CHAPTER I

Pellicudar

by Edgar R. Burroughs

CHAPTER I, PELLICUDAR by Edgar R. Burroughs
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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 exceed-
ingly 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 min-
utes' 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 free-
dom.

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 travel-
ing 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 Pel-
lucidar. 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 pos-
sessed 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 Pel-
lucidar.

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 bad 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 trans-
portation to Pellucidar.

She had seen all these evidences of a civilization
and brain-power transcending in scientific achieve-
ment 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 auto-
matics 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 Pel-
lucidar 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, scien-
tific instruments, and still more books--its great library
of reference works upon every conceivable branch of ap-
plied 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 ammuni-
tion 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 graz-
ing 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 unex-
pected 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 syn-
chronize 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 boul-
der, 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.