Books: Pellucidar

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Created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska

PELLUCIDAR

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PROLOGUE
I LOST ON PELLUCIDAR
II TRAVELING WITH TERROR
III SHOOTING THE CHUTES--AND AFTER
IV FRIENDSHIP AND TREACHERY
V SURPRISES
VI A PENDENT WORLD
VII FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT
VIII CAPTIVE
IX HOOJA'S CUTTHROATS APPEAR
X THE RAID ON THE CAVE-PRISON
XI ESCAPE
XII KIDNAPED!
XIII RACING FOR LIFE
XIV GORE AND DREAMS
XV CONQUEST AND PEACE

PROLOGUE

SEVERAL YEARS had elapsed since I had found the op-portunity 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 sum-mer camp could have been filled with greater im-patience
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, es-pecially 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 fol-lows.

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 re-produces 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 dis-covered 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 tick-ing 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 power-less 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 in-telligence 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--noth-ing 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 coinci-dences 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 pale-ontologist,
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 sol-diery, 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
lack-ing in adventure--he found that a man may be a writer of
"impossible trash" and yet have some redeem-ing 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
instru-ment, 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
be-gun 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 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.

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