fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable appreciation of my
predicament, or was it in anticipation of the juicy morsel which would
so soon be pulp between those formidable teeth?

He was about fifty feet from me when I heard a voice calling to me from
the direction of the bluff at my left. I looked and could have shouted
in delight at 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
his breakfast, 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 from the 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 the precipitous face of the rocks, clinging to small
projections, and the tough creepers that had found root-hold here and
there.

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

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

To clamber up that slim shaft without dragging Ja down and
precipitating both to the same doom from which the copper-colored one
was attempting to save me seemed utterly impossible, and as I came near
the spear I told Ja so, and that I 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
rapidly than you are now, the sithic will be upon you and drag you back
before ever you are halfway up the spear—he can rear up and reach you
with ease anywhere below where I stand.”

Well, Ja should know his own business, I thought, and so I grasped the
spear and clambered up toward the red man as rapidly as I could—being
so far removed from my simian ancestors as I am. I imagine the
slow-witted sithic, as Ja called him, suddenly realized our intentions
and that he was quite likely to lose 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 the ground, and came charging after me at a terrific rate. I had
reached the top of the spear by this time, or almost; another six
inches would give me a hold on Ja’s hand, when I felt a sudden wrench
from below and glancing fearfully downward saw the mighty jaws of the
monster close on the sharp point of the weapon.

I made a frantic effort to reach Ja’s hand, the sithic gave a
tremendous tug that 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 feet foremost toward my executioner.

At the instant that he felt the spear come away from Ja’s hand the
creature must have opened his huge jaws to catch me, for when I came
down, still clinging to the butt end of the weapon, the point yet
rested in his mouth and the 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 hold upon the spear, rolled the length of his face and head, across
his short neck onto his broad back and from there to the ground.

Scarce had I touched the earth than I was upon my feet, dashing madly
for the path by which I had entered this horrible valley. A glance over
my shoulder showed me the sithic engaged in pawing at the spear stuck
through his lower jaw, and so busily engaged did he remain in this
occupation that I had gained the safety of the cliff top before he was
ready to take up the pursuit. When he did not discover me in sight
within the valley he dashed, hissing, into the rank 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. He would not listen to any thanks for his attempt to save me,
which had come so near 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 my surprise when on seeing a canoe dragged up upon the
beach of the mainland I discovered your own footprints in the sand
beside it.

“I immediately set out in search of you, knowing as I did that you must
be entirely unarmed and defenseless against the many dangers which lurk
upon the mainland both in the form of savage beasts and reptiles, and
men as well. I had no difficulty in tracking you to this point. It is
well that I arrived when I did.”

“But why did you do it?” I asked, puzzled at this show of friendship on
the part 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
protect and 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 would come and live with me. You shall become a member of
my tribe. Among us there is the best of hunting and fishing, and you
shall have, to choose a mate from, the most beautiful girls of
Pellucidar. Will you come?”

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

“Oh, that is easy, my friend,” he said. “You need merely to come to the
foot of the highest peak of the Mountains of the Clouds. There you will
find a river which flows into the Lural Az. Directly opposite the mouth
of the river you will 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 is Anoroc, where I rule the tribe of
Anoroc.”

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

“How large is Pellucidar?” I asked, wondering what sort of theory these
primitive 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 to travel far in any direction, and all the waters of
Pellucidar would run to one spot and drown us. No, Pellucidar is quite
flat and extends no man knows how far in all directions. At the edges,
so my ancestors have reported and handed down to me, is a great wall
that prevents the earth and waters from escaping over into the burning
sea whereon Pellucidar floats; but I never have been so far from Anoroc
as to have seen this wall with my own eyes. However, it is quite
reasonable to believe that this is true, whereas there is no reason at
all in the foolish belief of the Mahars. According to them
Pellucidarians who live upon the opposite side walk always with their
heads pointed downward!” and Ja laughed uproariously at the very
thought.

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

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

“Ja,” I said, “what would you say were I to tell you that in so far as
the Mahars’ 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 the fact that I was able to pass through the earth from the outer
crust to Pellucidar. If your theory is correct all is a sea of flame
beneath us, wherein no peoples could exist, and yet I come from a great
world that is covered with human beings, and beasts, and birds, and
fishes in mighty oceans.”

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

I attempted to explain the force of gravity to him, and by the means of
the dropped fruit to illustrate how impossible it would be for a body
to fall off the earth under any circumstances. He listened so intently
that I thought I had made an impression, and started the train of
thought that would lead him to a partial 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, “without support even this tiny fruit falls until it strikes
something that stops it. If Pellucidar were not supported upon the
flaming sea it too would fall as the fruit falls—you have proven it
yourself!” He had me, that time—you could see it in his eye.

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

“Well, Ja,” I laughed, “whether we be walking with our feet up or down,
here we are, and the question of greatest importance is not so much
where we came from as where we are going now. For my part I wish that
you could guide me to Phutra where I may give myself up to the Mahars
once more that my friends and I may work out the plan of escape which
the Sagoths interrupted when they gathered us together and drove us to
the arena to witness the punishment of the slaves who killed the
guardsman. I wish now that I had not left the arena for by this time my
friends and I might have made good our escape, whereas this delay may
mean the wrecking of all our plans, which depended for their
consummation upon the continued sleep of the three Mahars who lay in
the pit beneath the building in which 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
seems most foolish, for the Mahars will most certainly condemn you to
death for running away, and so you will be accomplishing nothing for
your friends by returning. Never in all my life have I heard of a
prisoner returning to the Mahars 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
rather go to Sheol after Perry than to Phutra. However, Perry is much
too pious to make the probability at all great that I should ever be
called upon to rescue him 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 are carried down to Molop Az by the little demons
who dwell there. We know this because when graves are opened we find
that the bodies have been partially or entirely borne off. That is why
we of Anoroc place our dead in high trees where the birds may find them
and bear them bit by bit to the Dead World above the Land of Awful
Shadow. If we kill an enemy we place his body in the ground that it may
go to Molop Az.”

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

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

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

There was, however, one great thing to be accomplished first—at least
it was the great thing to me—the finding of Dian the Beautiful. I
wanted to make amends for the affront I had put upon her in my
ignorance, and I wanted to—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
then across the rolling land toward the shadowless columns that guard
the ways to buried Phutra. At a quarter-mile from the nearest entrance
I was discovered by the Sagoth guard, and in an instant four of the
gorilla-men were dashing toward me.

Though they brandished their long spears and yelled like wild Comanches
I paid not the slightest attention to them, walking quietly toward them
as though unaware of their existence. My manner had the effect upon
them that I had hoped, and as we came quite near together they ceased
their savage shouting. It was evident that they had expected me to turn
and flee at sight of them, thus presenting that which they most
enjoyed, a moving human target at which to cast their spears.

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

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

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

“Where else might I go?” I asked. “I am a stranger within Pellucidar
and know no other where than Phutra. Why should I not desire to be in
Phutra? Am I not well 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
being stupid brutes they took me to their masters whom they felt would
be better fitted 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 the scent of my purposed attempt at escape. If they thought that I
was so satisfied with my lot within Phutra that I would voluntarily
return when I had once had so excellent an opportunity to escape, they
would never for an instant imagine that I could be occupied in
arranging another escape immediately upon my return to the city.

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

“You say that you returned to Phutra of your own free will, because you
think yourself better off here than elsewhere—do you not know that you
may be the next chosen to give up your life in the interests of the
wonderful scientific investigations 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
the savage jungles or upon the lonely plains of Pellucidar. I was
fortunate, I think, to return to Phutra at all. As it was I barely
escaped death within the jaws of a huge sithic. No, I am sure that I am
safer in the hands of intelligent creatures such as rule Phutra. At
least such would be the case in my own world, where human beings like
myself rule supreme. There the higher races of man extend protection
and hospitality to the stranger within their gates, and being a
stranger here I naturally assumed that a like courtesy would be
accorded me.”

The Mahar looked at me in silence for some time after I ceased speaking
and the Sagoth had translated my words to his master. The creature
seemed deep in thought. Presently he communicated some message to the
Sagoth. The latter turned, 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 this strange 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 to them?”

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

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

“But it is the truth,” I insisted. “From where else then did I come? I
am not of Pellucidar. Anyone with half an eye could see that.”

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

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

“You may be sentenced to the arena, or go to the pits to be used in
research work 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 as the latter never return, their knowledge does them but little
good. It is said that the learned ones cut up their subjects while they
are yet alive, thus learning many useful things. However I should not
imagine that it would prove very useful to him who was being cut up;
but of course this is all but conjecture. The chances are that ere long
you will know much more about it than I,” and he grinned as he spoke.
The Sagoths have a well-developed sense of humor.

“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?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Your end in the arena would be similar to what was intended for them,”
he explained, “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, nor does any other,” he replied; “but those who go to the arena
may come out alive and 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 the arena after the beasts depart or are killed. Thus it has
happened that several mighty warriors from far distant lands, whom we
have captured on our slave raids, have battled the brutes turned in
upon them and slain them, thereby winning their freedom. In the
instance which you witnessed the beasts killed each other, but the
result was the same—the man and woman were liberated, furnished with
weapons, and started on their homeward journey. Upon the left shoulder
of each a mark was burned—the mark of the Mahars—which will forever
protect these two from slaving parties.”

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

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

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

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

The guards in whose hands I now found myself, upon hearing that I had
returned of my own volition to Phutra evidently felt that it would be
safe to give me liberty within the building as had been the custom
before I had escaped, and so I 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 great tomes that he was supposed to be merely dusting and
rearranging upon new shelves.

As I entered the room he glanced up and nodded pleasantly to me, only
to resume his work as though I had never been away at all. I was both
astonished and hurt at his indifference. And to think that I was
risking death to return to him purely 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
since that 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 indeed have been worried, and as it is I had intended asking you
about how you escaped the beast as soon as I had completed the
translation of this most interesting passage.”

“Perry, you ARE mad,” I exclaimed. “Why, the Lord only knows how long I
have been away. I have been to other lands, discovered a new race of
humans within Pellucidar, seen the Mahars at their worship in their
hidden temple, and barely escaped with my life from them and from a
great labyrinthodon that I met afterward, following my long and tedious
wanderings across an unknown world. I must have been away for months,
Perry, and now you barely look up from your work when I return and
insist that we have been separated but a moment. Is that any way to
treat a friend? I’m surprised at you, Perry, and if I’d thought for a
moment that you cared no more for me than this I should not have
returned to chance 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
puzzled expression 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 not mad, and I am equally sure that you are not; but how in
the world are we to account for the strange hallucinations that each of
us seems to harbor relative to the passage of time since last we saw
each other. You are positive that months have gone by, while to me it
seems equally certain that not more than an hour ago I sat beside you
in the amphitheater. Can it be that both of us are right and at the
same time both are wrong? First tell me what time is, and then maybe 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
book here, there has been no lapse of time. I have done little or
nothing to waste my energies and so have required neither food nor
sleep, but you, on the contrary, have walked and fought and wasted
strength and tissue which must needs be rebuilt by nutriment and food,
and so, having eaten and slept many times since last you saw me you
naturally measure the lapse of time largely by these acts. As a matter
of fact, David, I am rapidly coming to the conviction that there is no
such thing as time—surely there can be no time here within Pellucidar,
where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, the
Mahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here
in all their literary works but a single tense, the present. There
seems to be neither past nor future with them. Of course it is
impossible for our outer-earthly minds to grasp such a condition, but
our recent experiences seem to demonstrate its existence.”

It was too big a subject for me, and I said so, but Perry seemed to
enjoy nothing better than speculating upon it, and after listening with
interest to my account of the adventures through which I had passed he
returned once more to the subject, which he was enlarging upon with
considerable fluency when he was interrupted by the entrance of a
Sagoth.

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

“Good-bye, Perry!” I said, clasping the old man’s hand. “There may be
nothing but the present and no such thing as time, but I feel that I am
about to take a trip into the hereafter from which I shall never
return. If you and Ghak should manage to escape I want you to promise
me that you will find Dian the Beautiful and tell her that with my last
words I asked her forgiveness for the unintentional affront I put upon
her, and that my one wish was to be spared long 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 awful to think of living out the balance of my life without you
among these hateful and repulsive creatures. If you are taken away I
shall never escape, for I feel that 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 as he hid his face in his
hands the Sagoth guardsman grasped me roughly by the shoulder and
hustled me from the chamber.




XI
FOUR DEAD MAHARS


A moment later I was standing before a dozen Mahars—the social
investigators of Phutra. They asked me many questions, through a Sagoth
interpreter. I answered them all truthfully. They seemed particularly
interested in my account of the outer earth and the strange vehicle
which had brought Perry and me to Pellucidar. I thought that I had
convinced them, and after they had sat in silence for a long time
following my examination, I expected to be ordered returned 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 tribunal communicated the result of their conference to the officer
in charge of the Sagoth guard.

“Come,” he said to me, “you are sentenced to the experimental pits for
having dared to insult the intelligence of the mighty ones with the
ridiculous tale you 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 to believe so impossible a lie?”

It was hopeless, and so I walked in silence beside my guard down
through the dark corridors and runways toward my awful doom. At a low
level we came upon a number of lighted chambers in which we saw many
Mahars engaged in various occupations. To one of these chambers my
guard escorted me, and before leaving they chained me to a side wall.
There were other humans similarly chained. Upon a long table lay a
victim even as I was ushered into the room. Several Mahars stood 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 open
the victim’s chest and abdomen. No anesthetic had been administered and
the shrieks and groans of the tortured man were terrible to hear. This,
indeed, was vivisection with a vengeance. Cold sweat broke out upon me
as I realized that soon my turn would come. And to think that where
there was no such thing as time I might easily imagine that my
suffering was enduring for months before death finally released me!

The Mahars had paid not the slightest attention to me as I had been
brought into the room. So deeply immersed were they in their work that
I am sure they did 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 such possibility. I looked about for some means of
escape from my bonds. Upon the floor between me and the Mahars lay a
tiny surgical instrument which one of them must have dropped. It looked
not unlike a button-hook, but was much smaller, and its point was
sharpened. A hundred times in my boyhood days had I picked locks with a
buttonhook. Could I but reach that little bit of polished steel 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 out as I could my fingers still fell an inch short of the coveted
instrument. It was tantalizing! Stretch every fiber of my being as I
would, I could not quite make it.

At last I turned about and extended one foot toward the object. My
heart came to my throat! I could just touch the thing! But suppose that
in my effort to drag it toward me I should accidentally shove it still
farther away and thus entirely out of reach! Cold sweat broke out upon
me from every pore. Slowly and cautiously I made the effort. My toes
dropped upon the cold metal. Gradually I worked it toward me until I
felt that it was within reach of my hand and a moment 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
was pitifully 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 already turned away and was examining other victims,
evidently with the intention of selecting the next subject.

Those at the table had their backs toward me. But for the creature
walking toward 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 my right. Here the reptile stopped and commenced to go
over the poor devil carefully, and as it did so its back turned toward
me for an instant, and in that instant I gave two mighty leaps that
carried me out of the chamber into the 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
place as 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 of running into some new predicament, were I not careful, I
moved still more slowly and cautiously. After a time I came to a
passage that seemed in some mysterious way familiar to me, and
presently, chancing to glance within a chamber which led from the
corridor I saw three Mahars curled up in slumber upon a bed of skins. I
could have shouted aloud in joy and relief. It was the same corridor
and the same Mahars that I had intended to have lead so important a
role in our escape from Phutra. Providence had indeed been kind to me,
for the reptiles still slept.

My one great danger now lay in returning to the upper levels in search
of Perry and Ghak, but there was nothing else to be done, and so I
hastened upward. When I came to the frequented portions of the
building, I found a large burden of skins in a corner and these I
lifted to my head, carrying them in such a way that 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 been wont
to eat and sleep.

Both were glad to see me, it was needless to say, though of course they
had known nothing of the fate that had been meted out to me by my
judges. It was decided that no time should now be lost before
attempting to put our plan of escape 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 without arousing suspicion. However it
seemed likely that it would carry me once more safely through the
crowded passages and chambers of the upper levels, and so I set out
with Perry and Ghak—the stench of the illy cured pelts fairly choking
me.

Together we repaired to the first tier of corridors beneath the main
floor of the buildings, and here Perry and Ghak halted to await me. The
buildings are cut out of the solid limestone formation. There is
nothing at all remarkable about their architecture. The rooms are
sometimes rectangular, sometimes circular, and again oval in shape. The
corridors which connect them are narrow and not always straight. The
chambers are lighted by diffused sunlight reflected through tubes
similar to those by which the avenues are lighted. The lower the tiers
of chambers, the darker. Most of the corridors are entirely unlighted.
The Mahars can see quite well in semidarkness.

Down to the main floor we encountered many Mahars, Sagoths, and slaves;
but no attention was paid to us as we had become a part of the domestic
life of the building. There was but a single entrance leading from the
place into the avenue and this was well guarded by Sagoths—this doorway
alone were we forbidden to pass. It is true that we were not supposed
to enter the deeper corridors and apartments except on special
occasions when we were instructed to do so; but as we were considered a
lower order without intelligence there was little reason to fear that
we could accomplish any harm by so doing, and so we were not hindered
as we entered the corridor which led below.

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

Having come to the apartment in which the three Mahars slept I entered
silently on 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 second thrust was not so fortunate, so that before I
could kill the next of my victims it had hurled itself against the
third, who sprang quickly up, facing me with wide-distended jaws. But
fighting is not the occupation which the race of Mahars loves, and when
the thing saw that I already had dispatched two of its companions, and
that my sword was red with their blood, it made a dash to escape me.
But I was too quick for it, and so, half hopping, half flying, it
scurried down another corridor with me close upon its heels.

Its escape meant the utter ruin of our plan, and in all probability my
instant death. This thought lent wings to my feet; but even at my best
I could do no more 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 an instant later as I rushed in I found myself facing two of the
Mahars. The one who had been there when we entered had been occupied
with a number of metal vessels, into which had been put powders and
liquids as I judged from the array of flasks standing about upon the
bench where it had been working. In an instant I realized what I had
stumbled upon. It was the very room for the finding of which Perry had
given me minute directions. It was the buried chamber in which was
hidden the Great Secret of the race of Mahars. And on the bench beside
the flasks lay the skin-bound book which held the only copy of the
thing 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
stood facing the two frightful reptiles. Cornered, I knew that they
would fight like demons, and they were well equipped to fight if fight
they must. Together they launched themselves upon me, and though I ran
one of them through the heart on the instant, the other fastened its
gleaming fangs about my sword arm above the elbow, 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 that I might
release my arm from that powerful, viselike grip which seemed to be
severing my arm from my body. The pain I suffered was intense, but it
only served 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 my left hand, at the same time watching for an
opportunity to transfer my blade from my now useless sword hand to its
rapidly weakening mate. At last I was successful, and with what seemed
to me my last ounce of strength I ran the blade through the ugly body
of my foe.

Soundless, as it had fought, it died, and though weak from pain and
loss of blood, it was with an emotion of triumphant pride that I
stepped across its convulsively 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 to me.

And as I grasped it did I think of what it meant to the human race of
Pellucidar—did there flash through my mind the thought that countless
generations of my own kind yet unborn would have reason to worship me
for the thing that I had accomplished for them? I did not. I thought of
a beautiful oval 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 of nothing, standing there alone in the secret
chamber of the Mahars of Pellucidar, 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
tucked the book in the thong that supported my loin cloth, and turned
to leave the apartment. At the bottom of the corridor which leads aloft
from the lower chambers I whistled in accordance with the prearranged
signal which was to announce to Perry and Ghak that I had been
successful. A moment later they stood beside me, and to my surprise I
saw that Hooja the Sly One accompanied them.

“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 that I 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
he thought 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 had expected 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
intimation of 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
succeeded in crawling inside of them ourselves that there seemed an
excellent chance for us to pass unnoticed from Phutra. It was not an
easy thing to fasten the hides together where we had split them along
the belly to remove them from their carcasses, but by remaining out
until the others had all been sewed in with my help, and then leaving
an aperture in the breast of Perry’s skin through which he could pass
his hands to sew me up, we were enabled to accomplish our design to
really much better purpose than I had hoped. We managed to keep the
heads erect by passing our swords up through the necks, and by the same
means were enabled to move them about in a life-like manner. We had our
greatest difficulty with the webbed feet, but even that problem was
finally solved, so that when we moved about we did so quite naturally.
Tiny holes punctured in the baggy throats into which our heads were
thrust permitted us to see well enough to guide our progress.

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

As the noise of hurrying feet warned me that we were entering the busy
corridors of the main level, my heart came up into my mouth. It is with
no sense of shame that I admit that I was frightened—never before in my
life, nor since, did I experience any such agony of soulsearing fear
and suspense as enveloped me. If it be possible to sweat blood, I sweat
it then.

Slowly, after the manner of locomotion habitual to the Mahars, when
they are not using their wings, we crept through throngs of busy
slaves, Sagoths, and Mahars. After what seemed an eternity we reached
the outer door which leads into the main avenue of Phutra. Many Sagoths
loitered near the opening. They glanced 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 that the warm blood from
my wounded arm was trickling down through the dead foot of the Mahar
skin I wore and leaving its tell-tale mark upon the pavement, for I saw
a Sagoth call a companion’s attention to it.

The guard stepped before me and pointing to my bleeding foot spoke to
me in the sign language which these two races employ as a means of
communication. Even had I known what he was saying I could not have
replied with the dead thing that covered me. I once had seen a great
Mahar freeze a presumptuous Sagoth with a look. It seemed my only hope,
and so I tried it. Stopping in my tracks I moved my sword so that it
made the dead head appear to turn inquiring eyes upon the gorilla-man.
For a long moment I stood perfectly still, eyeing the fellow with those
dead eyes. Then I lowered the head and started slowly on. For a moment
all hung in the balance, but before I touched him the guard stepped to
one 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 of our enemies that surrounded us on all sides. Fortunately,
there was a great concourse of Mahars repairing to the shallow lake
which lies a mile or more from the city. They go there to indulge their
amphibian proclivities in diving for small fish, and enjoying the cool
depths of the water. It is a fresh-water lake, shallow, and free from
the larger reptiles which make the use of the great 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. For some 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 remained until all had passed and we were
alone. Then, still in our disguises, we set off directly away from
Phutra.

The heat of the vertical rays of the sun was fast making our horrible
prisons unbearable, so that after passing a low divide, and entering a
sheltering forest, we finally discarded the Mahar skins that had
brought us thus far in safety.

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

On and on we raced, our one thought to put as much distance between
ourselves and 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 us relentless Sagoths were dogging our
tracks. Ghak said they never failed to hunt down their quarry until
they had captured it or themselves been turned back by a superior
force.

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

At last, after what seemed months, and may, I now realize, have been
years, we came in sight of the dun escarpment which buttressed the
foothills of Sari. At almost 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 in our 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 with
incredible swiftness, and as they are almost tireless they are
doubtless much fresher than we. Then—” he paused, glancing at Perry.

I knew what he meant. The old man was exhausted. For much of the period
of our flight either Ghak or I had half supported him on the march.
With such a handicap, less fleet pursuers than the Sagoths might easily
overtake us before we 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 should be 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 that this great, hairy, primeval man had any such nobility of
character stowed away inside him. I had always liked him, but now to my
liking was added honor and respect. Yes, and love.

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

No, he wouldn’t leave us, and that was all there was to it, but he
suggested that Hooja might hurry on and warn the Sarians of the king’s
danger. It didn’t require much urging to start Hooja—the naked idea was
enough to send him leaping 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 fellow fairly begged us to go on without him, although I knew that
he was suffering a perfect anguish of terror at the thought of falling
into the hands of the Sagoths. Ghak finally solved the problem, in
part, by lifting Perry in his powerful arms and carrying him. While the
act cut down Ghak’s speed he still could 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 had greatly increased their speed. On and on we stumbled up the
narrow canyon that Ghak had chosen to approach the heights of Sari. On
either side rose precipitous cliffs of gorgeous, parti-colored rock,
while beneath our feet a thick mountain grass formed a soft and
noiseless carpet. Since we had entered the canyon we had had no glimpse
of our pursuers, and I was commencing to hope that they had lost our
trail and that we would reach the now rapidly nearing cliffs in time to
scale them before we should be overtaken.

Ahead we neither saw nor heard any sign which might betoken the success
of Hooja’s mission. By now he should have reached the outposts of the
Sarians, and we should at least hear the savage cries of the tribesmen
as they swarmed to arms in answer to their king’s appeal for succor. In
another moment the frowning cliffs ahead should be black with primeval
warriors. But nothing of the kind happened—as a matter of fact the Sly
One had betrayed us. At the moment that we expected to see Sarian
spearmen charging to our relief at Hooja’s back, the craven traitor was
sneaking around the outskirts of the nearest Sarian village, that he
might come up from the other side when it was too 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 in Dian’s protection, and his malevolent spirit was equal to
sacrificing us all that he might be revenged upon me.

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

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

Again the canyon veered sharply to the left, but to the right another
branch ran on at a lesser deviation from the general direction, so that
appeared more like the main canyon than the lefthand branch. The
Sagoths were now not over two hundred and fifty yards behind us, and I
saw that it was hopeless for us to expect to escape other than by a
ruse. There was a bare chance of saving Ghak and 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
and Perry had disappeared around a bend in the left-hand canyon, and as
the Sagoth’s savage yell announced that he had seen me I turned and
fled up the right-hand branch. My ruse was successful, and the entire
party of man-hunters raced headlong after me up one canyon while Ghak
bore Perry to safety up the other.

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

The Sagoths were gaining on me rapidly. There was one in particular,
fleeter than 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 abutting peaks. What lay beyond I could not even
guess—possibly a sheer drop of hundreds of feet into the corresponding
valley upon the other side. Could it be that I had plunged into a
cul-de-sac?

Realizing that I could not hope to outdistance the Sagoths to the top
of the canyon 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 the skin quiver which hung behind my shoulder. As I
fitted the shaft with my right hand I stopped and wheeled toward the
gorilla-man.

In the world of my birth I never had drawn a shaft, but since our
escape from Phutra I had kept the party supplied with small game by
means of my arrows, and so, through necessity, had developed a fair
degree of accuracy. During our flight from Phutra I had restrung my bow
with a piece of heavy gut taken from a huge 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, with the strength and
elasticity of my new string, gave me unwonted confidence in my weapon.

Never had I greater need of steady nerves than then—never were my
nerves and muscles under better control. I sighted as carefully and
deliberately as though at a straw target. The Sagoth had never before
seen a bow and arrow, but of a sudden it must have swept over his dull
intellect that the thing I held toward him 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 methods in 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
point upon the left breast of my adversary; and then he launched his
hatchet and I released 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. I felt the swish of the hatchet as it
grazed my head, and at the same instant my shaft pierced the Sagoth’s
savage heart, and with a single groan he lunged almost at my feet—stone
dead. Close behind him were two more—fifty yards perhaps—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 the
urgent need I had for one. Those which I had purloined at Phutra we had
not been able to bring along because their size precluded our
concealing them within 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 sped toward me I caught it upon the shield, and fitted another
shaft for him; but he did not wait to receive it. Instead, he turned
and retreated toward the main body 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 to press their pursuit so closely as before. Unmolested I
reached the top of the canyon where I found a sheer drop of two or
three hundred feet to the bottom of a rocky chasm; but on the left a
narrow ledge rounded the shoulder of the overhanging cliff. Along this
I advanced, and at a sudden turning, a few yards beyond the canyon’s
end, the path widened, and at my left I saw the opening to a large
cave. Before, the ledge continued until it passed from sight about
another projecting buttress of the mountain.

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

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

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

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 to dispute possession of the ledge with the thing
which owned that voice. The noise had not been loud—I doubt if the
Sagoths heard it at all—but the suggestion of latent possibilities
behind it was such that I knew it would only emanate from a gigantic
and ferocious beast.

As I backed along the ledge I soon was past the mouth of the cave,
where I no longer could see those fearful flaming eyes, but an instant
later I caught sight of the fiendish face of a Sagoth as it warily
advanced beyond the cliff’s turn on the far side of the cave’s mouth.
As the fellow saw me he leaped along the ledge in pursuit, and after
him came as many of his companions as could crowd upon each other’s
heels. At the same time the beast emerged from the cave, 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 feet at the shoulder, while from the tip of its nose to the end
of its stubby tail it was fully twelve feet in length. As it sighted
the Sagoths it emitted a most frightful roar, and with open mouth
charged full upon them. With a cry of terror the foremost gorilla-man
turned to escape, but behind him he ran full upon his on-rushing
companions.

The horror of the following seconds is indescribable. The Sagoth
nearest the cave bear, finding his escape blocked, turned and leaped
deliberately to an awful death upon the jagged rocks three hundred feet
below. Then those giant jaws reached out and gathered in the next—there
was a sickening sound of crushing bones, and the mangled corpse was
dropped over the cliff’s edge. Nor did the mighty beast even pause in
his steady advance along the ledge.

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

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

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




XIV
THE GARDEN OF EDEN


With no heavenly guide, it is little wonder that I became confused and
lost in the labyrinthine maze of those mighty hills. What, in reality,
I did was to pass 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 a small cave in the face of the limestone
formation which had taken the place of the granite farther back.

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

Here I found a rather large chamber, lighted by a narrow cleft in the
rock above which let the sunlight filter in in sufficient quantities
partially to dispel 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 was comparatively small, so that after
considerable effort I was able to lug up a bowlder from the valley
below which entirely blocked it.

Then I returned again to the valley for an armful of grasses and on
this trip was fortunate enough to knock over an orthopi, the diminutive
horse of Pellucidar, a little animal about the size of a fox terrier,
which abounds in all parts of the inner world. Thus, with food and
bedding I returned to my lair, where after a meal of raw meat, to which
I had now become quite accustomed, I dragged the bowlder before the
entrance and curled myself upon a bed of grasses—a naked, primeval,
cave man, as savagely primitive as my prehistoric progenitors.

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

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

I had determined to make the cave my headquarters, and with it as a
base make a systematic exploration of the surrounding country in search
of the land of Sari. First I devoured the remainder of the carcass of
the orthopi I had killed before my last sleep. Then I hid the Great
Secret in a deep niche at the back of 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
little orthopi evincing the greatest wariness and galloping to safest
distances. All the animals stopped feeding as I approached, and after
moving to what they considered a safe distance stood contemplating me
with serious eyes and up-cocked ears. Once one of the old bull
antelopes of the striped species lowered 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 resumed feeding as though
nothing had disturbed him.

Near the lower end of the valley I passed a number of tapirs, and
across the river saw a great sadok, the enormous double-horned
progenitor of the modern rhinoceros. 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 them in search of a ledge along
which I might continue my journey. Some fifty feet from the base I came
upon a projection which formed a natural path along the face 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
stratum which formed it evidently having been forced up at this steep
angle when the mountains behind it were born. As I climbed carefully up
the ascent my attention suddenly was attracted aloft by the sound of
strange hissing, and what resembled the flapping of wings.

And at the first glance there broke upon my horrified vision the most
frightful thing I had seen even within Pellucidar. It was a giant
dragon such as is pictured in the legends and fairy tales of earth
folk. Its huge body must have measured forty feet in length, while the
batlike wings that supported it in midair 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 its throat, and seemed to be directed at something beyond and
below me which I could not see. The ledge upon which I stood terminated
abruptly a few paces farther on, and as I reached the end I saw the
cause of the reptile’s agitation.

Some time in past ages an earthquake had produced a fault at this
point, so that beyond the spot where I stood the strata had slipped
down a matter of twenty feet. The result was that the continuation of
my ledge lay twenty feet below 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 narrow platform, her face buried in her arms, as though to
shut out the sight of the frightful death which hovered just above her.

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

Almost thoughtless of the consequences, I leaped from the end of the
ledge upon which I stood, for the tiny shelf twenty feet below. At the
same instant the dragon darted in toward the girl, but my sudden advent
upon the scene must have startled 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
had come, for she thought I was the dragon; but finally when no cruel
fangs closed upon her she raised her eyes in astonishment. As they fell
upon me the expression that came into them would be difficult to
describe; but her feelings could scarcely have been one whit more
complicated than my own—for the wide eyes 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
whether she were glad or angry that I had come.

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

Quickly I fitted an arrow now that I might be ready at the next attack,
and as I did so I looked down at the girl, so that I surprised her in a
surreptitious glance which she was stealing at me; but immediately, she
again covered her face 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 she pointed over my shoulder. “The thipdar comes,” she said,
and I turned again to meet the reptile.

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

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

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

“I hate you,” was her only reply; but I imagined that there was less
vehemence in 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
Hooja freed you from the Sagoths?”

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

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

“But at last one of Jubal’s hunters saw me as I was creeping toward my
father’s cave to see if my brother had yet returned and he gave the
alarm and Jubal set out after me. He has been pursuing me across many
lands. He cannot be far behind me now. When he comes he will kill you
and carry me back to his cave. He is a terrible man. I have gone as far
as I can go, and there is no escape,” and she 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 sea is there”—she pointed over the edge of the cliff—“and the sea
shall have me rather 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 and let it fall in token of release.

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

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

I tried to convince her that I was sincere, but she simply couldn’t
forget the humiliation 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,”
she said, “if Jubal does not catch and kill you. I am in your power,
and the treatment you accord me will be the best proof of your
intentions toward me. I am not your mate, and again I tell you that I
hate you, and that I should be glad if I never saw you again.”

Dian certainly was candid. There was no gainsaying that. In fact I
found candor and directness to be quite a marked characteristic of the
cave men of Pellucidar. 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 no considerable desire to meet the formidable
and ferocious creature, of whose mighty prowess Dian had told me when I
first met her. He it was who, armed with a puny knife, had met and
killed a cave bear in a hand-to-hand struggle. It was Jubal who could
cast his spear entirely through the armored carcass of the sadok at
fifty paces. It was he who had crushed the skull of a charging dyryth
with a single blow of his war club. No, I was not pining to meet the
Ugly One—and it was quite certain that I should not go out and hunt for
him; but the matter was taken out of my hands very quickly, as is often
the way, and I did meet Jubal the Ugly One face to face.

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

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

For a while I kept still. I was utterly squelched. And to think that I
had twice protected her from attack—the last time risking my life to
save hers. It was incredible that even a daughter of the Stone Age
could be so ungrateful—so heartless; 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 by the action of the water draining through it from the
plateau above. It gave us a rather rough climb to the summit, but
finally we stood upon the level mesa which stretched back for several
miles to the mountain range. Behind us lay the broad inland sea,
curving upward in the horizonless distance to merge into the blue of
the sky, so that for all the world it looked as though the sea lapped
back to arch completely over us and disappear beyond the distant
mountains at our backs—the weird and uncanny aspect of the seascapes of
Pellucidar balk description.

At our right lay a dense forest, but to the left the country was open
and clear to the plateau’s farther verge. It was in this direction that
our way led, and we 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 a man. He must have been seven feet tall, and proportioned
accordingly. He still was too far off to distinguish his features.

“Run,” I said to Dian. “I can engage him until you get a good start.
Maybe I can hold him until you have gotten entirely away,” and then,
without a backward glance, I advanced to meet the Ugly One. I had hoped
that Dian would have a kind word to say to me before she went, for she
must have known that I was going 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 grass to my doom.

When I had come close enough to Jubal to distinguish his features I
understood how it was that he had earned the sobriquet of Ugly One.
Apparently some fearful 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 exposed and grinning through the horrible scar.

Formerly he may have been as good to look upon as the others of his
handsome race, and it may be that the terrible result of this encounter
had tended to sour an already strong and brutal character. However this
may be it is quite certain that he was not a pretty sight, and now that
his features, or what remained of them, were distorted in rage at the
sight of Dian with another male, 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. I was somewhat longer than usual, for I must confess that
the sight of this awful man had wrought upon my nerves to such an
extent that my knees were anything but steady. What chance had I
against this mighty warrior for whom even the fiercest cave bear had no
terrors! Could I hope to best one who slaughtered the sadok and dyryth
singlehanded! I shuddered; but, in fairness to myself, my fear was more
for Dian than for my own fate.

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

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

It was a duel of strategy now—the great, hairy man maneuvering to get
inside my guard where he could bring those giant thews to play, while
my wits were directed to the task of keeping him at arm’s length.
Thrice he rushed me, and thrice I caught his knife blow upon my shield.
Each time my sword found his body—once penetrating to his lung. He was
covered with blood by this time, and the internal hemorrhage induced
paroxysms of coughing that brought the red stream through the hideous
mouth and nose, covering his face and breast with bloody 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 of ungoverned 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 there evidently loomed the thought that perhaps
at last he had met his master, and was facing his end.

At any rate it is only upon this hypothesis that I can account for his
next act, which was in the nature of a last resort—a sort of forlorn
hope, which could only have been born of the belief that if he did not
kill me quickly I should 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 seizing my sword blade in both his hands
wrenched the weapon from my grasp as easily as from a babe.

Flinging it far to one side he stood motionless for just an instant
glaring into my face with such a horrid leer of malignant triumph as to
almost unnerve me—then he sprang for me with his bare hands. But it was
Jubal’s day to learn new methods of warfare. For the first time he had
seen a bow and arrows, never before that duel had he beheld a sword,
and now he learned what a man who knows may do with his bare fists.

As he came for me, like a great bear, I ducked again beneath his
outstretched arm, and as I came up planted as clean a blow upon his jaw
as ever you have seen. Down went that great mountain of flesh sprawling
upon the ground. He was so surprised and dazed that he lay there for
several seconds before he made any attempt to rise, and I stood over
him with another dose ready when he should gain his knees.

Up he came at last, almost roaring in his rage and mortification; but
he didn’t stay up—I let him have a left fair on the point of the jaw
that sent him tumbling 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. Time after time I bowled him over as fast as he
could stagger up, until toward the last he lay longer on the ground
between blows, and each time came up weaker than before.

He was bleeding very profusely now from the wound in his lungs, and
presently a terrific blow over the heart sent him reeling heavily to
the ground, where he lay very still, and somehow I knew at once that
Jubal the Ugly One would never get up again. But even as I looked upon
that massive body lying there so grim and terrible in death, I could
not believe that I, single-handed, had bested this 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
my foeman, and as I thought of the battle I had just fought and won a
great idea was born in my brain—the outcome of this and the suggestion
that Perry had made within the city of Phutra. If skill and science
could render a comparative pygmy the master of this mighty brute, what
could not the brute’s fellows accomplish with the same skill and
science. Why all Pellucidar would be at their feet—and I would be their
king and Dian their queen.

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

“Girl!” I cried, “what are you doing here? I thought that you had gone
to the cave, 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 and looked at the corpse. “May be that I saved you from a worse
fate, old man,” I said, but I guess it was lost on Dian, for she never
seemed to notice it at all.

“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 all the way through, as I had certainly felt that at least a
word of thanks should have rewarded me, for I knew that even by her own
standards, I must have done a very wonderful thing to have killed the
redoubtable Jubal in a hand-to-hand encounter.

We had no difficulty in finding my lair, and then I went down into the
valley and bowled over a small antelope, which I dragged up the steep
ascent to the ledge 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 teeth like some wild animal would cause
a revulsion of my sentiments toward her; but to my surprise I found
that she ate quite as daintily as the most civilized woman of my
acquaintance, and finally I found myself gazing in foolish rapture at
the beauties of her strong, white teeth. Such is love.

After our repast we went down to the river together and bathed our
hands and faces, and then after drinking our fill went back to the
cave. Without a word I crawled 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 came up in my throat, so that I nearly choked.
I had never been in love before, but I 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
tribe now that Jubal was dead, but she shook her head sadly, and said
that she did not dare, for there was still Jubal’s brother to be
considered—his oldest brother.

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

She was not quite sure as to what I meant.

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

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

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

“Yes,” replied Dian, “but they don’t count—they all have mates. Jubal’s
brothers have no mates because Jubal could get none for himself. He was
so ugly that women ran away from him—some have even thrown themselves
from the cliffs of 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 mixed with contempt, and the contempt seemed to be laid on a
little thicker than the circumstance warranted—as though to make quite
certain that I shouldn’t overlook it. “You see,” she continued, “a
younger brother may not take a mate until all his older brothers have
done so, unless the older brother waives his prerogative, which Jubal
would not do, knowing that as long as he kept them single they would be
all the keener in aiding him to secure a mate.”

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

“As you dare not return to Amoz,” I ventured, “what is to become of you
since you 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 go elsewhere 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 a
prehistoric 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
your ingratitude and your insults,” and then I turned and strode
majestically down toward the valley. I had taken a hundred steps in
absolute silence, and then Dian 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
realize that I couldn’t leave her alone there without protection, to
hunt her own food amid the dangers of that savage world. She might hate
me, and revile me, and heap indignity after indignity upon me, as she
already had, until I should have hated her; but the pitiful fact
remained that I loved her, and I couldn’t leave her there alone.

The more I thought about it the madder I got, so that by the time I
reached the valley I was furious, and the result of it was that I
turned right around and went up that cliff again as fast as I had come
down. I saw that Dian had left the ledge and gone within the cave, but
I bolted right in after her. She was lying upon her face on the pile of
grasses I had gathered for her bed. When she heard 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 the cave I could not see her features, and I was rather
glad, for I disliked to think 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
grasped her by the wrists, and when she struggled, I put my arm around
her so as to pinion her hands to her sides. She fought like a tigress,
but I took my free hand and pushed her head back—I imagine that I had
suddenly turned brute, that I had gone back a thousand million years,
and was again a veritable cave man taking 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 I love you? That I love you better than all else in this world or
my own? That I am 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 became
accustomed to the light I saw that she was smiling—a very contented,
happy smile. I was thunderstruck. Then I realized that, very gently,
she was trying to disengage her arms, and I loosened my grip upon them
so that she could do so. Slowly they came up and stole about my neck,
and then she drew my lips down to 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 I knew that you loved me?” she asked.

“But I have told you right along that I love you,” I said. “Love speaks
in acts,” she replied. “You could have made your mouth say what you
wished it to say, but just now when you came and took me in your arms
your heart spoke to mine in the language that a woman’s heart
understands. What a silly man you are, 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
saw you, although I did not know it until that time you struck down
Hooja the Sly One, and then spurned me.”

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

“You might have known,” she said, “when I did not run away from you
that it was not hate which chained me to you. While you were battling
with Jubal, I could have run to the edge of the forest, and when I
learned the outcome of the combat it would have been a simple thing to
have eluded you and returned to my own 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
SOME excuse for remaining near you.”

“You little sinner!” I exclaimed. “And you have caused me all this
anguish for nothing!”

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

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

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 own land—and it meant just as much to the cave woman to be a
queen in the Stone Age as it does to the woman of today to be a queen
now; it’s all comparative glory any way you look at it, and if there
were only half-naked savages on the outer crust today, you’d find that
it would be considerable glory to be the wife of a Dahomey chief.

I couldn’t help but compare Dian’s action with that of a splendid young
woman I had known in New York—I mean splendid to look at and to talk
to. She had been head over heels in love with a chum of mine—a clean,
manly chap—but she had married a broken-down, disreputable old
debauchee because he was a count in some dinky little European
principality that was not even accorded a distinctive 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, and to know that all was right with him. I had told Dian about
our plan of emancipating the human race of Pellucidar, and she was
fairly wild over it. She said that if Dacor, her brother, would only
return he could easily be king of Amoz, and that then he and Ghak could
form an alliance. That would give us a flying 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 their use we
were confident that they could overcome any tribe that seemed
disinclined to join the great army of federated states with which we
were planning to march upon the Mahars.

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

The first time we started for Sari I stepped into a nest of poisonous
vipers before we reached the valley. A little fellow stung me on the
ankle, and Dian made me come back to the cave. She said that I mustn’t
exercise, or it might prove fatal—if it had been a full-grown snake
that struck me she said, I wouldn’t have moved a single pace from the
nest—I’d have died in my tracks, so virulent 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 and drew out the poison.

The episode proved most fortunate, however, as it gave me an idea which
added a thousand-fold to the value of my arrows as missiles of offense
and defense. As soon as I was able to be about again, I sought out some
adult vipers of the species 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 one of these, and though my arrow
inflicted but a superficial flesh wound the beast crumpled in death
almost immediately after he was hit.

We now set out once more for the land of the Sarians, and it was with
feelings of sincere regret that we bade good-bye to our beautiful
Garden of Eden, in the comparative peace and harmony of which we had
lived the happiest moments of our lives. How long we had been there I
did not know, for as I have told you, time had ceased to exist for me
beneath that eternal noonday sun—it may have been an hour, 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 we came out upon a great level plain which stretched away as
far as the eye could reach. I cannot tell you in what direction it
stretched even if you would care to know, for all the while that I was
within Pellucidar I never discovered any but 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, of course,
is DOWN to you of the outer crust. Since the sun neither rises nor sets
there is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects such
as high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas.

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

We had barely entered the great plain when we discovered two enormous
animals approaching us from a great distance. So far were they that we
could not distinguish what manner of beasts they might be, but as they
came closer, I saw that they were enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a
hundred feet long, with tiny heads perched at the top of very long
necks. Their heads must have been quite forty feet from the ground. The
beasts moved very slowly—that is their action was slow—but their
strides covered such a great distance that in reality they traveled
considerably faster than a man walks.

As they drew still nearer we discovered that upon the back of each sat
a human being. 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 the outer verge of the Land of Awful Shadow. The Thorians alone of
all the races of Pellucidar ride the lidi, for nowhere else than beside
the dark country are they found.”

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

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

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

I remember that Perry was very much excited when I told him about this
Dead World, for he seemed to think that it explained the hitherto
inexplicable phenomena 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 a man and the other a woman. The former had held up his two hands,
palms toward us, in sign of peace, and I had answered him in kind, when
he suddenly gave a cry of astonishment and pleasure, and slipping from
his enormous mount ran forward toward Dian, throwing his arms about
her.

In an instant I was white with jealousy, but only for an instant; since
Dian quickly 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
liking among the Sari, nor farther on until he had come to the land of
the Thoria, and there he had found and fought for this very lovely
Thorian maiden whom he was bringing back to his own people.

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

After a journey which was, for Pellucidar, quite uneventful, we came to
the first of the Sarian villages which consists of between one and two
hundred artificial caves cut into the face of a great cliff. Here to
our immense delight, we found both Perry and Ghak. The old man was
quite overcome at sight of 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 he afterward remarked that with the pick of two worlds I could not
have done better.

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

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

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

In one of the skirmishes with slave caravans some of our Sarians took a
number of Sagoth prisoners, and among them were two who had been
members of the guards within the building where we had been confined at
Phutra. They told us that the Mahars were frantic with rage when they
discovered what had taken place in the cellars of the buildings. The
Sagoths knew that something very terrible had befallen their masters,
but the Mahars had been most careful to see that no inkling of the true
nature of their vital affliction reached beyond their own race. How
long it would take for the race to become extinct it was impossible
even 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 upon whomever should harm us. The Sagoths could not
understand these seemingly paradoxical instructions, though their
purpose was quite evident to me. The Mahars wanted the Great Secret,
and they knew that we alone could deliver it to them.

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

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

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

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

Dian and I were ready to embark, but I was anxious to witness the first
clash between two fair-sized armies of the opposing races of
Pellucidar. I realized that this was to mark the historic beginning of
a mighty struggle for possession of a world, and as the first emperor
of Pellucidar I felt that it was not alone my duty, but my right, to be
in the thick of that momentous struggle.

As the opposing army approached we saw that there were many Mahars with
the Sagoth troops—an indication of the vast importance which the
dominant race placed upon the outcome of this campaign, for it was not
customary with them to take active part in the sorties which their
creatures made for slaves—the only form 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. Dacor took the left, while I commanded the center. Behind
us I stationed a sufficient reserve under one of Ghak’s head men. The
Sagoths advanced steadily with menacing spears, and I let them come
until they were within easy bowshot before I gave the word to fire.

At the first volley of poison-tipped arrows the front ranks of the
gorilla-men crumpled to the ground; but those behind charged over the
prostrate forms of their comrades in a wild, mad rush to be upon us
with their spears. A second volley stopped them for an instant, and
then my reserve sprang through the openings in the firing line to
engage them with sword and shield. The clumsy spears 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 close quarters
with their lighter, handier weapons.

Ghak took his archers along the enemy’s flank, and while the swordsmen
engaged them in front, he poured volley after volley into their
unprotected left. The Mahars 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 or leg of a Sarian.

The battle did not last a great while, for when Dacor and I led our men
in upon the Sagoth’s right with naked swords they were already so
demoralized that they turned and fled before us. We pursued them for
some time, taking many prisoners and 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 that his life had been spared in hope that through him the Mahars
would learn the whereabouts of their Great Secret. Ghak and I were
inclined to think that the Sly One had been guiding this expedition to
the land of Sari, where he thought that the book might be found in
Perry’s possession; but we had no proof of this and 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 own people of them that they would not approach them unless
completely covered from the sight of the reptiles by a piece of skin.
Even Dian shared the popular superstition regarding the evil effects of
exposure to the eyes of angry Mahars, and though I laughed at her fears
I was willing enough to humor them if it would relieve her apprehension
in any degree, and so she sat apart from the prospector, near which the
Mahars had been chained, while Perry and I again inspected every
portion of the mechanism.

At last I took my place in the driving seat, and called to one of the
men without to fetch Dian. It happened that Hooja stood quite close to
the doorway of the prospector, so that it was he who, without my
knowledge, went to bring her; but how he succeeded in accomplishing the
fiendish thing he did, I cannot guess, 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 Hooja had he suggested the
heartless scheme, even had he had time to acquaint another with it. It
was all done so quickly that I may only believe that it was the result
of sudden impulse, aided by a number of, to Hooja, fortuitous
circumstances occurring at precisely the right moment.

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

As before on that far-gone night that had witnessed our first trial of
the iron monster, there was a frightful roaring beneath us—the giant
frame trembled and vibrated—there was a rush of sound as the loose
earth passed up through the hollow 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
sudden lurching of the prospector. At first I did not realize what had
happened, but presently it dawned upon me that just before entering the
crust the towering body had fallen through its supporting scaffolding,
and that instead of entering 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. She still sat shrouded in
the great skin.

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

The thing beneath the skin was not Dian—it was a hideous Mahar.
Instantly I realized the trick that Hooja had played upon me, and the
purpose of it. Rid of me, forever as he doubtless thought, Dian would
be at his mercy. Frantically I tore at the steering wheel in an effort
to turn the prospector back toward Pellucidar; 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.
It varied but little from the former one which had brought us from the
outer to the inner world. Because of the angle at which we had entered
the ground the trip required nearly a day longer, and brought me out
here upon the sand of the Sahara 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 leave the prospector for fear I should never be able to find it
again—the shifting sands of the desert would soon cover it, and then my
only hope of returning to my Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone
forever.

That I ever shall see her again seems but remotely possible, for how
may I know upon what part of Pellucidar my return journey may
terminate—and how, without a north or south or an east or a west may I
hope ever to find my way across that vast 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 the rim of the great Sahara Desert. The next day he took me out to
see the prospector—it was precisely as he had described it. So huge was
it that it could have been brought to this inaccessible part of the
world by no means of transportation that existed there—it could only
have come in the way that David Innes said it came—up through the crust
of the earth from the inner world of Pellucidar.

I spent a week with him, and then, abandoning my lion hunt, returned
directly to the coast and hurried to London where I purchased a great
quantity of stuff which 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 he wanted a library with
which they could reproduce the wonders of the twentieth century 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 of the 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 the caravan—the same guide, in fact, who had
accompanied me on the previous trip into the Sahara—and after writing a
long letter to Innes in which I gave him my American address, I saw the
expedition head south.

Among the other things which I sent to Innes was over five hundred
miles of double, insulated wire of a very fine gauge. I had it packed
on a special reel at his suggestion, as it was his idea that he could
fasten one end here before he left and by paying it out through the end
of the prospector lay a telegraph line between the outer and inner
worlds. In my letter I told him to be sure to mark the terminus of the
line very plainly with a high cairn, in case I was not able to reach
him before he set out, so that I might easily find and communicate 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 took advantage of every northward-passing caravan to drop me word of
some sort. His last 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 Arabs don’t get me. They have been very nasty of late. I don’t know
the cause, but on two occasions they have threatened my life. One, more
friendly than the rest, told me today that they intended attacking me
tonight. It would be unfortunate should 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, the slenderer 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
thinks it 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 spot where I had left Innes. My first disappointment was when I
discovered that my old guide had died within a few weeks of my return,
nor could I find any member of my former party who could lead me to the
same spot.

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

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

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

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