At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.

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At the Earth's Core

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co.

[1914]

Created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska

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Map of Pellucidar
 At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

PROLOGUE

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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 the 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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
day-light 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 burled 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--hyaenadon 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 day-light 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 not 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 day-light--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.
At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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, 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
envelopes Pellucidar, and with a smile I stepped forth into the day-light.

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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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, where in 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 canon, 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 button-hook. 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 left-
hand 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 at 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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 bat-like 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 single-handed! 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 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.

At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, [1914], at sacred-texts.com

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, abandoned 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, tool 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 ricky 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.