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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pellucidar, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Pellucidar
+
+Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+Release Date: July, 1996 [eBook #605]
+[Most recently updated: July 16, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Judith Boss
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PELLUCIDAR ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PELLUCIDAR
+
+By Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PROLOGUE
+ CHAPTER I. LOST ON PELLUCIDAR
+ CHAPTER II. TRAVELING WITH TERROR
+ CHAPTER III. SHOOTING THE CHUTES—AND AFTER
+ CHAPTER IV. FRIENDSHIP AND TREACHERY
+ CHAPTER V. SURPRISES
+ CHAPTER VI. A PENDENT WORLD
+ CHAPTER VII. FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT
+ CHAPTER VIII. CAPTIVE
+ CHAPTER IX. HOOJA’S CUTTHROATS APPEAR
+ CHAPTER X. THE RAID ON THE CAVE-PRISON
+ CHAPTER XI. ESCAPE
+ CHAPTER XII. KIDNAPED!
+ CHAPTER XIII. RACING FOR LIFE
+ CHAPTER XIV. GORE AND DREAMS
+ CHAPTER XV. CONQUEST AND PEACE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+Several years had elapsed since I had found the opportunity to do any
+big-game hunting; for at last I had my plans almost perfected for a
+return to my old stamping-grounds in northern Africa, where in other
+days I had had excellent sport in pursuit of the king of beasts.
+
+The date of my departure had been set; I was to leave in two weeks. No
+schoolboy counting the lagging hours that must pass before the
+beginning of “long vacation” released him to the delirious joys of the
+summer camp could have been filled with greater impatience or keener
+anticipation.
+
+And then came a letter that started me for Africa twelve days ahead of
+my schedule.
+
+Often am I in receipt of letters from strangers who have found
+something in a story of mine to commend or to condemn. My interest in
+this department of my correspondence is ever fresh. I opened this
+particular letter with all the zest of pleasurable anticipation with
+which I had opened so many others. The post-mark (Algiers) had aroused
+my interest and curiosity, especially at this time, since it was
+Algiers that was presently to witness the termination of my coming sea
+voyage in search of sport and adventure.
+
+Before the reading of that letter was completed lions and lion-hunting
+had fled my thoughts, and I was in a state of excitement bordering upon
+frenzy.
+
+It—well, read it yourself, and see if you, too, do not find food for
+frantic conjecture, for tantalizing doubts, and for a great hope.
+
+Here it is:
+
+DEAR SIR: I think that I have run across one of the most remarkable
+coincidences in modern literature. But let me start at the beginning:
+
+I am, by profession, a wanderer upon the face of the earth. I have no
+trade—nor any other occupation.
+
+My father bequeathed me a competency; some remoter ancestors lust to
+roam. I have combined the two and invested them carefully and without
+extravagance.
+
+I became interested in your story, At the Earth’s Core, not so much
+because of the probability of the tale as of a great and abiding wonder
+that people should be paid real money for writing such impossible
+trash. You will pardon my candor, but it is necessary that you
+understand my mental attitude toward this particular story—that you may
+credit that which follows.
+
+Shortly thereafter I started for the Sahara in search of a rather rare
+species of antelope that is to be found only occasionally within a
+limited area at a certain season of the year. My chase led me far from
+the haunts of man.
+
+It was a fruitless search, however, in so far as antelope is concerned;
+but one night as I lay courting sleep at the edge of a little cluster
+of date-palms that surround an ancient well in the midst of the arid,
+shifting sands, I suddenly became conscious of a strange sound coming
+apparently from the earth beneath my head.
+
+It was an intermittent ticking!
+
+No reptile or insect with which I am familiar reproduces any such
+notes. I lay for an hour—listening intently.
+
+At last my curiosity got the better of me. I arose, lighted my lamp and
+commenced to investigate.
+
+My bedding lay upon a rug stretched directly upon the warm sand. The
+noise appeared to be coming from beneath the rug. I raised it, but
+found nothing—yet, at intervals, the sound continued.
+
+I dug into the sand with the point of my hunting-knife. A few inches
+below the surface of the sand I encountered a solid substance that had
+the feel of wood beneath the sharp steel.
+
+Excavating about it, I unearthed a small wooden box. From this
+receptacle issued the strange sound that I had heard.
+
+How had it come here?
+
+What did it contain?
+
+In attempting to lift it from its burying place I discovered that it
+seemed to be held fast by means of a very small insulated cable running
+farther into the sand beneath it.
+
+My first impulse was to drag the thing loose by main strength; but
+fortunately I thought better of this and fell to examining the box. I
+soon saw that it was covered by a hinged lid, which was held closed by
+a simple screwhook and eye.
+
+It took but a moment to loosen this and raise the cover, when, to my
+utter astonishment, I discovered an ordinary telegraph instrument
+clicking away within.
+
+“What in the world,” thought I, “is this thing doing here?”
+
+That it was a French military instrument was my first guess; but really
+there didn’t seem much likelihood that this was the correct
+explanation, when one took into account the loneliness and remoteness
+of the spot.
+
+As I sat gazing at my remarkable find, which was ticking and clicking
+away there in the silence of the desert night, trying to convey some
+message which I was unable to interpret, my eyes fell upon a bit of
+paper lying in the bottom of the box beside the instrument. I picked it
+up and examined it. Upon it were written but two letters:
+
+D. I.
+
+
+They meant nothing to me then. I was baffled.
+
+Once, in an interval of silence upon the part of the receiving
+instrument, I moved the sending-key up and down a few times. Instantly
+the receiving mechanism commenced to work frantically.
+
+I tried to recall something of the Morse Code, with which I had played
+as a little boy—but time had obliterated it from my memory. I became
+almost frantic as I let my imagination run riot among the possibilities
+for which this clicking instrument might stand.
+
+Some poor devil at the unknown other end might be in dire need of
+succor. The very franticness of the instrument’s wild clashing
+betokened something of the kind.
+
+And there sat I, powerless to interpret, and so powerless to help!
+
+It was then that the inspiration came to me. In a flash there leaped to
+my mind the closing paragraphs of the story I had read in the club at
+Algiers:
+
+Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara, at
+the ends of two tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost cairn?
+
+The idea seemed preposterous. Experience and intelligence combined to
+assure me that there could be no slightest grain of truth or
+possibility in your wild tale—it was fiction pure and simple.
+
+And yet where WERE the other ends of those wires?
+
+What was this instrument—ticking away here in the great Sahara—but a
+travesty upon the possible!
+
+Would I have believed in it had I not seen it with my own eyes?
+
+And the initials—D. I.—upon the slip of paper!
+
+David’s initials were these—David Innes.
+
+I smiled at my imaginings. I ridiculed the assumption that there was an
+inner world and that these wires led downward through the earth’s crust
+to the surface of Pellucidar. And yet—
+
+Well, I sat there all night, listening to that tantalizing clicking,
+now and then moving the sending-key just to let the other end know that
+the instrument had been discovered. In the morning, after carefully
+returning the box to its hole and covering it over with sand, I called
+my servants about me, snatched a hurried breakfast, mounted my horse,
+and started upon a forced march for Algiers.
+
+I arrived here today. In writing you this letter I feel that I am
+making a fool of myself.
+
+There is no David Innes.
+
+There is no Dian the Beautiful.
+
+There is no world within a world.
+
+Pellucidar is but a realm of your imagination—nothing more.
+
+BUT—
+
+The incident of the finding of that buried telegraph instrument upon
+the lonely Sahara is little short of uncanny, in view of your story of
+the adventures of David Innes.
+
+I have called it one of the most remarkable coincidences in modern
+fiction. I called it literature before, but—again pardon my candor—your
+story is not.
+
+And now—why am I writing you?
+
+Heaven knows, unless it is that the persistent clicking of that
+unfathomable enigma out there in the vast silences of the Sahara has so
+wrought upon my nerves that reason refuses longer to function sanely.
+
+I cannot hear it now, yet I know that far away to the south, all alone
+beneath the sands, it is still pounding out its vain, frantic appeal.
+
+It is maddening.
+
+It is your fault—I want you to release me from it.
+
+Cable me at once, at my expense, that there was no basis of fact for
+your story, At the Earth’s Core.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+
+COGDON NESTOR,
+    —— and —— Club,
+        Algiers.
+            June 1st, —.
+
+
+Ten minutes after reading this letter I had cabled Mr. Nestor as
+follows:
+
+Story true. Await me Algiers.
+
+
+As fast as train and boat would carry me, I sped toward my destination.
+For all those dragging days my mind was a whirl of mad conjecture, of
+frantic hope, of numbing fear.
+
+The finding of the telegraph-instrument practically assured me that
+David Innes had driven Perry’s iron mole back through the earth’s crust
+to the buried world of Pellucidar; but what adventures had befallen him
+since his return?
+
+Had he found Dian the Beautiful, his half-savage mate, safe among his
+friends, or had Hooja the Sly One succeeded in his nefarious schemes to
+abduct her?
+
+Did Abner Perry, the lovable old inventor and paleontologist, still
+live?
+
+Had the federated tribes of Pellucidar succeeded in overthrowing the
+mighty Mahars, the dominant race of reptilian monsters, and their
+fierce, gorilla-like soldiery, the savage Sagoths?
+
+I must admit that I was in a state bordering upon nervous prostration
+when I entered the —— and —— Club, in Algiers, and inquired for Mr.
+Nestor. A moment later I was ushered into his presence, to find myself
+clasping hands with the sort of chap that the world holds only too few
+of.
+
+He was a tall, smooth-faced man of about thirty, clean-cut, straight,
+and strong, and weather-tanned to the hue of a desert Arab. I liked him
+immensely from the first, and I hope that after our three months
+together in the desert country—three months not entirely lacking in
+adventure—he found that a man may be a writer of “impossible trash” and
+yet have some redeeming qualities.
+
+The day following my arrival at Algiers we left for the south, Nestor
+having made all arrangements in advance, guessing, as he naturally did,
+that I could be coming to Africa for but a single purpose—to hasten at
+once to the buried telegraph-instrument and wrest its secret from it.
+
+In addition to our native servants, we took along an English
+telegraph-operator named Frank Downes. Nothing of interest enlivened
+our journey by rail and caravan till we came to the cluster of
+date-palms about the ancient well upon the rim of the Sahara.
+
+It was the very spot at which I first had seen David Innes. If he had
+ever raised a cairn above the telegraph instrument no sign of it
+remained now. Had it not been for the chance that caused Cogdon Nestor
+to throw down his sleeping rug directly over the hidden instrument, it
+might still be clicking there unheard—and this story still unwritten.
+
+When we reached the spot and unearthed the little box the instrument
+was quiet, nor did repeated attempts upon the part of our telegrapher
+succeed in winning a response from the other end of the line. After
+several days of futile endeavor to raise Pellucidar, we had begun to
+despair. I was as positive that the other end of that little cable
+protruded through the surface of the inner world as I am that I sit
+here today in my study—when about midnight of the fourth day I was
+awakened by the sound of the instrument.
+
+Leaping to my feet I grasped Downes roughly by the neck and dragged him
+out of his blankets. He didn’t need to be told what caused my
+excitement, for the instant he was awake he, too, heard the long-hoped
+for click, and with a whoop of delight pounced upon the instrument.
+
+Nestor was on his feet almost as soon as I. The three of us huddled
+about that little box as if our lives depended upon the message it had
+for us.
+
+Downes interrupted the clicking with his sending-key. The noise of the
+receiver stopped instantly.
+
+“Ask who it is, Downes,” I directed.
+
+He did so, and while we awaited the Englishman’s translation of the
+reply, I doubt if either Nestor or I breathed.
+
+“He says he’s David Innes,” said Downes. “He wants to know who we are.”
+
+“Tell him,” said I; “and that we want to know how he is—and all that
+has befallen him since I last saw him.”
+
+For two months I talked with David Innes almost every day, and as
+Downes translated, either Nestor or I took notes. From these, arranged
+in chronological order, I have set down the following account of the
+further adventures of David Innes at the earth’s core, practically in
+his own words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+LOST ON PELLUCIDAR
+
+
+The Arabs, of whom I wrote you at the end of my last letter (Innes
+began), and whom I thought to be enemies intent only upon murdering me,
+proved to be exceedingly friendly—they were searching for the very band
+of marauders that had threatened my existence. The huge
+rhamphorhynchus-like reptile that I had brought back with me from the
+inner world—the ugly Mahar that Hooja the Sly One had substituted for
+my dear Dian at the moment of my departure—filled them with wonder and
+with awe.
+
+Nor less so did the mighty subterranean prospector which had carried me
+to Pellucidar and back again, and which lay out in the desert about two
+miles from my camp.
+
+With their help I managed to get the unwieldy tons of its great bulk
+into a vertical position—the nose deep in a hole we had dug in the sand
+and the rest of it supported by the trunks of date-palms cut for the
+purpose.
+
+It was a mighty engineering job with only wild Arabs and their wilder
+mounts to do the work of an electric crane—but finally it was
+completed, and I was ready for departure.
+
+For some time I hesitated to take the Mahar back with me. She had been
+docile and quiet ever since she had discovered herself virtually a
+prisoner aboard the “iron mole.” It had been, of course, impossible for
+me to communicate with her since she had no auditory organs and I no
+knowledge of her fourth-dimension, sixth-sense method of communication.
+
+Naturally I am kind-hearted, and so I found it beyond me to leave even
+this hateful and repulsive thing alone in a strange and hostile world.
+The result was that when I entered the iron mole I took her with me.
+
+That she knew that we were about to return to Pellucidar was evident,
+for immediately her manner changed from that of habitual gloom that had
+pervaded her, to an almost human expression of contentment and delight.
+
+Our trip through the earth’s crust was but a repetition of my two
+former journeys between the inner and the outer worlds. This time,
+however, I imagine that we must have maintained a more nearly
+perpendicular course, for we accomplished the journey in a few minutes’
+less time than upon the occasion of my first journey through the
+five-hundred-mile crust. Just a trifle less than seventy-two hours
+after our departure into the sands of the Sahara, we broke through the
+surface of Pellucidar.
+
+Fortune once again favored me by the slightest of margins, for when I
+opened the door in the prospector’s outer jacket I saw that we had
+missed coming up through the bottom of an ocean by but a few hundred
+yards.
+
+The aspect of the surrounding country was entirely unfamiliar to me—I
+had no conception of precisely where I was upon the one hundred and
+twenty-four million square miles of Pellucidar’s vast land surface.
+
+The perpetual midday sun poured down its torrid rays from zenith, as it
+had done since the beginning of Pellucidarian time—as it would continue
+to do to the end of it. Before me, across the wide sea, the weird,
+horizonless seascape folded gently upward to meet the sky until it lost
+itself to view in the azure depths of distance far above the level of
+my eyes.
+
+How strange it looked! How vastly different from the flat and puny area
+of the circumscribed vision of the dweller upon the outer crust!
+
+I was lost. Though I wandered ceaselessly throughout a lifetime, I
+might never discover the whereabouts of my former friends of this
+strange and savage world. Never again might I see dear old Perry, nor
+Ghak the Hairy One, nor Dacor the Strong One, nor that other infinitely
+precious one—my sweet and noble mate, Dian the Beautiful!
+
+But even so I was glad to tread once more the surface of Pellucidar.
+Mysterious and terrible, grotesque and savage though she is in many of
+her aspects, I can not but love her. Her very savagery appealed to me,
+for it is the savagery of unspoiled Nature.
+
+The magnificence of her tropic beauties enthralled me. Her mighty land
+areas breathed unfettered freedom.
+
+Her untracked oceans, whispering of virgin wonders unsullied by the eye
+of man, beckoned me out upon their restless bosoms.
+
+Not for an instant did I regret the world of my nativity. I was in
+Pellucidar. I was home. And I was content.
+
+As I stood dreaming beside the giant thing that had brought me safely
+through the earth’s crust, my traveling companion, the hideous Mahar,
+emerged from the interior of the prospector and stood beside me. For a
+long time she remained motionless.
+
+What thoughts were passing through the convolutions of her reptilian
+brain?
+
+I do not know.
+
+She was a member of the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak
+of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in that
+world of anomalies.
+
+To her, creatures such as I were of a lower order. As Perry had
+discovered among the writings of her kind in the buried city of Phutra,
+it was still an open question among the Mahars as to whether man
+possessed means of intelligent communication or the power of reason.
+
+Her kind believed that in the center of all-pervading solidity there
+was a single, vast, spherical cavity, which was Pellucidar. This cavity
+had been left there for the sole purpose of providing a place for the
+creation and propagation of the Mahar race. Everything within it had
+been put there for the uses of the Mahar.
+
+I wondered what this particular Mahar might think now. I found pleasure
+in speculating upon just what the effect had been upon her of passing
+through the earth’s crust, and coming out into a world that one of even
+less intelligence than the great Mahars could easily see was a
+different world from her own Pellucidar.
+
+What had she thought of the outer world’s tiny sun?
+
+What had been the effect upon her of the moon and myriad stars of the
+clear African nights?
+
+How had she explained them?
+
+With what sensations of awe must she first have watched the sun moving
+slowly across the heavens to disappear at last beneath the western
+horizon, leaving in his wake that which the Mahar had never before
+witnessed—the darkness of night? For upon Pellucidar there is no night.
+The stationary sun hangs forever in the center of the Pellucidarian
+sky—directly overhead.
+
+Then, too, she must have been impressed by the wondrous mechanism of
+the prospector which had bored its way from world to world and back
+again. And that it had been driven by a rational being must also have
+occurred to her.
+
+Too, she had seen me conversing with other men upon the earth’s
+surface. She had seen the arrival of the caravan of books and arms, and
+ammunition, and the balance of the heterogeneous collection which I had
+crammed into the cabin of the iron mole for transportation to
+Pellucidar.
+
+She had seen all these evidences of a civilization and brain-power
+transcending in scientific achievement anything that her race had
+produced; nor once had she seen a creature of her own kind.
+
+There could have been but a single deduction in the mind of the
+Mahar—there were other worlds than Pellucidar, and the gilak was a
+rational being.
+
+Now the creature at my side was creeping slowly toward the near-by sea.
+At my hip hung a long-barreled six-shooter—somehow I had been unable to
+find the same sensation of security in the newfangled automatics that
+had been perfected since my first departure from the outer world—and in
+my hand was a heavy express rifle.
+
+I could have shot the Mahar with ease, for I knew intuitively that she
+was escaping—but I did not.
+
+I felt that if she could return to her own kind with the story of her
+adventures, the position of the human race within Pellucidar would be
+advanced immensely at a single stride, for at once man would take his
+proper place in the considerations of the reptilia.
+
+At the edge of the sea the creature paused and looked back at me. Then
+she slid sinuously into the surf.
+
+For several minutes I saw no more of her as she luxuriated in the cool
+depths.
+
+Then a hundred yards from shore she rose and there for another short
+while she floated upon the surface.
+
+Finally she spread her giant wings, flapped them vigorously a score of
+times and rose above the blue sea. A single time she circled far
+aloft—and then straight as an arrow she sped away.
+
+I watched her until the distant haze enveloped her and she had
+disappeared. I was alone.
+
+My first concern was to discover where within Pellucidar I might be—and
+in what direction lay the land of the Sarians where Ghak the Hairy One
+ruled.
+
+But how was I to guess in which direction lay Sari?
+
+And if I set out to search—what then?
+
+Could I find my way back to the prospector with its priceless freight
+of books, firearms, ammunition, scientific instruments, and still more
+books—its great library of reference works upon every conceivable
+branch of applied sciences?
+
+And if I could not, of what value was all this vast storehouse of
+potential civilization and progress to be to the world of my adoption?
+
+Upon the other hand, if I remained here alone with it, what could I
+accomplish single-handed?
+
+Nothing.
+
+But where there was no east, no west, no north, no south, no stars, no
+moon, and only a stationary midday sun, how was I to find my way back
+to this spot should ever I get out of sight of it?
+
+I didn’t know.
+
+For a long time I stood buried in deep thought, when it occurred to me
+to try out one of the compasses I had brought and ascertain if it
+remained steadily fixed upon an unvarying pole. I reentered the
+prospector and fetched a compass without.
+
+Moving a considerable distance from the prospector that the needle
+might not be influenced by its great bulk of iron and steel I turned
+the delicate instrument about in every direction.
+
+Always and steadily the needle remained rigidly fixed upon a point
+straight out to sea, apparently pointing toward a large island some ten
+or twenty miles distant. This then should be north.
+
+I drew my note-book from my pocket and made a careful topographical
+sketch of the locality within the range of my vision. Due north lay the
+island, far out upon the shimmering sea.
+
+The spot I had chosen for my observations was the top of a large, flat
+boulder which rose six or eight feet above the turf. This spot I called
+Greenwich. The boulder was the “Royal Observatory.”
+
+I had made a start! I cannot tell you what a sense of relief was
+imparted to me by the simple fact that there was at least one spot
+within Pellucidar with a familiar name and a place upon a map.
+
+It was with almost childish joy that I made a little circle in my
+note-book and traced the word Greenwich beside it.
+
+Now I felt I might start out upon my search with some assurance of
+finding my way back again to the prospector.
+
+I decided that at first I would travel directly south in the hope that
+I might in that direction find some familiar landmark. It was as good a
+direction as any. This much at least might be said of it.
+
+Among the many other things I had brought from the outer world were a
+number of pedometers. I slipped three of these into my pockets with the
+idea that I might arrive at a more or less accurate mean from the
+registrations of them all.
+
+On my map I would register so many paces south, so many east, so many
+west, and so on. When I was ready to return I would then do so by any
+route that I might choose.
+
+I also strapped a considerable quantity of ammunition across my
+shoulders, pocketed some matches, and hooked an aluminum fry-pan and a
+small stew-kettle of the same metal to my belt.
+
+I was ready—ready to go forth and explore a world!
+
+Ready to search a land area of 124,110,000 square miles for my friends,
+my incomparable mate, and good old Perry!
+
+And so, after locking the door in the outer shell of the prospector, I
+set out upon my quest. Due south I traveled, across lovely valleys
+thick-dotted with grazing herds.
+
+Through dense primeval forests I forced my way and up the slopes of
+mighty mountains searching for a pass to their farther sides.
+
+Ibex and musk-sheep fell before my good old revolver, so that I lacked
+not for food in the higher altitudes. The forests and the plains gave
+plentifully of fruits and wild birds, antelope, aurochsen, and elk.
+
+Occasionally, for the larger game animals and the gigantic beasts of
+prey, I used my express rifle, but for the most part the revolver
+filled all my needs.
+
+There were times, too, when faced by a mighty cave bear, a
+saber-toothed tiger, or huge felis spelaea, black-maned and terrible,
+even my powerful rifle seemed pitifully inadequate—but fortune favored
+me so that I passed unscathed through adventures that even the
+recollection of causes the short hairs to bristle at the nape of my
+neck.
+
+How long I wandered toward the south I do not know, for shortly after I
+left the prospector something went wrong with my watch, and I was again
+at the mercy of the baffling timelessness of Pellucidar, forging
+steadily ahead beneath the great, motionless sun which hangs eternally
+at noon.
+
+I ate many times, however, so that days must have elapsed, possibly
+months with no familiar landscape rewarding my eager eyes.
+
+I saw no men nor signs of men. Nor is this strange, for Pellucidar, in
+its land area, is immense, while the human race there is very young and
+consequently far from numerous.
+
+Doubtless upon that long search mine was the first human foot to touch
+the soil in many places—mine the first human eye to rest upon the
+gorgeous wonders of the landscape.
+
+It was a staggering thought. I could not but dwell upon it often as I
+made my lonely way through this virgin world. Then, quite suddenly, one
+day I stepped out of the peace of manless primality into the presence
+of man—and peace was gone.
+
+It happened thus:
+
+I had been following a ravine downward out of a chain of lofty hills
+and had paused at its mouth to view the lovely little valley that lay
+before me. At one side was tangled wood, while straight ahead a river
+wound peacefully along parallel to the cliffs in which the hills
+terminated at the valley’s edge.
+
+Presently, as I stood enjoying the lovely scene, as insatiate for
+Nature’s wonders as if I had not looked upon similar landscapes
+countless times, a sound of shouting broke from the direction of the
+woods. That the harsh, discordant notes rose from the throats of men I
+could not doubt.
+
+I slipped behind a large boulder near the mouth of the ravine and
+waited. I could hear the crashing of underbrush in the forest, and I
+guessed that whoever came came quickly—pursued and pursuers, doubtless.
+
+In a short time some hunted animal would break into view, and a moment
+later a score of half-naked savages would come leaping after with
+spears or club or great stone-knives.
+
+I had seen the thing so many times during my life within Pellucidar
+that I felt that I could anticipate to a nicety precisely what I was
+about to witness. I hoped that the hunters would prove friendly and be
+able to direct me toward Sari.
+
+Even as I was thinking these thoughts the quarry emerged from the
+forest. But it was no terrified four-footed beast. Instead, what I saw
+was an old man—a terrified old man!
+
+Staggering feebly and hopelessly from what must have been some very
+terrible fate, if one could judge from the horrified expressions he
+continually cast behind him toward the wood, he came stumbling on in my
+direction.
+
+He had covered but a short distance from the forest when I beheld the
+first of his pursuers—a Sagoth, one of those grim and terrible
+gorilla-men who guard the mighty Mahars in their buried cities, faring
+forth from time to time upon slave-raiding or punitive expeditions
+against the human race of Pellucidar, of whom the dominant race of the
+inner world think as we think of the bison or the wild sheep of our own
+world.
+
+Close behind the foremost Sagoth came others until a full dozen raced,
+shouting after the terror-stricken old man. They would be upon him
+shortly, that was plain.
+
+One of them was rapidly overhauling him, his back-thrown spear-arm
+testifying to his purpose.
+
+And then, quite with the suddenness of an unexpected blow, I realized a
+past familiarity with the gait and carriage of the fugitive.
+
+Simultaneously there swept over me the staggering fact that the old man
+was—PERRY! That he was about to die before my very eyes with no hope
+that I could reach him in time to avert the awful catastrophe—for to me
+it meant a real catastrophe!
+
+Perry was my best friend.
+
+Dian, of course, I looked upon as more than friend. She was my mate—a
+part of me.
+
+I had entirely forgotten the rifle in my hand and the revolvers at my
+belt; one does not readily synchronize his thoughts with the stone age
+and the twentieth century simultaneously.
+
+Now from past habit I still thought in the stone age, and in my
+thoughts of the stone age there were no thoughts of firearms.
+
+The fellow was almost upon Perry when the feel of the gun in my hand
+awoke me from the lethargy of terror that had gripped me. From behind
+my boulder I threw up the heavy express rifle—a mighty engine of
+destruction that might bring down a cave bear or a mammoth at a single
+shot—and let drive at the Sagoth’s broad, hairy breast.
+
+At the sound of the shot he stopped stock-still. His spear dropped from
+his hand.
+
+Then he lunged forward upon his face.
+
+The effect upon the others was little less remarkable. Perry alone
+could have possibly guessed the meaning of the loud report or explained
+its connection with the sudden collapse of the Sagoth. The other
+gorilla-men halted for but an instant. Then with renewed shrieks of
+rage they sprang forward to finish Perry.
+
+At the same time I stepped from behind my boulder, drawing one of my
+revolvers that I might conserve the more precious ammunition of the
+express rifle. Quickly I fired again with the lesser weapon.
+
+Then it was that all eyes were directed toward me. Another Sagoth fell
+to the bullet from the revolver; but it did not stop his companions.
+They were out for revenge as well as blood now, and they meant to have
+both.
+
+As I ran forward toward Perry I fired four more shots, dropping three
+of our antagonists. Then at last the remaining seven wavered. It was
+too much for them, this roaring death that leaped, invisible, upon them
+from a great distance.
+
+As they hesitated I reached Perry’s side. I have never seen such an
+expression upon any man’s face as that upon Perry’s when he recognized
+me. I have no words wherewith to describe it. There was not time to
+talk then—scarce for a greeting. I thrust the full, loaded revolver
+into his hand, fired the last shot in my own, and reloaded. There were
+but six Sagoths left then.
+
+They started toward us once more, though I could see that they were
+terrified probably as much by the noise of the guns as by their
+effects. They never reached us. Half-way the three that remained turned
+and fled, and we let them go.
+
+The last we saw of them they were disappearing into the tangled
+undergrowth of the forest. And then Perry turned and threw his arms
+about my neck and, burying his old face upon my shoulder, wept like a
+child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+TRAVELING WITH TERROR
+
+
+We made camp there beside the peaceful river. There Perry told me all
+that had befallen him since I had departed for the outer crust.
+
+It seemed that Hooja had made it appear that I had intentionally left
+Dian behind, and that I did not purpose ever returning to Pellucidar.
+He told them that I was of another world and that I had tired of this
+and of its inhabitants.
+
+To Dian he had explained that I had a mate in the world to which I was
+returning; that I had never intended taking Dian the Beautiful back
+with me; and that she had seen the last of me.
+
+Shortly afterward Dian had disappeared from the camp, nor had Perry
+seen or heard aught of her since.
+
+He had no conception of the time that had elapsed since I had departed,
+but guessed that many years had dragged their slow way into the past.
+
+Hooja, too, had disappeared very soon after Dian had left. The Sarians,
+under Ghak the Hairy One, and the Amozites under Dacor the Strong One,
+Dian’s brother, had fallen out over my supposed defection, for Ghak
+would not believe that I had thus treacherously deceived and deserted
+them.
+
+The result had been that these two powerful tribes had fallen upon one
+another with the new weapons that Perry and I had taught them to make
+and to use. Other tribes of the new federation took sides with the
+original disputants or set up petty revolutions of their own.
+
+The result was the total demolition of the work we had so well started.
+
+Taking advantage of the tribal war, the Mahars had gathered their
+Sagoths in force and fallen upon one tribe after another in rapid
+succession, wreaking awful havoc among them and reducing them for the
+most part to as pitiable a state of terror as that from which we had
+raised them.
+
+Alone of all the once-mighty federation the Sarians and the Amozites
+with a few other tribes continued to maintain their defiance of the
+Mahars; but these tribes were still divided among themselves, nor had
+it seemed at all probable to Perry when he had last been among them
+that any attempt at re-amalgamation would be made.
+
+“And thus, your majesty,” he concluded, “has faded back into the
+oblivion of the Stone Age our wondrous dream and with it has gone the
+First Empire of Pellucidar.”
+
+We both had to smile at the use of my royal title, yet I was indeed
+still “Emperor of Pellucidar,” and some day I meant to rebuild what the
+vile act of the treacherous Hooja had torn down.
+
+But first I would find my empress. To me she was worth forty empires.
+
+“Have you no clue as to the whereabouts of Dian?” I asked.
+
+“None whatever,” replied Perry. “It was in search of her that I came to
+the pretty pass in which you discovered me, and from which, David, you
+saved me.
+
+“I knew perfectly well that you had not intentionally deserted either
+Dian or Pellucidar. I guessed that in some way Hooja the Sly One was at
+the bottom of the matter, and I determined to go to Amoz, where I
+guessed that Dian might come to the protection of her brother, and do
+my utmost to convince her, and through her Dacor the Strong One, that
+we had all been victims of a treacherous plot to which you were no
+party.
+
+“I came to Amoz after a most trying and terrible journey, only to find
+that Dian was not among her brother’s people and that they knew naught
+of her whereabouts.
+
+“Dacor, I am sure, wanted to be fair and just, but so great were his
+grief and anger over the disappearance of his sister that he could not
+listen to reason, but kept repeating time and again that only your
+return to Pellucidar could prove the honesty of your intentions.
+
+“Then came a stranger from another tribe, sent I am sure at the
+instigation of Hooja. He so turned the Amozites against me that I was
+forced to flee their country to escape assassination.
+
+“In attempting to return to Sari I became lost, and then the Sagoths
+discovered me. For a long time I eluded them, hiding in caves and
+wading in rivers to throw them off my trail.
+
+“I lived on nuts and fruits and the edible roots that chance threw in
+my way.
+
+“I traveled on and on, in what directions I could not even guess; and
+at last I could elude them no longer and the end came as I had long
+foreseen that it would come, except that I had not foreseen that you
+would be there to save me.”
+
+We rested in our camp until Perry had regained sufficient strength to
+travel again. We planned much, rebuilding all our shattered
+air-castles; but above all we planned most to find Dian.
+
+I could not believe that she was dead, yet where she might be in this
+savage world, and under what frightful conditions she might be living,
+I could not guess.
+
+When Perry was rested we returned to the prospector, where he fitted
+himself out fully like a civilized human being—under-clothing, socks,
+shoes, khaki jacket and breeches and good, substantial puttees.
+
+When I had come upon him he was clothed in rough sadak sandals, a
+gee-string and a tunic fashioned from the shaggy hide of a thag. Now he
+wore real clothing again for the first time since the ape-folk had
+stripped us of our apparel that long-gone day that had witnessed our
+advent within Pellucidar.
+
+With a bandoleer of cartridges across his shoulder, two six-shooters at
+his hips, and a rifle in his hand he was a much rejuvenated Perry.
+
+Indeed he was quite a different person altogether from the rather shaky
+old man who had entered the prospector with me ten or eleven years
+before, for the trial trip that had plunged us into such wondrous
+adventures and into such a strange and hitherto undreamed-of-world.
+
+Now he was straight and active. His muscles, almost atrophied from
+disuse in his former life, had filled out.
+
+He was still an old man of course, but instead of appearing ten years
+older than he really was, as he had when we left the outer world, he
+now appeared about ten years younger. The wild, free life of Pellucidar
+had worked wonders for him.
+
+Well, it must need have done so or killed him, for a man of Perry’s
+former physical condition could not long have survived the dangers and
+rigors of the primitive life of the inner world.
+
+Perry had been greatly interested in my map and in the “royal
+observatory” at Greenwich. By use of the pedometers we had retraced our
+way to the prospector with ease and accuracy.
+
+Now that we were ready to set out again we decided to follow a
+different route on the chance that it might lead us into more familiar
+territory.
+
+I shall not weary you with a repetition of the countless adventures of
+our long search. Encounters with wild beasts of gigantic size were of
+almost daily occurrence; but with our deadly express rifles we ran
+comparatively little risk when one recalls that previously we had both
+traversed this world of frightful dangers inadequately armed with
+crude, primitive weapons and all but naked.
+
+We ate and slept many times—so many that we lost count—and so I do not
+know how long we roamed, though our map shows the distances and
+directions quite accurately. We must have covered a great many thousand
+square miles of territory, and yet we had seen nothing in the way of a
+familiar landmark, when from the heights of a mountain-range we were
+crossing I descried far in the distance great masses of billowing
+clouds.
+
+Now clouds are practically unknown in the skies of Pellucidar. The
+moment that my eyes rested upon them my heart leaped. I seized Perry’s
+arm and, pointing toward the horizonless distance, shouted:
+
+“The Mountains of the Clouds!”
+
+“They lie close to Phutra, and the country of our worst enemies, the
+Mahars,” Perry remonstrated.
+
+“I know it,” I replied, “but they give us a starting-point from which
+to prosecute our search intelligently. They are at least a familiar
+landmark.
+
+“They tell us that we are upon the right trail and not wandering far in
+the wrong direction.
+
+“Furthermore, close to the Mountains of the Clouds dwells a good
+friend, Ja the Mezop. You did not know him, but you know all that he
+did for me and all that he will gladly do to aid me.
+
+“At least he can direct us upon the right direction toward Sari.”
+
+“The Mountains of the Clouds constitute a mighty range,” replied Perry.
+“They must cover an enormous territory. How are you to find your friend
+in all the great country that is visible from their rugged flanks?”
+
+“Easily,” I answered him, “for Ja gave me minute directions. I recall
+almost his exact words:
+
+“‘You need merely come to the foot of the highest peak of the Mountains
+of the Clouds. There you will find a river that 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.’”
+
+And so we hastened onward toward the great cloud-mass that was to be
+our guide for several weary marches. At last we came close to the
+towering crags, Alp-like in their grandeur.
+
+Rising nobly among its noble fellows, one stupendous peak reared its
+giant head thousands of feet above the others. It was he whom we
+sought; but at its foot no river wound down toward any sea.
+
+“It must rise from the opposite side,” suggested Perry, casting a
+rueful glance at the forbidding heights that barred our further
+progress. “We cannot endure the arctic cold of those high flung passes,
+and to traverse the endless miles about this interminable range might
+require a year or more. The land we seek must lie upon the opposite
+side of the mountains.”
+
+“Then we must cross them,” I insisted.
+
+Perry shrugged.
+
+“We can’t do it, David,” he repeated. “We are dressed for the tropics.
+We should freeze to death among the snows and glaciers long before we
+had discovered a pass to the opposite side.”
+
+“We must cross them,” I reiterated. “We will cross them.”
+
+I had a plan, and that plan we carried out. It took some time.
+
+First we made a permanent camp part way up the slopes where there was
+good water. Then we set out in search of the great, shaggy cave bear of
+the higher altitudes.
+
+He is a mighty animal—a terrible animal. He is but little larger than
+his cousin of the lesser, lower hills; but he makes up for it in the
+awfulness of his ferocity and in the length and thickness of his shaggy
+coat. It was his coat that we were after.
+
+We came upon him quite unexpectedly. I was trudging in advance along a
+rocky trail worn smooth by the padded feet of countless ages of wild
+beasts. At a shoulder of the mountain around which the path ran I came
+face to face with the Titan.
+
+I was going up for a fur coat. He was coming down for breakfast. Each
+realized that here was the very thing he sought.
+
+With a horrid roar the beast charged me.
+
+At my right the cliff rose straight upward for thousands of feet.
+
+At my left it dropped into a dim, abysmal cañon.
+
+In front of me was the bear.
+
+Behind me was Perry.
+
+I shouted to him in warning, and then I raised my rifle and fired into
+the broad breast of the creature. There was no time to take aim; the
+thing was too close upon me.
+
+But that my bullet took effect was evident from the howl of rage and
+pain that broke from the frothing jowls. It didn’t stop him, though.
+
+I fired again, and then he was upon me. Down I went beneath his ton of
+maddened, clawing flesh and bone and sinew.
+
+I thought my time had come. I remember feeling sorry for poor old
+Perry, left all alone in this inhospitable, savage world.
+
+And then of a sudden I realized that the bear was gone and that I was
+quite unharmed. I leaped to my feet, my rifle still clutched in my
+hand, and looked about for my antagonist.
+
+I thought that I should find him farther down the trail, probably
+finishing Perry, and so I leaped in the direction I supposed him to be,
+to find Perry perched upon a projecting rock several feet above the
+trail. My cry of warning had given him time to reach this point of
+safety.
+
+There he squatted, his eyes wide and his mouth ajar, the picture of
+abject terror and consternation.
+
+“Where is he?” he cried when he saw me. “Where is he?”
+
+“Didn’t he come this way?” I asked.
+
+“Nothing came this way,” replied the old man. “But I heard his roars—he
+must have been as large as an elephant.”
+
+“He was,” I admitted; “but where in the world do you suppose he
+disappeared to?”
+
+Then came a possible explanation to my mind. I returned to the point at
+which the bear had hurled me down and peered over the edge of the cliff
+into the abyss below.
+
+Far, far down I saw a small brown blotch near the bottom of the canon.
+It was the bear.
+
+My second shot must have killed him, and so his dead body, after
+hurling me to the path, had toppled over into the abyss. I shivered at
+the thought of how close I, too, must have been to going over with him.
+
+It took us a long time to reach the carcass, and arduous labor to
+remove the great pelt. But at last the thing was accomplished, and we
+returned to camp dragging the heavy trophy behind us.
+
+Here we devoted another considerable period to scraping and curing it.
+When this was done to our satisfaction we made heavy boots, trousers,
+and coats of the shaggy skin, turning the fur in.
+
+From the scraps we fashioned caps that came down around our ears, with
+flaps that fell about our shoulders and breasts. We were now fairly
+well equipped for our search for a pass to the opposite side of the
+Mountains of the Clouds.
+
+Our first step now was to move our camp upward to the very edge of the
+perpetual snows which cap this lofty range. Here we built a snug,
+secure little hut, which we provisioned and stored with fuel for its
+diminutive fireplace.
+
+With our hut as a base we sallied forth in search of a pass across the
+range.
+
+Our every move was carefully noted upon our maps which we now kept in
+duplicate. By this means we were saved tedious and unnecessary
+retracing of ways already explored.
+
+Systematically we worked upward in both directions from our base, and
+when we had at last discovered what seemed might prove a feasible pass
+we moved our belongings to a new hut farther up.
+
+It was hard work—cold, bitter, cruel work. Not a step did we take in
+advance but the grim reaper strode silently in our tracks.
+
+There were the great cave bears in the timber, and gaunt, lean
+wolves—huge creatures twice the size of our Canadian timber-wolves.
+Farther up we were assailed by enormous white bears—hungry, devilish
+fellows, who came roaring across the rough glacier tops at the first
+glimpse of us, or stalked us stealthily by scent when they had not yet
+seen us.
+
+It is one of the peculiarities of life within Pellucidar that man is
+more often the hunted than the hunter. Myriad are the huge-bellied
+carnivora of this primitive world. Never, from birth to death, are
+those great bellies sufficiently filled, so always are their mighty
+owners prowling about in search of meat.
+
+Terribly armed for battle as they are, man presents to them in his
+primal state an easy prey, slow of foot, puny of strength, ill-equipped
+by nature with natural weapons of defense.
+
+The bears looked upon us as easy meat. Only our heavy rifles saved us
+from prompt extinction. Poor Perry never was a raging lion at heart,
+and I am convinced that the terrors of that awful period must have
+caused him poignant mental anguish.
+
+When we were abroad pushing our trail farther and farther toward the
+distant break which, we assumed, marked a feasible way across the
+range, we never knew at what second some great engine of clawed and
+fanged destruction might rush upon us from behind, or lie in wait for
+us beyond an ice-hummock or a jutting shoulder of the craggy steeps.
+
+The roar of our rifles was constantly shattering the world-old silence
+of stupendous canons upon which the eye of man had never before gazed.
+And when in the comparative safety of our hut we lay down to sleep the
+great beasts roared and fought without the walls, clawed and battered
+at the door, or rushed their colossal frames headlong against the hut’s
+sides until it rocked and trembled to the impact.
+
+Yes, it was a gay life.
+
+Perry had got to taking stock of our ammunition each time we returned
+to the hut. It became something of an obsession with him.
+
+He’d count our cartridges one by one and then try to figure how long it
+would be before the last was expended and we must either remain in the
+hut until we starved to death or venture forth, empty, to fill the
+belly of some hungry bear.
+
+I must admit that I, too, felt worried, for our progress was indeed
+snail-like, and our ammunition could not last forever. In discussing
+the problem, finally we came to the decision to burn our bridges behind
+us and make one last supreme effort to cross the divide.
+
+It would mean that we must go without sleep for a long period, and with
+the further chance that when the time came that sleep could no longer
+be denied we might still be high in the frozen regions of perpetual
+snow and ice, where sleep would mean certain death, exposed as we would
+be to the attacks of wild beasts and without shelter from the hideous
+cold.
+
+But we decided that we must take these chances and so at last we set
+forth from our hut for the last time, carrying such necessities as we
+felt we could least afford to do without. The bears seemed unusually
+troublesome and determined that time, and as we clambered slowly upward
+beyond the highest point to which we had previously attained, the cold
+became infinitely more intense.
+
+Presently, with two great bears dogging our footsteps we entered a
+dense fog.
+
+We had reached the heights that are so often cloud-wrapped for long
+periods. We could see nothing a few paces beyond our noses.
+
+We dared not turn back into the teeth of the bears which we could hear
+grunting behind us. To meet them in this bewildering fog would have
+been to court instant death.
+
+Perry was almost overcome by the hopelessness of our situation. He
+flopped down on his knees and began to pray.
+
+It was the first time I had heard him at his old habit since my return
+to Pellucidar, and I had thought that he had given up his little
+idiosyncrasy; but he hadn’t. Far from it.
+
+I let him pray for a short time undisturbed, and then as I was about to
+suggest that we had better be pushing along one of the bears in our
+rear let out a roar that made the earth fairly tremble beneath our
+feet.
+
+It brought Perry to his feet as if he had been stung by a wasp, and
+sent him racing ahead through the blinding fog at a gait that I knew
+must soon end in disaster were it not checked.
+
+Crevasses in the glacier-ice were far too frequent to permit of
+reckless speed even in a clear atmosphere, and then there were hideous
+precipices along the edges of which our way often led us. I shivered as
+I thought of the poor old fellow’s peril.
+
+At the top of my lungs I called to him to stop, but he did not answer
+me. And then I hurried on in the direction he had gone, faster by far
+than safety dictated.
+
+For a while I thought I heard him ahead of me, but at last, though I
+paused often to listen and to call to him, I heard nothing more, not
+even the grunting of the bears that had been behind us. All was deathly
+silence—the silence of the tomb. About me lay the thick, impenetrable
+fog.
+
+I was alone. Perry was gone—gone forever, I had not the slightest
+doubt.
+
+Somewhere near by lay the mouth of a treacherous fissure, and far down
+at its icy bottom lay all that was mortal of my old friend, Abner
+Perry. There would his body be preserved in its icy sepulcher for
+countless ages, until on some far distant day the slow-moving river of
+ice had wound its snail-like way down to the warmer level, there to
+disgorge its grisly evidence of grim tragedy, and what in that far
+future age, might mean baffling mystery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+SHOOTING THE CHUTES—AND AFTER
+
+
+Through the fog I felt my way along by means of my compass. I no longer
+heard the bears, nor did I encounter one within the fog.
+
+Experience has since taught me that these great beasts are as
+terror-stricken by this phenomenon as a landsman by a fog at sea, and
+that no sooner does a fog envelop them than they make the best of their
+way to lower levels and a clear atmosphere. It was well for me that
+this was true.
+
+I felt very sad and lonely as I crawled along the difficult footing. My
+own predicament weighed less heavily upon me than the loss of Perry,
+for I loved the old fellow.
+
+That I should ever win the opposite slopes of the range I began to
+doubt, for though I am naturally sanguine, I imagine that the
+bereavement which had befallen me had cast such a gloom over my spirits
+that I could see no slightest ray of hope for the future.
+
+Then, too, the blighting, gray oblivion of the cold, damp clouds
+through which I wandered was distressing. Hope thrives best in
+sunlight, and I am sure that it does not thrive at all in a fog.
+
+But the instinct of self-preservation is stronger than hope. It
+thrives, fortunately, upon nothing. It takes root upon the brink of the
+grave, and blossoms in the jaws of death. Now it flourished bravely
+upon the breast of dead hope, and urged me onward and upward in a stern
+endeavor to justify its existence.
+
+As I advanced the fog became denser. I could see nothing beyond my
+nose. Even the snow and ice I trod were invisible.
+
+I could not see below the breast of my bearskin coat. I seemed to be
+floating in a sea of vapor.
+
+To go forward over a dangerous glacier under such conditions was little
+short of madness; but I could not have stopped going had I known
+positively that death lay two paces before my nose. In the first place,
+it was too cold to stop, and in the second, I should have gone mad but
+for the excitement of the perils that beset each forward step.
+
+For some time the ground had been rougher and steeper, until I had been
+forced to scale a considerable height that had carried me from the
+glacier entirely. I was sure from my compass that I was following the
+right general direction, and so I kept on.
+
+Once more the ground was level. From the wind that blew about me I
+guessed that I must be upon some exposed peak of ridge.
+
+And then quite suddenly I stepped out into space. Wildly I turned and
+clutched at the ground that had slipped from beneath my feet.
+
+Only a smooth, icy surface was there. I found nothing to clutch or stay
+my fall, and a moment later so great was my speed that nothing could
+have stayed me.
+
+As suddenly as I had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did I
+emerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from a
+cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see
+nothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth and
+frozen snow, that rushed past me with express-train velocity.
+
+I must have slid downward thousands of feet before the steep incline
+curved gently on to a broad, smooth, snow-covered plateau. Across this
+I hurtled with slowly diminishing velocity, until at last objects about
+me began to take definite shape.
+
+Far ahead, miles and miles away, I saw a great valley and mighty woods,
+and beyond these a broad expanse of water. In the nearer foreground I
+discerned a small, dark blob of color upon the shimmering whiteness of
+the snow.
+
+“A bear,” thought I, and thanked the instinct that had impelled me to
+cling tenaciously to my rifle during the moments of my awful tumble.
+
+At the rate I was going it would be but a moment before I should be
+quite abreast the thing; nor was it long before I came to a sudden stop
+in soft snow, upon which the sun was shining, not twenty paces from the
+object of my most immediate apprehension.
+
+It was standing upon its hind legs waiting for me. As I scrambled to my
+feet to meet it, I dropped my gun in the snow and doubled up with
+laughter.
+
+It was Perry.
+
+The expression upon his face, combined with the relief I felt at seeing
+him again safe and sound, was too much for my overwrought nerves.
+
+“David!” he cried. “David, my boy! God has been good to an old man. He
+has answered my prayer.”
+
+It seems that Perry in his mad flight had plunged over the brink at
+about the same point as that at which I had stepped over it a short
+time later. Chance had done for us what long periods of rational labor
+had failed to accomplish.
+
+We had crossed the divide. We were upon the side of the Mountains of
+the Clouds that we had for so long been attempting to reach.
+
+We looked about. Below us were green trees and warm jungles. In the
+distance was a great sea.
+
+“The Lural Az,” I said, pointing toward its blue-green surface.
+
+Somehow—the gods alone can explain it—Perry, too, had clung to his
+rifle during his mad descent of the icy slope. For that there was cause
+for great rejoicing.
+
+Neither of us was worse for his experience, so after shaking the snow
+from our clothing, we set off at a great rate down toward the warmth
+and comfort of the forest and the jungle.
+
+The going was easy by comparison with the awful obstacles we had had to
+encounter upon the opposite side of the divide. There were beasts, of
+course, but we came through safely.
+
+Before we halted to eat or rest, we stood beside a little mountain
+brook beneath the wondrous trees of the primeval forest in an
+atmosphere of warmth and comfort. It reminded me of an early June day
+in the Maine woods.
+
+We fell to work with our short axes and cut enough small trees to build
+a rude protection from the fiercer beasts. Then we lay down to sleep.
+
+How long we slept I do not know. Perry says that inasmuch as there is
+no means of measuring time within Pellucidar, there can be no such
+thing as time here, and that we may have slept an outer earthly year,
+or we may have slept but a second.
+
+But this I know. We had stuck the ends of some of the saplings into the
+ground in the building of our shelter, first stripping the leaves and
+branches from them, and when we awoke we found that many of them had
+thrust forth sprouts.
+
+Personally, I think that we slept at least a month; but who may say?
+The sun marked midday when we closed our eyes; it was still in the same
+position when we opened them; nor had it varied a hair’s breadth in the
+interim.
+
+It is most baffling, this question of elapsed time within Pellucidar.
+
+Anyhow, I was famished when we awoke. I think that it was the pangs of
+hunger that awoke me. Ptarmigan and wild boar fell before my revolver
+within a dozen moments of my awakening. Perry soon had a roaring fire
+blazing by the brink of the little stream.
+
+It was a good and delicious meal we made. Though we did not eat the
+entire boar, we made a very large hole in him, while the ptarmigan was
+but a mouthful.
+
+Having satisfied our hunger, we determined to set forth at once in
+search of Anoroc and my old friend, Ja the Mezop. We each thought that
+by following the little stream downward, we should come upon the large
+river which Ja had told me emptied into the Lural Az op-posite his
+island.
+
+We did so; nor were we disappointed, for at last after a pleasant
+journey—and what journey would not be pleasant after the hardships we
+had endured among the peaks of the Mountains of the Clouds—we came upon
+a broad flood that rushed majestically onward in the direction of the
+great sea we had seen from the snowy slopes of the mountains.
+
+For three long marches we followed the left bank of the growing river,
+until at last we saw it roll its mighty volume into the vast waters of
+the sea. Far out across the rippling ocean we descried three islands.
+The one to the left must be Anoroc.
+
+At last we had come close to a solution of our problem—the road to
+Sari.
+
+But how to reach the islands was now the foremost question in our
+minds. We must build a canoe.
+
+Perry is a most resourceful man. He has an axiom which carries the
+thought-kernel that what man has done, man can do, and it doesn’t cut
+any figure with Perry whether a fellow knows how to do it or not.
+
+He set out to make gunpowder once, shortly after our escape from Phutra
+and at the beginning of the confederation of the wild tribes of
+Pellucidar. He said that some one, without any knowledge of the fact
+that such a thing might be concocted, had once stumbled upon it by
+accident, and so he couldn’t see why a fellow who knew all about powder
+except how to make it couldn’t do as well.
+
+He worked mighty hard mixing all sorts of things together, until
+finally he evolved a substance that looked like powder. He had been
+very proud of the stuff, and had gone about the village of the Sarians
+exhibiting it to every one who would listen to him, and explaining what
+its purpose was and what terrific havoc it would work, until finally
+the natives became so terrified at the stuff that they wouldn’t come
+within a rod of Perry and his invention.
+
+Finally, I suggested that we experiment with it and see what it would
+do, so Perry built a fire, after placing the powder at a safe distance,
+and then touched a glowing ember to a minute particle of the deadly
+explosive. It extinguished the ember.
+
+Repeated experiments with it determined me that in searching for a high
+explosive, Perry had stumbled upon a fire-extinguisher that would have
+made his fortune for him back in our own world.
+
+So now he set himself to work to build a scientific canoe. I had
+suggested that we construct a dugout, but Perry convinced me that we
+must build something more in keeping with our positions of supermen in
+this world of the Stone Age.
+
+“We must impress these natives with our superiority,” he explained.
+“You must not forget, David, that you are emperor of Pellucidar. As
+such you may not with dignity approach the shores of a foreign power in
+so crude a vessel as a dugout.”
+
+I pointed out to Perry that it wasn’t much more incongruous for the
+emperor to cruise in a canoe, than it was for the prime minister to
+attempt to build one with his own hands.
+
+He had to smile at that; but in extenuation of his act he assured me
+that it was quite customary for prime ministers to give their personal
+attention to the building of imperial navies; “and this,” he said, “is
+the imperial navy of his Serene Highness, David I, Emperor of the
+Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar.”
+
+I grinned; but Perry was quite serious about it. It had always seemed
+rather more or less of a joke to me that I should be addressed as
+majesty and all the rest of it. Yet my imperial power and dignity had
+been a very real thing during my brief reign.
+
+Twenty tribes had joined the federation, and their chiefs had sworn
+eternal fealty to one another and to me. Among them were many powerful
+though savage nations. Their chiefs we had made kings; their tribal
+lands kingdoms.
+
+We had armed them with bows and arrows and swords, in addition to their
+own more primitive weapons. I had trained them in military discipline
+and in so much of the art of war as I had gleaned from extensive
+reading of the campaigns of Napoleon, Von Moltke, Grant, and the
+ancients.
+
+We had marked out as best we could natural boundaries dividing the
+various kingdoms. We had warned tribes beyond these boundaries that
+they must not trespass, and we had marched against and severely
+punished those who had.
+
+We had met and defeated the Mahars and the Sagoths. In short, we had
+demonstrated our rights to empire, and very rapidly were we being
+recognized and heralded abroad when my departure for the outer world
+and Hooja’s treachery had set us back.
+
+But now I had returned. The work that fate had undone must be done
+again, and though I must need smile at my imperial honors, I none the
+less felt the weight of duty and obligation that rested upon my
+shoulders.
+
+Slowly the imperial navy progressed toward completion. She was a
+wondrous craft, but I had my doubts about her. When I voiced them to
+Perry, he reminded me gently that my people for many generations had
+been mine-owners, not ship-builders, and consequently I couldn’t be
+expected to know much about the matter.
+
+I was minded to inquire into his hereditary fitness to design
+battleships; but inasmuch as I already knew that his father had been a
+minister in a back-woods village far from the coast, I hesitated lest I
+offend the dear old fellow.
+
+He was immensely serious about his work, and I must admit that in so
+far as appearances went he did extremely well with the meager tools and
+assistance at his command. We had only two short axes and our
+hunting-knives; yet with these we hewed trees, split them into planks,
+surfaced and fitted them.
+
+The “navy” was some forty feet in length by ten feet beam. Her sides
+were quite straight and fully ten feet high—“for the purpose,”
+explained Perry, “of adding dignity to her appearance and rendering it
+less easy for an enemy to board her.”
+
+As a matter of fact, I knew that he had had in mind the safety of her
+crew under javelin-fire—the lofty sides made an admirable shelter.
+Inside she reminded me of nothing so much as a floating trench. There
+was also some slight analogy to a huge coffin.
+
+Her prow sloped sharply backward from the water-line—quite like a line
+of battleship. Perry had designed her more for moral effect upon an
+enemy, I think, than for any real harm she might inflict, and so those
+parts which were to show were the most imposing.
+
+Below the water-line she was practically non-existent. She should have
+had considerable draft; but, as the enemy couldn’t have seen it, Perry
+decided to do away with it, and so made her flat-bottomed. It was this
+that caused my doubts about her.
+
+There was another little idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us both
+until she was about ready to launch—there was no method of propulsion.
+Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perry
+suggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it would
+be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe,
+even if we could find or wield poles that would reach to the bottom of
+the ocean.
+
+Finally I suggested that we convert her into a sailing vessel. When
+once the idea took hold Perry was most enthusiastic about it, and
+nothing would do but a four-masted, full-rigged ship.
+
+Again I tried to dissuade him, but he was simply crazy over the
+psychological effect which the appearance of this strange and mighty
+craft would have upon the natives of Pellucidar. So we rigged her with
+thin hides for sails and dried gut for rope.
+
+Neither of us knew much about sailing a full-rigged ship; but that
+didn’t worry me a great deal, for I was confident that we should never
+be called upon to do so, and as the day of launching approached I was
+positive of it.
+
+We had built her upon a low bank of the river close to where it emptied
+into the sea, and just above high tide. Her keel we had laid upon
+several rollers cut from small trees, the ends of the rollers in turn
+resting upon parallel tracks of long saplings. Her stern was toward the
+water.
+
+A few hours before we were ready to launch her she made quite an
+imposing picture, for Perry had insisted upon setting every shred of
+“canvas.” I told him that I didn’t know much about it, but I was sure
+that at launching the hull only should have been completed, everything
+else being completed after she had floated safely.
+
+At the last minute there was some delay while we sought a name for her.
+I wanted her christened the Perry in honor both of her designer and
+that other great naval genius of another world, Captain Oliver Hazard
+Perry, of the United States Navy. But Perry was too modest; he wouldn’t
+hear of it.
+
+We finally decided to establish a system in the naming of the fleet.
+Battle-ships of the first-class should bear the names of kingdoms of
+the federation; armored cruisers the names of kings; cruisers the names
+of cities, and so on down the line. Therefore, we decided to name the
+first battle-ship Sari, after the first of the federated kingdoms.
+
+The launching of the Sari proved easier than I contemplated. Perry
+wanted me to get in and break something over the bow as she floated out
+upon the bosom of the river, but I told him that I should feel safer on
+dry land until I saw which side up the Sari would float.
+
+I could see by the expression of the old man’s face that my words had
+hurt him; but I noticed that he didn’t offer to get in himself, and so
+I felt less contrition than I might otherwise.
+
+When we cut the ropes and removed the blocks that held the Sari in
+place she started for the water with a lunge. Before she hit it she was
+going at a reckless speed, for we had laid our tracks quite down to the
+water, greased them, and at intervals placed rollers all ready to
+receive the ship as she moved forward with stately dignity. But there
+was no dignity in the Sari.
+
+When she touched the surface of the river she must have been going
+twenty or thirty miles an hour. Her momentum carried her well out into
+the stream, until she came to a sudden halt at the end of the long line
+which we had had the foresight to attach to her bow and fasten to a
+large tree upon the bank.
+
+The moment her progress was checked she promptly capsized. Perry was
+overwhelmed. I didn’t upbraid him, nor remind him that I had “told him
+so.”
+
+His grief was so genuine and so apparent that I didn’t have the heart
+to reproach him, even were I inclined to that particular sort of
+meanness.
+
+“Come, come, old man!” I cried. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Give me a
+hand with this rope, and we’ll drag her up as far as we can; and then
+when the tide goes out we’ll try another scheme. I think we can make a
+go of her yet.”
+
+Well, we managed to get her up into shallow water. When the tide
+receded she lay there on her side in the mud, quite a pitiable object
+for the premier battle-ship of a world—“the terror of the seas” was the
+way Perry had occasionally described her.
+
+We had to work fast; but before the tide came in again we had stripped
+her of her sails and masts, righted her, and filled her about a quarter
+full of rock ballast. If she didn’t stick too fast in the mud I was
+sure that she would float this time right side up.
+
+I can tell you that it was with palpitating hearts that we sat upon the
+river-bank and watched that tide come slowly in. The tides of
+Pellucidar don’t amount to much by comparison with our higher tides of
+the outer world, but I knew that it ought to prove ample to float the
+Sari.
+
+Nor was I mistaken. Finally we had the satisfaction of seeing the
+vessel rise out of the mud and float slowly upstream with the tide. As
+the water rose we pulled her in quite close to the bank and clambered
+aboard.
+
+She rested safely now upon an even keel; nor did she leak, for she was
+well calked with fiber and tarry pitch. We rigged up a single short
+mast and light sail, fastened planking down over the ballast to form a
+deck, worked her out into midstream with a couple of sweeps, and
+dropped our primitive stone anchor to await the turn of the tide that
+would bear us out to sea.
+
+While we waited we devoted the time to the construction of an upper
+deck, since the one immediately above the ballast was some seven feet
+from the gunwale. The second deck was four feet above this. In it was a
+large, commodious hatch, leading to the lower deck. The sides of the
+ship rose three feet above the upper deck, forming an excellent
+breastwork, which we loopholed at intervals that we might lie prone and
+fire upon an enemy.
+
+Though we were sailing out upon a peaceful mission in search of my
+friend Ja, we knew that we might meet with people of some other island
+who would prove unfriendly.
+
+At last the tide turned. We weighed anchor. Slowly we drifted down the
+great river toward the sea.
+
+About us swarmed the mighty denizens of the primeval deep—plesiosauri
+and ichthyosauria with all their horrid, slimy cousins whose names were
+as the names of aunts and uncles to Perry, but which I have never been
+able to recall an hour after having heard them.
+
+At last we were safely launched upon the journey to which we had looked
+forward for so long, and the results of which meant so much to me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+FRIENDSHIP AND TREACHERY
+
+
+The Sari proved a most erratic craft. She might have done well enough
+upon a park lagoon if safely anchored, but upon the bosom of a mighty
+ocean she left much to be desired.
+
+Sailing with the wind she did her best; but in quartering or when
+close-hauled she drifted terribly, as a nautical man might have guessed
+she would. We couldn’t keep within miles of our course, and our
+progress was pitifully slow.
+
+Instead of making for the island of Anoroc, we bore far to the right,
+until it became evident that we should have to pass between the two
+right-hand islands and attempt to return toward Anoroc from the
+opposite side.
+
+As we neared the islands Perry was quite overcome by their beauty. When
+we were directly between two of them he fairly went into raptures; nor
+could I blame him.
+
+The tropical luxuriance of the foliage that dripped almost to the
+water’s edge and the vivid colors of the blooms that shot the green
+made a most gorgeous spectacle.
+
+Perry was right in the midst of a flowery panegyric on the wonders of
+the peaceful beauty of the scene when a canoe shot out from the nearest
+island. There were a dozen warriors in it; it was quickly followed by a
+second and third.
+
+Of course we couldn’t know the intentions of the strangers, but we
+could pretty well guess them.
+
+Perry wanted to man the sweeps and try to get away from them, but I
+soon convinced him that any speed of which the Sari was capable would
+be far too slow to outdistance the swift, though awkward, dugouts of
+the Mezops.
+
+I waited until they were quite close enough to hear me, and then I
+hailed them. I told them that we were friends of the Mezops, and that
+we were upon a visit to Ja of Anoroc, to which they replied that they
+were at war with Ja, and that if we would wait a minute they’d board us
+and throw our corpses to the azdyryths.
+
+I warned them that they would get the worst of it if they didn’t leave
+us alone, but they only shouted in derision and paddled swiftly toward
+us. It was evident that they were considerably impressed by the
+appearance and dimensions of our craft, but as these fellows know no
+fear they were not at all awed.
+
+Seeing that they were determined to give battle, I leaned over the rail
+of the Sari and brought the imperial battle-squadron of the Emperor of
+Pellucidar into action for the first time in the history of a world. In
+other and simpler words, I fired my revolver at the nearest canoe.
+
+The effect was magical. A warrior rose from his knees, threw his paddle
+aloft, stiffened into rigidity for an instant, and then toppled
+overboard.
+
+The others ceased paddling, and, with wide eyes, looked first at me and
+then at the battling sea-things which fought for the corpse of their
+comrade. To them it must have seemed a miracle that I should be able to
+stand at thrice the range of the most powerful javelin-thrower and with
+a loud noise and a smudge of smoke slay one of their number with an
+invisible missile.
+
+But only for an instant were they paralyzed with wonder. Then, with
+savage shouts, they fell once more to their paddles and forged rapidly
+toward us.
+
+Again and again I fired. At each shot a warrior sank to the bottom of
+the canoe or tumbled overboard.
+
+When the prow of the first craft touched the side of the Sari it
+contained only dead and dying men. The other two dugouts were
+approaching rapidly, so I turned my attention toward them.
+
+I think that they must have been commencing to have some doubts—those
+wild, naked, red warriors—for when the first man fell in the second
+boat, the others stopped paddling and commenced to jabber among
+themselves.
+
+The third boat pulled up alongside the second and its crews joined in
+the conference. Taking advantage of the lull in the battle, I called
+out to the survivors to return to their shore.
+
+“I have no fight with you,” I cried, and then I told them who I was and
+added that if they would live in peace they must sooner or later join
+forces with me.
+
+“Go back now to your people,” I counseled them, “and tell them that you
+have seen David I, Emperor of the Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar, and
+that single-handed he has overcome you, just as he intends overcoming
+the Mahars and the Sagoths and any other peoples of Pellucidar who
+threaten the peace and welfare of his empire.”
+
+Slowly they turned the noses of their canoes toward land. It was
+evident that they were impressed; yet that they were loath to give up
+without further contesting my claim to naval supremacy was also
+apparent, for some of their number seemed to be exhorting the others to
+a renewal of the conflict.
+
+However, at last they drew slowly away, and the Sari, which had not
+decreased her snail-like speed during this, her first engagement,
+continued upon her slow, uneven way.
+
+Presently Perry stuck his head up through the hatch and hailed me.
+
+“Have the scoundrels departed?” he asked. “Have you killed them all?”
+
+“Those whom I failed to kill have departed, Perry,” I replied.
+
+He came out on deck and, peering over the side, descried the lone canoe
+floating a short distance astern with its grim and grisly freight.
+Farther his eyes wandered to the retreating boats.
+
+“David,” said he at last, “this is a notable occasion. It is a great
+day in the annals of Pellucidar. We have won a glorious victory.
+
+“Your majesty’s navy has routed a fleet of the enemy thrice its own
+size, manned by ten times as many men. Let us give thanks.”
+
+I could scarce restrain a smile at Perry’s use of the pronoun “we,” yet
+I was glad to share the rejoicing with him as I shall always be glad to
+share everything with the dear old fellow.
+
+Perry is the only male coward I have ever known whom I could respect
+and love. He was not created for fighting; but I think that if the
+occasion should ever arise where it became necessary he would give his
+life cheerfully for me—yes, I KNOW it.
+
+It took us a long time to work around the islands and draw in close to
+Anoroc. In the leisure afforded we took turns working on our map, and
+by means of the compass and a little guesswork we set down the
+shoreline we had left and the three islands with fair accuracy.
+
+Crossed sabers marked the spot where the first great naval engagement
+of a world had taken place. In a note-book we jotted down, as had been
+our custom, details that would be of historical value later.
+
+Opposite Anoroc we came to anchor quite close to shore. I knew from my
+previous experience with the tortuous trails of the island that I could
+never find my way inland to the hidden tree-village of the Mezop
+chieftain, Ja; so we remained aboard the Sari, firing our express
+rifles at intervals to attract the attention of the natives.
+
+After some ten shots had been fired at considerable intervals a body of
+copper-colored warriors appeared upon the shore. They watched us for a
+moment and then I hailed them, asking the whereabouts of my old friend
+Ja.
+
+They did not reply at once, but stood with their heads together in
+serious and animated discussion. Continually they turned their eyes
+toward our strange craft. It was evident that they were greatly puzzled
+by our appearance as well as unable to explain the source of the loud
+noises that had attracted their attention to us. At last one of the
+warriors addressed us.
+
+“Who are you who seek Ja?” he asked. “What would you of our chief?”
+
+“We are friends,” I replied. “I am David. Tell Ja that David, whose
+life he once saved from a sithic, has come again to visit him.
+
+“If you will send out a canoe we will come ashore. We cannot bring our
+great warship closer in.”
+
+Again they talked for a considerable time. Then two of them entered a
+canoe that several dragged from its hiding-place in the jungle and
+paddled swiftly toward us.
+
+They were magnificent specimens of manhood. Perry had never seen a
+member of this red race close to before. In fact, the dead men in the
+canoe we had left astern after the battle and the survivors who were
+paddling rapidly toward their shore were the first he ever had seen. He
+had been greatly impressed by their physical beauty and the promise of
+superior intelligence which their well-shaped skulls gave.
+
+The two who now paddled out received us into their canoe with dignified
+courtesy. To my inquiries relative to Ja they explained that he had not
+been in the village when our signals were heard, but that runners had
+been sent out after him and that doubtless he was already upon his way
+to the coast.
+
+One of the men remembered me from the occasion of my former visit to
+the island; he was extremely agree-able the moment that he came close
+enough to recognize me. He said that Ja would be delighted to welcome
+me, and that all the tribe of Anoroc knew of me by repute, and had
+received explicit instructions from their chieftain that if any of them
+should ever come upon me to show me every kindness and attention.
+
+Upon shore we were received with equal honor. While we stood conversing
+with our bronze friends a tall warrior leaped suddenly from the jungle.
+
+It was Ja. As his eyes fell upon me his face lighted with pleasure. He
+came quickly forward to greet me after the manner of his tribe.
+
+Toward Perry he was equally hospitable. The old man fell in love with
+the savage giant as completely as had I. Ja conducted us along the
+maze-like trail to his strange village, where he gave over one of the
+tree-houses for our exclusive use.
+
+Perry was much interested in the unique habitation, which resembled
+nothing so much as a huge wasp’s nest built around the bole of a tree
+well above the ground.
+
+After we had eaten and rested Ja came to see us with a number of his
+head men. They listened attentively to my story, which included a
+narrative of the events leading to the formation of the federated
+kingdoms, the battle with the Mahars, my journey to the outer world,
+and my return to Pellucidar and search for Sari and my mate.
+
+Ja told me that the Mezops had heard something of the federation and
+had been much interested in it. He had even gone so far as to send a
+party of warriors toward Sari to investigate the reports, and to
+arrange for the entrance of Anoroc into the empire in case it appeared
+that there was any truth in the rumors that one of the aims of the
+federation was the overthrow of the Mahars.
+
+The delegation had met with a party of Sagoths. As there had been a
+truce between the Mahars and the Mezops for many generations, they
+camped with these warriors of the reptiles, from whom they learned that
+the federation had gone to pieces. So the party returned to Anoroc.
+
+When I showed Ja our map and explained its purpose to him, he was much
+interested. The location of Anoroc, the Mountains of the Clouds, the
+river, and the strip of seacoast were all familiar to him.
+
+He quickly indicated the position of the inland sea and close beside
+it, the city of Phutra, where one of the powerful Mahar nations had its
+seat. He likewise showed us where Sari should be and carried his own
+coast-line as far north and south as it was known to him.
+
+His additions to the map convinced us that Greenwich lay upon the verge
+of this same sea, and that it might be reached by water more easily
+than by the arduous crossing of the mountains or the dangerous approach
+through Phutra, which lay almost directly in line between Anoroc and
+Greenwich to the northwest.
+
+If Sari lay upon the same water then the shore-line must bend far back
+toward the southwest of Greenwich—an assumption which, by the way, we
+found later to be true. Also, Sari was upon a lofty plateau at the
+southern end of a mighty gulf of the Great Ocean.
+
+The location which Ja gave to distant Amoz puzzled us, for it placed it
+due north of Greenwich, apparently in mid-ocean. As Ja had never been
+so far and knew only of Amoz through hearsay, we thought that he must
+be mistaken; but he was not. Amoz lies directly north of Greenwich
+across the mouth of the same gulf as that upon which Sari is.
+
+The sense of direction and location of these primitive Pellucidarians
+is little short of uncanny, as I have had occasion to remark in the
+past. You may take one of them to the uttermost ends of his world, to
+places of which he has never even heard, yet without sun or moon or
+stars to guide him, without map or compass, he will travel straight for
+home in the shortest direction.
+
+Mountains, rivers, and seas may have to be gone around, but never once
+does his sense of direction fail him—the homing instinct is supreme.
+
+In the same remarkable way they never forget the location of any place
+to which they have ever been, and know that of many of which they have
+only heard from others who have visited them.
+
+In short, each Pellucidarian is a walking geography of his own district
+and of much of the country contiguous thereto. It always proved of the
+greatest aid to Perry and me; nevertheless we were anxious to enlarge
+our map, for we at least were not endowed with the homing instinct.
+
+After several long councils it was decided that, in order to expedite
+matters, Perry should return to the prospector with a strong party of
+Mezops and fetch the freight I had brought from the outer world. Ja and
+his warriors were much impressed by our firearms, and were also anxious
+to build boats with sails.
+
+As we had arms at the prospector and also books on boat-building we
+thought that it might prove an excellent idea to start these naturally
+maritime people upon the construction of a well built navy of staunch
+sailing-vessels. I was sure that with definite plans to go by Perry
+could oversee the construction of an adequate flotilla.
+
+I warned him, however, not to be too ambitious, and to forget about
+dreadnoughts and armored cruisers for a while and build instead a few
+small sailing-boats that could be manned by four or five men.
+
+I was to proceed to Sari, and while prosecuting my search for Dian
+attempt at the same time the rehabilitation of the federation. Perry
+was going as far as possible by water, with the chances that the entire
+trip might be made in that manner, which proved to be the fact.
+
+With a couple of Mezops as companions I started for Sari. In order to
+avoid crossing the principal range of the Mountains of the Clouds we
+took a route that passed a little way south of Phutra. We had eaten
+four times and slept once, and were, as my companions told me, not far
+from the great Mahar city, when we were suddenly confronted by a
+considerable band of Sagoths.
+
+They did not attack us, owing to the peace which exists between the
+Mahars and the Mezops, but I could see that they looked upon me with
+considerable suspicion. My friends told them that I was a stranger from
+a remote country, and as we had previously planned against such a
+contingency I pretended ignorance of the language which the human
+beings of Pellucidar employ in conversing with the gorilla-like
+soldiery of the Mahars.
+
+I noticed, and not without misgivings, that the leader of the Sagoths
+eyed me with an expression that betokened partial recognition. I was
+sure that he had seen me before during the period of my incarceration
+in Phutra and that he was trying to recall my identity.
+
+It worried me not a little. I was extremely thankful when we bade them
+adieu and continued upon our journey.
+
+Several times during the next few marches I became acutely conscious of
+the sensation of being watched by unseen eyes, but I did not speak of
+my suspicions to my companions. Later I had reason to regret my
+reticence, for—
+
+Well, this is how it happened:
+
+We had killed an antelope and after eating our fill I had lain down to
+sleep. The Pellucidarians, who seem seldom if ever to require sleep,
+joined me in this instance, for we had had a very trying march along
+the northern foothills of the Mountains of the Clouds, and now with
+their bellies filled with meat they seemed ready for slumber.
+
+When I awoke it was with a start to find a couple of huge Sagoths
+astride me. They pinioned my arms and legs, and later chained my wrists
+behind my back. Then they let me up.
+
+I saw my companions; the brave fellows lay dead where they had slept,
+javelined to death without a chance at self-defense.
+
+I was furious. I threatened the Sagoth leader with all sorts of dire
+reprisals; but when he heard me speak the hybrid language that is the
+medium of communication between his kind and the human race of the
+inner world he only grinned, as much as to say, “I thought so!”
+
+They had not taken my revolvers or ammunition away from me because they
+did not know what they were; but my heavy rifle I had lost. They simply
+left it where it had lain beside me.
+
+So low in the scale of intelligence are they, that they had not
+sufficient interest in this strange object even to fetch it along with
+them.
+
+I knew from the direction of our march that they were taking me to
+Phutra. Once there I did not need much of an imagination to picture
+what my fate would be. It was the arena and a wild thag or fierce tarag
+for me—unless the Mahars elected to take me to the pits.
+
+In that case my end would be no more certain, though infinitely more
+horrible and painful, for in the pits I should be subjected to cruel
+vivisection. From what I had once seen of their methods in the pits of
+Phutra I knew them to be the opposite of merciful, whereas in the arena
+I should be quickly despatched by some savage beast.
+
+Arrived at the underground city, I was taken immediately before a slimy
+Mahar. When the creature had received the report of the Sagoth its cold
+eyes glistened with malice and hatred as they were turned balefully
+upon me.
+
+I knew then that my identity had been guessed. With a show of
+excitement that I had never before seen evinced by a member of the
+dominant race of Pellucidar, the Mahar hustled me away, heavily
+guarded, through the main avenue of the city to one of the principal
+buildings.
+
+Here we were ushered into a great hall where presently many Mahars
+gathered.
+
+In utter silence they conversed, for they have no oral speech since
+they are without auditory nerves. Their method of communication Perry
+has likened to the projection of a sixth sense into a fourth dimension,
+where it becomes cognizable to the sixth sense of their audience.
+
+Be that as it may, however, it was evident that I was the subject of
+discussion, and from the hateful looks bestowed upon me not a
+particularly pleasant subject.
+
+How long I waited for their decision I do not know, but it must have
+been a very long time. Finally one of the Sagoths addressed me. He was
+acting as interpreter for his masters.
+
+“The Mahars will spare your life,” he said, “and release you on one
+condition.”
+
+“And what is that condition?” I asked, though I could guess its terms.
+
+“That you return to them that which you stole from the pits of Phutra
+when you killed the four Mahars and escaped,” he replied.
+
+I had thought that that would be it. The great secret upon which
+depended the continuance of the Mahar race was safely hid where only
+Dian and I knew.
+
+I ventured to imagine that they would have given me much more than my
+liberty to have it safely in their keeping again; but after that—what?
+
+Would they keep their promises?
+
+I doubted it. With the secret of artificial propagation once more in
+their hands their numbers would soon be made so to overrun the world of
+Pellucidar that there could be no hope for the eventual supremacy of
+the human race, the cause for which I so devoutly hoped, for which I
+had consecrated my life, and for which I was not willing to give my
+life.
+
+Yes! In that moment as I stood before the heartless tribunal I felt
+that my life would be a very little thing to give could it save to the
+human race of Pellucidar the chance to come into its own by insuring
+the eventual extinction of the hated, powerful Mahars.
+
+“Come!” exclaimed the Sagoths. “The mighty Mahars await your reply.”
+
+“You may say to them,” I answered, “that I shall not tell them where
+the great secret is hid.”
+
+When this had been translated to them there was a great beating of
+reptilian wings, gaping of sharp-fanged jaws, and hideous hissing. I
+thought that they were about to fall upon me on the spot, and so I laid
+my hands upon my revolvers; but at length they became more quiet and
+presently transmitted some command to my Sagoth guard, the chief of
+which laid a heavy hand upon my arm and pushed me roughly before him
+from the audience-chamber.
+
+They took me to the pits, where I lay carefully guarded. I was sure
+that I was to be taken to the vivisection laboratory, and it required
+all my courage to fortify myself against the terrors of so fearful a
+death. In Pellucidar, where there is no time, death-agonies may endure
+for eternities.
+
+Accordingly, I had to steel myself against an endless doom, which now
+stared me in the face!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+SURPRISES
+
+
+But at last the allotted moment arrived—the moment for which I had been
+trying to prepare myself, for how long I could not even guess. A great
+Sagoth came and spoke some words of command to those who watched over
+me. I was jerked roughly to my feet and with little consideration
+hustled upward toward the higher levels.
+
+Out into the broad avenue they conducted me, where, amid huge throngs
+of Mahars, Sagoths, and heavily guarded slaves, I was led, or, rather,
+pushed and shoved roughly, along in the same direction that the mob
+moved. I had seen such a concourse of people once before in the buried
+city of Phutra; I guessed, and rightly, that we were bound for the
+great arena where slaves who are condemned to death meet their end.
+
+Into the vast amphitheater they took me, stationing me at the extreme
+end of the arena. The queen came, with her slimy, sickening retinue.
+The seats were filled. The show was about to commence.
+
+Then, from a little doorway in the opposite end of the structure, a
+girl was led into the arena. She was at a considerable distance from
+me. I could not see her features.
+
+I wondered what fate awaited this other poor victim and myself, and why
+they had chosen to have us die together. My own fate, or rather, my
+thought of it, was submerged in the natural pity I felt for this lone
+girl, doomed to die horribly beneath the cold, cruel eyes of her awful
+captors. Of what crime could she be guilty that she must expiate it in
+the dreaded arena?
+
+As I stood thus thinking, another door, this time at one of the long
+sides of the arena, was thrown open, and into the theater of death
+slunk a mighty tarag, the huge cave tiger of the Stone Age. At my sides
+were my revolvers. My captors had not taken them from me, because they
+did not yet realize their nature. Doubtless they thought them some
+strange manner of war-club, and as those who are condemned to the arena
+are permitted weapons of defense, they let me keep them.
+
+The girl they had armed with a javelin. A brass pin would have been
+almost as effective against the ferocious monster they had loosed upon
+her.
+
+The tarag stood for a moment looking about him—first up at the vast
+audience and then about the arena. He did not seem to see me at all,
+but his eyes fell presently upon the girl. A hideous roar broke from
+his titanic lungs—a roar which ended in a long-drawn scream that is
+more human than the death-cry of a tortured woman—more human but more
+awesome. I could scarce restrain a shudder.
+
+Slowly the beast turned and moved toward the girl. Then it was that I
+came to myself and to a realization of my duty. Quickly and as
+noiselessly as possible I ran down the arena in pursuit of the grim
+creature. As I ran I drew one of my pitifully futile weapons. Ah! Could
+I but have had my lost express-gun in my hands at that moment! A single
+well-placed shot would have crumbled even this great monster. The best
+I could hope to accomplish was to divert the thing from the girl to
+myself and then to place as many bullets as possible in it before it
+reached and mauled me into insensibility and death.
+
+There is a certain unwritten law of the arena that vouchsafes freedom
+and immunity to the victor, be he beast or human being—both of whom, by
+the way, are all the same to the Mahar. That is, they were accustomed
+to look upon man as a lower animal before Perry and I broke through the
+Pellucidarian crust, but I imagine that they were beginning to alter
+their views a trifle and to realize that in the gilak—their word for
+human being—they had a highly organized, reasoning being to contend
+with.
+
+Be that as it may, the chances were that the tarag alone would profit
+by the law of the arena. A few more of his long strides, a prodigious
+leap, and he would be upon the girl. I raised a revolver and fired. The
+bullet struck him in the left hind leg. It couldn’t have damaged him
+much; but the report of the shot brought him around, facing me.
+
+I think the snarling visage of a huge, enraged, saber-toothed tiger is
+one of the most terrible sights in the world. Especially if he be
+snarling at you and there be nothing between the two of you but bare
+sand.
+
+Even as he faced me a little cry from the girl carried my eyes beyond
+the brute to her face. Hers was fastened upon me with an expression of
+incredulity that baffles description. There was both hope and horror in
+them, too.
+
+“Dian!” I cried. “My Heavens, Dian!”
+
+I saw her lips form the name David, as with raised javelin she rushed
+forward upon the tarag. She was a tigress then—a primitive savage
+female defending her loved one. Before she could reach the beast with
+her puny weapon, I fired again at the point where the tarag’s neck met
+his left shoulder. If I could get a bullet through there it might reach
+his heart. The bullet didn’t reach his heart, but it stopped him for an
+instant.
+
+It was then that a strange thing happened. I heard a great hissing from
+the stands occupied by the Mahars, and as I glanced toward them I saw
+three mighty thipdars—the winged dragons that guard the queen, or, as
+Perry calls them, pterodactyls—rise swiftly from their rocks and dart
+lightning-like, toward the center of the arena. They are huge, powerful
+reptiles. One of them, with the advantage which his wings might give
+him, would easily be a match for a cave bear or a tarag.
+
+These three, to my consternation, swooped down upon the tarag as he was
+gathering himself for a final charge upon me. They buried their talons
+in his back and lifted him bodily from the arena as if he had been a
+chicken in the clutches of a hawk.
+
+What could it mean?
+
+I was baffled for an explanation; but with the tarag gone I lost no
+time in hastening to Dian’s side. With a little cry of delight she
+threw herself into my arms. So lost were we in the ecstasy of reunion
+that neither of us—to this day—can tell what became of the tarag.
+
+The first thing we were aware of was the presence of a body of Sagoths
+about us. Gruffly they commanded us to follow them. They led us from
+the arena and back through the streets of Phutra to the audience
+chamber in which I had been tried and sentenced. Here we found
+ourselves facing the same cold, cruel tribunal.
+
+Again a Sagoth acted as interpreter. He explained that our lives had
+been spared because at the last moment Tu-al-sa had returned to Phutra,
+and seeing me in the arena had prevailed upon the queen to spare my
+life.
+
+“Who is Tu-al-sa?” I asked.
+
+“A Mahar whose last male ancestor was—ages ago—the last of the male
+rulers among the Mahars,” he replied.
+
+“Why should she wish to have my life spared?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and then repeated my question to the Mahar
+spokesman. When the latter had explained in the strange sign-language
+that passes for speech between the Mahars and their fighting men the
+Sagoth turned again to me:
+
+“For a long time you had Tu-al-sa in your power,” he explained. “You
+might easily have killed her or abandoned her in a strange world—but
+you did neither. You did not harm her, and you brought her back with
+you to Pellucidar and set her free to return to Phutra. This is your
+reward.”
+
+Now I understood. The Mahar who had been my involuntary companion upon
+my return to the outer world was Tu-al-sa. This was the first time that
+I had learned the lady’s name. I thanked fate that I had not left her
+upon the sands of the Sahara—or put a bullet in her, as I had been
+tempted to do. I was surprised to discover that gratitude was a
+characteristic of the dominant race of Pellucidar. I could never think
+of them as aught but cold-blooded, brainless reptiles, though Perry had
+devoted much time in explaining to me that owing to a strange freak of
+evolution among all the genera of the inner world, this species of the
+reptilia had advanced to a position quite analogous to that which man
+holds upon the outer crust.
+
+He had often told me that there was every reason to believe from their
+writings, which he had learned to read while we were incarcerated in
+Phutra, that they were a just race, and that in certain branches of
+science and arts they were quite well advanced, especially in genetics
+and metaphysics, engineering and architecture.
+
+While it had always been difficult for me to look upon these things as
+other than slimy, winged crocodiles—which, by the way, they do not at
+all resemble—I was now forced to a realization of the fact that I was
+in the hands of enlightened creatures—for justice and gratitude are
+certain hallmarks of rationality and culture.
+
+But what they purposed for us further was of most imminent interest to
+me. They might save us from the tarag and yet not free us. They looked
+upon us yet, to some extent, I knew, as creatures of a lower order, and
+so as we are unable to place ourselves in the position of the brutes we
+enslave—thinking that they are happier in bondage than in the free
+fulfilment of the purposes for which nature intended them—the Mahars,
+too, might consider our welfare better conserved in captivity than
+among the dangers of the savage freedom we craved. Naturally, I was
+next impelled to inquire their further intent.
+
+To my question, put through the Sagoth interpreter, I received the
+reply that having spared my life they considered that Tu-al-sa’s debt
+of gratitude was canceled. They still had against me, however, the
+crime of which I had been guilty—the unforgivable crime of stealing the
+great secret. They, therefore, intended holding Dian and me prisoners
+until the manuscript was returned to them.
+
+They would, they said, send an escort of Sagoths with me to fetch the
+precious document from its hiding-place, keeping Dian at Phutra as a
+hostage and releasing us both the moment that the document was safely
+restored to their queen.
+
+There was no doubt but that they had the upper hand. However, there was
+so much more at stake than the liberty or even the lives of Dian and
+myself, that I did not deem it expedient to accept their offer without
+giving the matter careful thought.
+
+Without the great secret this maleless race must eventually become
+extinct. For ages they had fertilized their eggs by an artificial
+process, the secret of which lay hidden in the little cave of a far-off
+valley where Dian and I had spent our honeymoon. I was none too sure
+that I could find the valley again, nor that I cared to. So long as the
+powerful reptilian race of Pellucidar continued to propagate, just so
+long would the position of man within the inner world be jeopardized.
+There could not be two dominant races.
+
+I said as much to Dian.
+
+“You used to tell me,” she replied, “of the wonderful things you could
+accomplish with the inventions of your own world. Now you have returned
+with all that is necessary to place this great power in the hands of
+the men of Pellucidar.
+
+“You told me of great engines of destruction which would cast a
+bursting ball of metal among our enemies, killing hundreds of them at
+one time.
+
+“You told me of mighty fortresses of stone which a thousand men armed
+with big and little engines such as these could hold forever against a
+million Sagoths.
+
+“You told me of great canoes which moved across the water without
+paddles, and which spat death from holes in their sides.
+
+“All these may now belong to the men of Pellucidar. Why should we fear
+the Mahars?
+
+“Let them breed! Let their numbers increase by thousands. They will be
+helpless before the power of the Emperor of Pellucidar.
+
+“But if you remain a prisoner in Phutra, what may we accomplish?
+
+“What could the men of Pellucidar do without you to lead them?
+
+“They would fight among themselves, and while they fought the Mahars
+would fall upon them, and even though the Mahar race should die out, of
+what value would the emancipation of the human race be to them without
+the knowledge, which you alone may wield, to guide them toward the
+wonderful civilization of which you have told me so much that I long
+for its comforts and luxuries as I never before longed for anything.
+
+“No, David; the Mahars cannot harm us if you are at liberty. Let them
+have their secret that you and I may return to our people, and lead
+them to the conquest of all Pellucidar.”
+
+It was plain that Dian was ambitious, and that her ambition had not
+dulled her reasoning faculties. She was right. Nothing could be gained
+by remaining bottled up in Phutra for the rest of our lives.
+
+It was true that Perry might do much with the contents of the
+prospector, or iron mole, in which I had brought down the implements of
+outer-world civilization; but Perry was a man of peace. He could never
+weld the warring factions of the disrupted federation. He could never
+win new tribes to the empire. He would fiddle around manufacturing
+gun-powder and trying to improve upon it until some one blew him up
+with his own invention. He wasn’t practical. He never would get
+anywhere without a balance-wheel—without some one to direct his
+energies.
+
+Perry needed me and I needed him. If we were going to do anything for
+Pellucidar we must be free to do it together.
+
+The outcome of it all was that I agreed to the Mahars’ proposition.
+They promised that Dian would be well treated and protected from every
+indignity during my absence. So I set out with a hundred Sagoths in
+search of the little valley which I had stumbled upon by accident, and
+which I might and might not find again.
+
+We traveled directly toward Sari. Stopping at the camp where I had been
+captured I recovered my express rifle, for which I was very thankful. I
+found it lying where I had left it when I had been overpowered in my
+sleep by the Sagoths who had captured me and slain my Mezop companions.
+
+On the way I added materially to my map, an occupation which did not
+elicit from the Sagoths even a shadow of interest. I felt that the
+human race of Pellucidar had little to fear from these gorilla-men.
+They were fighters—that was all. We might even use them later ourselves
+in this same capacity. They had not sufficient brain power to
+constitute a menace to the advancement of the human race.
+
+As we neared the spot where I hoped to find the little valley I became
+more and more confident of success. Every landmark was familiar to me,
+and I was sure now that I knew the exact location of the cave.
+
+It was at about this time that I sighted a number of the half-naked
+warriors of the human race of Pellucidar. They were marching across our
+front. At sight of us they halted; that there would be a fight I could
+not doubt. These Sagoths would never permit an opportunity for the
+capture of slaves for their Mahar masters to escape them.
+
+I saw that the men were armed with bows and arrows, long lances and
+swords, so I guessed that they must have been members of the
+federation, for only my people had been thus equipped. Before Perry and
+I came the men of Pellucidar had only the crudest weapons wherewith to
+slay one another.
+
+The Sagoths, too, were evidently expecting battle. With savage shouts
+they rushed forward toward the human warriors.
+
+Then a strange thing happened. The leader of the human beings stepped
+forward with upraised hands. The Sagoths ceased their war-cries and
+advanced slowly to meet him. There was a long parley during which I
+could see that I was often the subject of their discourse. The Sagoths’
+leader pointed in the direction in which I had told him the valley lay.
+Evidently he was explaining the nature of our expedition to the leader
+of the warriors. It was all a puzzle to me.
+
+What human being could be upon such excellent terms with the
+gorilla-men?
+
+I couldn’t imagine. I tried to get a good look at the fellow, but the
+Sagoths had left me in the rear with a guard when they had advanced to
+battle, and the distance was too great for me to recognize the features
+of any of the human beings.
+
+Finally the parley was concluded and the men continued on their way
+while the Sagoths returned to where I stood with my guard. It was time
+for eating, so we stopped where we were and made our meal. The Sagoths
+didn’t tell me who it was they had met, and I did not ask, though I
+must confess that I was quite curious.
+
+They permitted me to sleep at this halt. Afterward we took up the last
+leg of our journey. I found the valley without difficulty and led my
+guard directly to the cave. At its mouth the Sagoths halted and I
+entered alone.
+
+I noticed as I felt about the floor in the dim light that there was a
+pile of fresh-turned rubble there. Presently my hands came to the spot
+where the great secret had been buried. There was a cavity where I had
+carefully smoothed the earth over the hiding-place of the document—the
+manuscript was gone!
+
+Frantically I searched the whole interior of the cave several times
+over, but without other result than a complete confirmation of my worst
+fears. Someone had been here ahead of me and stolen the great secret.
+
+The one thing within Pellucidar which might free Dian and me was gone,
+nor was it likely that I should ever learn its whereabouts. If a Mahar
+had found it, which was quite improbable, the chances were that the
+dominant race would never divulge the fact that they had recovered the
+precious document. If a cave man had happened upon it he would have no
+conception of its meaning or value, and as a consequence it would be
+lost or destroyed in short order.
+
+With bowed head and broken hopes I came out of the cave and told the
+Sagoth chieftain what I had discovered. It didn’t mean much to the
+fellow, who doubt-less had but little better idea of the contents of
+the document I had been sent to fetch to his masters than would the
+cave man who in all probability had discovered it.
+
+The Sagoth knew only that I had failed in my mission, so he took
+advantage of the fact to make the return journey to Phutra as
+disagreeable as possible. I did not rebel, though I had with me the
+means to destroy them all. I did not dare rebel because of the
+consequences to Dian. I intended demanding her release on the grounds
+that she was in no way guilty of the theft, and that my failure to
+recover the document had not lessened the value of the good faith I had
+had in offering to do so. The Mahars might keep me in slavery if they
+chose, but Dian should be returned safely to her people.
+
+I was full of my scheme when we entered Phutra and I was conducted
+directly to the great audience-chamber. The Mahars listened to the
+report of the Sagoth chieftain, and so difficult is it to judge their
+emotions from their almost expressionless countenance, that I was at a
+loss to know how terrible might be their wrath as they learned that
+their great secret, upon which rested the fate of their race, might now
+be irretrievably lost.
+
+Presently I could see that she who presided was communicating something
+to the Sagoth interpreter—doubt-less something to be transmitted to me
+which might give me a forewarning of the fate which lay in store for
+me. One thing I had decided definitely: If they would not free Dian I
+should turn loose upon Phutra with my little arsenal. Alone I might
+even win to freedom, and if I could learn where Dian was imprisoned it
+would be worth the attempt to free her. My thoughts were interrupted by
+the interpreter.
+
+“The mighty Mahars,” he said, “are unable to reconcile your statement
+that the document is lost with your action in sending it to them by a
+special messenger. They wish to know if you have so soon forgotten the
+truth or if you are merely ignoring it.”
+
+“I sent them no document,” I cried. “Ask them what they mean.”
+
+“They say,” he went on after conversing with the Mahar for a moment,
+“that just before your return to Phutra, Hooja the Sly One came,
+bringing the great secret with him. He said that you had sent him ahead
+with it, asking him to deliver it and return to Sari where you would
+await him, bringing the girl with him.”
+
+“Dian?” I gasped. “The Mahars have given over Dian into the keeping of
+Hooja.”
+
+“Surely,” he replied. “What of it? She is only a gilak,” as you or I
+would say, “She is only a cow.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+A PENDENT WORLD
+
+
+The Mahars set me free as they had promised, but with strict
+injunctions never to approach Phutra or any other Mahar city. They also
+made it perfectly plain that they considered me a dangerous creature,
+and that having wiped the slate clean in so far as they were under
+obligations to me, they now considered me fair prey. Should I again
+fall into their hands, they intimated it would go ill with me.
+
+They would not tell me in which direction Hooja had set forth with
+Dian, so I departed from Phutra, filled with bitterness against the
+Mahars, and rage toward the Sly One who had once again robbed me of my
+greatest treasure.
+
+At first I was minded to go directly back to Anoroc; but upon second
+thought turned my face toward Sari, as I felt that somewhere in that
+direction Hooja would travel, his own country lying in that general
+direction.
+
+Of my journey to Sari it is only necessary to say that it was fraught
+with the usual excitement and adventure, incident to all travel across
+the face of savage Pellucidar. The dangers, however, were greatly
+reduced through the medium of my armament. I often wondered how it had
+happened that I had ever survived the first ten years of my life within
+the inner world, when, naked and primitively armed, I had traversed
+great areas of her beast-ridden surface.
+
+With the aid of my map, which I had kept with great care during my
+march with the Sagoths in search of the great secret, I arrived at Sari
+at last. As I topped the lofty plateau in whose rocky cliffs the
+principal tribe of Sarians find their cave-homes, a great hue and cry
+arose from those who first discovered me.
+
+Like wasps from their nests the hairy warriors poured from their caves.
+The bows with their poison-tipped arrows, which I had taught them to
+fashion and to use, were raised against me. Swords of hammered
+iron—another of my innovations—menaced me, as with lusty shouts the
+horde charged down.
+
+It was a critical moment. Before I should be recognized I might be
+dead. It was evident that all semblance of intertribal relationship had
+ceased with my going, and that my people had reverted to their former
+savage, suspicious hatred of all strangers. My garb must have puzzled
+them, too, for never before of course had they seen a man clothed in
+khaki and puttees.
+
+Leaning my express rifle against my body I raised both hands aloft. It
+was the peace-sign that is recognized everywhere upon the surface of
+Pellucidar. The charging warriors paused and surveyed me. I looked for
+my friend Ghak, the Hairy One, king of Sari, and presently I saw him
+coming from a distance. Ah, but it was good to see his mighty, hairy
+form once more! A friend was Ghak—a friend well worth the having; and
+it had been some time since I had seen a friend.
+
+Shouldering his way through the throng of warriors, the mighty
+chieftain advanced toward me. There was an expression of puzzlement
+upon his fine features. He crossed the space between the warriors and
+myself, halting before me.
+
+I did not speak. I did not even smile. I wanted to see if Ghak, my
+principal lieutenant, would recognize me. For some time he stood there
+looking me over carefully. His eyes took in my large pith helmet, my
+khaki jacket, and bandoleers of cartridges, the two revolvers swinging
+at my hips, the large rifle resting against my body. Still I stood with
+my hands above my head. He examined my puttees and my strong tan
+shoes—a little the worse for wear now. Then he glanced up once more to
+my face. As his gaze rested there quite steadily for some moments I saw
+recognition tinged with awe creep across his countenance.
+
+Presently without a word he took one of my hands in his and dropping to
+one knee raised my fingers to his lips. Perry had taught them this
+trick, nor ever did the most polished courtier of all the grand courts
+of Europe perform the little act of homage with greater grace and
+dignity.
+
+Quickly I raised Ghak to his feet, clasping both his hands in mine. I
+think there must have been tears in my eyes then—I know I felt too full
+for words. The king of Sari turned toward his warriors.
+
+“Our emperor has come back,” he announced. “Come hither and—”
+
+But he got no further, for the shouts that broke from those savage
+throats would have drowned the voice of heaven itself. I had never
+guessed how much they thought of me. As they clustered around, almost
+fighting for the chance to kiss my hand, I saw again the vision of
+empire which I had thought faded forever.
+
+With such as these I could conquer a world. With such as these I
+_would_ conquer one! If the Sarians had remained loyal, so too would
+the Amozites be loyal still, and the Kalians, and the Suvians, and all
+the great tribes who had formed the federation that was to emancipate
+the human race of Pellucidar.
+
+Perry was safe with the Mezops; I was safe with the Sarians; now if
+Dian were but safe with me the future would look bright indeed.
+
+It did not take long to outline to Ghak all that had befallen me since
+I had departed from Pellucidar, and to get down to the business of
+finding Dian, which to me at that moment was of even greater importance
+than the very empire itself.
+
+When I told him that Hooja had stolen her, he stamped his foot in rage.
+
+“It is always the Sly One!” he cried. “It was Hooja who caused the
+first trouble between you and the Beautiful One.
+
+“It was Hooja who betrayed our trust, and all but caused our recapture
+by the Sagoths that time we escaped from Phutra.
+
+“It was Hooja who tricked you and substituted a Mahar for Dian when you
+started upon your return journey to your own world.
+
+“It was Hooja who schemed and lied until he had turned the kingdoms one
+against another and destroyed the federation.
+
+“When we had him in our power we were foolish to let him live. Next
+time—”
+
+Ghak did not need to finish his sentence.
+
+“He has become a very powerful enemy now,” I replied. “That he is
+allied in some way with the Mahars is evidenced by the familiarity of
+his relations with the Sagoths who were accompanying me in search of
+the great secret, for it must have been Hooja whom I saw conversing
+with them just before we reached the valley. Doubtless they told him of
+our quest and he hastened on ahead of us, discovered the cave and stole
+the document. Well does he deserve his appellation of the Sly One.”
+
+With Ghak and his head men I held a number of consultations. The upshot
+of them was a decision to combine our search for Dian with an attempt
+to rebuild the crumbled federation. To this end twenty warriors were
+despatched in pairs to ten of the leading kingdoms, with instructions
+to make every effort to discover the whereabouts of Hooja and Dian,
+while prosecuting their missions to the chieftains to whom they were
+sent.
+
+Ghak was to remain at home to receive the various delegations which we
+invited to come to Sari on the business of the federation. Four hundred
+warriors were started for Anoroc to fetch Perry and the contents of the
+prospector, to the capitol of the empire, which was also the principal
+settlements of the Sarians.
+
+At first it was intended that I remain at Sari, that I might be in
+readiness to hasten forth at the first report of the discovery of Dian;
+but I found the inaction in the face of my deep solicitude for the
+welfare of my mate so galling that scarce had the several units
+departed upon their missions before I, too, chafed to be actively
+engaged upon the search.
+
+It was after my second sleep, subsequent to the departure of the
+warriors, as I recall, that I at last went to Ghak with the admission
+that I could no longer support the intolerable longing to be personally
+upon the trail of my lost love.
+
+Ghak tried to dissuade me, though I could tell that his heart was with
+me in my wish to be away and really doing something. It was while we
+were arguing upon the subject that a stranger, with hands above his
+head, entered the village. He was immediately surrounded by warriors
+and conducted to Ghak’s presence.
+
+The fellow was a typical cave man-squat muscular, and hairy, and of a
+type I had not seen before. His features, like those of all the
+primeval men of Pellucidar, were regular and fine. His weapons
+consisted of a stone ax and knife and a heavy knobbed bludgeon of wood.
+His skin was very white.
+
+“Who are you?” asked Ghak. “And whence come you?”
+
+“I am Kolk, son of Goork, who is chief of the Thurians,” replied the
+stranger. “From Thuria I have come in search of the land of Amoz, where
+dwells Dacor, the Strong One, who stole my sister, Canda, the Grace-ful
+One, to be his mate.
+
+“We of Thuria had heard of a great chieftain who has bound together
+many tribes, and my father has sent me to Dacor to learn if there be
+truth in these stories, and if so to offer the services of Thuria to
+him whom we have heard called emperor.”
+
+“The stories are true,” replied Ghak, “and here is the emperor of whom
+you have heard. You need travel no farther.”
+
+Kolk was delighted. He told us much of the wonderful resources of
+Thuria, the Land of Awful Shadow, and of his long journey in search of
+Amoz.
+
+“And why,” I asked, “does Goork, your father, desire to join his
+kingdom to the empire?”
+
+“There are two reasons,” replied the young man. “Forever have the
+Mahars, who dwell beyond the Lidi Plains which lie at the farther rim
+of the Land of Awful Shadow, taken heavy toll of our people, whom they
+either force into lifelong slavery or fatten for their feasts. We have
+heard that the great emperor makes successful war upon the Mahars,
+against whom we should be glad to fight.
+
+“Recently has another reason come. Upon a great island which lies in
+the Sojar Az, but a short distance from our shores, a wicked man has
+collected a great band of outcast warriors of all tribes. Even are
+there many Sagoths among them, sent by the Mahars to aid the Wicked
+One.
+
+“This band makes raids upon our villages, and it is constantly growing
+in size and strength, for the Mahars give liberty to any of their male
+prisoners who will promise to fight with this band against the enemies
+of the Mahars. It is the purpose of the Mahars thus to raise a force of
+our own kind to combat the growth and menace of the new empire of which
+I have come to seek information. All this we learned from one of our
+own warriors who had pretended to sympathize with this band and had
+then escaped at the first opportunity.”
+
+“Who could this man be,” I asked Ghak, “who leads so vile a movement
+against his own kind?”
+
+“His name is Hooja,” spoke up Kolk, answering my question.
+
+Ghak and I looked at each other. Relief was written upon his
+countenance and I know that it was beating strongly in my heart. At
+last we had discovered a tangible clue to the whereabouts of Hooja—and
+with the clue a guide!
+
+But when I broached the subject to Kolk he demurred. He had come a long
+way, he explained, to see his sister and to confer with Dacor.
+Moreover, he had instructions from his father which he could not ignore
+lightly. But even so he would return with me and show me the way to the
+island of the Thurian shore if by doing so we might accomplish
+anything.
+
+“But we cannot,” he urged. “Hooja is powerful. He has thousands of
+warriors. He has only to call upon his Mahar allies to receive a
+countless horde of Sagoths to do his bidding against his human enemies.
+
+“Let us wait until you may gather an equal horde from the kingdoms of
+your empire. Then we may march against Hooja with some show of success.
+
+“But first must you lure him to the mainland, for who among you knows
+how to construct the strange things that carry Hooja and his band back
+and forth across the water?
+
+“We are not island people. We do not go upon the water. We know nothing
+of such things.”
+
+I couldn’t persuade him to do more than direct me upon the way. I
+showed him my map, which now included a great area of country extending
+from Anoroc upon the east to Sari upon the west, and from the river
+south of the Mountains of the Clouds north to Amoz. As soon as I had
+explained it to him he drew a line with his finger, showing a sea-coast
+far to the west and south of Sari, and a great circle which he said
+marked the extent of the Land of Awful Shadow in which lay Thuria.
+
+The shadow extended southeast of the coast out into the sea half-way to
+a large island, which he said was the seat of Hooja’s traitorous
+government. The island itself lay in the light of the noonday sun.
+Northwest of the coast and embracing a part of Thuria lay the Lidi
+Plains, upon the northwestern verge of which was situated the Mahar
+city which took such heavy toll of the Thurians.
+
+Thus were the unhappy people now between two fires, with Hooja upon one
+side and the Mahars upon the other. I did not wonder that they sent out
+an appeal for succor.
+
+Though Ghak and Kolk both attempted to dissuade me, I was determined to
+set out at once, nor did I delay longer than to make a copy of my map
+to be given to Perry that he might add to his that which I had set down
+since we parted. I left a letter for him as well, in which among other
+things I advanced the theory that the Sojar Az, or Great Sea, which
+Kolk mentioned as stretching eastward from Thuria, might indeed be the
+same mighty ocean as that which, swinging around the southern end of a
+continent ran northward along the shore opposite Phutra, mingling its
+waters with the huge gulf upon which lay Sari, Amoz, and Greenwich.
+
+Against this possibility I urged him to hasten the building of a fleet
+of small sailing-vessels, which we might utilize should I find it
+impossible to entice Hooja’s horde to the mainland.
+
+I told Ghak what I had written, and suggested that as soon as he could
+he should make new treaties with the various kingdoms of the empire,
+collect an army and march toward Thuria—this of course against the
+possibility of my detention through some cause or other.
+
+Kolk gave me a sign to his father—a lidi, or beast of burden, crudely
+scratched upon a bit of bone, and beneath the lidi a man and a flower;
+all very rudely done perhaps, but none the less effective as I well
+knew from my long years among the primitive men of Pellucidar.
+
+The lidi is the tribal beast of the Thurians; the man and the flower in
+the combination in which they appeared bore a double significance, as
+they constituted not only a message to the effect that the bearer came
+in peace, but were also Kolk’s signature.
+
+And so, armed with my credentials and my small arsenal, I set out alone
+upon my quest for the dearest girl in this world or yours.
+
+Kolk gave me explicit directions, though with my map I do not believe
+that I could have gone wrong. As a matter of fact I did not need the
+map at all, since the principal landmark of the first half of my
+journey, a gigantic mountain-peak, was plainly visible from Sari,
+though a good hundred miles away.
+
+At the southern base of this mountain a river rose and ran in a
+westerly direction, finally turning south and emptying into the Sojar
+Az some forty miles northeast of Thuria. All that I had to do was
+follow this river to the sea and then follow the coast to Thuria.
+
+Two hundred and forty miles of wild mountain and primeval jungle, of
+untracked plain, of nameless rivers, of deadly swamps and savage
+forests lay ahead of me, yet never had I been more eager for an
+adventure than now, for never had more depended upon haste and success.
+
+I do not know how long a time that journey required, and only half did
+I appreciate the varied wonders that each new march unfolded before me,
+for my mind and heart were filled with but a single image—that of a
+perfect girl whose great, dark eyes looked bravely forth from a frame
+of raven hair.
+
+It was not until I had passed the high peak and found the river that my
+eyes first discovered the pendent world, the tiny satellite which hangs
+low over the surface of Pellucidar casting its perpetual shadow always
+upon the same spot—the area that is known here as the Land of Awful
+Shadow, in which dwells the tribe of Thuria.
+
+From the distance and the elevation of the highlands where I stood the
+Pellucidarian noonday moon showed half in sunshine and half in shadow,
+while directly beneath it was plainly visible the round dark spot upon
+the surface of Pellucidar where the sun has never shone. From where I
+stood the moon appeared to hang so low above the ground as almost to
+touch it; but later I was to learn that it floats a mile above the
+surface—which seems indeed quite close for a moon.
+
+Following the river downward I soon lost sight of the tiny planet as I
+entered the mazes of a lofty forest. Nor did I catch another glimpse of
+it for some time—several marches at least. However, when the river led
+me to the sea, or rather just before it reached the sea, of a sudden
+the sky became overcast and the size and luxuriance of the vegetation
+diminished as by magic—as if an omni-potent hand had drawn a line upon
+the earth, and said:
+
+“Upon this side shall the trees and the shrubs, the grasses and the
+flowers, riot in profusion of rich colors, gigantic size and
+bewildering abundance; and upon that side shall they be dwarfed and
+pale and scant.”
+
+Instantly I looked above, for clouds are so uncommon in the skies of
+Pellucidar—they are practically unknown except above the mightiest
+mountain ranges—that it had given me something of a start to discover
+the sun obliterated. But I was not long in coming to a realization of
+the cause of the shadow.
+
+Above me hung another world. I could see its mountains and valleys,
+oceans, lakes, and rivers, its broad, grassy plains and dense forests.
+But too great was the distance and too deep the shadow of its under
+side for me to distinguish any movement as of animal life.
+
+Instantly a great curiosity was awakened within me. The questions which
+the sight of this planet, so tantalizingly close, raised in my mind
+were numerous and unanswerable.
+
+Was it inhabited?
+
+If so, by what manner and form of creature?
+
+Were its people as relatively diminutive as their little world, or were
+they as disproportionately huge as the lesser attraction of gravity
+upon the surface of their globe would permit of their being?
+
+As I watched it, I saw that it was revolving upon an axis that lay
+parallel to the surface of Pellucidar, so that during each revolution
+its entire surface was once exposed to the world below and once bathed
+in the heat of the great sun above. The little world had that which
+Pellucidar could not have—a day and night, and—greatest of boons to one
+outer-earthly born—time.
+
+Here I saw a chance to give time to Pellucidar, using this mighty
+clock, revolving perpetually in the heavens, to record the passage of
+the hours for the earth below. Here should be located an observatory,
+from which might be flashed by wireless to every corner of the empire
+the correct time once each day. That this time would be easily measured
+I had no doubt, since so plain were the landmarks upon the under
+surface of the satellite that it would be but necessary to erect a
+simple instrument and mark the instant of passage of a given landmark
+across the instrument.
+
+But then was not the time for dreaming; I must devote my mind to the
+purpose of my journey. So I hastened onward beneath the great shadow.
+As I advanced I could not but note the changing nature of the
+vegetation and the paling of its hues.
+
+The river led me a short distance within the shadow before it emptied
+into the Sojar Az. Then I continued in a southerly direction along the
+coast toward the village of Thuria, where I hoped to find Goork and
+deliver to him my credentials.
+
+I had progressed no great distance from the mouth of the river when I
+discerned, lying some distance at sea, a great island. This I assumed
+to be the stronghold of Hooja, nor did I doubt that upon it even now
+was Dian.
+
+The way was most difficult, since shortly after leaving the river I
+encountered lofty cliffs split by numerous long, narrow fiords, each of
+which necessitated a considerable detour. As the crow flies it is about
+twenty miles from the mouth of the river to Thuria, but before I had
+covered half of it I was fagged. There was no familiar fruit or
+vegetable growing upon the rocky soil of the cliff-tops, and I would
+have fared ill for food had not a hare broken cover almost beneath my
+nose.
+
+I carried bow and arrows to conserve my ammunition-supply, but so quick
+was the little animal that I had no time to draw and fit a shaft. In
+fact my dinner was a hundred yards away and going like the proverbial
+bat when I dropped my six-shooter on it. It was a pretty shot and when
+coupled with a good dinner made me quite contented with myself.
+
+After eating I lay down and slept. When I awoke I was scarcely so
+self-satisfied, for I had not more than opened my eyes before I became
+aware of the presence, barely a hundred yards from me, of a pack of
+some twenty huge wolf-dogs—the things which Perry insisted upon calling
+hyaenodons—and almost simultaneously I discovered that while I slept my
+revolvers, rifle, bow, arrows, and knife had been stolen from me.
+
+And the wolf-dog pack was preparing to rush me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT
+
+
+I have never been much of a runner; I hate running. But if ever a
+sprinter broke into smithereens all world’s records it was I that day
+when I fled before those hideous beasts along the narrow spit of rocky
+cliff between two narrow fiords toward the Sojar Az. Just as I reached
+the verge of the cliff the foremost of the brutes was upon me. He
+leaped and closed his massive jaws upon my shoulder.
+
+The momentum of his flying body, added to that of my own, carried the
+two of us over the cliff. It was a hideous fall. The cliff was almost
+perpendicular. At its foot broke the sea against a solid wall of rock.
+
+We struck the cliff-face once in our descent and then plunged into the
+salt sea. With the impact with the water the hyaenodon released his
+hold upon my shoulder.
+
+As I came sputtering to the surface I looked about for some tiny foot-
+or hand-hold where I might cling for a moment of rest and recuperation.
+The cliff itself offered me nothing, so I swam toward the mouth of the
+fiord.
+
+At the far end I could see that erosion from above had washed down
+sufficient rubble to form a narrow ribbon of beach. Toward this I swam
+with all my strength. Not once did I look behind me, since every
+unnecessary movement in swimming detracts so much from one’s endurance
+and speed. Not until I had drawn myself safely out upon the beach did I
+turn my eyes back toward the sea for the hyaenodon. He was swimming
+slowly and apparently painfully toward the beach upon which I stood.
+
+I watched him for a long time, wondering why it was that such a doglike
+animal was not a better swimmer. As he neared me I realized that he was
+weakening rapidly. I had gathered a handful of stones to be ready for
+his assault when he landed, but in a moment I let them fall from my
+hands. It was evident that the brute either was no swimmer or else was
+severely injured, for by now he was making practically no headway.
+Indeed, it was with quite apparent difficulty that he kept his nose
+above the surface of the sea.
+
+He was not more than fifty yards from shore when he went under. I
+watched the spot where he had disappeared, and in a moment I saw his
+head reappear. The look of dumb misery in his eyes struck a chord in my
+breast, for I love dogs. I forgot that he was a vicious, primordial
+wolf-thing—a man-eater, a scourge, and a terror. I saw only the sad
+eyes that looked like the eyes of Raja, my dead collie of the outer
+world.
+
+I did not stop to weigh and consider. In other words, I did not stop to
+think, which I believe must be the way of men who do things—in
+contradistinction to those who think much and do nothing. Instead, I
+leaped back into the water and swam out toward the drowning beast. At
+first he showed his teeth at my approach, but just before I reached him
+he went under for the second time, so that I had to dive to get him.
+
+I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and though he weighed as much
+as a Shetland pony, I managed to drag him to shore and well up upon the
+beach. Here I found that one of his forelegs was broken—the crash
+against the cliff-face must have done it.
+
+By this time all the fight was out of him, so that when I had gathered
+a few tiny branches from some of the stunted trees that grew in the
+crevices of the cliff, and returned to him he permitted me to set his
+broken leg and bind it in splints. I had to tear part of my shirt into
+bits to obtain a bandage, but at last the job was done. Then I sat
+stroking the savage head and talking to the beast in the man-dog talk
+with which you are familiar, if you ever owned and loved a dog.
+
+When he is well, I thought, he probably will turn upon me and attempt
+to devour me, and against that eventuality I gathered together a pile
+of rocks and set to work to fashion a stone-knife. We were bottled up
+at the head of the fiord as completely as if we had been behind prison
+bars. Before us spread the Sojar Az, and elsewhere about us rose
+unscalable cliffs.
+
+Fortunately a little rivulet trickled down the side of the rocky wall,
+giving us ample supply of fresh water—some of which I kept constantly
+beside the hyaenodon in a huge, bowl-shaped shell, of which there were
+countless numbers among the rubble of the beach.
+
+For food we subsisted upon shellfish and an occasional bird that I
+succeeded in knocking over with a rock, for long practice as a pitcher
+on prep-school and varsity nines had made me an excellent shot with a
+hand-thrown missile.
+
+It was not long before the hyaenodon’s leg was sufficiently mended to
+permit him to rise and hobble about on three legs. I shall never forget
+with what intent interest I watched his first attempt. Close at my hand
+lay my pile of rocks. Slowly the beast came to his three good feet. He
+stretched himself, lowered his head, and lapped water from the
+drinking-shell at his side, turned and looked at me, and then hobbled
+off toward the cliffs.
+
+Thrice he traversed the entire extent of our prison, seeking, I
+imagine, a loop-hole for escape, but finding none he returned in my
+direction. Slowly he came quite close to me, sniffed at my shoes, my
+puttees, my hands, and then limped off a few feet and lay down again.
+
+Now that he was able to get around, I was a little uncertain as to the
+wisdom of my impulsive mercy.
+
+How could I sleep with that ferocious thing prowling about the narrow
+confines of our prison?
+
+Should I close my eyes it might be to open them again to the feel of
+those mighty jaws at my throat. To say the least, I was uncomfortable.
+
+I have had too much experience with dumb animals to bank very strongly
+on any sense of gratitude which may be attributed to them by
+inexperienced sentimentalists. I believe that some animals love their
+masters, but I doubt very much if their affection is the outcome of
+gratitude—a characteristic that is so rare as to be only occasionally
+traceable in the seemingly unselfish acts of man himself.
+
+But finally I was forced to sleep. Tired nature would be put off no
+longer. I simply fell asleep, willy nilly, as I sat looking out to sea.
+I had been very uncomfortable since my ducking in the ocean, for though
+I could see the sunlight on the water half-way toward the island and
+upon the island itself, no ray of it fell upon us. We were well within
+the Land of Awful Shadow. A perpetual half-warmth pervaded the
+atmosphere, but clothing was slow in drying, and so from loss of sleep
+and great physical discomfort, I at last gave way to nature’s demands
+and sank into profound slumber.
+
+When I awoke it was with a start, for a heavy body was upon me. My
+first thought was that the hyaenodon had at last attacked me, but as my
+eyes opened and I struggled to rise, I saw that a man was astride me
+and three others bending close above him.
+
+I am no weakling—and never have been. My experience in the hard life of
+the inner world has turned my thews to steel. Even such giants as Ghak
+the Hairy One have praised my strength; but to it is added another
+quality which they lack—science.
+
+The man upon me held me down awkwardly, leaving me many openings—one of
+which I was not slow in taking advantage of, so that almost before the
+fellow knew that I was awake I was upon my feet with my arms over his
+shoulders and about his waist and had hurled him heavily over my head
+to the hard rubble of the beach, where he lay quite still.
+
+In the instant that I arose I had seen the hyaenodon lying asleep
+beside a boulder a few yards away. So nearly was he the color of the
+rock that he was scarcely discernible. Evidently the newcomers had not
+seen him.
+
+I had not more than freed myself from one of my antagonists before the
+other three were upon me. They did not work silently now, but charged
+me with savage cries—a mistake upon their part. The fact that they did
+not draw their weapons against me convinced me that they desired to
+take me alive; but I fought as desperately as if death loomed immediate
+and sure.
+
+The battle was short, for scarce had their first wild whoop
+reverberated through the rocky fiord, and they had closed upon me, than
+a hairy mass of demoniacal rage hurtled among us.
+
+It was the hyaenodon!
+
+In an instant he had pulled down one of the men, and with a single
+shake, terrier-like, had broken his neck. Then he was upon another. In
+their efforts to vanquish the wolf-dog the savages forgot all about me,
+thus giving me an instant in which to snatch a knife from the
+loin-string of him who had first fallen and account for another of
+them. Almost simultaneously the hyaenodon pulled down the remaining
+enemy, crushing his skull with a single bite of those fearsome jaws.
+
+The battle was over—unless the beast considered me fair prey, too. I
+waited, ready for him with knife and bludgeon—also filched from a dead
+foeman; but he paid no attention to me, falling to work instead to
+devour one of the corpses.
+
+The beast bad been handicapped but little by his splinted leg; but
+having eaten he lay down and commenced to gnaw at the bandage. I was
+sitting some little distance away devouring shellfish, of which, by the
+way, I was becoming exceedingly tired.
+
+Presently, the hyaenodon arose and came toward me. I did not move. He
+stopped in front of me and deliberately raised his bandaged leg and
+pawed my knee. His act was as intelligible as words—he wished the
+bandage removed.
+
+I took the great paw in one hand and with the other hand untied and
+unwound the bandage, removed the splints and felt of the injured
+member. As far as I could judge the bone was completely knit. The joint
+was stiff; when I bent it a little the brute winced—but he neither
+growled nor tried to pull away. Very slowly and gently I rubbed the
+joint and applied pressure to it for a few moments.
+
+Then I set it down upon the ground. The hyaenodon walked around me a
+few times, and then lay down at my side, his body touching mine. I laid
+my hand upon his head. He did not move. Slowly, I scratched about his
+ears and neck and down beneath the fierce jaws. The only sign he gave
+was to raise his chin a trifle that I might better caress him.
+
+That was enough! From that moment I have never again felt suspicion of
+Raja, as I immediately named him. Somehow all sense of loneliness
+vanished, too—I had a dog! I had never guessed precisely what it was
+that was lacking to life in Pellucidar, but now I knew it was the total
+absence of domestic animals.
+
+Man here had not yet reached the point where he might take the time
+from slaughter and escaping slaughter to make friends with any of the
+brute creation. I must qualify this statement a trifle and say that
+this was true of those tribes with which I was most familiar. The
+Thurians do domesticate the colossal lidi, traversing the great Lidi
+Plains upon the backs of these grotesque and stupendous monsters, and
+possibly there may also be other, far-distant peoples within the great
+world, who have tamed others of the wild things of jungle, plain or
+mountain.
+
+The Thurians practice agriculture in a crude sort of way. It is my
+opinion that this is one of the earliest steps from savagery to
+civilization. The taming of wild beasts and their domestication
+follows.
+
+Perry argues that wild dogs were first domesticated for hunting
+purposes; but I do not agree with him. I believe that if their
+domestication were not purely the result of an accident, as, for
+example, my taming of the hyaenodon, it came about through the desire
+of tribes who had previously domesticated flocks and herds to have some
+strong, ferocious beast to guard their roaming property. However, I
+lean rather more strongly to the theory of accident.
+
+As I sat there upon the beach of the little fiord eating my unpalatable
+shell-fish, I commenced to wonder how it had been that the four savages
+had been able to reach me, though I had been unable to escape from my
+natural prison. I glanced about in all directions, searching for an
+explanation. At last my eyes fell upon the bow of a small dugout
+protruding scarce a foot from behind a large boulder lying half in the
+water at the edge of the beach.
+
+At my discovery I leaped to my feet so suddenly that it brought Raja,
+growling and bristling, upon all fours in an instant. For the moment I
+had forgotten him. But his savage rumbling did not cause me any
+uneasiness. He glanced quickly about in all directions as if searching
+for the cause of my excitement. Then, as I walked rapidly down toward
+the dugout, he slunk silently after me.
+
+The dugout was similar in many respects to those which I had seen in
+use by the Mezops. In it were four paddles. I was much delighted, as it
+promptly offered me the escape I had been craving.
+
+I pushed it out into water that would float it, stepped in and called
+to Raja to enter. At first he did not seem to understand what I wished
+of him, but after I had paddled out a few yards he plunged through the
+surf and swam after me. When he had come alongside I grasped the scruff
+of his neck, and after a considerable struggle, in which I several
+times came near to overturning the canoe, I managed to drag him aboard,
+where he shook himself vigorously and squatted down before me.
+
+After emerging from the fiord, I paddled southward along the coast,
+where presently the lofty cliffs gave way to lower and more level
+country. It was here somewhere that I should come upon the principal
+village of the Thurians. When, after a time, I saw in the distance what
+I took to be huts in a clearing near the shore, I drew quickly into
+land, for though I had been furnished credentials by Kolk, I was not
+sufficiently familiar with the tribal characteristics of these people
+to know whether I should receive a friendly welcome or not; and in case
+I should not, I wanted to be sure of having a canoe hidden safely away
+so that I might undertake the trip to the island, in any
+event—provided, of course, that I escaped the Thurians should they
+prove belligerent.
+
+At the point where I landed the shore was quite low. A forest of pale,
+scrubby ferns ran down almost to the beach. Here I dragged up the
+dugout, hiding it well within the vegetation, and with some loose rocks
+built a cairn upon the beach to mark my cache. Then I turned my steps
+toward the Thurian village.
+
+As I proceeded I began to speculate upon the possible actions of Raja
+when we should enter the presence of other men than myself. The brute
+was padding softly at my side, his sensitive nose constantly atwitch
+and his fierce eyes moving restlessly from side to side—nothing would
+ever take Raja unawares!
+
+The more I thought upon the matter the greater became my perturbation.
+I did not want Raja to attack any of the people upon whose friendship I
+so greatly depended, nor did I want him injured or slain by them.
+
+I wondered if Raja would stand for a leash. His head as he paced beside
+me was level with my hip. I laid my hand upon it caressingly. As I did
+so he turned and looked up into my face, his jaws parting and his red
+tongue lolling as you have seen your own dog’s beneath a love pat.
+
+“Just been waiting all your life to be tamed and loved, haven’t you,
+old man?” I asked. “You’re nothing but a good pup, and the man who put
+the hyaeno in your name ought to be sued for libel.”
+
+Raja bared his mighty fangs with upcurled, snarling lips and licked my
+hand.
+
+“You’re grinning, you old fraud, you!” I cried. “If you’re not, I’ll
+eat you. I’ll bet a doughnut you’re nothing but some kid’s poor old
+Fido, masquerading around as a real, live man-eater.”
+
+Raja whined. And so we walked on together toward Thuria—I talking to
+the beast at my side, and he seeming to enjoy my company no less than I
+enjoyed his. If you don’t think it’s lonesome wandering all by yourself
+through savage, unknown Pellucidar, why, just try it, and you will not
+wonder that I was glad of the company of this first dog—this living
+replica of the fierce and now extinct hyaenodon of the outer crust that
+hunted in savage packs the great elk across the snows of southern
+France, in the days when the mastodon roamed at will over the broad
+continent of which the British Isles were then a part, and perchance
+left his footprints and his bones in the sands of Atlantis as well.
+
+Thus I dreamed as we moved on toward Thuria. My dreaming was rudely
+shattered by a savage growl from Raja. I looked down at him. He had
+stopped in his tracks as one turned to stone. A thin ridge of stiff
+hair bristled along the entire length of his spine. His yellow green
+eyes were fastened upon the scrubby jungle at our right.
+
+I fastened my fingers in the bristles at his neck and turned my eyes in
+the direction that his pointed. At first I saw nothing. Then a slight
+movement of the bushes riveted my attention. I thought it must be some
+wild beast, and was glad of the primitive weapons I had taken from the
+bodies of the warriors who had attacked me.
+
+Presently I distinguished two eyes peering at us from the vegetation. I
+took a step in their direction, and as I did so a youth arose and fled
+precipitately in the direction we had been going. Raja struggled to be
+after him, but I held tightly to his neck, an act which he did not seem
+to relish, for he turned on me with bared fangs.
+
+I determined that now was as good a time as any to discover just how
+deep was Raja’s affection for me. One of us could be master, and
+logically I was the one. He growled at me. I cuffed him sharply across
+the nose. He looked it me for a moment in surprised bewilderment, and
+then he growled again. I made another feint at him, expecting that it
+would bring him at my throat; but instead he winced and crouched down.
+
+Raja was subdued!
+
+I stooped and patted him. Then I took a piece of the rope that
+constituted a part of my equipment and made a leash for him.
+
+Thus we resumed our journey toward Thuria. The youth who had seen us
+was evidently of the Thurians. That he had lost no time in racing
+homeward and spreading the word of my coming was evidenced when we had
+come within sight of the clearing, and the village—the first real
+village, by the way, that I had ever seen constructed by human
+Pellucidarians. There was a rude rectangle walled with logs and
+boulders, in which were a hundred or more thatched huts of similar
+construction. There was no gate. Ladders that could be removed by night
+led over the palisade.
+
+Before the village were assembled a great concourse of warriors. Inside
+I could see the heads of women and children peering over the top of the
+wall; and also, farther back, the long necks of lidi, topped by their
+tiny heads. Lidi, by the way, is both the singular and plural form of
+the noun that describes the huge beasts of burden of the Thurians. They
+are enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long, with very small
+heads perched at the top of very long, slender necks. Their heads are
+quite forty feet from the ground. Their gait is slow and deliberate,
+but so enormous are their strides that, as a matter of fact, they cover
+the ground quite rapidly.
+
+Perry has told me that they are almost identical with the fossilized
+remains of the diplodocus of the outer crust’s Jurassic age. I have to
+take his word for it—and I guess you will, unless you know more of such
+matters than I.
+
+As we came in sight of the warriors the men set up a great jabbering.
+Their eyes were wide in astonishment—not only, I presume, because of my
+strange garmenture, but as well from the fact that I came in company
+with a jalok, which is the Pellucidarian name of the hyaenodon.
+
+Raja tugged at his leash, growling and showing his long white fangs. He
+would have liked nothing better than to be at the throats of the whole
+aggregation; but I held him in with the leash, though it took all my
+strength to do it. My free hand I held above my head, palm out, in
+token of the peacefulness of my mission.
+
+In the foreground I saw the youth who had discovered us, and I could
+tell from the way he carried himself that he was quite overcome by his
+own importance. The warriors about him were all fine looking fellows,
+though shorter and squatter than the Sarians or the Amozites. Their
+color, too, was a bit lighter, owing, no doubt, to the fact that much
+of their lives is spent within the shadow of the world that hangs
+forever above their country.
+
+A little in advance of the others was a bearded fellow tricked out in
+many ornaments. I didn’t need to ask to know that he was the
+chieftain—doubtless Goork, father of Kolk. Now to him I addressed
+myself.
+
+“I am David,” I said, “Emperor of the Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar.
+Doubtless you have heard of me?”
+
+He nodded his head affirmatively.
+
+“I come from Sari,” I continued, “where I just met Kolk, the son of
+Goork. I bear a token from Kolk to his father, which will prove that I
+am a friend.”
+
+Again the warrior nodded. “I am Goork,” he said. “Where is the token?”
+
+“Here,” I replied, and fished into the game-bag where I had placed it.
+
+Goork and his people waited in silence. My hand searched the inside of
+the bag.
+
+It was empty!
+
+The token had been stolen with my arms!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+CAPTIVE
+
+
+When Goork and his people saw that I had no token they commenced to
+taunt me.
+
+“You do not come from Kolk, but from the Sly One!” they cried. “He has
+sent you from the island to spy upon us. Go away, or we will set upon
+you and kill you.”
+
+I explained that all my belongings had been stolen from me, and that
+the robber must have taken the token too; but they didn’t believe me.
+As proof that I was one of Hooja’s people, they pointed to my weapons,
+which they said were ornamented like those of the island clan. Further,
+they said that no good man went in company with a jalok—and that by
+this line of reasoning I certainly was a bad man.
+
+I saw that they were not naturally a war-like tribe, for they preferred
+that I leave in peace rather than force them to attack me, whereas the
+Sarians would have killed a suspicious stranger first and inquired into
+his purposes later.
+
+I think Raja sensed their antagonism, for he kept tugging at his leash
+and growling ominously. They were a bit in awe of him, and kept at a
+safe distance. It was evident that they could not comprehend why it was
+that this savage brute did not turn upon me and rend me.
+
+I wasted a long time there trying to persuade Goork to accept me at my
+own valuation, but he was too canny. The best he would do was to give
+us food, which he did, and direct me as to the safest portion of the
+island upon which to attempt a landing, though even as he told me I am
+sure that he thought my request for information but a blind to deceive
+him as to my true knowledge of the insular stronghold.
+
+At last I turned away from them—rather disheartened, for I had hoped to
+be able to enlist a considerable force of them in an attempt to rush
+Hooja’s horde and rescue Dian. Back along the beach toward the hidden
+canoe we made our way.
+
+By the time we came to the cairn I was dog-tired. Throwing myself upon
+the sand I soon slept, and with Raja stretched out beside me I felt a
+far greater security than I had enjoyed for a long time.
+
+I awoke much refreshed to find Raja’s eyes glued upon me. The moment I
+opened mine he rose, stretched himself, and without a backward glance
+plunged into the jungle. For several minutes I could hear him crashing
+through the brush. Then all was silent.
+
+I wondered if he had left me to return to his fierce pack. A feeling of
+loneliness overwhelmed me. With a sigh I turned to the work of dragging
+the canoe down to the sea. As I entered the jungle where the dugout lay
+a hare darted from beneath the boat’s side, and a well-aimed cast of my
+javelin brought it down. I was hungry—I had not realized it before—so I
+sat upon the edge of the canoe and devoured my repast. The last
+remnants gone, I again busied myself with preparations for my
+expedition to the island.
+
+I did not know for certain that Dian was there; but I surmised as much.
+Nor could I guess what obstacles might confront me in an effort to
+rescue her. For a time I loitered about after I had the canoe at the
+water’s edge, hoping against hope that Raja would return; but he did
+not, so I shoved the awkward craft through the surf and leaped into it.
+
+I was still a little downcast by the desertion of my new-found friend,
+though I tried to assure myself that it was nothing but what I might
+have expected.
+
+The savage brute had served me well in the short time that we had been
+together, and had repaid his debt of gratitude to me, since he had
+saved my life, or at least my liberty, no less certainly than I had
+saved his life when he was injured and drowning.
+
+The trip across the water to the island was uneventful. I was mighty
+glad to be in the sunshine again when I passed out of the shadow of the
+dead world about half-way between the mainland and the island. The hot
+rays of the noonday sun did a great deal toward raising my spirits, and
+dispelling the mental gloom in which I had been shrouded almost
+continually since entering the Land of Awful Shadow. There is nothing
+more dispiriting to me than absence of sunshine.
+
+I had paddled to the southwestern point, which Goork said he believed
+to be the least frequented portion of the island, as he had never seen
+boats put off from there. I found a shallow reef running far out into
+the sea and rather precipitous cliffs running almost to the surf. It
+was a nasty place to land, and I realized now why it was not used by
+the natives; but at last I managed, after a good wetting, to beach my
+canoe and scale the cliffs.
+
+The country beyond them appeared more open and park-like than I had
+anticipated, since from the mainland the entire coast that is visible
+seems densely clothed with tropical jungle. This jungle, as I could see
+from the vantage-point of the cliff-top, formed but a relatively narrow
+strip between the sea and the more open forest and meadow of the
+interior. Farther back there was a range of low but apparently very
+rocky hills, and here and there all about were visible flat-topped
+masses of rock—small mountains, in fact—which reminded me of pictures I
+had seen of landscapes in New Mexico. Altogether, the country was very
+much broken and very beautiful. From where I stood I counted no less
+than a dozen streams winding down from among the table-buttes and
+emptying into a pretty river which flowed away in a northeasterly
+direction toward the op-posite end of the island.
+
+As I let my eyes roam over the scene I suddenly became aware of figures
+moving upon the flat top of a far-distant butte. Whether they were
+beast or human, though, I could not make out; but at least they were
+alive, so I determined to prosecute my search for Hooja’s stronghold in
+the general direction of this butte.
+
+To descend to the valley required no great effort. As I swung along
+through the lush grass and the fragrant flowers, my cudgel swinging in
+my hand and my javelin looped across my shoulders with its aurochs-hide
+strap, I felt equal to any emergency, ready for any danger.
+
+I had covered quite a little distance, and I was passing through a
+strip of wood which lay at the foot of one of the flat-topped hills,
+when I became conscious of the sensation of being watched. My life
+within Pellucidar has rather quickened my senses of sight, hearing, and
+smell, and, too, certain primitive intuitive or instinctive qualities
+that seem blunted in civilized man. But, though I was positive that
+eyes were upon me, I could see no sign of any living thing within the
+wood other than the many, gay-plumaged birds and little monkeys which
+filled the trees with life, color, and action.
+
+To you it may seem that my conviction was the result of an overwrought
+imagination, or to the actual reality of the prying eyes of the little
+monkeys or the curious ones of the birds; but there is a difference
+which I cannot explain between the sensation of casual observation and
+studied espionage. A sheep might gaze at you without transmitting a
+warning through your subjective mind, because you are in no danger from
+a sheep. But let a tiger gaze fixedly at you from ambush, and unless
+your primitive instincts are completely calloused you will presently
+commence to glance furtively about and be filled with vague,
+unreasoning terror.
+
+Thus was it with me then. I grasped my cudgel more firmly and unslung
+my javelin, carrying it in my left hand. I peered to left and right,
+but I saw nothing. Then, all quite suddenly, there fell about my neck
+and shoulders, around my arms and body, a number of pliant fiber ropes.
+
+In a jiffy I was trussed up as neatly as you might wish. One of the
+nooses dropped to my ankles and was jerked up with a suddenness that
+brought me to my face upon the ground. Then something heavy and hairy
+sprang upon my back. I fought to draw my knife, but hairy hands grasped
+my wrists and, dragging them behind my back, bound them securely.
+
+Next my feet were bound. Then I was turned over upon my back to look up
+into the faces of my captors.
+
+And what faces! Imagine if you can a cross between a sheep and a
+gorilla, and you will have some conception of the physiognomy of the
+creature that bent close above me, and of those of the half-dozen
+others that clustered about. There was the facial length and great eyes
+of the sheep, and the bull-neck and hideous fangs of the gorilla. The
+bodies and limbs were both man and gorilla-like.
+
+As they bent over me they conversed in a mono-syllabic tongue that was
+perfectly intelligible to me. It was something of a simplified language
+that had no need for aught but nouns and verbs, but such words as it
+included were the same as those of the human beings of Pellucidar. It
+was amplified by many gestures which filled in the speech-gaps.
+
+I asked them what they intended doing with me; but, like our own North
+American Indians when questioned by a white man, they pretended not to
+understand me. One of them swung me to his shoulder as lightly as if I
+had been a shoat. He was a huge creature, as were his fellows, standing
+fully seven feet upon his short legs and weighing considerably more
+than a quarter of a ton.
+
+Two went ahead of my bearer and three behind. In this order we cut to
+the right through the forest to the foot of the hill where precipitous
+cliffs appeared to bar our farther progress in this direction. But my
+escort never paused. Like ants upon a wall, they scaled that seemingly
+unscalable barrier, clinging, Heaven knows how, to its ragged
+perpendicular face. During most of the short journey to the summit I
+must admit that my hair stood on end. Presently, however, we topped the
+thing and stood upon the level mesa which crowned it.
+
+Immediately from all about, out of burrows and rough, rocky lairs,
+poured a perfect torrent of beasts similar to my captors. They
+clustered about, jabbering at my guards and attempting to get their
+hands upon me, whether from curiosity or a desire to do me bodily harm
+I did not know, since my escort with bared fangs and heavy blows kept
+them off.
+
+Across the mesa we went, to stop at last before a large pile of rocks
+in which an opening appeared. Here my guards set me upon my feet and
+called out a word which sounded like “Gr-gr-gr!” and which I later
+learned was the name of their king.
+
+Presently there emerged from the cavernous depths of the lair a
+monstrous creature, scarred from a hundred battles, almost hairless and
+with an empty socket where one eye had been. The other eye, sheeplike
+in its mildness, gave the most startling appearance to the beast, which
+but for that single timid orb was the most fearsome thing that one
+could imagine.
+
+I had encountered the black, hairless, long-tailed ape—things of the
+mainland—the creatures which Perry thought might constitute the link
+between the higher orders of apes and man—but these brute-men of
+Gr-gr-gr seemed to set that theory back to zero, for there was less
+similarity between the black ape-men and these creatures than there was
+between the latter and man, while both had many human attributes, some
+of which were better developed in one species and some in the other.
+
+The black apes were hairless and built thatched huts in their arboreal
+retreats; they kept domesticated dogs and ruminants, in which respect
+they were farther advanced than the human beings of Pellucidar; but
+they appeared to have only a meager language, and sported long, apelike
+tails.
+
+On the other hand, Gr-gr-gr’s people were, for the most part, quite
+hairy, but they were tailless and had a language similar to that of the
+human race of Pellucidar; nor were they arboreal. Their skins, where
+skin showed, were white.
+
+From the foregoing facts and others that I have noted during my long
+life within Pellucidar, which is now passing through an age analogous
+to some pre-glacial age of the outer crust, I am constrained to the
+belief that evolution is not so much a gradual transition from one form
+to another as it is an accident of breeding, either by crossing or the
+hazards of birth. In other words, it is my belief that the first man
+was a freak of nature—nor would one have to draw overstrongly upon his
+credulity to be convinced that Gr-gr-gr and his tribe were also freaks.
+
+The great man-brute seated himself upon a flat rock—his throne, I
+imagine—just before the entrance to his lair. With elbows on knees and
+chin in palms he regarded me intently through his lone sheep-eye while
+one of my captors told of my taking.
+
+When all had been related Gr-gr-gr questioned me. I shall not attempt
+to quote these people in their own abbreviated tongue—you would have
+even greater difficulty in interpreting them than did I. Instead, I
+shall put the words into their mouths which will carry to you the ideas
+which they intended to convey.
+
+“You are an enemy,” was Gr-gr-gr’s initial declaration. “You belong to
+the tribe of Hooja.”
+
+Ah! So they knew Hooja and he was their enemy! Good!
+
+“I am an enemy of Hooja,” I replied. “He has stolen my mate and I have
+come here to take her away from him and punish Hooja.”
+
+“How could you do that alone?”
+
+“I do not know,” I answered, “but I should have tried had you not
+captured me. What do you intend to do with me?”
+
+“You shall work for us.”
+
+“You will not kill me?” I asked.
+
+“We do not kill except in self-defense,” he replied; “self-defense and
+punishment. Those who would kill us and those who do wrong we kill. If
+we knew you were one of Hooja’s people we might kill you, for all
+Hooja’s people are bad people; but you say you are an enemy of Hooja.
+You may not speak the truth, but until we learn that you have lied we
+shall not kill you. You shall work.”
+
+“If you hate Hooja,” I suggested, “why not let me, who hate him, too,
+go and punish him?”
+
+For some time Gr-gr-gr sat in thought. Then he raised his head and
+addressed my guard.
+
+“Take him to his work,” he ordered.
+
+His tone was final. As if to emphasize it he turned and entered his
+burrow. My guard conducted me farther into the mesa, where we came
+presently to a tiny depression or valley, at one end of which gushed a
+warm spring.
+
+The view that opened before me was the most surprising that I have ever
+seen. In the hollow, which must have covered several hundred acres,
+were numerous fields of growing things, and working all about with
+crude implements or with no implements at all other than their bare
+hands were many of the brute-men engaged in the first agriculture that
+I had seen within Pellucidar.
+
+They put me to work cultivating in a patch of melons.
+
+I never was a farmer nor particularly keen for this sort of work, and I
+am free to confess that time never had dragged so heavily as it did
+during the hour or the year I spent there at that work. How long it
+really was I do not know, of course; but it was all too long.
+
+The creatures that worked about me were quite simple and friendly. One
+of them proved to be a son of Gr-gr-gr. He had broken some minor tribal
+law, and was working out his sentence in the fields. He told me that
+his tribe had lived upon this hilltop always, and that there were other
+tribes like them dwelling upon other hilltops. They had no wars and had
+always lived in peace and harmony, menaced only by the larger carnivora
+of the island, until my kind had come under a creature called Hooja,
+and attacked and killed them when they chanced to descend from their
+natural fortresses to visit their fellows upon other lofty mesas.
+
+Now they were afraid; but some day they would go in a body and fall
+upon Hooja and his people and slay them all. I explained to him that I
+was Hooja’s enemy, and asked, when they were ready to go, that I be
+allowed to go with them, or, better still, that they let me go ahead
+and learn all that I could about the village where Hooja dwelt so that
+they might attack it with the best chance of success.
+
+Gr-gr-gr’s son seemed much impressed by my suggestion. He said that
+when he was through in the fields he would speak to his father about
+the matter.
+
+Some time after this Gr-gr-gr came through the fields where we were,
+and his son spoke to him upon the subject, but the old gentleman was
+evidently in anything but a good humor, for he cuffed the youngster
+and, turning upon me, informed me that he was convinced that I had lied
+to him, and that I was one of Hooja’s people.
+
+“Wherefore,” he concluded, “we shall slay you as soon as the melons are
+cultivated. Hasten, therefore.”
+
+And hasten I did. I hastened to cultivate the weeds which grew among
+the melon-vines. Where there had been one sickly weed before, I
+nourished two healthy ones. When I found a particularly promising
+variety of weed growing elsewhere than among my melons, I forthwith dug
+it up and transplanted it among my charges.
+
+My masters did not seem to realize my perfidy. They saw me always
+laboring diligently in the melon-patch, and as time enters not into the
+reckoning of Pellucidarians—even of human beings and much less of
+brutes and half brutes—I might have lived on indefinitely through this
+subterfuge had not that occurred which took me out of the melon-patch
+for good and all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+HOOJA’S CUTTHROATS APPEAR
+
+
+I had built a little shelter of rocks and brush where I might crawl in
+and sleep out of the perpetual light and heat of the noonday sun. When
+I was tired or hungry I retired to my humble cot.
+
+My masters never interposed the slightest objection. As a matter of
+fact, they were very good to me, nor did I see aught while I was among
+them to indicate that they are ever else than a simple, kindly folk
+when left to themselves. Their awe-inspiring size, terrific strength,
+mighty fighting-fangs, and hideous appearance are but the attributes
+necessary to the successful waging of their constant battle for
+survival, and well do they employ them when the need arises. The only
+flesh they eat is that of herbivorous animals and birds. When they hunt
+the mighty thag, the prehistoric bos of the outer crust, a single male,
+with his fiber rope, will catch and kill the greatest of the bulls.
+
+Well, as I was about to say, I had this little shelter at the edge of
+my melon-patch. Here I was resting from my labors on a certain occasion
+when I heard a great hub-bub in the village, which lay about a quarter
+of a mile away.
+
+Presently a male came racing toward the field, shouting excitedly. As
+he approached I came from my shelter to learn what all the commotion
+might be about, for the monotony of my existence in the melon-patch
+must have fostered that trait of my curiosity from which it had always
+been my secret boast I am peculiarly free.
+
+The other workers also ran forward to meet the messenger, who quickly
+unburdened himself of his information, and as quickly turned and
+scampered back toward the village. When running these beast-men often
+go upon all fours. Thus they leap over obstacles that would slow up a
+human being, and upon the level attain a speed that would make a
+thoroughbred look to his laurels. The result in this instance was that
+before I had more than assimilated the gist of the word which had been
+brought to the fields, I was alone, watching my co-workers speeding
+villageward.
+
+I was alone! It was the first time since my capture that no beast-man
+had been within sight of me. I was alone! And all my captors were in
+the village at the op-posite edge of the mesa repelling an attack of
+Hooja’s horde!
+
+It seemed from the messenger’s tale that two of Gr-gr-gr’s great males
+had been set upon by a half-dozen of Hooja’s cutthroats while the
+former were peaceably returning from the thag hunt. The two had
+returned to the village unscratched, while but a single one of Hooja’s
+half-dozen had escaped to report the outcome of the battle to their
+leader. Now Hooja was coming to punish Gr-gr-gr’s people. With his
+large force, armed with the bows and arrows that Hooja had learned from
+me to make, with long lances and sharp knives, I feared that even the
+mighty strength of the beastmen could avail them but little.
+
+At last had come the opportunity for which I waited! I was free to make
+for the far end of the mesa, find my way to the valley below, and while
+the two forces were engaged in their struggle, continue my search for
+Hooja’s village, which I had learned from the beast-men lay farther on
+down the river that I had been following when taken prisoner.
+
+As I turned to make for the mesa’s rim the sounds of battle came
+plainly to my ears—the hoarse shouts of men mingled with the
+half-beastly roars and growls of the brute-folk.
+
+Did I take advantage of my opportunity?
+
+I did not. Instead, lured by the din of strife and by the desire to
+deliver a stroke, however feeble, against hated Hooja, I wheeled and
+ran directly toward the village.
+
+When I reached the edge of the plateau such a scene met my astonished
+gaze as never before had startled it, for the unique battle-methods of
+the half-brutes were rather the most remarkable I had ever witnessed.
+Along the very edge of the cliff-top stood a thin line of mighty
+males—the best rope-throwers of the tribe. A few feet behind these the
+rest of the males, with the exception of about twenty, formed a second
+line. Still farther in the rear all the women and young children were
+clustered into a single group under the protection of the remaining
+twenty fighting males and all the old males.
+
+But it was the work of the first two lines that interested me. The
+forces of Hooja—a great horde of savage Sagoths and primeval cave
+men—were working their way up the steep cliff-face, their agility but
+slightly less than that of my captors who had clambered so nimbly
+aloft—even he who was burdened by my weight.
+
+As the attackers came on they paused occasionally wherever a projection
+gave them sufficient foothold and launched arrows and spears at the
+defenders above them. During the entire battle both sides hurled taunts
+and insults at one another—the human beings naturally excelling the
+brutes in the coarseness and vileness of their vilification and
+invective.
+
+The “firing-line” of the brute-men wielded no weapon other than their
+long fiber nooses. When a foeman came within range of them a noose
+would settle unerringly about him and he would be dragged, fighting and
+yelling, to the cliff-top, unless, as occasionally occurred, he was
+quick enough to draw his knife and cut the rope above him, in which
+event he usually plunged down-ward to a no less certain death than that
+which awaited him above.
+
+Those who were hauled up within reach of the powerful clutches of the
+defenders had the nooses snatched from them and were catapulted back
+through the first line to the second, where they were seized and killed
+by the simple expedient of a single powerful closing of mighty fangs
+upon the backs of their necks.
+
+But the arrows of the invaders were taking a much heavier toll than the
+nooses of the defenders and I foresaw that it was but a matter of time
+before Hooja’s forces must conquer unless the brute-men changed their
+tactics, or the cave men tired of the battle.
+
+Gr-gr-gr was standing in the center of the first line. All about him
+were boulders and large fragments of broken rock. I approached him and
+without a word toppled a large mass of rock over the edge of the cliff.
+It fell directly upon the head of an archer, crushing him to instant
+death and carrying his mangled corpse with it to the bottom of the
+declivity, and on its way brushing three more of the attackers into the
+hereafter.
+
+Gr-gr-gr turned toward me in surprise. For an instant he appeared to
+doubt the sincerity of my motives. I felt that perhaps my time had come
+when he reached for me with one of his giant paws; but I dodged him,
+and running a few paces to the right hurled down another missile. It,
+too, did its allotted work of destruction. Then I picked up smaller
+fragments and with all the control and accuracy for which I had earned
+justly deserved fame in my collegiate days I rained down a hail of
+death upon those beneath me.
+
+Gr-gr-gr was coming toward me again. I pointed to the litter of rubble
+upon the cliff-top.
+
+“Hurl these down upon the enemy!” I cried to him. “Tell your warriors
+to throw rocks down upon them!”
+
+At my words the others of the first line, who had been interested
+spectators of my tactics, seized upon great boulders or bits of rock,
+whichever came first to their hands, and, without waiting for a command
+from Gr-gr-gr, deluged the terrified cave men with a perfect avalanche
+of stone. In less than no time the cliff-face was stripped of enemies
+and the village of Gr-gr-gr was saved.
+
+Gr-gr-gr was standing beside me when the last of the cave men
+disappeared in rapid flight down the valley. He was looking at me
+intently.
+
+“Those were your people,” he said. “Why did you kill them?”
+
+“They were not my people,” I returned. “I have told you that before,
+but you would not believe me. Will you believe me now when I tell you
+that I hate Hooja and his tribe as much as you do? Will you believe me
+when I tell you that I wish to be the friend of Gr-gr-gr?”
+
+For some time he stood there beside me, scratching his head. Evidently
+it was no less difficult for him to readjust his preconceived
+conclusions than it is for most human beings; but finally the idea
+percolated—which it might never have done had he been a man, or I might
+qualify that statement by saying had he been some men. Finally he
+spoke.
+
+“Gilak,” he said, “you have made Gr-gr-gr ashamed. He would have killed
+you. How can he reward you?”
+
+“Set me free,” I replied quickly.
+
+“You are free,” he said. “You may go down when you wish, or you may
+stay with us. If you go you may always return. We are your friends.”
+
+Naturally, I elected to go. I explained all over again to Gr-gr-gr the
+nature of my mission. He listened attentively; after I had done he
+offered to send some of his people with me to guide me to Hooja’s
+village. I was not slow in accepting his offer.
+
+First, however, we must eat. The hunters upon whom Hooja’s men had
+fallen had brought back the meat of a great thag. There would be a
+feast to commemorate the victory—a feast and dancing.
+
+I had never witnessed a tribal function of the brute-folk, though I had
+often heard strange sounds coming from the village, where I had not
+been allowed since my capture. Now I took part in one of their orgies.
+
+It will live forever in my memory. The combination of bestiality and
+humanity was oftentimes pathetic, and again grotesque or horrible.
+Beneath the glaring noonday sun, in the sweltering heat of the
+mesa-top, the huge, hairy creatures leaped in a great circle. They
+coiled and threw their fiber-ropes; they hurled taunts and insults at
+an imaginary foe; they fell upon the carcass of the thag and literally
+tore it to pieces; and they ceased only when, gorged, they could no
+longer move.
+
+I had to wait until the processes of digestion had released my escort
+from its torpor. Some had eaten until their abdomens were so distended
+that I thought they must burst, for beside the thag there had been
+fully a hundred antelopes of various sizes and varied degrees of
+decomposition, which they had unearthed from burial beneath the floors
+of their lairs to grace the banquet-board.
+
+But at last we were started—six great males and myself. Gr-gr-gr had
+returned my weapons to me, and at last I was once more upon my
+oft-interrupted way toward my goal. Whether I should find Dian at the
+end of my journey or no I could not even surmise; but I was none the
+less impatient to be off, for if only the worst lay in store for me I
+wished to know even the worst at once.
+
+I could scarce believe that my proud mate would still be alive in the
+power of Hooja; but time upon Pellucidar is so strange a thing that I
+realized that to her or to him only a few minutes might have elapsed
+since his subtle trickery had enabled him to steal her away from
+Phutra. Or she might have found the means either to repel his advances
+or escape him.
+
+As we descended the cliff we disturbed a great pack of large hyena-like
+beasts—hyaena spelaeus, Perry calls them—who were busy among the
+corpses of the cave men fallen in battle. The ugly creatures were far
+from the cowardly things that our own hyenas are reputed to be; they
+stood their ground with bared fangs as we approached them. But, as I
+was later to learn, so formidable are the brute-folk that there are few
+even of the larger carnivora that will not make way for them when they
+go abroad. So the hyenas moved a little from our line of march, closing
+in again upon their feasts when we had passed.
+
+We made our way steadily down the rim of the beautiful river which
+flows the length of the island, coming at last to a wood rather denser
+than any that I had before encountered in this country. Well within
+this forest my escort halted.
+
+“There!” they said, and pointed ahead. “We are to go no farther.”
+
+Thus having guided me to my destination they left me. Ahead of me,
+through the trees, I could see what appeared to be the foot of a steep
+hill. Toward this I made my way. The forest ran to the very base of a
+cliff, in the face of which were the mouths of many caves. They
+appeared untenanted; but I decided to watch for a while before
+venturing farther. A large tree, densely foliaged, offered a splendid
+vantage-point from which to spy upon the cliff, so I clambered among
+its branches where, securely hidden, I could watch what transpired
+about the caves.
+
+It seemed that I had scarcely settled myself in a comfortable position
+before a party of cave men emerged from one of the smaller apertures in
+the cliff-face, about fifty feet from the base. They descended into the
+forest and disappeared. Soon after came several others from the same
+cave, and after them, at a short interval, a score of women and
+children, who came into the wood to gather fruit. There were several
+warriors with them—a guard, I presume.
+
+After this came other parties, and two or three groups who passed out
+of the forest and up the cliff-face to enter the same cave. I could not
+understand it. All who came out had emerged from the same cave. All who
+returned reentered it. No other cave gave evidence of habitation, and
+no cave but one of extraordinary size could have accommodated all the
+people whom I had seen pass in and out of its mouth.
+
+For a long time I sat and watched the coming and going of great numbers
+of the cave-folk. Not once did one leave the cliff by any other opening
+save that from which I had seen the first party come, nor did any
+reenter the cliff through another aperture.
+
+What a cave it must be, I thought, that houses an entire tribe! But
+dissatisfied of the truth of my surmise, I climbed higher among the
+branches of the tree that I might get a better view of other portions
+of the cliff. High above the ground I reached a point whence I could
+see the summit of the hill. Evidently it was a flat-topped butte
+similar to that on which dwelt the tribe of Gr-gr-gr.
+
+As I sat gazing at it a figure appeared at the very edge. It was that
+of a young girl in whose hair was a gorgeous bloom plucked from some
+flowering tree of the forest. I had seen her pass beneath me but a
+short while before and enter the small cave that had swallowed all of
+the returning tribesmen.
+
+The mystery was solved. The cave was but the mouth of a passage that
+led upward through the cliff to the summit of the hill. It served
+merely as an avenue from their lofty citadel to the valley below.
+
+No sooner had the truth flashed upon me than the realization came that
+I must seek some other means of reaching the village, for to pass
+unobserved through this well-traveled thoroughfare would be impossible.
+At the moment there was no one in sight below me, so I slid quickly
+from my arboreal watch-tower to the ground and moved rapidly away to
+the right with the intention of circling the hill if necessary until I
+had found an unwatched spot where I might have some slight chance of
+scaling the heights and reaching the top unseen.
+
+I kept close to the edge of the forest, in the very midst of which the
+hill seemed to rise. Though I carefully scanned the cliff as I
+traversed its base, I saw no sign of any other entrance than that to
+which my guides had led me.
+
+After some little time the roar of the sea broke upon my ears. Shortly
+after I came upon the broad ocean which breaks at this point at the
+very foot of the great hill where Hooja had found safe refuge for
+himself and his villains.
+
+I was just about to clamber along the jagged rocks which lie at the
+base of the cliff next to the sea, in search of some foothold to the
+top, when I chanced to see a canoe rounding the end of the island. I
+threw myself down behind a large boulder where I could watch the dugout
+and its occupants without myself being seen.
+
+They paddled toward me for a while and then, about a hundred yards from
+me, they turned straight in toward the foot of the frowning cliffs.
+From where I was it seemed that they were bent upon self-destruction,
+since the roar of the breakers beating upon the perpendicular rock-face
+appeared to offer only death to any one who might venture within their
+relentless clutch.
+
+A mass of rock would soon hide them from my view; but so keen was the
+excitement of the instant that I could not refrain from crawling
+forward to a point whence I could watch the dashing of the small craft
+to pieces on the jagged rocks that loomed before her, although I risked
+discovery from above to accomplish my design.
+
+When I had reached a point where I could again see the dugout, I was
+just in time to see it glide unharmed between two needle-pointed
+sentinels of granite and float quietly upon the unruffled bosom of a
+tiny cove.
+
+Again I crouched behind a boulder to observe what would next transpire;
+nor did I have long to wait. The dugout, which contained but two men,
+was drawn close to the rocky wall. A fiber rope, one end of which was
+tied to the boat, was made fast about a projection of the cliff face.
+
+Then the two men commenced the ascent of the almost perpendicular wall
+toward the summit several hundred feet above. I looked on in amazement,
+for, splendid climbers though the cave men of Pellucidar are, I never
+before had seen so remarkable a feat performed. Upwardly they moved
+without a pause, to disappear at last over the summit.
+
+When I felt reasonably sure that they had gone for a while at least I
+crawled from my hiding-place and at the risk of a broken neck leaped
+and scrambled to the spot where their canoe was moored.
+
+If they had scaled that cliff I could, and if I couldn’t I should die
+in the attempt.
+
+But when I turned to the accomplishment of the task I found it easier
+than I had imagined it would be, since I immediately discovered that
+shallow hand and foot-holds had been scooped in the cliff’s rocky face,
+forming a crude ladder from the base to the summit.
+
+At last I reached the top, and very glad I was, too. Cautiously I
+raised my head until my eyes were above the cliff-crest. Before me
+spread a rough mesa, liberally sprinkled with large boulders. There was
+no village in sight nor any living creature.
+
+I drew myself to level ground and stood erect. A few trees grew among
+the boulders. Very carefully I advanced from tree to tree and boulder
+to boulder toward the inland end of the mesa. I stopped often to listen
+and look cautiously about me in every direction.
+
+How I wished that I had my revolvers and rifle! I would not have to
+worm my way like a scared cat toward Hooja’s village, nor did I relish
+doing so now; but Dian’s life might hinge upon the success of my
+venture, and so I could not afford to take chances. To have met
+suddenly with discovery and had a score or more of armed warriors upon
+me might have been very grand and heroic; but it would have immediately
+put an end to all my earthly activities, nor have accomplished aught in
+the service of Dian.
+
+Well, I must have traveled nearly a mile across that mesa without
+seeing a sign of anyone, when all of a sudden, as I crept around the
+edge of a boulder, I ran plump into a man, down on all fours like
+myself, crawling toward me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+THE RAID ON THE CAVE-PRISON
+
+
+His head was turned over his shoulder as I first saw him—he was looking
+back toward the village. As I leaped for him his eyes fell upon me.
+Never in my life have I seen a more surprised mortal than this poor
+cave man. Before he could utter a single scream of warning or alarm I
+had my fingers on his throat and had dragged him behind the boulder,
+where I proceeded to sit upon him, while I figured out what I had best
+do with him.
+
+He struggled a little at first, but finally lay still, and so I
+released the pressure of my fingers at his windpipe, for which I
+imagine he was quite thankful—I know that I should have been.
+
+I hated to kill him in cold blood; but what else I was to do with him I
+could not see, for to turn him loose would have been merely to have the
+entire village aroused and down upon me in a moment. The fellow lay
+looking up at me with the surprise still deeply written on his
+countenance. At last, all of a sudden, a look of recognition entered
+his eyes.
+
+“I have seen you before,” he said. “I saw you in the arena at the
+Mahars’ city of Phutra when the thipdars dragged the tarag from you and
+your mate. I never understood that. Afterward they put me in the arena
+with two warriors from Gombul.”
+
+He smiled in recollection.
+
+“It would have been the same had there been ten warriors from Gombul. I
+slew them, winning my freedom. Look!”
+
+He half turned his left shoulder toward me, exhibiting the newly healed
+scar of the Mahars’ branded mark.
+
+“Then,” he continued, “as I was returning to my people I met some of
+them fleeing. They told me that one called Hooja the Sly One had come
+and seized our village, putting our people into slavery. So I hurried
+hither to learn the truth, and, sure enough, here I found Hooja and his
+wicked men living in my village, and my father’s people but slaves
+among them.
+
+“I was discovered and captured, but Hooja did not kill me. I am the
+chief’s son, and through me he hoped to win my father’s warriors back
+to the village to help him in a great war he says that he will soon
+commence.
+
+“Among his prisoners is Dian the Beautiful One, whose brother, Dacor
+the Strong One, chief of Amoz, once saved my life when he came to
+Thuria to steal a mate. I helped him capture her, and we are good
+friends. So when I learned that Dian the Beautiful One was Hooja’s
+prisoner, I told him that I would not aid him if he harmed her.
+
+“Recently one of Hooja’s warriors overheard me talking with another
+prisoner. We were planning to combine all the prisoners, seize weapons,
+and when most of Hooja’s warriors were away, slay the rest and retake
+our hilltop. Had we done so we could have held it, for there are only
+two entrances—the narrow tunnel at one end and the steep path up the
+cliffs at the other.
+
+“But when Hooja heard what we had planned he was very angry, and
+ordered that I die. They bound me hand and foot and placed me in a cave
+until all the warriors should return to witness my death; but while
+they were away I heard someone calling me in a muffled voice which
+seemed to come from the wall of the cave. When I replied the voice,
+which was a woman’s, told me that she had overheard all that had passed
+between me and those who had brought me thither, and that she was
+Dacor’s sister and would find a way to help me.
+
+“Presently a little hole appeared in the wall at the point from which
+the voice had come. After a time I saw a woman’s hand digging with a
+bit of stone. Dacor’s sister made a hole in the wall between the cave
+where I lay bound and that in which she had been confined, and soon she
+was by my side and had cut my bonds.
+
+“We talked then, and I offered to make the attempt to take her away and
+back to the land of Sari, where she told me she would be able to learn
+the whereabouts of her mate. Just now I was going to the other end of
+the island to see if a boat lay there, and if the way was clear for our
+escape. Most of the boats are always away now, for a great many of
+Hooja’s men and nearly all the slaves are upon the Island of Trees,
+where Hooja is having many boats built to carry his warriors across the
+water to the mouth of a great river which he discovered while he was
+returning from Phutra—a vast river that empties into the sea there.”
+
+The speaker pointed toward the northeast. “It is wide and smooth and
+slow-running almost to the land of Sari,” he added.
+
+“And where is Dian the Beautiful One now?” I asked.
+
+I had released my prisoner as soon as I found that he was Hooja’s
+enemy, and now the pair of us were squat-ting beside the boulder while
+he told his story.
+
+“She returned to the cave where she had been imprisoned,” he replied,
+“and is awaiting me there.”
+
+“There is no danger that Hooja will come while you are away?”
+
+“Hooja is upon the Island of Trees,” he replied.
+
+“Can you direct me to the cave so that I can find it alone?” I asked.
+
+He said he could, and in the strange yet explicit fashion of the
+Pellucidarians he explained minutely how I might reach the cave where
+he had been imprisoned, and through the hole in its wall reach Dian.
+
+I thought it best for but one of us to return, since two could
+accomplish but little more than one and would double the risk of
+discovery. In the meantime he could make his way to the sea and guard
+the boat, which I told him lay there at the foot of the cliff.
+
+I told him to await us at the cliff-top, and if Dian came alone to do
+his best to get away with her and take her to Sari, as I thought it
+quite possible that, in case of detection and pursuit, it might be
+necessary for me to hold off Hooja’s people while Dian made her way
+alone to where my new friend was to await her. I impressed upon him the
+fact that he might have to resort to trickery or even to force to get
+Dian to leave me; but I made him promise that he would sacrifice
+everything, even his life, in an attempt to rescue Dacor’s sister.
+
+Then we parted—he to take up his position where he could watch the boat
+and await Dian, I to crawl cautiously on toward the caves. I had no
+difficulty in following the directions given me by Juag, the name by
+which Dacor’s friend said he was called. There was the leaning tree, my
+first point he told me to look for after rounding the boulder where we
+had met. After that I crawled to the balanced rock, a huge boulder
+resting upon a tiny base no larger than the palm of your hand.
+
+From here I had my first view of the village of caves. A low bluff ran
+diagonally across one end of the mesa, and in the face of this bluff
+were the mouths of many caves. Zig-zag trails led up to them, and
+narrow ledges scooped from the face of the soft rock connected those
+upon the same level.
+
+The cave in which Juag had been confined was at the extreme end of the
+cliff nearest me. By taking advantage of the bluff itself, I could
+approach within a few feet of the aperture without being visible from
+any other cave. There were few people about at the time; most of these
+were congregated at the foot of the far end of the bluff, where they
+were so engrossed in excited conversation that I felt but little fear
+of detection. However I exercised the greatest care in approaching the
+cliff. After watching for a while until I caught an instant when every
+head was turned away from me, I darted, rabbitlike, into the cave.
+
+Like many of the man-made caves of Pellucidar, this one consisted of
+three chambers, one behind another, and all unlit except for what
+sunlight filtered in through the external opening. The result was
+gradually increasing darkness as one passed into each succeeding
+chamber.
+
+In the last of the three I could just distinguish objects, and that was
+all. As I was groping around the walls for the hole that should lead
+into the cave where Dian was imprisoned, I heard a man’s voice quite
+close to me.
+
+The speaker had evidently but just entered, for he spoke in a loud
+tone, demanding the whereabouts of one whom he had come in search of.
+
+“Where are you, woman?” he cried. “Hooja has sent for you.”
+
+And then a woman’s voice answered him:
+
+“And what does Hooja want of me?”
+
+The voice was Dian’s. I groped in the direction of the sounds, feeling
+for the hole.
+
+“He wishes you brought to the Island of Trees,” replied the man; “for
+he is ready to take you as his mate.”
+
+“I will not go,” said Dian. “I will die first.”
+
+“I am sent to bring you, and bring you I shall.”
+
+I could hear him crossing the cave toward her.
+
+Frantically I clawed the wall of the cave in which I was in an effort
+to find the elusive aperture that would lead me to Dian’s side.
+
+I heard the sound of a scuffle in the next cave. Then my fingers sank
+into loose rock and earth in the side of the cave. In an instant I
+realized why I had been unable to find the opening while I had been
+lightly feeling the surface of the walls—Dian had blocked up the hole
+she had made lest it arouse suspicion and lead to an early discovery of
+Juag’s escape.
+
+Plunging my weight against the crumbling mass, I sent it crashing into
+the adjoining cavern. With it came I, David, Emperor of Pellucidar. I
+doubt if any other potentate in a world’s history ever made a more
+undignified entrance. I landed head first on all fours, but I came
+quickly and was on my feet before the man in the dark guessed what had
+happened.
+
+He saw me, though, when I arose and, sensing that no friend came thus
+precipitately, turned to meet me even as I charged him. I had my stone
+knife in my hand, and he had his. In the darkness of the cave there was
+little opportunity for a display of science, though even at that I
+venture to say that we fought a very pretty duel.
+
+Before I came to Pellucidar I do not recall that I ever had seen a
+stone knife, and I am sure that I never fought with a knife of any
+description; but now I do not have to take my hat off to any of them
+when it comes to wielding that primitive yet wicked weapon.
+
+I could just see Dian in the darkness, but I knew that she could not
+see my features or recognize me; and I enjoyed in anticipation, even
+while I was fighting for her life and mine, her dear joy when she
+should discover that it was I who was her deliverer.
+
+My opponent was large, but he also was active and no mean knife-man. He
+caught me once fairly in the shoulder—I carry the scar yet, and shall
+carry it to the grave. And then he did a foolish thing, for as I leaped
+back to gain a second in which to calm the shock of the wound he rushed
+after me and tried to clinch. He rather neglected his knife for the
+moment in his greater desire to get his hands on me. Seeing the
+opening, I swung my left fist fairly to the point of his jaw.
+
+Down he went. Before ever he could scramble up again I was on him and
+had buried my knife in his heart. Then I stood up—and there was Dian
+facing me and peering at me through the dense gloom.
+
+“You are not Juag!” she exclaimed. “Who are you?”
+
+I took a step toward her, my arms outstretched.
+
+“It is I, Dian,” I said. “It is David.”
+
+At the sound of my voice she gave a little cry in which tears were
+mingled—a pathetic little cry that told me all without words how far
+hope had gone from her—and then she ran forward and threw herself in my
+arms. I covered her perfect lips and her beautiful face with kisses,
+and stroked her thick black hair, and told her again and again what she
+already knew—what she had known for years—that I loved her better than
+all else which two worlds had to offer. We couldn’t devote much time,
+though, to the happiness of love-making, for we were in the midst of
+enemies who might discover us at any moment.
+
+I drew her into the adjoining cave. Thence we made our way to the mouth
+of the cave that had given me entrance to the cliff. Here I
+reconnoitered for a moment, and seeing the coast clear, ran swiftly
+forth with Dian at my side. We dodged around the cliff-end, then paused
+for an instant, listening. No sound reached our ears to indicate that
+any had seen us, and we moved cautiously onward along the way by which
+I had come.
+
+As we went Dian told me that her captors had informed her how close I
+had come in search of her—even to the Land of Awful Shadow—and how one
+of Hooja’s men who knew me had discovered me asleep and robbed me of
+all my possessions. And then how Hooja had sent four others to find me
+and take me prisoner. But these men, she said, had not yet returned, or
+at least she had not heard of their return.
+
+“Nor will you ever,” I responded, “for they have gone to that place
+whence none ever returns.” I then related my adventure with these four.
+
+We had come almost to the cliff-edge where Juag should be awaiting us
+when we saw two men walking rapidly toward the same spot from another
+direction. They did not see us, nor did they see Juag, whom I now
+discovered hiding behind a low bush close to the verge of the precipice
+which drops into the sea at this point. As quickly as possible, without
+exposing ourselves too much to the enemy, we hastened forward that we
+might reach Juag as quickly as they.
+
+But they noticed him first and immediately charged him, for one of them
+had been his guard, and they had both been sent to search for him, his
+escape having been discovered between the time he left the cave and the
+time when I reached it. Evidently they had wasted precious moments
+looking for him in other portions of the mesa.
+
+When I saw that the two of them were rushing him, I called out to
+attract their attention to the fact that they had more than a single
+man to cope with. They paused at the sound of my voice and looked
+about.
+
+When they discovered Dian and me they exchanged a few words, and one of
+them continued toward Juag while the other turned upon us. As he came
+nearer I saw that he carried in his hand one of my six-shooters, but he
+was holding it by the barrel, evidently mistaking it for some sort of
+warclub or tomahawk.
+
+I could scarce refrain a grin when I thought of the wasted
+possibilities of that deadly revolver in the hands of an untutored
+warrior of the stone age. Had he but reversed it and pulled the trigger
+he might still be alive; maybe he is for all I know, since I did not
+kill him then. When he was about twenty feet from me I flung my javelin
+with a quick movement that I had learned from Ghak. He ducked to avoid
+it, and instead of receiving it in his heart, for which it was
+intended, he got it on the side of the head.
+
+Down he went all in a heap. Then I glanced toward Juag. He was having a
+most exciting time. The fellow pitted against Juag was a veritable
+giant; he was hacking and hewing away at the poor slave with a
+villainous-looking knife that might have been designed for butchering
+mastodons. Step by step, he was forcing Juag back toward the edge of
+the cliff with a fiendish cunning that permitted his adversary no
+chance to side-step the terrible consequences of retreat in this
+direction. I saw quickly that in another moment Juag must deliberately
+hurl himself to death over the precipice or be pushed over by his
+foeman.
+
+And as I saw Juag’s predicament I saw, too, in the same instant, a way
+to relieve him. Leaping quickly to the side of the fellow I had just
+felled, I snatched up my fallen revolver. It was a desperate chance to
+take, and I realized it in the instant that I threw the gun up from my
+hip and pulled the trigger. There was no time to aim. Juag was upon the
+very brink of the chasm. His relentless foe was pushing him hard,
+beating at him furiously with the heavy knife.
+
+And then the revolver spoke—loud and sharp. The giant threw his hands
+above his head, whirled about like a huge top, and lunged forward over
+the precipice.
+
+And Juag?
+
+He cast a single affrighted glance in my direction—never before, of
+course, had he heard the report of a firearm—and with a howl of dismay
+he, too, turned and plunged headforemost from sight. Horror-struck, I
+hastened to the brink of the abyss just in time to see two splashes
+upon the surface of the little cove below.
+
+For an instant I stood there watching with Dian at my side. Then, to my
+utter amazement, I saw Juag rise to the surface and swim strongly
+toward the boat.
+
+The fellow had dived that incredible distance and come up unharmed!
+
+I called to him to await us below, assuring him that he need have no
+fear of my weapon, since it would harm only my enemies. He shook his
+head and mut-tered something which I could not hear at so great a
+distance; but when I pushed him he promised to wait for us. At the same
+instant Dian caught my arm and pointed toward the village. My shot had
+brought a crowd of natives on the run toward us.
+
+The fellow whom I had stunned with my javelin had regained
+consciousness and scrambled to his feet. He was now racing as fast as
+he could go back toward his people. It looked mighty dark for Dian and
+me with that ghastly descent between us and even the beginnings of
+liberty, and a horde of savage enemies advancing at a rapid run.
+
+There was but one hope. That was to get Dian started for the bottom
+without delay. I took her in my arms just for an instant—I felt,
+somehow, that it might be for the last time. For the life of me I
+couldn’t see how both of us could escape.
+
+I asked her if she could make the descent alone—if she were not afraid.
+She smiled up at me bravely and shrugged her shoulders. She afraid! So
+beautiful is she that I am always having difficulty in remembering that
+she is a primitive, half-savage cave girl of the stone age, and often
+find myself mentally limiting her capacities to those of the effete and
+overcivilized beauties of the outer crust.
+
+“And you?” she asked as she swung over the edge of the cliff.
+
+“I shall follow you after I take a shot or two at our friends,” I
+replied. “I just want to give them a taste of this new medicine which
+is going to cure Pellucidar of all its ills. That will stop them long
+enough for me to join you. Now hurry, and tell Juag to be ready to
+shove off the moment I reach the boat, or the instant that it becomes
+apparent that I cannot reach it.
+
+“You, Dian, must return to Sari if anything happens to me, that you may
+devote your life to carrying out with Perry the hopes and plans for
+Pellucidar that are so dear to my heart. Promise me, dear.”
+
+She hated to promise to desert me, nor would she; only shaking her head
+and making no move to descend. The tribesmen were nearing us. Juag was
+shouting up to us from below. It was evident that he realized from my
+actions that I was attempting to persuade Dian to descend, and that
+grave danger threatened us from above.
+
+“Dive!” he cried. “Dive!”
+
+I looked at Dian and then down at the abyss below us. The cove appeared
+no larger than a saucer. How Juag ever had hit it I could not guess.
+
+“Dive!” cried Juag. “It is the only way—there is no time to climb
+down.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+ESCAPE
+
+
+Dian glanced downward and shuddered. Her tribe were hill people—they
+were not accustomed to swimming other than in quiet rivers and placid
+lakelets. It was not the steep that appalled her. It was the
+ocean—vast, mysterious, terrible.
+
+To dive into it from this great height was beyond her. I couldn’t
+wonder, either. To have attempted it myself seemed too preposterous
+even for thought. Only one consideration could have prompted me to leap
+headforemost from that giddy height—suicide; or at least so I thought
+at the moment.
+
+“Quick!” I urged Dian. “You cannot dive; but I can hold them until you
+reach safety.”
+
+“And you?” she asked once more. “Can you dive when they come too close?
+Otherwise you could not escape if you waited here until I reached the
+bottom.”
+
+I saw that she would not leave me unless she thought that I could make
+that frightful dive as we had seen Juag make it. I glanced once
+downward; then with a mental shrug I assured her that I would dive the
+moment that she reached the boat. Satisfied, she began the descent
+carefully, yet swiftly. I watched her for a moment, my heart in my
+mouth lest some slight mis-step or the slipping of a finger-hold should
+pitch her to a frightful death upon the rocks below.
+
+Then I turned toward the advancing Hoojans—“Hoosiers,” Perry dubbed
+them—even going so far as to christen this island where Hooja held sway
+Indiana; it is so marked now upon our maps. They were coming on at a
+great rate. I raised my revolver, took deliberate aim at the foremost
+warrior, and pulled the trigger. With the bark of the gun the fellow
+lunged forward. His head doubled beneath him. He rolled over and over
+two or three times before he came to a stop, to lie very quietly in the
+thick grass among the brilliant wild flowers.
+
+Those behind him halted. One of them hurled a javelin toward me, but it
+fell short—they were just beyond javelin-range. There were two armed
+with bows and arrows; these I kept my eyes on. All of them appeared
+awe-struck and frightened by the sound and effect of the firearm. They
+kept looking from the corpse to me and jabbering among themselves.
+
+I took advantage of the lull in hostilities to throw a quick glance
+over the edge toward Dian. She was half-way down the cliff and
+progressing finely. Then I turned back toward the enemy. One of the
+bowmen was fitting an arrow to his bow. I raised my hand.
+
+“Stop!” I cried. “Whoever shoots at me or advances toward me I shall
+kill as I killed him!”
+
+I pointed at the dead man. The fellow lowered his bow. Again there was
+animated discussion. I could see that those who were not armed with
+bows were urging something upon the two who were.
+
+At last the majority appeared to prevail, for simu-taneously the two
+archers raised their weapons. At the same instant I fired at one of
+them, dropping him in his tracks. The other, however, launched his
+missile, but the report of my gun had given him such a start that the
+arrow flew wild above my head. A second after and he, too, was sprawled
+upon the sward with a round hole between his eyes. It had been a rather
+good shot.
+
+I glanced over the edge again. Dian was almost at the bottom. I could
+see Juag standing just beneath her with his hands upstretched to assist
+her.
+
+A sullen roar from the warriors recalled my attention toward them. They
+stood shaking their fists at me and yelling insults. From the direction
+of the village I saw a single warrior coming to join them. He was a
+huge fellow, and when he strode among them I could tell by his bearing
+and their deference toward him that he was a chieftain. He listened to
+all they had to tell of the happenings of the last few minutes; then
+with a command and a roar he started for me with the whole pack at his
+heels. All they had needed had arrived—namely, a brave leader.
+
+I had two unfired cartridges in the chambers of my gun. I let the big
+warrior have one of them, thinking that his death would stop them all.
+But I guess they were worked up to such a frenzy of rage by this time
+that nothing would have stopped them. At any rate, they only yelled the
+louder as he fell and increased their speed toward me. I dropped
+another with my remaining cartridge.
+
+Then they were upon me—or almost. I thought of my promise to Dian—the
+awful abyss was behind me—a big devil with a huge bludgeon in front of
+me. I grasped my six-shooter by the barrel and hurled it squarely in
+his face with all my strength.
+
+Then, without waiting to learn the effect of my throw, I wheeled, ran
+the few steps to the edge, and leaped as far out over that frightful
+chasm as I could. I know something of diving, and all that I know I put
+into that dive, which I was positive would be my last.
+
+For a couple of hundred feet I fell in horizontal position. The
+momentum I gained was terrific. I could feel the air almost as a solid
+body, so swiftly I hurtled through it. Then my position gradually
+changed to the vertical, and with hands outstretched I slipped through
+the air, cleaving it like a flying arrow. Just before I struck the
+water a perfect shower of javelins fell all about. My enemies had
+rushed to the brink and hurled their weapons after me. By a miracle I
+was untouched.
+
+In the final instant I saw that I had cleared the rocks and was going
+to strike the water fairly. Then I was in and plumbing the depths. I
+suppose I didn’t really go very far down, but it seemed to me that I
+should never stop. When at last I dared curve my hands upward and
+divert my progress toward the surface, I thought that I should explode
+for air before I ever saw the sun again except through a swirl of
+water. But at last my head popped above the waves, and I filled my
+lungs with air.
+
+Before me was the boat, from which Juag and Dian were clambering. I
+couldn’t understand why they were deserting it now, when we were about
+to set out for the mainland in it; but when I reached its side I
+understood. Two heavy javelins, missing Dian and Juag by but a hair’s
+breadth, had sunk deep into the bottom of the dugout in a straight line
+with the grain of the wood, and split her almost in two from stem to
+stern. She was useless.
+
+Juag was leaning over a near-by rock, his hand out-stretched to aid me
+in clambering to his side; nor did I lose any time in availing myself
+of his proffered assistance. An occasional javelin was still dropping
+perilously close to us, so we hastened to draw as close as possible to
+the cliffside, where we were comparatively safe from the missiles.
+
+Here we held a brief conference, in which it was decided that our only
+hope now lay in making for the opposite end of the island as quickly as
+we could, and utilizing the boat that I had hidden there, to continue
+our journey to the mainland.
+
+Gathering up three of the least damaged javelins that had fallen about
+us, we set out upon our journey, keeping well toward the south side of
+the island, which Juag said was less frequented by the Hoojans than the
+central portion where the river ran. I think that this ruse must have
+thrown our pursuers off our track, since we saw nothing of them nor
+heard any sound of pursuit during the greater portion of our march the
+length of the island.
+
+But the way Juag had chosen was rough and round-about, so that we
+consumed one or two more marches in covering the distance than if we
+had followed the river. This it was which proved our undoing.
+
+Those who sought us must have sent a party up the river immediately
+after we escaped; for when we came at last onto the river-trail not far
+from our destination, there can be no doubt but that we were seen by
+Hoojans who were just ahead of us on the stream. The result was that as
+we were passing through a clump of bush a score of warriors leaped out
+upon us, and before we could scarce strike a blow in defense, had
+disarmed and bound us.
+
+For a time thereafter I seemed to be entirely bereft of hope. I could
+see no ray of promise in the future—only immediate death for Juag and
+me, which didn’t concern me much in the face of what lay in store for
+Dian.
+
+Poor child! What an awful life she had led! From the moment that I had
+first seen her chained in the slave caravan of the Mahars until now, a
+prisoner of a no less cruel creature, I could recall but a few brief
+intervals of peace and quiet in her tempestuous existence. Before I had
+known her, Jubal the Ugly One had pursued her across a savage world to
+make her his mate. She had eluded him, and finally I had slain him; but
+terror and privations, and exposure to fierce beasts had haunted her
+footsteps during all her lonely flight from him. And when I had
+returned to the outer world the old trials had recommenced with Hooja
+in Jubal’s role. I could almost have wished for death to vouchsafe her
+that peace which fate seemed to deny her in this life.
+
+I spoke to her on the subject, suggesting that we expire together.
+
+“Do not fear, David,” she replied. “I shall end my life before ever
+Hooja can harm me; but first I shall see that Hooja dies.”
+
+She drew from her breast a little leathern thong, to the end of which
+was fastened a tiny pouch.
+
+“What have you there?” I asked.
+
+“Do you recall that time you stepped upon the thing you call viper in
+your world?” she asked.
+
+I nodded.
+
+“The accident gave you the idea for the poisoned arrows with which we
+fitted the warriors of the empire,” she continued. “And, too, it gave
+me an idea. For a long time I have carried a viper’s fang in my bosom.
+It has given me strength to endure many dangers, for it has always
+assured me immunity from the ultimate insult. I am not ready to die
+yet. First let Hooja embrace the viper’s fang.”
+
+So we did not die together, and I am glad now that we did not. It is
+always a foolish thing to contemplate suicide; for no matter how dark
+the future may appear today, tomorrow may hold for us that which will
+alter our whole life in an instant, revealing to us nothing but
+sunshine and happiness. So, for my part, I shall always wait for
+tomorrow.
+
+In Pellucidar, where it is always today, the wait may not be so long,
+and so it proved for us. As we were passing a lofty, flat-topped hill
+through a park-like wood a perfect network of fiber ropes fell suddenly
+about our guard, enmeshing them. A moment later a horde of our friends,
+the hairy gorilla-men, with the mild eyes and long faces of sheep
+leaped among them.
+
+It was a very interesting fight. I was sorry that my bonds prevented me
+from taking part in it, but I urged on the brutemen with my voice, and
+cheered old Gr-gr-gr, their chief, each time that his mighty jaws
+crunched out the life of a Hoojan. When the battle was over we found
+that a few of our captors had escaped, but the majority of them lay
+dead about us. The gorilla-men paid no further attention to them.
+Gr-gr-gr turned to me.
+
+“Gr-gr-gr and all his people are your friends,” he said. “One saw the
+warriors of the Sly One and followed them. He saw them capture you, and
+then he flew to the village as fast as he could go and told me all that
+he had seen. The rest you know. You did much for Gr-gr-gr and
+Gr-gr-gr’s people. We shall always do much for you.”
+
+I thanked him; and when I had told him of our escape and our
+destination, he insisted on accompanying us to the sea with a great
+number of his fierce males. Nor were we at all loath to accept his
+escort. We found the canoe where I had hidden it, and bidding Gr-gr-gr
+and his warriors farewell, the three of us embarked for the mainland.
+
+I questioned Juag upon the feasibility of attempting to cross to the
+mouth of the great river of which he had told me, and up which he said
+we might paddle almost to Sari; but he urged me not to attempt it,
+since we had but a single paddle and no water or food. I had to admit
+the wisdom of his advice, but the desire to explore this great waterway
+was strong upon me, arousing in me at last a determination to make the
+attempt after first gaining the mainland and rectifying our
+deficiencies.
+
+We landed several miles north of Thuria in a little cove that seemed to
+offer protection from the heavier seas which sometimes run, even upon
+these usually pacific oceans of Pellucidar. Here I outlined to Dian and
+Juag the plans I had in mind. They were to fit the canoe with a small
+sail, the purposes of which I had to explain to them both—since neither
+had ever seen or heard of such a contrivance before. Then they were to
+hunt for food which we could transport with us, and prepare a
+receptacle for water.
+
+These two latter items were more in Juag’s line, but he kept muttering
+about the sail and the wind for a long time. I could see that he was
+not even half convinced that any such ridiculous contraption could make
+a canoe move through the water.
+
+We hunted near the coast for a while, but were not rewarded with any
+particular luck. Finally we decided to hide the canoe and strike inland
+in search of game. At Juag’s suggestion we dug a hole in the sand at
+the upper edge of the beach and buried the craft, smoothing the surface
+over nicely and throwing aside the excess material we had excavated.
+Then we set out away from the sea. Traveling in Thuria is less arduous
+than under the midday sun which perpetually glares down on the rest of
+Pellucidar’s surface; but it has its draw-backs, one of which is the
+depressing influence exerted by the everlasting shade of the Land of
+Awful Shadow.
+
+The farther inland we went the darker it became, until we were moving
+at last through an endless twilight. The vegetation here was sparse and
+of a weird, colorless nature, though what did grow was wondrous in
+shape and form. Often we saw huge lidi, or beasts of burden, striding
+across the dim landscape, browsing upon the grotesque vegetation or
+drinking from the slow and sullen rivers that run down from the Lidi
+Plains to empty into the sea in Thuria.
+
+What we sought was either a thag—a sort of gigantic elk—or one of the
+larger species of antelope, the flesh of either of which dries nicely
+in the sun. The bladder of the thag would make a fine water-bottle, and
+its skin, I figured, would be a good sail. We traveled a considerable
+distance inland, entirely crossing the Land of Awful Shadow and
+emerging at last upon that portion of the Lidi Plains which lies in the
+pleasant sunlight. Above us the pendent world revolved upon its axis,
+filling me especially—and Dian to an almost equal state—with wonder and
+insatiable curiosity as to what strange forms of life existed among the
+hills and valleys and along the seas and rivers, which we could plainly
+see.
+
+Before us stretched the horizonless expanses of vast Pellucidar, the
+Lidi Plains rolling up about us, while hanging high in the heavens to
+the northwest of us I thought I discerned the many towers which marked
+the entrances to the distant Mahar city, whose inhabitants preyed upon
+the Thurians.
+
+Juag suggested that we travel to the northeast, where, he said, upon
+the verge of the plain we would find a wooded country in which game
+should be plentiful. Acting upon his advice, we came at last to a
+forest-jungle, through which wound innumerable game-paths. In the
+depths of this forbidding wood we came upon the fresh spoor of thag.
+
+Shortly after, by careful stalking, we came within javelin-range of a
+small herd. Selecting a great bull, Juag and I hurled our weapons
+simultaneously, Dian reserving hers for an emergency. The beast
+staggered to his feet, bellowing. The rest of the herd was up and away
+in an instant, only the wounded bull remaining, with lowered head and
+roving eyes searching for the foe.
+
+Then Juag exposed himself to the view of the bull—it is a part of the
+tactics of the hunt—while I stepped to one side behind a bush. The
+moment that the savage beast saw Juag he charged him. Juag ran straight
+away, that the bull might be lured past my hiding-place. On he
+came—tons of mighty bestial strength and rage.
+
+Dian had slipped behind me. She, too, could fight a thag should
+emergency require. Ah, such a girl! A rightful empress of a stone age
+by every standard which two worlds might bring to measure her!
+
+Crashing down toward us came the bull thag, bellowing and snorting,
+with the power of a hundred outer-earthly bulls. When he was opposite
+me I sprang for the heavy mane that covered his huge neck. To tangle my
+fingers in it was the work of but an instant. Then I was running along
+at the beast’s shoulder.
+
+Now, the theory upon which this hunting custom is based is one long ago
+discovered by experience, and that is that a thag cannot be turned from
+his charge once he has started toward the object of his wrath, so long
+as he can still see the thing he charges. He evidently believes that
+the man clinging to his mane is attempting to restrain him from
+overtaking his prey, and so he pays no attention to this enemy, who, of
+course, does not retard the mighty charge in the least.
+
+Once in the gait of the plunging bull, it was but a slight matter to
+vault to his back, as cavalrymen mount their chargers upon the run.
+Juag was still running in plain sight ahead of the bull. His speed was
+but a trifle less than that of the monster that pursued him. These
+Pellucidarians are almost as fleet as deer; because I am not is one
+reason that I am always chosen for the close-in work of the thag-hunt.
+I could not keep in front of a charging thag long enough to give the
+killer time to do his work. I learned that the first—and last—time I
+tried it.
+
+Once astride the bull’s neck, I drew my long stone knife and, setting
+the point carefully over the brute’s spine, drove it home with both
+hands. At the same instant I leaped clear of the stumbling animal. Now,
+no vertebrate can progress far with a knife through his spine, and the
+thag is no exception to the rule.
+
+The fellow was down instantly. As he wallowed Juag returned, and the
+two of us leaped in when an opening afforded the opportunity and
+snatched our javelins from his side. Then we danced about him, more
+like two savages than anything else, until we got the opening we were
+looking for, when simultaneously, our javelins pierced his wild heart,
+stilling it forever.
+
+The thag had covered considerable ground from the point at which I had
+leaped upon him. When, after despatching him, I looked back for Dian, I
+could see nothing of her. I called aloud, but receiving no reply, set
+out at a brisk trot to where I had left her. I had no difficulty in
+finding the self-same bush behind which we had hidden, but Dian was not
+there. Again and again I called, to be rewarded only by silence. Where
+could she be? What could have become of her in the brief interval since
+I had seen her standing just behind me?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+KIDNAPED!
+
+
+I searched about the spot carefully. At last I was rewarded by the
+discovery of her javelin, a few yards from the bush that had concealed
+us from the charging thag—her javelin and the indications of a struggle
+revealed by the trampled vegetation and the overlapping footprints of a
+woman and a man. Filled with consternation and dismay, I followed these
+latter to where they suddenly disappeared a hundred yards from where
+the struggle had occurred. There I saw the huge imprints of a lidi’s
+feet.
+
+The story of the tragedy was all too plain. A Thurian had either been
+following us, or had accidentally espied Dian and taken a fancy to her.
+While Juag and I had been engaged with the thag, he had abducted her. I
+ran swiftly back to where Juag was working over the kill. As I
+approached him I saw that something was wrong in this quarter as well,
+for the islander was standing upon the carcass of the thag, his javelin
+poised for a throw.
+
+When I had come nearer I saw the cause of his belligerent attitude.
+Just beyond him stood two large jaloks, or wolf-dogs, regarding him
+intently—a male and a female. Their behavior was rather peculiar, for
+they did not seem preparing to charge him. Rather, they were
+contemplating him in an attitude of questioning.
+
+Juag heard me coming and turned toward me with a grin. These fellows
+love excitement. I could see by his expression that he was enjoying in
+anticipation the battle that seemed imminent. But he never hurled his
+javelin. A shout of warning from me stopped him, for I had seen the
+remnants of a rope dangling from the neck of the male jalok.
+
+Juag again turned toward me, but this time in surprise. I was abreast
+him in a moment and, passing him, walked straight toward the two
+beasts. As I did so the female crouched with bared fangs. The male,
+however, leaped forward to meet me, not in deadly charge, but with
+every expression of delight and joy which the poor animal could
+exhibit.
+
+It was Raja—the jalok whose life I had saved, and whom I then had
+tamed! There was no doubt that he was glad to see me. I now think that
+his seeming desertion of me had been but due to a desire to search out
+his ferocious mate and bring her, too, to live with me.
+
+When Juag saw me fondling the great beast he was filled with
+consternation, but I did not have much time to spare to Raja while my
+mind was filled with the grief of my new loss. I was glad to see the
+brute, and I lost no time in taking him to Juag and making him
+understand that Juag, too, was to be Raja’s friend. With the female the
+matter was more difficult, but Raja helped us out by growling savagely
+at her whenever she bared her fangs against us.
+
+I told Juag of the disappearance of Dian, and of my suspicions as to
+the explanation of the catastrophe. He wanted to start right out after
+her, but I suggested that with Raja to help me it might be as well were
+he to remain and skin the thag, remove its bladder, and then return to
+where we had hidden the canoe on the beach. And so it was arranged that
+he was to do this and await me there for a reasonable time. I pointed
+to a great lake upon the surface of the pendent world above us, telling
+him that if after this lake had appeared four times I had not returned
+to go either by water or land to Sari and fetch Ghak with an army.
+Then, calling Raja after me, I set out after Dian and her abductor.
+First I took the wolf dog to the spot where the man had fought with
+Dian. A few paces behind us followed Raja’s fierce mate. I pointed to
+the ground where the evidences of the struggle were plainest and where
+the scent must have been strong to Raja’s nostrils.
+
+Then I grasped the remnant of leash that hung about his neck and urged
+him forward upon the trail. He seemed to understand. With nose to
+ground he set out upon his task. Dragging me after him, he trotted
+straight out upon the Lidi Plains, turning his steps in the direction
+of the Thurian village. I could have guessed as much!
+
+Behind us trailed the female. After a while she closed upon us, until
+she ran quite close to me and at Raja’s side. It was not long before
+she seemed as easy in my company as did her lord and master.
+
+We must have covered considerable distance at a very rapid pace, for we
+had reentered the great shadow, when we saw a huge lidi ahead of us,
+moving leisurely across the level plain. Upon its back were two human
+figures. If I could have known that the jaloks would not harm Dian I
+might have turned them loose upon the lidi and its master; but I could
+not know, and so dared take no chances.
+
+However, the matter was taken out of my hands presently when Raja
+raised his head and caught sight of his quarry. With a lunge that
+hurled me flat and jerked the leash from my hand, he was gone with the
+speed of the wind after the giant lidi and its riders. At his side
+raced his shaggy mate, only a trifle smaller than he and no whit less
+savage.
+
+They did not give tongue until the lidi itself discovered them and
+broke into a lumbering, awkward, but none the less rapid gallop. Then
+the two hound-beasts commenced to bay, starting with a low, plaintive
+note that rose, weird and hideous, to terminate in a series of short,
+sharp yelps. I feared that it might be the hunting-call of the pack;
+and if this were true, there would be slight chance for either Dian or
+her abductor—or myself, either, as far as that was concerned. So I
+redoubled my efforts to keep pace with the hunt; but I might as well
+have attempted to distance the bird upon the wing; as I have often
+reminded you, I am no runner. In that instance it was just as well that
+I am not, for my very slowness of foot played into my hands; while had
+I been fleeter, I might have lost Dian that time forever.
+
+The lidi, with the hounds running close on either side, had almost
+disappeared in the darkness that enveloped the surrounding landscape,
+when I noted that it was bearing toward the right. This was accounted
+for by the fact that Raja ran upon his left side, and unlike his mate,
+kept leaping for the great beast’s shoulder. The man on the lidi’s back
+was prodding at the hyaenodon with his long spear, but still Raja kept
+springing up and snapping.
+
+The effect of this was to turn the lidi toward the right, and the
+longer I watched the procedure the more convinced I became that Raja
+and his mate were working together with some end in view, for the
+she-dog merely galloped steadily at the lidi’s right about op-posite
+his rump.
+
+I had seen jaloks hunting in packs, and I recalled now what for the
+time I had not thought of—the several that ran ahead and turned the
+quarry back toward the main body. This was precisely what Raja and his
+mate were doing—they were turning the lidi back toward me, or at least
+Raja was. Just why the female was keeping out of it I did not
+understand, unless it was that she was not entirely clear in her own
+mind as to precisely what her mate was attempting.
+
+At any rate, I was sufficiently convinced to stop where I was and await
+developments, for I could readily realize two things. One was that I
+could never overhaul them before the damage was done if they should
+pull the lidi down now. The other thing was that if they did not pull
+it down for a few minutes it would have completed its circle and
+returned close to where I stood.
+
+And this is just what happened. The lot of them were almost swallowed
+up in the twilight for a moment. Then they reappeared again, but this
+time far to the right and circling back in my general direction. I
+waited until I could get some clear idea of the right spot to gain that
+I might intercept the lidi; but even as I waited I saw the beast
+attempt to turn still more to the right—a move that would have carried
+him far to my left in a much more circumscribed circle than the
+hyaenodons had mapped out for him. Then I saw the female leap forward
+and head him; and when he would have gone too far to the left, Raja
+sprang, snapping at his shoulder and held him straight.
+
+Straight for me the two savage beasts were driving their quarry! It was
+wonderful.
+
+It was something else, too, as I realized while the monstrous beast
+neared me. It was like standing in the middle of the tracks in front of
+an approaching express-train. But I didn’t dare waver; too much
+depended upon my meeting that hurtling mass of terrified flesh with a
+well-placed javelin. So I stood there, waiting to be run down and
+crushed by those gigantic feet, but determined to drive home my weapon
+in the broad breast before I fell.
+
+The lidi was only about a hundred yards from me when Raja gave a few
+barks in a tone that differed materially from his hunting-cry.
+Instantly both he and his mate leaped for the long neck of the
+ruminant.
+
+Neither missed. Swinging in mid-air, they hung tenaciously, their
+weight dragging down the creature’s head and so retarding its speed
+that before it had reached me it was almost stopped and devoting all
+its energies to attempting to scrape off its attackers with its
+forefeet.
+
+Dian had seen and recognized me, and was trying to extricate herself
+from the grasp of her captor, who, handicapped by his strong and agile
+prisoner, was unable to wield his lance effectively upon the two
+jaloks. At the same time I was running swiftly toward them.
+
+When the man discovered me he released his hold upon Dian and sprang to
+the ground, ready with his lance to meet me. My javelin was no match
+for his longer weapon, which was used more for stabbing than as a
+missile. Should I miss him at my first cast, as was quite probable,
+since he was prepared for me, I would have to face his formidable lance
+with nothing more than a stone knife. The outlook was scarcely
+entrancing. Evidently I was soon to be absolutely at his mercy.
+
+Seeing my predicament, he ran toward me to get rid of one antagonist
+before he had to deal with the other two. He could not guess, of
+course, that the two jaloks were hunting with me; but he doubtless
+thought that after they had finished the lidi they would make after the
+human prey—the beasts are notorious killers, often slaying wantonly.
+
+But as the Thurian came Raja loosened his hold upon the lidi and dashed
+for him, with the female close after. When the man saw them he yelled
+to me to help him, protesting that we should both be killed if we did
+not fight together. But I only laughed at him and ran toward Dian.
+
+Both the fierce beasts were upon the Thurian simu-taneously—he must
+have died almost before his body tumbled to the ground. Then the female
+wheeled toward Dian. I was standing by her side as the thing charged
+her, my javelin ready to receive her.
+
+But again Raja was too quick for me. I imagined he thought she was
+making for me, for he couldn’t have known anything of my relations
+toward Dian. At any rate he leaped full upon her back and dragged her
+down. There ensued forthwith as terrible a battle as one would wish to
+see if battles were gaged by volume of noise and riotousness of action.
+I thought that both the beasts would be torn to shreds.
+
+When finally the female ceased to struggle and rolled over on her back,
+her forepaws limply folded, I was sure that she was dead. Raja stood
+over her, growling, his jaws close to her throat. Then I saw that
+neither of them bore a scratch. The male had simply administered a
+severe drubbing to his mate. It was his way of teaching her that I was
+sacred.
+
+After a moment he moved away and let her rise, when she set about
+smoothing down her rumpled coat, while he came stalking toward Dian and
+me. I had an arm about Dian now. As Raja came close I caught him by the
+neck and pulled him up to me. There I stroked him and talked to him,
+bidding Dian do the same, until I think he pretty well understood that
+if I was his friend, so was Dian.
+
+For a long time he was inclined to be shy of her, often baring his
+teeth at her approach, and it was a much longer time before the female
+made friends with us. But by careful kindness, by never eating without
+sharing our meat with them, and by feeding them from our hands, we
+finally won the confidence of both animals. However, that was a long
+time after.
+
+With the two beasts trotting after us, we returned to where we had left
+Juag. Here I had the dickens’ own time keeping the female from Juag’s
+throat. Of all the venomous, wicked, cruel-hearted beasts on two
+worlds, I think a female hyaenodon takes the palm.
+
+But eventually she tolerated Juag as she had Dian and me, and the five
+of us set out toward the coast, for Juag had just completed his labors
+on the thag when we arrived. We ate some of the meat before starting,
+and gave the hounds some. All that we could we carried upon our backs.
+
+On the way to the canoe we met with no mishaps. Dian told me that the
+fellow who had stolen her had come upon her from behind while the
+roaring of the thag had drowned all other noises, and that the first
+she had known he had disarmed her and thrown her to the back of his
+lidi, which had been lying down close by waiting for him. By the time
+the thag had ceased bellowing the fellow had got well away upon his
+swift mount. By holding one palm over her mouth he had prevented her
+calling for help.
+
+“I thought,” she concluded, “that I should have to use the viper’s
+tooth, after all.”
+
+We reached the beach at last and unearthed the canoe. Then we busied
+ourselves stepping a mast and rigging a small sail—Juag and I, that
+is—while Dian cut the thag meat into long strips for drying when we
+should be out in the sunlight once more.
+
+At last all was done. We were ready to embark. I had no difficulty in
+getting Raja aboard the dugout; but Ranee—as we christened her after I
+had explained to Dian the meaning of Raja and its feminine
+equivalent—positively refused for a time to follow her mate aboard. In
+fact, we had to shove off without her. After a moment, however, she
+plunged into the water and swam after us.
+
+I let her come alongside, and then Juag and I pulled her in, she
+snapping and snarling at us as we did so; but, strange to relate, she
+didn’t offer to attack us after we had ensconced her safely in the
+bottom alongside Raja.
+
+The canoe behaved much better under sail than I had hoped—infinitely
+better than the battle-ship Sari had—and we made good progress almost
+due west across the gulf, upon the opposite side of which I hoped to
+find the mouth of the river of which Juag had told me.
+
+The islander was much interested and impressed by the sail and its
+results. He had not been able to understand exactly what I hoped to
+accomplish with it while we were fitting up the boat; but when he saw
+the clumsy dugout move steadily through the water without paddles, he
+was as delighted as a child. We made splendid headway on the trip,
+coming into sight of land at last.
+
+Juag had been terror-stricken when he had learned that I intended
+crossing the ocean, and when we passed out of sight of land he was in a
+blue funk. He said that he had never heard of such a thing before in
+his life, and that always he had understood that those who ventured far
+from land never returned; for how could they find their way when they
+could see no land to steer for?
+
+I tried to explain the compass to him; and though he never really
+grasped the scientific explanation of it, yet he did learn to steer by
+it quite as well as I. We passed several islands on the journey—islands
+which Juag told me were entirely unknown to his own island folk.
+Indeed, our eyes may have been the first ever to rest upon them. I
+should have liked to stop off and explore them, but the business of
+empire would brook no unnecessary delays.
+
+I asked Juag how Hooja expected to reach the mouth of the river which
+we were in search of if he didn’t cross the gulf, and the islander
+explained that Hooja would undoubtedly follow the coast around. For
+some time we sailed up the coast searching for the river, and at last
+we found it. So great was it that I thought it must be a mighty gulf
+until the mass of driftwood that came out upon the first ebb tide
+convinced me that it was the mouth of a river. There were the trunks of
+trees uprooted by the undermining of the river banks, giant creepers,
+flowers, grasses, and now and then the body of some land animal or
+bird.
+
+I was all excitement to commence our upward journey when there occurred
+that which I had never before seen within Pellucidar—a really terrific
+wind-storm. It blew down the river upon us with a ferocity and
+suddenness that took our breaths away, and before we could get a chance
+to make the shore it became too late. The best that we could do was to
+hold the scud-ding craft before the wind and race along in a smother of
+white spume. Juag was terrified. If Dian was, she hid it; for was she
+not the daughter of a once great chief, the sister of a king, and the
+mate of an emperor?
+
+Raja and Ranee were frightened. The former crawled close to my side and
+buried his nose against me. Finally even fierce Ranee was moved to seek
+sympathy from a human being. She slunk to Dian, pressing close against
+her and whimpering, while Dian stroked her shaggy neck and talked to
+her as I talked to Raja.
+
+There was nothing for us to do but try to keep the canoe right side up
+and straight before the wind. For what seemed an eternity the tempest
+neither increased nor abated. I judged that we must have blown a
+hundred miles before the wind and straight out into an unknown sea!
+
+As suddenly as the wind rose it died again, and when it died it veered
+to blow at right angles to its former course in a gentle breeze. I
+asked Juag then what our course was, for he had had the compass last.
+It had been on a leather thong about his neck. When he felt for it, the
+expression that came into his eyes told me as plainly as words what had
+happened—the compass was lost! The compass was lost!
+
+And we were out of sight of land without a single celestial body to
+guide us! Even the pendent world was not visible from our position!
+
+Our plight seemed hopeless to me, but I dared not let Dian and Juag
+guess how utterly dismayed I was; though, as I soon discovered, there
+was nothing to be gained by trying to keep the worst from Juag—he knew
+it quite as well as I. He had always known, from the legends of his
+people, the dangers of the open sea beyond the sight of land. The
+compass, since he had learned its uses from me, had been all that he
+had to buoy his hope of eventual salvation from the watery deep. He had
+seen how it had guided me across the water to the very coast that I
+desired to reach, and so he had implicit confidence in it. Now that it
+was gone, his confidence had departed, also.
+
+There seemed but one thing to do; that was to keep on sailing straight
+before the wind—since we could travel most rapidly along that
+course—until we sighted land of some description. If it chanced to be
+the mainland, well and good; if an island—well, we might live upon an
+island. We certainly could not live long in this little boat, with only
+a few strips of dried thag and a few quarts of water left.
+
+Quite suddenly a thought occurred to me. I was surprised that it had
+not come before as a solution to our problem. I turned toward Juag.
+
+“You Pellucidarians are endowed with a wonderful instinct,” I reminded
+him, “an instinct that points the way straight to your homes, no matter
+in what strange land you may find yourself. Now all we have to do is
+let Dian guide us toward Amoz, and we shall come in a short time to the
+same coast whence we just were blown.”
+
+As I spoke I looked at them with a smile of renewed hope; but there was
+no answering smile in their eyes. It was Dian who enlightened me.
+
+“We could do all this upon land,” she said. “But upon the water that
+power is denied us. I do not know why; but I have always heard that
+this is true—that only upon the water may a Pellucidarian be lost. This
+is, I think, why we all fear the great ocean so—even those who go upon
+its surface in canoes. Juag has told us that they never go beyond the
+sight of land.”
+
+We had lowered the sail after the blow while we were discussing the
+best course to pursue. Our little craft had been drifting idly, rising
+and falling with the great waves that were now diminishing. Sometimes
+we were upon the crest—again in the hollow. As Dian ceased speaking she
+let her eyes range across the limitless expanse of billowing waters. We
+rose to a great height upon the crest of a mighty wave. As we topped it
+Dian gave an exclamation and pointed astern.
+
+“Boats!” she cried. “Boats! Many, many boats!”
+
+Juag and I leaped to our feet; but our little craft had now dropped to
+the trough, and we could see nothing but walls of water close upon
+either hand. We waited for the next wave to lift us, and when it did we
+strained our eyes in the direction that Dian had indicated. Sure
+enough, scarce half a mile away were several boats, and scattered far
+and wide behind us as far as we could see were many others! We could
+not make them out in the distance or in the brief glimpse that we
+caught of them before we were plunged again into the next wave canon;
+but they were boats.
+
+And in them must be human beings like ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+RACING FOR LIFE
+
+
+At last the sea subsided, and we were able to get a better view of the
+armada of small boats in our wake. There must have been two hundred of
+them. Juag said that he had never seen so many boats before in all his
+life. Where had they come from? Juag was first to hazard a guess.
+
+“Hooja,” he said, “was building many boats to carry his warriors to the
+great river and up it toward Sari. He was building them with almost all
+his warriors and many slaves upon the Island of Trees. No one else in
+all the history of Pellucidar has ever built so many boats as they told
+me Hooja was building. These must be Hooja’s boats.”
+
+“And they were blown out to sea by the great storm just as we were,”
+suggested Dian.
+
+“There can be no better explanation of them,” I agreed.
+
+“What shall we do?” asked Juag.
+
+“Suppose we make sure that they are really Hooja’s people,” suggested
+Dian. “It may be that they are not, and that if we run away from them
+before we learn definitely who they are, we shall be running away from
+a chance to live and find the mainland. They may be a people of whom we
+have never even heard, and if so we can ask them to help us—if they
+know the way to the mainland.”
+
+“Which they will not,” interposed Juag.
+
+“Well,” I said, “it can’t make our predicament any more trying to wait
+until we find out who they are. They are heading for us now. Evidently
+they have spied our sail, and guess that we do not belong to their
+fleet.”
+
+“They probably want to ask the way to the mainland themselves,” said
+Juag, who was nothing if not a pessimist.
+
+“If they want to catch us, they can do it if they can paddle faster
+than we can sail,” I said. “If we let them come close enough to
+discover their identity, and can then sail faster than they can paddle,
+we can get away from them anyway, so we might as well wait.”
+
+And wait we did.
+
+The sea calmed rapidly, so that by the time the foremost canoe had come
+within five hundred yards of us we could see them all plainly. Every
+one was headed for us. The dugouts, which were of unusual length, were
+manned by twenty paddlers, ten to a side. Besides the paddlers there
+were twenty-five or more warriors in each boat.
+
+When the leader was a hundred yards from us Dian called our attention
+to the fact that several of her crew were Sagoths. That convinced us
+that the flotilla was indeed Hooja’s. I told Juag to hail them and get
+what information he could, while I remained in the bottom of our canoe
+as much out of sight as possible. Dian lay down at full length in the
+bottom; I did not want them to see and recognize her if they were in
+truth Hooja’s people.
+
+“Who are you?” shouted Juag, standing up in the boat and making a
+megaphone of his palms.
+
+A figure arose in the bow of the leading canoe—a figure that I was sure
+I recognized even before he spoke.
+
+“I am Hooja!” cried the man, in answer to Juag.
+
+For some reason he did not recognize his former prisoner and
+slave—possibly because he had so many of them.
+
+“I come from the Island of Trees,” he continued. “A hundred of my boats
+were lost in the great storm and all their crews drowned. Where is the
+land? What are you, and what strange thing is that which flutters from
+the little tree in the front of your canoe?”
+
+He referred to our sail, flapping idly in the wind.
+
+“We, too, are lost,” replied Juag. “We know not where the land is. We
+are going back to look for it now.”
+
+So saying he commenced to scull the canoe’s nose before the wind, while
+I made fast the primitive sheets that held our crude sail. We thought
+it time to be going.
+
+There wasn’t much wind at the time, and the heavy, lumbering dugout was
+slow in getting under way. I thought it never would gain any momentum.
+And all the while Hooja’s canoe was drawing rapidly nearer, propelled
+by the strong arms of his twenty paddlers. Of course, their dugout was
+much larger than ours, and, consequently, infinitely heavier and more
+cumbersome; nevertheless, it was coming along at quite a clip, and ours
+was yet but barely moving. Dian and I remained out of sight as much as
+possible, for the two craft were now well within bow-shot of one
+another, and I knew that Hooja had archers.
+
+Hooja called to Juag to stop when he saw that our craft was moving. He
+was much interested in the sail, and not a little awed, as I could tell
+by his shouted remarks and questions. Raising my head, I saw him
+plainly. He would have made an excellent target for one of my guns, and
+I had never been sorrier that I had lost them.
+
+We were now picking up speed a trifle, and he was not gaining upon us
+so fast as at first. In consequence, his requests that we stop suddenly
+changed to commands as he became aware that we were trying to escape
+him.
+
+“Come back!” he shouted. “Come back, or I’ll fire!”
+
+I use the word fire because it more nearly translates into English the
+Pellucidarian word trag, which covers the launching of any deadly
+missile.
+
+But Juag only seized his paddle more tightly—the paddle that answered
+the purpose of rudder, and commenced to assist the wind by vigorous
+strokes. Then Hooja gave the command to some of his archers to fire
+upon us. I couldn’t lie hidden in the bottom of the boat, leaving Juag
+alone exposed to the deadly shafts, so I arose and, seizing another
+paddle, set to work to help him. Dian joined me, though I did my best
+to persuade her to remain sheltered; but being a woman, she must have
+her own way.
+
+The instant that Hooja saw us he recognized us. The whoop of triumph he
+raised indicated how certain he was that we were about to fall into his
+hands. A shower of arrows fell about us. Then Hooja caused his men to
+cease firing—he wanted us alive. None of the missiles struck us, for
+Hooja’s archers were not nearly the marksmen that are my Sarians and
+Amozites.
+
+We had now gained sufficient headway to hold our own on about even
+terms with Hooja’s paddlers. We did not seem to be gaining, though; and
+neither did they. How long this nerve-racking experience lasted I
+cannot guess, though we had pretty nearly finished our meager supply of
+provisions when the wind picked up a bit and we commenced to draw away.
+
+Not once yet had we sighted land, nor could I understand it, since so
+many of the seas I had seen before were thickly dotted with islands.
+Our plight was anything but pleasant, yet I think that Hooja and his
+forces were even worse off than we, for they had no food nor water at
+all.
+
+Far out behind us in a long line that curved upward in the distance, to
+be lost in the haze, strung Hooja’s two hundred boats. But one would
+have been enough to have taken us could it have come alongside. We had
+drawn some fifty yards ahead of Hooja—there had been times when we were
+scarce ten yards in advance-and were feeling considerably safer from
+capture. Hooja’s men, working in relays, were commencing to show the
+effects of the strain under which they had been forced to work without
+food or water, and I think their weakening aided us almost as much as
+the slight freshening of the wind.
+
+Hooja must have commenced to realize that he was going to lose us, for
+he again gave orders that we be fired upon. Volley after volley of
+arrows struck about us. The distance was so great by this time that
+most of the arrows fell short, while those that reached us were
+sufficiently spent to allow us to ward them off with our paddles.
+However, it was a most exciting ordeal.
+
+Hooja stood in the bow of his boat, alternately urging his men to
+greater speed and shouting epithets at me. But we continued to draw
+away from him. At last the wind rose to a fair gale, and we simply
+raced away from our pursuers as if they were standing still. Juag was
+so tickled that he forgot all about his hunger and thirst. I think that
+he had never been entirely reconciled to the heathenish invention which
+I called a sail, and that down in the bottom of his heart he believed
+that the paddlers would eventually overhaul us; but now he couldn’t
+praise it enough.
+
+We had a strong gale for a considerable time, and eventually dropped
+Hooja’s fleet so far astern that we could no longer discern them. And
+then—ah, I shall never forget that moment—Dian sprang to her feet with
+a cry of “Land!”
+
+Sure enough, dead ahead, a long, low coast stretched across our bow. It
+was still a long way off, and we couldn’t make out whether it was
+island or mainland; but at least it was land. If ever shipwrecked
+mariners were grateful, we were then. Raja and Ranee were commencing to
+suffer for lack of food, and I could swear that the latter often cast
+hungry glances upon us, though I am equally sure that no such hideous
+thoughts ever entered the head of her mate. We watched them both most
+closely, however. Once while stroking Ranee I managed to get a rope
+around her neck and make her fast to the side of the boat. Then I felt
+a bit safer for Dian. It was pretty close quarters in that little
+dugout for three human beings and two practically wild, man-eating
+dogs; but we had to make the best of it, since I would not listen to
+Juag’s suggestion that we kill and eat Raja and Ranee.
+
+We made good time to within a few miles of the shore. Then the wind
+died suddenly out. We were all of us keyed up to such a pitch of
+anticipation that the blow was doubly hard to bear. And it was a blow,
+too, since we could not tell in what quarter the wind might rise again;
+but Juag and I set to work to paddle the remaining distance.
+
+Almost immediately the wind rose again from precisely the opposite
+direction from which it had formerly blown, so that it was mighty hard
+work making progress against it. Next it veered again so that we had to
+turn and run with it parallel to the coast to keep from being swamped
+in the trough of the seas.
+
+And while we were suffering all these disappointments Hooja’s fleet
+appeared in the distance!
+
+They evidently had gone far to the left of our course, for they were
+now almost behind us as we ran parallel to the coast; but we were not
+much afraid of being overtaken in the wind that was blowing. The gale
+kept on increasing, but it was fitful, swooping down upon us in great
+gusts and then going almost calm for an instant. It was after one of
+these momentary calms that the catastrophe occurred. Our sail hung limp
+and our momentum decreased when of a sudden a particularly vicious
+squall caught us. Before I could cut the sheets the mast had snapped at
+the thwart in which it was stepped.
+
+The worst had happened; Juag and I seized paddles and kept the canoe
+with the wind; but that squall was the parting shot of the gale, which
+died out immediately after, leaving us free to make for the shore,
+which we lost no time in attempting. But Hooja had drawn closer in
+toward shore than we, so it looked as if he might head us off before we
+could land. However, we did our best to distance him, Dian taking a
+paddle with us.
+
+We were in a fair way to succeed when there appeared, pouring from
+among the trees beyond the beach, a horde of yelling, painted savages,
+brandishing all sorts of devilish-looking primitive weapons. So
+menacing was their attitude that we realized at once the folly of
+attempting to land among them.
+
+Hooja was drawing closer to us. There was no wind. We could not hope to
+outpaddle him. And with our sail gone, no wind would help us, though,
+as if in derision at our plight, a steady breeze was now blowing. But
+we had no intention of sitting idle while our fate overtook us, so we
+bent to our paddles and, keeping parallel with the coast, did our best
+to pull away from our pursuers.
+
+It was a grueling experience. We were weakened by lack of food. We were
+suffering the pangs of thirst. Capture and death were close at hand.
+Yet I think that we gave a good account of ourselves in our final
+effort to escape. Our boat was so much smaller and lighter than any of
+Hooja’s that the three of us forced it ahead almost as rapidly as his
+larger craft could go under their twenty paddles.
+
+As we raced along the coast for one of those seemingly interminable
+periods that may draw hours into eternities where the labor is
+soul-searing and there is no way to measure time, I saw what I took for
+the opening to a bay or the mouth of a great river a short distance
+ahead of us. I wished that we might make for it; but with the menace of
+Hooja close behind and the screaming natives who raced along the shore
+parallel to us, I dared not attempt it.
+
+We were not far from shore in that mad flight from death. Even as I
+paddled I found opportunity to glance occasionally toward the natives.
+They were white, but hideously painted. From their gestures and weapons
+I took them to be a most ferocious race. I was rather glad that we had
+not succeeded in landing among them.
+
+Hooja’s fleet had been in much more compact formation when we sighted
+them this time than on the occasion following the tempest. Now they
+were moving rapidly in pursuit of us, all well within the radius of a
+mile. Five of them were leading, all abreast, and were scarce two
+hundred yards from us. When I glanced over my shoulder I could see that
+the archers had already fitted arrows to their bows in readiness to
+fire upon us the moment that they should draw within range.
+
+Hope was low in my breast. I could not see the slightest chance of
+escaping them, for they were overhauling us rapidly now, since they
+were able to work their paddles in relays, while we three were rapidly
+wearying beneath the constant strain that had been put upon us.
+
+It was then that Juag called my attention to the rift in the shore-line
+which I had thought either a bay or the mouth of a great river. There I
+saw moving slowly out into the sea that which filled my soul with
+wonder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+GORE AND DREAMS
+
+
+It was a two-masted felucca with lateen sails! The craft was long and
+low. In it were more than fifty men, twenty or thirty of whom were at
+oars with which the craft was being propelled from the lee of the land.
+I was dumbfounded.
+
+Could it be that the savage, painted natives I had seen on shore had so
+perfected the art of navigation that they were masters of such advanced
+building and rigging as this craft proclaimed? It seemed impossible!
+And as I looked I saw another of the same type swing into view and
+follow its sister through the narrow strait out into the ocean.
+
+Nor were these all. One after another, following closely upon one
+another’s heels, came fifty of the trim, graceful vessels. They were
+cutting in between Hooja’s fleet and our little dugout.
+
+When they came a bit closer my eyes fairly popped from my head at what
+I saw, for in the eye of the leading felucca stood a man with a
+sea-glass leveled upon us. Who could they be? Was there a civilization
+within Pellucidar of such wondrous advancement as this? Were there
+far-distant lands of which none of my people had ever heard, where a
+race had so greatly outstripped all other races of this inner world?
+
+The man with the glass had lowered it and was shouting to us. I could
+not make out his words, but presently I saw that he was pointing aloft.
+When I looked I saw a pennant fluttering from the peak of the forward
+lateen yard—a red, white, and blue pennant, with a single great white
+star in a field of blue.
+
+Then I knew. My eyes went even wider than they had before. It was the
+navy! It was the navy of the empire of Pellucidar which I had
+instructed Perry to build in my absence. It was _my_ navy!
+
+I dropped my paddle and stood up and shouted and waved my hand. Juag
+and Dian looked at me as if I had gone suddenly mad. When I could stop
+shouting I told them, and they shared my joy and shouted with me.
+
+But still Hooja was coming nearer, nor could the leading felucca
+overhaul him before he would be along-side or at least within bow-shot.
+
+Hooja must have been as much mystified as we were as to the identity of
+the strange fleet; but when he saw me waving to them he evidently
+guessed that they were friendly to us, so he urged his men to redouble
+their efforts to reach us before the felucca cut him off.
+
+He shouted word back to others of his fleet—word that was passed back
+until it had reached them all—directing them to run alongside the
+strangers and board them, for with his two hundred craft and his eight
+or ten thousand warriors he evidently felt equal to overcoming the
+fifty vessels of the enemy, which did not seem to carry over three
+thousand men all told.
+
+His own personal energies he bent to reaching Dian and me first,
+leaving the rest of the work to his other boats. I thought that there
+could be little doubt that he would be successful in so far as we were
+concerned, and I feared for the revenge that he might take upon us
+should the battle go against his force, as I was sure it would; for I
+knew that Perry and his Mezops must have brought with them all the arms
+and ammunition that had been contained in the prospector. But I was not
+prepared for what happened next.
+
+As Hooja’s canoe reached a point some twenty yards from us a great puff
+of smoke broke from the bow of the leading felucca, followed almost
+simultaneously by a terrific explosion, and a solid shot screamed close
+over the heads of the men in Hooja’s craft, raising a great splash
+where it clove the water just beyond them.
+
+Perry had perfected gunpowder and built cannon! It was marvelous! Dian
+and Juag, as much surprised as Hooja, turned wondering eyes toward me.
+Again the cannon spoke. I suppose that by comparison with the great
+guns of modern naval vessels of the outer world it was a pitifully
+small and inadequate thing; but here in Pellucidar, where it was the
+first of its kind, it was about as awe-inspiring as anything you might
+imagine.
+
+With the report an iron cannonball about five inches in diameter struck
+Hooja’s dugout just above the water-line, tore a great splintering hole
+in its side, turned it over, and dumped its occupants into the sea.
+
+The four dugouts that had been abreast of Hooja had turned to intercept
+the leading felucca. Even now, in the face of what must have been a
+withering catastrophe to them, they kept bravely on toward the strange
+and terrible craft.
+
+In them were fully two hundred men, while but fifty lined the gunwale
+of the felucca to repel them. The commander of the felucca, who proved
+to be Ja, let them come quite close and then turned loose upon them a
+volley of shots from small-arms.
+
+The cave men and Sagoths in the dugouts seemed to wither before that
+blast of death like dry grass before a prairie fire. Those who were not
+hit dropped their bows and javelins and, seizing upon paddles,
+attempted to escape. But the felucca pursued them relentlessly, her
+crew firing at will.
+
+At last I heard Ja shouting to the survivors in the dugouts—they were
+all quite close to us now—offering them their lives if they would
+surrender. Perry was standing close behind Ja, and I knew that this
+merciful action was prompted, perhaps commanded, by the old man; for no
+Pellucidarian would have thought of showing leniency to a defeated foe.
+
+As there was no alternative save death, the survivors surrendered and a
+moment later were taken aboard the Amoz, the name that I could now see
+printed in large letters upon the felucca’s bow, and which no one in
+that whole world could read except Perry and I.
+
+When the prisoners were aboard, Ja brought the felucca alongside our
+dugout. Many were the willing hands that reached down to lift us to her
+decks. The bronze faces of the Mezops were broad with smiles, and Perry
+was fairly beside himself with joy.
+
+Dian went aboard first and then Juag, as I wished to help Raja and
+Ranee aboard myself, well knowing that it would fare ill with any Mezop
+who touched them. We got them aboard at last, and a great commotion
+they caused among the crew, who had never seen a wild beast thus
+handled by man before.
+
+Perry and Dian and I were so full of questions that we fairly burst,
+but we had to contain ourselves for a while, since the battle with the
+rest of Hooja’s fleet had scarce commenced. From the small forward
+decks of the feluccas Perry’s crude cannon were belching smoke, flame,
+thunder, and death. The air trembled to the roar of them. Hooja’s
+horde, intrepid, savage fighters that they were, were closing in to
+grapple in a last death-struggle with the Mezops who manned our
+vessels.
+
+The handling of our fleet by the red island warriors of Ja’s clan was
+far from perfect. I could see that Perry had lost no time after the
+completion of the boats in setting out upon this cruise. What little
+the captains and crews had learned of handling feluccas they must have
+learned principally since they embarked upon this voyage, and while
+experience is an excellent teacher and had done much for them, they
+still had a great deal to learn. In maneuvering for position they were
+continually fouling one another, and on two occasions shots from our
+batteries came near to striking our own ships.
+
+No sooner, however, was I aboard the flagship than I attempted to
+rectify this trouble to some extent. By passing commands by word of
+mouth from one ship to another I managed to get the fifty feluccas into
+some sort of line, with the flag-ship in the lead. In this formation we
+commenced slowly to circle the position of the enemy. The dugouts came
+for us right along in an attempt to board us, but by keeping on the
+move in one direction and circling, we managed to avoid getting in each
+other’s way, and were enabled to fire our cannon and our small arms
+with less danger to our own comrades.
+
+When I had a moment to look about me, I took in the felucca on which I
+was. I am free to confess that I marveled at the excellent construction
+and stanch yet speedy lines of the little craft. That Perry had chosen
+this type of vessel seemed rather remarkable, for though I had warned
+him against turreted battle-ships, armor, and like useless show, I had
+fully expected that when I beheld his navy I should find considerable
+attempt at grim and terrible magnificence, for it was always Perry’s
+idea to overawe these ignorant cave men when we had to contend with
+them in battle. But I had soon learned that while one might easily
+astonish them with some new engine of war, it was an utter
+impossibility to frighten them into surrender.
+
+I learned later that Ja had gone carefully over the plans of various
+craft with Perry. The old man had explained in detail all that the text
+told him of them. The two had measured out dimensions upon the ground,
+that Ja might see the sizes of different boats. Perry had built models,
+and Ja had had him read carefully and explain all that they could find
+relative to the handling of sailing vessels. The result of this was
+that Ja was the one who had chosen the felucca. It was well that Perry
+had had so excellent a balance wheel, for he had been wild to build a
+huge frigate of the Nelsonian era—he told me so himself.
+
+One thing that had inclined Ja particularly to the felucca was the fact
+that it included oars in its equipment. He realized the limitations of
+his people in the matter of sails, and while they had never used oars,
+the implement was so similar to a paddle that he was sure they quickly
+could master the art—and they did. As soon as one hull was completed Ja
+kept it on the water constantly, first with one crew and then with
+another, until two thousand red warriors had learned to row. Then they
+stepped their masts and a crew was told off for the first ship.
+
+While the others were building they learned to handle theirs. As each
+succeeding boat was launched its crew took it out and practiced with it
+under the tutorage of those who had graduated from the first ship, and
+so on until a full complement of men had been trained for every boat.
+
+Well, to get back to the battle: The Hoojans kept on coming at us, and
+as fast as they came we mowed them down. It was little else than
+slaughter. Time and time again I cried to them to surrender, promising
+them their lives if they would do so. At last there were but ten
+boatloads left. These turned in flight. They thought they could paddle
+away from us—it was pitiful! I passed the word from boat to boat to
+cease firing—not to kill another Hoojan unless they fired on us. Then
+we set out after them. There was a nice little breeze blowing and we
+bowled along after our quarry as gracefully and as lightly as swans
+upon a park lagoon. As we approached them I could see not only wonder
+but admiration in their eyes. I hailed the nearest dugout.
+
+“Throw down your arms and come aboard us,” I cried, “and you shall not
+be harmed. We will feed you and return you to the mainland. Then you
+shall go free upon your promise never to bear arms against the Emperor
+of Pellucidar again!”
+
+I think it was the promise of food that interested them most. They
+could scarce believe that we would not kill them. But when I exhibited
+the prisoners we already had taken, and showed them that they were
+alive and unharmed, a great Sagoth in one of the boats asked me what
+guarantee I could give that I would keep my word.
+
+“None other than my word,” I replied. “That I do not break.”
+
+The Pellucidarians themselves are rather punctilious about this same
+matter, so the Sagoth could understand that I might possibly be
+speaking the truth. But he could not understand why we should not kill
+them unless we meant to enslave them, which I had as much as denied
+already when I had promised to set them free. Ja couldn’t exactly see
+the wisdom of my plan, either. He thought that we ought to follow up
+the ten remaining dugouts and sink them all; but I insisted that we
+must free as many as possible of our enemies upon the mainland.
+
+“You see,” I explained, “these men will return at once to Hooja’s
+Island, to the Mahar cities from which they come, or to the countries
+from which they were stolen by the Mahars. They are men of two races
+and of many countries. They will spread the story of our victory far
+and wide, and while they are with us, we will let them see and hear
+many other wonderful things which they may carry back to their friends
+and their chiefs. It’s the finest chance for free publicity, Perry,” I
+added to the old man, “that you or I have seen in many a day.”
+
+Perry agreed with me. As a matter of fact, he would have agreed to
+anything that would have restrained us from killing the poor devils who
+fell into our hands. He was a great fellow to invent gunpowder and
+firearms and cannon; but when it came to using these things to kill
+people, he was as tender-hearted as a chicken.
+
+The Sagoth who had spoken was talking to other Sagoths in his boat.
+Evidently they were holding a council over the question of the wisdom
+of surrendering.
+
+“What will become of you if you don’t surrender to us?” I asked. “If we
+do not open up our batteries on you again and kill you all, you will
+simply drift about the sea helplessly until you die of thirst and
+starvation. You cannot return to the islands, for you have seen as well
+as we that the natives there are very numerous and warlike. They would
+kill you the moment you landed.”
+
+The upshot of it was that the boat of which the Sagoth speaker was in
+charge surrendered. The Sagoths threw down their weapons, and we took
+them aboard the ship next in line behind the Amoz. First Ja had to
+impress upon the captain and crew of the ship that the prisoners were
+not to be abused or killed. After that the remaining dugouts paddled up
+and surrendered. We distributed them among the entire fleet lest there
+be too many upon any one vessel. Thus ended the first real naval
+engagement that the Pellucidarian seas had ever witnessed—though Perry
+still insists that the action in which the Sari took part was a battle
+of the first magnitude.
+
+The battle over and the prisoners disposed of and fed—and do not
+imagine that Dian, Juag, and I, as well as the two hounds were not fed
+also—I turned my attention to the fleet. We had the feluccas close in
+about the flag-ship, and with all the ceremony of a medieval potentate
+on parade I received the commanders of the forty-nine feluccas that
+accompanied the flag-ship—Dian and I together—the empress and the
+emperor of Pellucidar.
+
+It was a great occasion. The savage, bronze warriors entered into the
+spirit of it, for as I learned later dear old Perry had left no
+opportunity neglected for impressing upon them that David was emperor
+of Pellucidar, and that all that they were accomplishing and all that
+he was accomplishing was due to the power, and redounded to the glory
+of David. The old man must have rubbed it in pretty strong, for those
+fierce warriors nearly came to blows in their efforts to be among the
+first of those to kneel before me and kiss my hand. When it came to
+kissing Dian’s I think they enjoyed it more; I know I should have.
+
+A happy thought occurred to me as I stood upon the little deck of the
+Amoz with the first of Perry’s primitive cannon behind me. When Ja
+kneeled at my feet, and first to do me homage, I drew from its scabbard
+at his side the sword of hammered iron that Perry had taught him to
+fashion. Striking him lightly on the shoulder I created him king of
+Anoroc. Each captain of the forty-nine other feluccas I made a duke. I
+left it to Perry to enlighten them as to the value of the honors I had
+bestowed upon them.
+
+During these ceremonies Raja and Ranee had stood beside Dian and me.
+Their bellies had been well filled, but still they had difficulty in
+permitting so much edible humanity to pass unchallenged. It was a good
+education for them though, and never after did they find it difficult
+to associate with the human race without arousing their appetites.
+
+After the ceremonies were over we had a chance to talk with Perry and
+Ja. The former told me that Ghak, king of Sari, had sent my letter and
+map to him by a runner, and that he and Ja had at once decided to set
+out on the completion of the fleet to ascertain the correctness of my
+theory that the Lural Az, in which the Anoroc Islands lay, was in
+reality the same ocean as that which lapped the shores of Thuria under
+the name of Sojar Az, or Great Sea.
+
+Their destination had been the island retreat of Hooja, and they had
+sent word to Ghak of their plans that we might work in harmony with
+them. The tempest that had blown us off the coast of the continent had
+blown them far to the south also. Shortly before discovering us they
+had come into a great group of islands, from between the largest two of
+which they were sailing when they saw Hooja’s fleet pursuing our
+dugout.
+
+I asked Perry if he had any idea as to where we were, or in what
+direction lay Hooja’s island or the continent. He replied by producing
+his map, on which he had carefully marked the newly discovered
+islands—there described as the Unfriendly Isles—which showed Hooja’s
+island northwest of us about two points West.
+
+He then explained that with compass, chronometer, log and reel, they
+had kept a fairly accurate record of their course from the time they
+had set out. Four of the feluccas were equipped with these instruments,
+and all of the captains had been instructed in their use.
+
+I was very greatly surprised at the ease with which these savages had
+mastered the rather intricate detail of this unusual work, but Perry
+assured me that they were a wonderfully intelligent race, and had been
+quick to grasp all that he had tried to teach them.
+
+Another thing that surprised me was the fact that so much had been
+accomplished in so short a time, for I could not believe that I had
+been gone from Anoroc for a sufficient period to permit of building a
+fleet of fifty feluccas and mining iron ore for the cannon and balls,
+to say nothing of manufacturing these guns and the crude muzzle-loading
+rifles with which every Mezop was armed, as well as the gunpowder and
+ammunition they had in such ample quantities.
+
+“Time!” exclaimed Perry. “Well, how long were you gone from Anoroc
+before we picked you up in the Sojar Az?”
+
+That was a puzzler, and I had to admit it. I didn’t know how much time
+had elapsed and neither did Perry, for time is nonexistent in
+Pellucidar.
+
+“Then, you see, David,” he continued, “I had almost unbelievable
+resources at my disposal. The Mezops inhabiting the Anoroc Islands,
+which stretch far out to sea beyond the three principal isles with
+which you are familiar, number well into the millions, and by far the
+greater part of them are friendly to Ja. Men, women, and children
+turned to and worked the moment Ja explained the nature of our
+enterprise.
+
+“And not only were they anxious to do all in their power to hasten the
+day when the Mahars should be overthrown, but—and this counted for most
+of all—they are simply ravenous for greater knowledge and for better
+ways of doing things.
+
+“The contents of the prospector set their imaginations to working
+overtime, so that they craved to own, themselves, the knowledge which
+had made it possible for other men to create and build the things which
+you brought back from the outer world.
+
+“And then,” continued the old man, “the element of time, or, rather,
+lack of time, operated to my advantage. There being no nights, there
+was no laying off from work—they labored incessantly stopping only to
+eat and, on rare occasions, to sleep. Once we had discovered iron ore
+we had enough mined in an incredibly short time to build a thousand
+cannon. I had only to show them once how a thing should be done, and
+they would fall to work by thousands to do it.
+
+“Why, no sooner had we fashioned the first muzzle-loader and they had
+seen it work successfully, than fully three thousand Mezops fell to
+work to make rifles. Of course there was much confusion and lost motion
+at first, but eventually Ja got them in hand, detailing squads of them
+under competent chiefs to certain work.
+
+“We now have a hundred expert gun-makers. On a little isolated isle we
+have a great powder-factory. Near the iron-mine, which is on the
+mainland, is a smelter, and on the eastern shore of Anoroc, a well
+equipped ship-yard. All these industries are guarded by forts in which
+several cannon are mounted and where warriors are always on guard.
+
+“You would be surprised now, David, at the aspect of Anoroc. I am
+surprised myself; it seems always to me as I compare it with the day
+that I first set foot upon it from the deck of the Sari that only a
+miracle could have worked the change that has taken place.”
+
+“It is a miracle,” I said; “it is nothing short of a miracle to
+transplant all the wondrous possibilities of the twentieth century back
+to the Stone Age. It is a miracle to think that only five hundred miles
+of earth separate two epochs that are really ages and ages apart.”
+
+“It is stupendous, Perry! But still more stupendous is the power that
+you and I wield in this great world. These people look upon us as
+little less than supermen. We must show them that we are all of that.
+
+“We must give them the best that we have, Perry.”
+
+“Yes,” he agreed; “we must. I have been thinking a great deal lately
+that some kind of shrapnel shell or explosive bomb would be a most
+splendid innovation in their warfare. Then there are breech-loading
+rifles and those with magazines that I must hasten to study out and
+learn to reproduce as soon as we get settled down again; and—”
+
+“Hold on, Perry!” I cried. “I didn’t mean these sorts of things at all.
+I said that we must give them the best we have. What we have given them
+so far has been the worst. We have given them war and the munitions of
+war. In a single day we have made their wars infinitely more terrible
+and bloody than in all their past ages they have been able to make them
+with their crude, primitive weapons.
+
+“In a period that could scarcely have exceeded two outer earthly hours,
+our fleet practically annihilated the largest armada of native canoes
+that the Pellucidarians ever before had gathered together. We butchered
+some eight thousand warriors with the twentieth-century gifts we
+brought. Why, they wouldn’t have killed that many warriors in the
+entire duration of a dozen of their wars with their own weapons! No,
+Perry; we’ve got to give them something better than scientific methods
+of killing one another.”
+
+The old man looked at me in amazement. There was reproach in his eyes,
+too.
+
+“Why, David!” he said sorrowfully. “I thought that you would be pleased
+with what I had done. We planned these things together, and I am sure
+that it was you who suggested practically all of it. I have done only
+what I thought you wished done and I have done it the best that I know
+how.”
+
+I laid my hand on the old man’s shoulder.
+
+“Bless your heart, Perry!” I cried. “You’ve accomplished miracles. You
+have done precisely what I should have done, only you’ve done it
+better. I’m not finding fault; but I don’t wish to lose sight myself,
+or let you lose sight, of the greater work which must grow out of this
+preliminary and necessary carnage. First we must place the empire upon
+a secure footing, and we can do so only by putting the fear of us in
+the hearts of our enemies; but after that—
+
+“Ah, Perry! That is the day I look forward to! When you and I can build
+sewing-machines instead of battle-ships, harvesters of crops instead of
+harvesters of men, plow-shares and telephones, schools and colleges,
+printing-presses and paper! When our merchant marine shall ply the
+great Pellucidarian seas, and cargoes of silks and typewriters and
+books shall forge their ways where only hideous saurians have held sway
+since time began!”
+
+“Amen!” said Perry.
+
+And Dian, who was standing at my side, pressed my hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+CONQUEST AND PEACE
+
+
+The fleet sailed directly for Hooja’s island, coming to anchor at its
+north-eastern extremity before the flat-topped hill that had been
+Hooja’s stronghold. I sent one of the prisoners ashore to demand an
+immediate surrender; but as he told me afterward they wouldn’t believe
+all that he told them, so they congregated on the cliff-top and shot
+futile arrows at us.
+
+In reply I had five of the feluccas cannonade them. When they scampered
+away at the sound of the terrific explosions, and at sight of the smoke
+and the iron balls I landed a couple of hundred red warriors and led
+them to the opposite end of the hill into the tunnel that ran to its
+summit. Here we met a little resistance; but a volley from the
+muzzle-loaders turned back those who disputed our right of way, and
+presently we gained the mesa. Here again we met resistance, but at last
+the remnant of Hooja’s horde surrendered.
+
+Juag was with me, and I lost no time in returning to him and his tribe
+the hilltop that had been their ancestral home for ages until they were
+robbed of it by Hooja. I created a kingdom of the island, making Juag
+king there. Before we sailed I went to Gr-gr-gr, chief of the
+beast-men, taking Juag with me. There the three of us arranged a code
+of laws that would permit the brute-folk and the human beings of the
+island to live in peace and harmony. Gr-gr-gr sent his son with me back
+to Sari, capital of my empire, that he might learn the ways of the
+human beings. I have hopes of turning this race into the greatest
+agriculturists of Pellucidar. When I returned to the fleet I found that
+one of the islanders of Juag’s tribe, who had been absent when we
+arrived, had just returned from the mainland with the news that a great
+army was encamped in the Land of Awful Shadow, and that they were
+threatening Thuria. I lost no time in weighing anchors and setting out
+for the continent, which we reached after a short and easy voyage.
+
+From the deck of the Amoz I scanned the shore through the glasses that
+Perry had brought with him. When we were close enough for the glasses
+to be of value I saw that there was indeed a vast concourse of warriors
+entirely encircling the walled-village of Goork, chief of the Thurians.
+As we approached smaller objects became distinguishable. It was then
+that I discovered numerous flags and pennants floating above the army
+of the besiegers.
+
+I called Perry and passed the glasses to him.
+
+“Ghak of Sari,” I said.
+
+Perry looked through the lenses of a moment, and then turned to me with
+a smile.
+
+“The red, white, and blue of the empire,” he said. “It is indeed your
+majesty’s army.”
+
+It soon became apparent that we had been sighted by those on shore, for
+a great multitude of warriors had congregated along the beach watching
+us. We came to anchor as close in as we dared, which with our light
+feluccas was within easy speaking-distance of the shore. Ghak was there
+and his eyes were mighty wide, too; for, as he told us later, though he
+knew this must be Perry’s fleet it was so wonderful to him that he
+could not believe the testimony of his own eyes even while he was
+watching it approach.
+
+To give the proper effect to our meeting I commanded that each felucca
+fire twenty-one guns as a salute to His Majesty Ghak, King of Sari.
+Some of the gunners, in the exuberance of their enthusiasm, fired solid
+shot; but fortunately they had sufficient good judg-ment to train their
+pieces on the open sea, so no harm was done. After this we landed—an
+arduous task since each felucca carried but a single light dugout.
+
+I learned from Ghak that the Thurian chieftain, Goork, had been
+inclined to haughtiness, and had told Ghak, the Hairy One, that he knew
+nothing of me and cared less; but I imagine that the sight of the fleet
+and the sound of the guns brought him to his senses, for it was not
+long before he sent a deputation to me, inviting me to visit him in his
+village. Here he apologized for the treatment he had accorded me, very
+gladly swore allegiance to the empire, and received in return the title
+of king.
+
+We remained in Thuria only long enough to arrange the treaty with
+Goork, among the other details of which was his promise to furnish the
+imperial army with a thousand lidi, or Thurian beasts of burden, and
+drivers for them. These were to accompany Ghak’s army back to Sari by
+land, while the fleet sailed to the mouth of the great river from which
+Dian, Juag, and I had been blown.
+
+The voyage was uneventful. We found the river easily, and sailed up it
+for many miles through as rich and wonderful a plain as I have ever
+seen. At the head of navigation we disembarked, leaving a sufficient
+guard for the feluccas, and marched the remaining distance to Sari.
+
+Ghak’s army, which was composed of warriors of all the original tribes
+of the federation, showing how successful had been his efforts to
+rehabilitate the empire, marched into Sari some time after we arrived.
+With them were the thousand lidi from Thuria.
+
+At a council of the kings it was decided that we should at once
+commence the great war against the Mahars, for these haughty reptiles
+presented the greatest obstacle to human progress within Pellucidar. I
+laid out a plan of campaign which met with the enthusiastic indorsement
+of the kings. Pursuant to it, I at once despatched fifty lidi to the
+fleet with orders to fetch fifty cannon to Sari. I also ordered the
+fleet to proceed at once to Anoroc, where they were to take aboard all
+the rifles and ammunition that had been completed since their
+departure, and with a full complement of men to sail along the coast in
+an attempt to find a passage to the inland sea near which lay the
+Mahars’ buried city of Phutra.
+
+Ja was sure that a large and navigable river connected the sea of
+Phutra with the Lural Az, and that, barring accident, the fleet would
+be before Phutra as soon as the land forces were.
+
+At last the great army started upon its march. There were warriors from
+every one of the federated kingdoms. All were armed either with bow and
+arrows or muzzle-loaders, for nearly the entire Mezop contingent had
+been enlisted for this march, only sufficient having been left aboard
+the feluccas to man them properly. I divided the forces into divisions,
+regiments, battalions, companies, and even to platoons and sections,
+appointing the full complement of officers and noncommissioned
+officers. On the long march I schooled them in their duties, and as
+fast as one learned I sent him among the others as a teacher.
+
+Each regiment was made up of about a thousand bowmen, and to each was
+temporarily attached a company of Mezop musketeers and a battery of
+artillery—the latter, our naval guns, mounted upon the broad backs of
+the mighty lidi. There was also one full regiment of Mezop musketeers
+and a regiment of primitive spearmen. The rest of the lidi that we
+brought with us were used for baggage animals and to transport our
+women and children, for we had brought them with us, as it was our
+intention to march from one Mahar city to another until we had subdued
+every Mahar nation that menaced the safety of any kingdom of the
+empire.
+
+Before we reached the plain of Phutra we were discovered by a company
+of Sagoths, who at first stood to give battle; but upon seeing the vast
+numbers of our army they turned and fled toward Phutra. The result of
+this was that when we came in sight of the hundred towers which mark
+the entrances to the buried city we found a great army of Sagoths and
+Mahars lined up to give us battle.
+
+At a thousand yards we halted, and, placing our artillery upon a slight
+eminence at either flank, we commenced to drop solid shot among them.
+Ja, who was chief artillery officer, was in command of this branch of
+the service, and he did some excellent work, for his Mezop gunners had
+become rather proficient by this time. The Sagoths couldn’t stand much
+of this sort of warfare, so they charged us, yelling like fiends. We
+let them come quite close, and then the musketeers who formed the first
+line opened up on them.
+
+The slaughter was something frightful, but still the remnants of them
+kept on coming until it was a matter of hand-to-hand fighting. Here our
+spearmen were of value, as were also the crude iron swords with which
+most of the imperial warriors were armed.
+
+We lost heavily in the encounter after the Sagoths reached us; but they
+were absolutely exterminated—not one remained even as a prisoner. The
+Mahars, seeing how the battle was going, had hastened to the safety of
+their buried city. When we had overcome their gorilla-men we followed
+after them.
+
+But here we were doomed to defeat, at least temporarily; for no sooner
+had the first of our troops descended into the subterranean avenues
+than many of them came stumbling and fighting their way back to the
+surface, half-choked by the fumes of some deadly gas that the reptiles
+had liberated upon them. We lost a number of men here. Then I sent for
+Perry, who had remained discreetly in the rear, and had him construct a
+little affair that I had had in my mind against the possibility of our
+meeting with a check at the entrances to the underground city.
+
+Under my direction he stuffed one of his cannon full of powder, small
+bullets, and pieces of stone, almost to the muzzle. Then he plugged the
+muzzle tight with a cone-shaped block of wood, hammered and jammed in
+as tight as it could be. Next he inserted a long fuse. A dozen men
+rolled the cannon to the top of the stairs leading down into the city,
+first removing it from its carriage. One of them then lit the fuse and
+the whole thing was given a shove down the stairway, while the
+detachment turned and scampered to a safe distance.
+
+For what seemed a very long time nothing happened. We had commenced to
+think that the fuse had been put out while the piece was rolling down
+the stairway, or that the Mahars had guessed its purpose and
+extinguished it themselves, when the ground about the entrance rose
+suddenly into the air, to be followed by a terrific explosion and a
+burst of smoke and flame that shot high in company with dirt, stone,
+and fragments of cannon.
+
+Perry had been working on two more of these giant bombs as soon as the
+first was completed. Presently we launched these into two of the other
+entrances. They were all that were required, for almost immediately
+after the third explosion a stream of Mahars broke from the exits
+furthest from us, rose upon their wings, and soared northward. A
+hundred men on lidi were despatched in pursuit, each lidi carrying two
+riflemen in addition to its driver. Guessing that the inland sea, which
+lay not far north of Phutra, was their destination, I took a couple of
+regiments and followed.
+
+A low ridge intervenes between the Phutra plain where the city lies,
+and the inland sea where the Mahars were wont to disport themselves in
+the cool waters. Not until we had topped this ridge did we get a view
+of the sea.
+
+Then we beheld a scene that I shall never forget so long as I may live.
+
+Along the beach were lined up the troop of lidi, while a hundred yards
+from shore the surface of the water was black with the long snouts and
+cold, reptilian eyes of the Mahars. Our savage Mezop riflemen, and the
+shorter, squatter, white-skinned Thurian drivers, shading their eyes
+with their hands, were gazing seaward beyond the Mahars, whose eyes
+were fastened upon the same spot. My heart leaped when I discovered
+that which was chaining the attention of them all. Twenty graceful
+feluccas were moving smoothly across the waters of the sea toward the
+reptilian horde!
+
+The sight must have filled the Mahars with awe and consternation, for
+never had they seen the like of these craft before. For a time they
+seemed unable to do aught but gaze at the approaching fleet; but when
+the Mezops opened on them with their muskets the reptiles swam rapidly
+in the direction of the feluccas, evidently thinking that these would
+prove the easier to overcome. The commander of the fleet permitted them
+to approach within a hundred yards. Then he opened on them with all the
+cannon that could be brought to bear, as well as with the small arms of
+the sailors.
+
+A great many of the reptiles were killed at the first volley. They
+wavered for a moment, then dived; nor did we see them again for a long
+time.
+
+But finally they rose far out beyond the fleet, and when the feluccas
+came about and pursued them they left the water and flew away toward
+the north.
+
+Following the fall of Phutra I visited Anoroc, where I found the people
+busy in the shipyards and the factories that Perry had established. I
+discovered something, too, that he had not told me of—something that
+seemed infinitely more promising than the powder-factory or the
+arsenal. It was a young man poring over one of the books I had brought
+back from the outer world! He was sitting in the log cabin that Perry
+had had built to serve as his sleeping quarters and office. So absorbed
+was he that he did not notice our entrance. Perry saw the look of
+astonishment in my eyes and smiled.
+
+“I started teaching him the alphabet when we first reached the
+prospector, and were taking out its contents,” he explained. “He was
+much mystified by the books and anxious to know of what use they were.
+When I explained he asked me to teach him to read, and so I worked with
+him whenever I could. He is very intelligent and learns quickly. Before
+I left he had made great progress, and as soon as he is qualified he is
+going to teach others to read. It was mighty hard work getting started,
+though, for everything had to be translated into Pellucidarian.
+
+“It will take a long time to solve this problem, but I think that by
+teaching a number of them to read and write English we shall then be
+able more quickly to give them a written language of their own.”
+
+And this was the nucleus about which we were to build our great system
+of schools and colleges—this almost naked red warrior, sitting in
+Perry’s little cabin upon the island of Anoroc, picking out words
+letter by letter from a work on intensive farming. Now we have—
+
+But I’ll get to all that before I finish.
+
+While we were at Anoroc I accompanied Ja in an expedition to South
+Island, the southernmost of the three largest which form the Anoroc
+group—Perry had given it its name—where we made peace with the tribe
+there that had for long been hostile toward Ja. They were now glad
+enough to make friends with him and come into the federation. From
+there we sailed with sixty-five feluccas for distant Luana, the main
+island of the group where dwell the hereditary enemies of Anoroc.
+
+Twenty-five of the feluccas were of a new and larger type than those
+with which Ja and Perry had sailed on the occasion when they chanced to
+find and rescue Dian and me. They were longer, carried much larger
+sails, and were considerably swifter. Each carried four guns instead of
+two, and these were so arranged that one or more of them could be
+brought into action no matter where the enemy lay.
+
+The Luana group lies just beyond the range of vision from the mainland.
+The largest island of it alone is visible from Anoroc; but when we
+neared it we found that it comprised many beautiful islands, and that
+they were thickly populated. The Luanians had not, of course, been
+ignorant of all that had been going on in the domains of their nearest
+and dearest enemies. They knew of our feluccas and our guns, for
+several of their riding-parties had had a taste of both. But their
+principal chief, an old man, had never seen either. So, when he sighted
+us, he put out to overwhelm us, bringing with him a fleet of about a
+hundred large war-canoes, loaded to capacity with javelin-armed
+warriors. It was pitiful, and I told Ja as much. It seemed a shame to
+massacre these poor fellows if there was any way out of it.
+
+To my surprise Ja felt much as I did. He said he had always hated to
+war with other Mezops when there were so many alien races to fight
+against. I suggested that we hail the chief and request a parley; but
+when Ja did so the old fool thought that we were afraid, and with loud
+cries of exultation urged his warriors upon us.
+
+So we opened up on them, but at my suggestion centered our fire upon
+the chief’s canoe. The result was that in about thirty seconds there
+was nothing left of that war dugout but a handful of splinters, while
+its crew—those who were not killed—were struggling in the water,
+battling with the myriad terrible creatures that had risen to devour
+them.
+
+We saved some of them, but the majority died just as had Hooja and the
+crew of his canoe that time our second shot capsized them.
+
+Again we called to the remaining warriors to enter into a parley with
+us; but the chief’s son was there and he would not, now that he had
+seen his father killed. He was all for revenge. So we had to open up on
+the brave fellows with all our guns; but it didn’t last long at that,
+for there chanced to be wiser heads among the Luanians than their chief
+or his son had possessed. Presently, an old warrior who commanded one
+of the dugouts surrendered. After that they came in one by one until
+all had laid their weapons upon our decks.
+
+Then we called together upon the flag-ship all our captains, to give
+the affair greater weight and dignity, and all the principal men of
+Luana. We had conquered them, and they expected either death or
+slavery; but they deserved neither, and I told them so. It is always my
+habit here in Pellucidar to impress upon these savage people that mercy
+is as noble a quality as physical bravery, and that next to the men who
+fight shoulder to shoulder with one, we should honor the brave men who
+fight against us, and if we are victorious, award them both the mercy
+and honor that are their due.
+
+By adhering to this policy I have won to the federation many great and
+noble peoples, who under the ancient traditions of the inner world
+would have been massacred or enslaved after we had conquered them; and
+thus I won the Luanians. I gave them their freedom, and returned their
+weapons to them after they had sworn loyalty to me and friendship and
+peace with Ja, and I made the old fellow, who had had the good sense to
+surrender, king of Luana, for both the old chief and his only son had
+died in the battle.
+
+When I sailed away from Luana she was included among the kingdoms of
+the empire, whose boundaries were thus pushed eastward several hundred
+miles.
+
+We now returned to Anoroc and thence to the mainland, where I again
+took up the campaign against the Mahars, marching from one great buried
+city to another until we had passed far north of Amoz into a country
+where I had never been. At each city we were victorious, killing or
+capturing the Sagoths and driving the Mahars further away.
+
+I noticed that they always fled toward the north. The Sagoth prisoners
+we usually found quite ready to trans-fer their allegiance to us, for
+they are little more than brutes, and when they found that we could
+fill their stomachs and give them plenty of fighting, they were nothing
+loath to march with us against the next Mahar city and battle with men
+of their own race.
+
+Thus we proceeded, swinging in a great half-circle north and west and
+south again until we had come back to the edge of the Lidi Plains north
+of Thuria. Here we overcame the Mahar city that had ravaged the Land of
+Awful Shadow for so many ages. When we marched on to Thuria, Goork and
+his people went mad with joy at the tidings we brought them.
+
+During this long march of conquest we had passed through seven
+countries, peopled by primitive human tribes who had not yet heard of
+the federation, and succeeded in joining them all to the empire. It was
+noticeable that each of these peoples had a Mahar city situated near
+by, which had drawn upon them for slaves and human food for so many
+ages that not even in legend had the population any folk-tale which did
+not in some degree reflect an inherent terror of the reptilians.
+
+In each of these countries I left an officer and warriors to train them
+in military discipline, and prepare them to receive the arms that I
+intended furnishing them as rapidly as Perry’s arsenal could turn them
+out, for we felt that it would be a long, long time before we should
+see the last of the Mahars. That they had flown north but temporarily
+until we should be gone with our great army and terrifying guns I was
+positive, and equally sure was I that they would presently return.
+
+The task of ridding Pellucidar of these hideous creatures is one which
+in all probability will never be entirely completed, for their great
+cities must abound by the hundreds and thousands in the far-distant
+lands that no subject of the empire has ever laid eyes upon.
+
+But within the present boundaries of my domain there are now none left
+that I know of, for I am sure we should have heard indirectly of any
+great Mahar city that had escaped us, although of course the imperial
+army has by no means covered the vast area which I now rule.
+
+After leaving Thuria we returned to Sari, where the seat of government
+is located. Here, upon a vast, fertile plateau, overlooking the great
+gulf that runs into the continent from the Lural Az, we are building
+the great city of Sari. Here we are erecting mills and factories. Here
+we are teaching men and women the rudiments of agriculture. Here Perry
+has built the first printing-press, and a dozen young Sarians are
+teaching their fellows to read and write the language of Pellucidar.
+
+We have just laws and only a few of them. Our people are happy because
+they are always working at something which they enjoy. There is no
+money, nor is any money value placed upon any commodity. Perry and I
+were as one in resolving that the root of all evil should not be
+introduced into Pellucidar while we lived.
+
+A man may exchange that which he produces for something which he
+desires that another has produced; but he cannot dispose of the thing
+he thus acquires. In other words, a commodity ceases to have pecuniary
+value the instant that it passes out of the hands of its producer. All
+excess reverts to government; and, as this represents the production of
+the people as a government, government may dispose of it to other
+peoples in exchange for that which they produce. Thus we are
+establishing a trade between kingdoms, the profits from which go to the
+betterment of the people—to building factories for the manufacture of
+agricultural implements, and machinery for the various trades we are
+gradually teaching the people.
+
+Already Anoroc and Luana are vying with one another in the excellence
+of the ships they build. Each has several large ship-yards. Anoroc
+makes gunpowder and mines iron ore, and by means of their ships they
+carry on a very lucrative trade with Thuria, Sari, and Amoz. The
+Thurians breed lidi, which, having the strength and intelligence of an
+elephant, make excellent draft animals.
+
+Around Sari and Amoz the men are domesticating the great striped
+antelope, the meat of which is most delicious. I am sure that it will
+not be long before they will have them broken to harness and saddle.
+The horses of Pellucidar are far too diminutive for such uses, some
+species of them being little larger than fox-terriers.
+
+Dian and I live in a great palace overlooking the gulf. There is no
+glass in our windows, for we have no windows, the walls rising but a
+few feet above the floor-line, the rest of the space being open to the
+ceilings; but we have a roof to shade us from the perpetual noon-day
+sun. Perry and I decided to set a style in architecture that would not
+curse future generations with the white plague, so we have plenty of
+ventilation. Those of the people who prefer, still inhabit their caves,
+but many are building houses similar to ours.
+
+At Greenwich we have located a town and an observatory—though there is
+nothing to observe but the stationary sun directly overhead. Upon the
+edge of the Land of Awful Shadow is another observatory, from which the
+time is flashed by wireless to every corner of the empire twenty-four
+times a day. In addition to the wireless, we have a small telephone
+system in Sari. Everything is yet in the early stages of development;
+but with the science of the outer-world twentieth century to draw upon
+we are making rapid progress, and with all the faults and errors of the
+outer world to guide us clear of dangers, I think that it will not be
+long before Pellucidar will become as nearly a Utopia as one may expect
+to find this side of heaven.
+
+Perry is away just now, laying out a railway-line from Sari to Amoz.
+There are immense anthracite coal-fields at the head of the gulf not
+far from Sari, and the railway will tap these. Some of his students are
+working on a locomotive now. It will be a strange sight to see an iron
+horse puffing through the primeval jungles of the stone age, while cave
+bears, saber-toothed tigers, mastodons and the countless other terrible
+creatures of the past look on from their tangled lairs in wide-eyed
+astonishment.
+
+We are very happy, Dian and I, and I would not return to the outer
+world for all the riches of all its princes. I am content here. Even
+without my imperial powers and honors I should be content, for have I
+not that greatest of all treasures, the love of a good woman—my
+wondrous empress, Dian the Beautiful?
+
+
+
+
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