CHAPTER II. TRAVELING WITH TERROR
CHAPTER III. SHOOTING THE CHUTES—AND AFTER
CHAPTER IV. FRIENDSHIP AND TREACHERY
CHAPTER V. SURPRISES
CHAPTER VI. A PENDENT WORLD
CHAPTER VII. FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT
CHAPTER VIII. CAPTIVE
CHAPTER IX. HOOJA’S CUTTHROATS APPEAR
CHAPTER X. THE RAID ON THE CAVE-PRISON
CHAPTER XI. ESCAPE
CHAPTER XII. KIDNAPED!
CHAPTER XIII. RACING FOR LIFE
CHAPTER XIV. GORE AND DREAMS
CHAPTER XV. CONQUEST AND PEACE
PROLOGUE
Several years had elapsed since I had found the opportunity 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
summer camp could have been filled with greater impatience 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, especially 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 follows.
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 reproduces 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 discovered 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 ticking 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 powerless 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 intelligence 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—nothing 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 coincidences 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 paleontologist, 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 soldiery, 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 lacking in
adventure—he found that a man may be a writer of “impossible trash” and
yet have some redeeming 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 instrument, 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 begun 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 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 midday 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.