As we descended the broad staircase which led to the main avenue of
Phutra I caught my first sight of the dominant race of the inner world.
Involuntarily I shrank back as one of the creatures approached to
inspect us. A more hideous thing it would be impossible to imagine.
The all-powerful Mahars of Pellucidar are great reptiles, some six or
eight feet in length, with long narrow heads and great round eyes.
Their beak-like mouths are lined with sharp, white fangs, and the backs
of their huge, lizard bodies are serrated into bony ridges from their
necks to the end of their long tails. Their feet are equipped with
three webbed toes, while from the fore feet membranous wings, which are
attached to their bodies just in front of the hind legs, protrude at an
angle of 45 degrees toward the rear, ending in sharp points several
feet above their bodies.
I glanced at Perry as the thing passed me to inspect him. The old man
was gazing at the horrid creature with wide astonished eyes. When it
passed on, he turned to me.
"A rhamphorhynchus of the Middle Olitic, David," he said, "but, gad,
how enormous! The largest remains we ever have discovered have never
indicated a size greater than that attained by an ordinary crow."
As we continued on through the main avenue of Phutra we saw many
thousand of the creatures coming and going upon their daily duties.
They paid but little attention to us. Phutra is laid out underground
with a regularity that indicates remarkable engineering skill. It is
hewn from solid limestone strata. The streets are broad and of a
uniform height of twenty feet. At intervals tubes pierce the roof of
this underground city, and by means of lenses and reflectors transmit
the sunlight, softened and diffused, to dispel what would otherwise be
Cimmerian darkness. In like manner air is introduced.
Perry and I were taken, with Ghak, to a large public building, where
one of the Sagoths who had formed our guard explained to a Maharan
official the circumstances surrounding our capture. The method of
communication between these two was remarkable in that no spoken words
were exchanged. They employed a species of sign language. As I was to
learn later, the Mahars have no ears, nor any spoken language. Among
themselves they communicate by means of what Perry says must be a sixth
sense which is cognizant of a fourth dimension.
I never did quite grasp him, though he endeavored to explain it to me
upon numerous occasions. I suggested telepathy, but he said no, that
it was not telepathy since they could only communicate when in each
others' presence, nor could they talk with the Sagoths or the other
inhabitants of Pellucidar by the same method they used to converse with
one another.
"What they do," said Perry, "is to project their thoughts into the
fourth dimension, when they become appreciable to the sixth sense of
their listener. Do I make myself quite clear?"
"You do not, Perry," I replied. He shook his head in despair, and
returned to his work. They had set us to carrying a great accumulation
of Maharan literature from one apartment to another, and there
arranging it upon shelves. I suggested to Perry that we were in the
public library of Phutra, but later, as he commenced to discover the
key to their written language, he assured me that we were handling the
ancient archives of the race.
During this period my thoughts were continually upon Dian the
Beautiful. I was, of course, glad that she had escaped the Mahars, and
the fate that had been suggested by the Sagoth who had threatened to
purchase her upon our arrival at Phutra. I often wondered if the
little party of fugitives had been overtaken by the guards who had
returned to search for them. Sometimes I was not so sure but that I
should have been more contented to know that Dian was here in Phutra,
than to think of her at the mercy of Hooja the Sly One. Ghak, Perry,
and I often talked together of possible escape, but the Sarian was so
steeped in his lifelong belief that no one could escape from the Mahars
except by a miracle, that he was not much aid to us--his attitude was
of one who waits for the miracle to come to him.
At my suggestion Perry and I fashioned some swords of scraps of iron
which we discovered among some rubbish in the cells where we slept, for
we were permitted almost unrestrained freedom of action within the
limits of the building to which we had been assigned. So great were
the number of slaves who waited upon the inhabitants of Phutra that
none of us was apt to be overburdened with work, nor were our masters
unkind to us.
We hid our new weapons beneath the skins which formed our beds, and
then Perry conceived the idea of making bows and arrows--weapons
apparently unknown within Pellucidar. Next came shields; but these I
found it easier to steal from the walls of the outer guardroom of the
building.
We had completed these arrangements for our protection after leaving
Phutra when the Sagoths who had been sent to recapture the escaped
prisoners returned with four of them, of whom Hooja was one. Dian and
two others had eluded them. It so happened that Hooja was confined in
the same building with us. He told Ghak that he had not seen Dian or
the others after releasing them within the dark grotto. What had
become of them he had not the faintest conception--they might be
wandering yet, lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not dead from
starvation.
I was now still further apprehensive as to the fate of Dian, and at
this time, I imagine, came the first realization that my affection for
the girl might be prompted by more than friendship. During my waking
hours she was constantly the subject of my thoughts, and when I slept
her dear face haunted my dreams. More than ever was I determined to
escape the Mahars.
"Perry," I confided to the old man, "if I have to search every inch of
this diminutive world I am going to find Dian the Beautiful and right
the wrong I unintentionally did her." That was the excuse I made for
Perry's benefit.
"Diminutive world!" he scoffed. "You don't know what you are talking
about, my boy," and then he showed me a map of Pellucidar which he had
recently discovered among the manuscript he was arranging.
"Look," he cried, pointing to it, "this is evidently water, and all
this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas?
Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here. These
relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the
continents of the outer world.
"We know that the crust of the globe is 500 miles in thickness; then
the inside diameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the
superficial area 165,480,000 square miles. Three-fourths of this is
land. Think of it! A land area of 124,110,000 square miles! Our own
world contains but 53,000,000 square miles of land, the balance of its
surface being covered by water. Just as we often compare nations by
their relative land areas, so if we compare these two worlds in the
same way we have the strange anomaly of a larger world within a smaller
one!
"Where within vast Pellucidar would you search for your Dian? Without
stars, or moon, or changing sun how could you find her even though you
knew where she might be found?"
The proposition was a corker. It quite took my breath away; but I
found that it left me all the more determined to attempt it.
"If Ghak will accompany us we may be able to do it," I suggested.
Perry and I sought him out and put the question straight to him.
"Ghak," I said, "we are determined to escape from this bondage. Will
you accompany us?"
"They will set the thipdars upon us," he said, "and then we shall be
killed; but--" he hesitated--"I would take the chance if I thought that
I might possibly escape and return to my own people."
"Could you find your way back to your own land?" asked Perry. "And
could you aid David in his search for Dian?"
"Yes."
"But how," persisted Perry, "could you travel to strange country
without heavenly bodies or a compass to guide you?"
Ghak didn't know what Perry meant by heavenly bodies or a compass, but
he assured us that you might blindfold any man of Pellucidar and carry
him to the farthermost corner of the world, yet he would be able to
come directly to his own home again by the shortest route. He seemed
surprised to think that we found anything wonderful in it. Perry said
it must be some sort of homing instinct such as is possessed by certain
breeds of earthly pigeons. I didn't know, of course, but it gave me an
idea.
"Then Dian could have found her way directly to her own people?" I
asked.
"Surely," replied Ghak, "unless some mighty beast of prey killed her."
I was for making the attempted escape at once, but both Perry and Ghak
counseled waiting for some propitious accident which would insure us
some small degree of success. I didn't see what accident could befall
a whole community in a land of perpetual day-light where the
inhabitants had no fixed habits of sleep. Why, I am sure that some of
the Mahars never sleep, while others may, at long intervals, crawl into
the dark recesses beneath their dwellings and curl up in protracted
slumber. Perry says that if a Mahar stays awake for three years he
will make up all his lost sleep in a long year's snooze. That may be
all true, but I never saw but three of them asleep, and it was the
sight of these three that gave me a suggestion for our means of escape.
I had been searching about far below the levels that we slaves were
supposed to frequent--possibly fifty feet beneath the main floor of the
building--among a network of corridors and apartments, when I came
suddenly upon three Mahars curled up upon a bed of skins. At first I
thought they were dead, but later their regular breathing convinced me
of my error. Like a flash the thought came to me of the marvelous
opportunity these sleeping reptiles offered as a means of eluding the
watchfulness of our captors and the Sagoth guards.
Hastening back to Perry where he pored over a musty pile of, to me,
meaningless hieroglyphics, I explained my plan to him. To my surprise
he was horrified.
"It would be murder, David," he cried.
"Murder to kill a reptilian monster?" I asked in astonishment.
"Here they are not monsters, David," he replied. "Here they are the
dominant race--we are the 'monsters'--the lower orders. In Pellucidar
evolution has progressed along different lines than upon the outer
earth. These terrible convulsions of nature time and time again wiped
out the existing species--but for this fact some monster of the
Saurozoic epoch might rule today upon our own world. We see here what
might well have occurred in our own history had conditions been what
they have been here.
"Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust. Here
man has but reached a stage analogous to the Stone Age of our own
world's history, but for countless millions of years these reptiles
have been progressing. Possibly it is the sixth sense which I am sure
they possess that has given them an advantage over the other and more
frightfully armed of their fellows; but this we may never know. They
look upon us as we look upon the beasts of our fields, and I learn from
their written records that other races of Mahars feed upon men--they
keep them in great droves, as we keep cattle. They breed them most
carefully, and when they are quite fat, they kill and eat them."