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 mid-day 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.
