WHEN OUR GUARDS AROUSED US FROM SLEEP WE were much refreshed. They
gave us food. Strips of dried meat it was, but it put new life and
strength into us, so that now we too marched with high-held heads,
and took noble strides. At least I did, for I was young and proud;
but poor Perry hated walking. On earth I had often seen him call
a cab to travel a square--he was paying for it now, and his old
legs wobbled so that I put my arm about him and half carried him
through the balance of those frightful marches.
The country began to change at last, and we wound up out of the
level plain through mighty mountains of virgin granite. The tropical
verdure of the lowlands was replaced by hardier vegetation, but
even here the effects of constant heat and light were apparent in
the immensity of the trees and the profusion of foliage and blooms.
Crystal streams roared through their rocky channels, fed by the
perpetual snows which we could see far above us. Above the snowcapped
heights hung masses of heavy clouds. It was these, Perry explained,
which evidently served the double purpose of replenishing the
melting snows and protecting them from the direct rays of the sun.
By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language
in which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway
in the rather charming tongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead
of me in the chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain
linked us together in a forced companionship which I, at least,
soon rejoiced in. For I found her a willing teacher, and from
her I learned the language of her tribe, and much of the life and
customs of the inner world--at least that part of it with which
she was familiar.
She told me that she was called Dian the Beautiful, and that she
belonged to the tribe of Amoz, which dwells in the cliffs above
the Darel Az, or shallow sea.
"How came you here?" I asked her.
"I was running away from Jubal the Ugly One," she answered, as
though that was explanation quite sufficient.
"Who is Jubal the Ugly One?" I asked. "And why did you run away
from him?"
She looked at me in surprise.
"Why DOES a woman run away from a man?" she answered my question
with another.
"They do not, where I come from," I replied. "Sometimes they run
after them."
But she could not understand. Nor could I get her to grasp the
fact that I was of another world. She was quite as positive that
creation was originated solely to produce her own kind and the
world she lived in as are many of the outer world.
"But Jubal," I insisted. "Tell me about him, and why you ran away
to be chained by the neck and scourged across the face of a world."
"Jubal the Ugly One placed his trophy before my father's house. It
was the head of a mighty tandor. It remained there and no greater
trophy was placed beside it. So I knew that Jubal the Ugly One
would come and take me as his mate. None other so powerful wished
me, or they would have slain a mightier beast and thus have won me
from Jubal. My father is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but a
sadok tossed him, and never again had he the full use of his right
arm. My brother, Dacor the Strong One, had gone to the land of
Sari to steal a mate for himself. Thus there was none, father,
brother, or lover, to save me from Jubal the Ugly One, and I ran
away and hid among the hills that skirt the land of Amoz. And
there these Sagoths found me and made me captive."
"What will they do with you?" I asked. "Where are they taking us?"
Again she looked her incredulity.
"I can almost believe that you are of another world," she said,
"for otherwise such ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really
mean that you do not know that the Sagoths are the creatures of
the Mahars--the mighty Mahars who think they own Pellucidar and all
that walks or grows upon its surface, or creeps or burrows beneath,
or swims within its lakes and oceans, or flies through its air? Next
you will be telling me that you never before heard of the Mahars!"
I was loath to do it, and further incur her scorn; but there was
no alternative if I were to absorb knowledge, so I made a clean
breast of my pitiful ignorance as to the mighty Mahars. She was
shocked. But she did her very best to enlighten me, though much
that she said was as Greek would have been to her. She described
the Mahars largely by comparisons. In this way they were like unto
thipdars, in that to the hairless lidi.
About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had
wings, and webbed feet; lived in cities built beneath the ground;
could swim under water for great distances, and were very, very
wise. The Sagoths were their weapons of offense and defense, and
the races like herself were their hands and feet--they were the
slaves and servants who did all the manual labor. The Mahars were
the heads--the brains--of the inner world. I longed to see this
wondrous race of supermen.
Perry learned the language with me. When we halted, as we
occasionally did, though sometimes the halts seemed ages apart, he
would join in the conversation, as would Ghak the Hairy One, he who
was chained just ahead of Dian the Beautiful. Ahead of Ghak was
Hooja the Sly One. He too entered the conversation occasionally.
Most of his remarks were directed toward Dian the Beautiful. It
didn't take half an eye to see that he had developed a bad case; but
the girl appeared totally oblivious to his thinly veiled advances.
Did I say thinly veiled? There is a race of men in New Zealand,
or Australia, I have forgotten which, who indicate their preference
for the lady of their affections by banging her over the head with
a bludgeon. By comparison with this method Hooja's lovemaking might
be called thinly veiled. At first it caused me to blush violently
although I have seen several Old Years out at Rectors, and in other
less fashionable places off Broadway, and in Vienna, and Hamburg.
But the girl! She was magnificent. It was easy to see that she
considered herself as entirely above and apart from her present
surroundings and company. She talked with me, and with Perry, and
with the taciturn Ghak because we were respectful; but she couldn't
even see Hooja the Sly One, much less hear him, and that made him
furious. He tried to get one of the Sagoths to move the girl up
ahead of him in the slave gang, but the fellow only poked him with
his spear and told him that he had selected the girl for his own
property--that he would buy her from the Mahars as soon as they
reached Phutra. Phutra, it seemed, was the city of our destination.
After passing over the first chain of mountains we skirted a salt
sea, upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like
creatures there were with long necks stretching ten and more feet
above their enormous bodies and whose snake heads were split with
gaping mouths bristling with countless fangs. There were huge
tortoises too, paddling about among these other reptiles, which
Perry said were Plesiosaurs of the Lias. I didn't question his
veracity--they might have been most anything.
Dian told me they were tandorazes, or tandors of the sea, and that
the other, and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from
the deep to do battle with them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths--Perry
called them Ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of
an alligator.
I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school--about
all that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations
of restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined
belief that any man with a pig's shank and a vivid imagination
could "restore" most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit,
and take rank as a first class paleontologist. But when I saw these
sleek, shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged
from the ocean, shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters
roll from their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided
hither and thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I
saw them meet, open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic
and interminable warring I realized how futile is man's poor, weak
imagination by comparison with Nature's incredible genius.
And Perry! He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself.
"David," he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside
that awful sea. "David, I used to teach geology, and I thought
that I believed what I taught; but now I see that I did not believe
it--that it is impossible for man to believe such things as these
unless he sees them with his own eyes. We take things for granted,
perhaps, because we are told them over and over again, and have no
way of disproving them--like religions, for example; but we don't
believe them, we only think we do. If you ever get back to the
outer world you will find that the geologists and paleontologists
will be the first to set you down a liar, for they know that no
such creatures as they restore ever existed. It is all right to
IMAGINE them as existing in an equally imaginary epoch--but now?
poof!"
At the next halt Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack
chain to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Dian. We
were all standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her
back upon him in such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could
scarce repress a smile; but it was a short-lived smile for on the
instant the Sly One's hand fell upon the girl's bare arm, jerking
her roughly toward him.
I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics
which prevailed within Pellucidar; but even so I did not need the
appealing look which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes
to influence my subsequent act. What the Sly One's intention was
I paused not to inquire; but instead, before he could lay hold of
her with his other hand, I placed a right to the point of his jaw
that felled him in his tracks.
A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and
the Sagoths who had witnessed the brief drama; not, as I later
learned, because I had championed the girl, but for the neat and,
to them, astounding method by which I had bested Hooja.
And the girl? At first she looked at me with wide, wondering
eyes, and then she dropped her head, her face half averted, and a
delicate flush suffused her cheek. For a moment she stood thus in
silence, and then her head went high, and she turned her back upon
me as she had upon Hooja. Some of the prisoners laughed, and I
saw the face of Ghak the Hairy One go very black as he looked at
me searchingly. And what I could see of Dian's cheek went suddenly
from red to white.
Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that
in some way I had offended Dian the Beautiful I could not prevail
upon her to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred--in
fact I might quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all
the attention I got. At last my own foolish pride stepped in and
prevented my making any further attempts, and thus a companionship
that without my realizing it had come to mean a great deal to me was
cut off. Thereafter I confined my conversation to Perry. Hooja
did not renew his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture
near me.
Again the weary and apparently interminable marching became a
perfect nightmare of horrors to me. The more firmly fixed became
the realization that the girl's friendship had meant so much to me,
the more I came to miss it; and the more impregnable the barrier
of silly pride. But I was very young and would not ask Ghak for
the explanation which I was sure he could give, and that might have
made everything all right again.
On the march, or during halts, Dian refused consistently to notice
me--when her eyes wandered in my direction she looked either over
my head or directly through me. At last I became desperate, and
determined to swallow my self-esteem, and again beg her to tell me
how I had offended, and how I might make reparation. I made up my
mind that I should do this at the next halt. We were approaching
another range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them,
instead of winding across them through some high-flung pass we
entered a mighty natural tunnel--a series of labyrinthine grottoes,
dark as Erebus.
The guards had no torches or light of any description. In fact we
had seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered
Pellucidar. In a land of perpetual noon there is no need of light
above ground, yet I marveled that they had no means of lighting
their way through these dark, subterranean passages. So we crept
along at a snail's pace, with much stumbling and falling--the
guards keeping up a singsong chant ahead of us, interspersed with
certain high notes which I found always indicated rough places and
turns.
Halts were now more frequent, but I did not wish to speak to Dian
until I could see from the expression of her face how she was
receiving my apologies. At last a faint glow ahead forewarned us
of the end of the tunnel, for which I for one was devoutly thankful.
Then at a sudden turn we emerged into the full light of the noonday
sun.
But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a
real catastrophe--Dian was gone, and with her a half-dozen other
prisoners. The guards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage
was terrible to behold. Their awesome, bestial faces were contorted
in the most diabolical expressions, as they accused each other of
responsibility for the loss. Finally they fell upon us, beating
us with their spear shafts, and hatchets. They had already killed
two near the head of the line, and were like to have finished the
balance of us when their leader finally put a stop to the brutal
slaughter. Never in all my life had I witnessed a more horrible
exhibition of bestial rage--I thanked God that Dian had not been
one of those left to endure it.
Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me each
alternate one had been freed commencing with Dian. Hooja was gone.
Ghak remained. What could it mean? How had it been accomplished?
The commander of the guards was investigating. Soon he discovered
that the rude locks which had held the neckbands in place had been
deftly picked.
"Hooja the Sly One," murmured Ghak, who was now next to me in line.
"He has taken the girl that you would not have," he continued,
glancing at me.
"That I would not have!" I cried. "What do you mean?"
He looked at me closely for a moment.
"I have doubted your story that you are from another world," he
said at last, "but yet upon no other grounds could your ignorance
of the ways of Pellucidar be explained. Do you really mean that
you do not know that you offended the Beautiful One, and how?"
"I do not know, Ghak," I replied.
"Then shall I tell you. When a man of Pellucidar intervenes
between another man and the woman the other man would have, the
woman belongs to the victor. Dian the Beautiful belongs to you.
You should have claimed her or released her. Had you taken her
hand, it would have indicated your desire to make her your mate,
and had you raised her hand above her head and then dropped it,
it would have meant that you did not wish her for a mate and that
you released her from all obligation to you. By doing neither you
have put upon her the greatest affront that a man may put upon a
woman. Now she is your slave. No man will take her as mate, or
may take her honorably, until he shall have overcome you in combat,
and men do not choose slave women as their mates--at least not the
men of Pellucidar."
"I did not know, Ghak," I cried. "I did not know. Not for all
Pellucidar would I have harmed Dian the Beautiful by word, or look,
or act of mine. I do not want her as my slave. I do not want her
as my--" but here I stopped. The vision of that sweet and innocent
face floated before me amidst the soft mists of imagination, and
where I had on the second believed that I clung only to the memory
of a gentle friendship I had lost, yet now it seemed that it would
have been disloyalty to her to have said that I did not want Dian
the Beautiful as my mate. I had not thought of her except as a
welcome friend in a strange, cruel world. Even now I did not think
that I loved her.
I believe Ghak must have read the truth more in my expression than
in my words, for presently he laid his hand upon my shoulder.
"Man of another world," he said, "I believe you. Lips may lie,
but when the heart speaks through the eyes it tells only the truth.
Your heart has spoken to me. I know now that you meant no affront
to Dian the Beautiful. She is not of my tribe; but her mother is
my sister. She does not know it--her mother was stolen by Dian's
father who came with many others of the tribe of Amoz to battle
with us for our women--the most beautiful women of Pellucidar.
Then was her father king of Amoz, and her mother was daughter of
the king of Sari--to whose power I, his son, have succeeded. Dian
is the daughter of kings, though her father is no longer king since
the sadok tossed him and Jubal the Ugly One wrested his kingship
from him. Because of her lineage the wrong you did her was greatly
magnified in the eyes of all who saw it. She will never forgive
you."
I asked Ghak if there was not some way in which I could release the
girl from the bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon
her.
"If ever you find her, yes," he answered. "Merely to raise her hand
above her head and drop it in the presence of others is sufficient
to release her; but how may you ever find her, you who are doomed
to a life of slavery yourself in the buried city of Phutra?"
"Is there no escape?" I asked.
"Hooja the Sly One escaped and took the others with him," replied
Ghak. "But there are no more dark places on the way to Phutra,
and once there it is not so easy--the Mahars are very wise. Even
if one escaped from Phutra there are the thipdars--they would find
you, and then--" the Hairy One shuddered. "No, you will never
escape the Mahars."
It was a cheerful prospect. I asked Perry what he thought about
it; but he only shrugged his shoulders and continued a longwinded
prayer he had been at for some time. He was wont to say that the
only redeeming feature of our captivity was the ample time it gave
him for the improvisation of prayers--it was becoming an obsession
with him. The Sagoths had begun to take notice of his habit of
declaiming throughout entire marches. One of them asked him what
he was saying--to whom he was talking. The question gave me an
idea, so I answered quickly before Perry could say anything.
"Do not interrupt him," I said. "He is a very holy man in the world
from which we come. He is speaking to spirits which you cannot
see--do not interrupt him or they will spring out of the air upon
you and rend you limb from limb--like that," and I jumped toward
the great brute with a loud "Boo!" that sent him stumbling backward.
I took a long chance, I realized, but if we could make any capital
out of Perry's harmless mania I wanted to make it while the making
was prime. It worked splendidly. The Sagoths treated us both with
marked respect during the balance of the journey, and then passed
the word along to their masters, the Mahars.
Two marches after this episode we came to the city of Phutra. The
entrance to it was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which
guarded a flight of steps leading to the buried city. Sagoths
were on guard here as well as at a hundred or more other towers
scattered about over a large plain.
Read next: CHAPTER V - SLAVES
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