TANAR OF PELLUCIDAR
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York 36, N.Y.
This Ace edition follows the text of the first hard-cover
book edition, originally published in 1929.
<i>Cover art and title page illustration by Roy Krenkel, Jr.</i>
To Joan Burroughs Pierce II
Edgar Rice Burroughs <i>available in Ace Books:</i>
AT THE EARTH'S CORE (F-156)
THE MOON MAID (F-157)
PELLUCIDAR (F-158)
THE MOON MEN (F-159)
THUVIA, MAID OF MARS (F-168)
TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE (F-169)
THE CHESSMEN OF MARS (F-170)
Printed in U.S.A.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Introduction
I Stellara
II Disaster
III Amiocap
IV Letari
V The Tandor Hunter
VI The Island of Love
VII “Korsars!”
VIII Mow
IX Love and Treachery
X Pursuit
XI Gura
XII “I Hate You!”
XIII Prisoners
XIV Two Suns
XV Madness
XVI The Darkness Beyond
XVII Down to the Sea
Conclusion
PROLOGUE
Jason Gridley is a radio bug. Had he not been, this story never would
have been written. Jason is twenty-three and scandalously good
looking—too good looking to be a bug of any sort. As a matter of fact,
he does not seem buggish at all—just a normal, sane, young American, who
knows a great deal about many things in addition to radio; aeronautics,
for example, and golf, and tennis, and polo.
But this is not Jason’s story—he is only an incident—an important
incident in my life that made this story possible, and so, with a few
more words of explanation, we shall leave Jason to his tubes and waves
and amplifiers, concerning which he knows everything and I nothing.
Jason is an orphan with an income, and after he graduated from Stanford,
he came down and bought a couple of acres at Tarzana, and that is how
and when I met him.
While he was building he made my office his headquarters and was often
in my study and afterward I returned the compliment by visiting him in
his new “lab,” as he calls it—a quite large room at the rear of his
home, a quiet, restful room in a quiet, restful house of the
Spanish-American farm type—or we rode together in the Santa Monica
Mountains in the cool air of early morning.
Jason is experimenting with some new principle of radio concerning which
the less I say the better it will be for my reputation, since I know
nothing whatsoever about it and am likely never to.
Perhaps I am too old, perhaps I am too dumb, perhaps I am just not
interested—I prefer to ascribe my abysmal and persistent ignorance of
all things pertaining to radio to the last state; that of
disinterestedness; it salves my pride.
I do know this, however, because Jason has told me, that the idea he is
playing with suggests an entirely new and unsuspected—well, let us call
it wave.
He says the idea was suggested to him by the vagaries of static and in
groping around in search of some device to eliminate this he discovered
in the ether an undercurrent that operated according to no previously
known scientific laws.
At his Tarzana home he has erected a station and a few miles away, at
the back of my ranch, another. Between these stations we talk to one
another through some strange, ethereal medium that seems to pass through
all other waves and all other stations, unsuspected and entirely
harmless—so harmless is it that it has not the slightest effect upon
Jason’s regular set, standing in the same room and receiving over the
same aerial.
But this, which is not very interesting to any one except Jason, is all
by the way of getting to the beginning of the amazing narrative of the
adventures of Tanar of Pellucidar.
Jason and I were sitting in his “lab” one evening discussing, as we
often did, innumerable subjects, from “cabbages to kings,” and coming
back, as Jason usually did, to the Gridley wave, which is what we have
named it.
Much of the time Jason kept on his ear phones, than which there is no
greater discourager of conversation. But this does not irk me as much as
most of the conversations one has to listen to through life. I like long
silences and my own thoughts.
Presently, Jason removed the headpiece. “It is enough to drive a fellow
to drink!” he exclaimed.
“What?” I asked.
“I am getting that same stuff again,” he said. “I can hear voices, very
faintly, but, unmistakably, human voices. They, are speaking a language
unknown to man. It is maddening.”
“Mars, perhaps,” I suggested, “or Venus.”
He knitted his brows and then suddenly smiled one of his quick smiles.
“Or Pellucidar.”
I shrugged.
“Do you know, Admiral,” he said (he calls me Admiral because of a
yachting cap I wear at the beach), “that when I was a kid I used to
believe every word of those crazy stories of yours about Mars and
Pellucidar. The inner world at the earth’s core was as real to me as the
High Sierras, the San Joaquin Valley, or the Golden Gate, and I felt
that I knew the twin cities of Helium better than I did Los Angeles.
“I saw nothing improbable at all in that trip of David Innes and old man
Perry through the earth’s crust to Pellucidar. Yes, sir, that was all
gospel to me when I was a kid.”
“And now you are twenty-three and know that it can’t be true,” I said,
with a smile.
“You are trying to tell me it is true, are you?” he demanded, laughing.
“I never have told any one that it is true,” I replied; “I let people
think what they think, but I reserve the right to do likewise.”
“Why, you know perfectly well that it would be impossible for that iron
mole of Perry’s to have penetrated five hundred miles of the earth’s
crust, you know there is no inner world peopled by strange reptiles and
men of the stone age, you know there is no Emperor of Pellucidar.” Jason
was becoming excited, but his sense of humor came to our rescue and he
laughed.
“I like to believe that there is a Dian the Beautiful,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed, “but I am sorry you killed off Hooja the Sly One. He
was a corking villain.”
“There are always plenty of villains,” I reminded him.
“They help the girls to keep their ‘figgers’ and their school girl
complexions,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
“The exercise they get from being pursued.”
“You are making fun of me,” I reproached him, “but remember, please,
that I am but a simple historian. If damsels flee and villains pursue I
must truthfully record the fact.”
“Baloney!” he exclaimed in the pure university English of America.
Jason replaced his headpiece and I returned to the perusal of the
narrative of an ancient liar, who should have made a fortune out of the
credulity of book readers, but seems not to have. Thus we sat for some
time.
Presently Jason removed his ear phones and turned toward me. “I was
getting music,” he said; “strange, weird music, and then suddenly there
came loud shouts and it seemed that I could hear blows struck and there
were screams and the sound of shots.”
“Perry, you know, was experimenting with gunpowder down there below, in
Pellucidar,” I reminded Jason, with a grin; but he was inclined to be
serious and did not respond in kind.
“You know, of course,” he said, “that there really has been a theory of
an inner world for many years.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I have read works expounding and defending such a
theory.”
“It supposes polar openings leading into the interior of the earth,”
said Jason.
“And it is substantiated by many seemingly irrefutable scientific
facts,” I reminded him—“open polar sea, warmer water farthest north,
tropical vegetation floating southward from the polar regions, the
northern lights, the magnetic pole, the persistent stories of the
Eskimos that they are descended from a race that came from a warm
country far to the north.”
“I’d like to make a try for one of the polar openings,” mused Jason as
he replaced the ear phones.
Again there was a long silence, broken at last by a sharp exclamation
from Jason. He pushed an extra headpiece toward me.
“Listen!” he exclaimed.
As I adjusted the ear phones I heard that which we had never before
received on the Gridley wave—code! No wonder that Jason Gridley was
excited, since there was no station on earth, other than his own,
attuned to the Gridley wave.
Code! What could it mean? I was torn by conflicting emotions—to tear off
the ear phones and discuss this amazing thing with Jason, and to keep
them on and listen.
I am not what one might call an expert in the intricacies of code, but I
had no difficulty in understanding the simple signal of two letters,
repeated in groups of three, with a pause after each group: “D.I., D.I.,
D.I.,” pause; “D.I., D.I., D.I.,” pause.
I glanced up at Jason. His eyes, filled with puzzled questioning, met
mine, as though to ask, what does it mean?
The signals ceased and Jason touched his own key, sending his initials,
“J.G., J.G., J.G.” in the same grouping that we had received the D.I.
signal. Almost instantly he was interrupted—you could feel the
excitement of the sender.
“D.I., D.I., D.I., Pellucidar,” rattled against our ear-drums like
machine gun fire. Jason and I sat in dumb amazement, staring at one
another.
“It is a hoax!” I exclaimed, and Jason, reading my lips, shook his head.
“How can it be a hoax?” he asked. “There is no other station on earth
equipped to send or to receive over the Gridley wave, so there can be no
means of perpetrating such a hoax.”
Our mysterious station was on the air again! “If you get this, repeat my
signal,” and he signed off with “D.I., D.I., D.I.”
“That would be David Innes,” mused Jason.
“Emperor of Pellucidar,” I added.
Jason sent the message, “D.I., D.I., D.I.,” followed by, “what station
is this,” and “who is sending?”
“This is the Imperial Observatory at Greenwich, Pellucidar; Abner Perry
sending. Who are you?”
“This is the private experimental laboratory of Jason Gridley, Tarzana,
California; Gridley sending,” replied Jason.
“I want to get into communication with Edgar Rice Burroughs; do you know
him?”
“He is sitting here, listening in with me,” replied Jason.
“Thank God, if that is true, but how am I to know that it is true?”
demanded Perry.
I hastily scribbled a note to Jason: “Ask him if he recalls the fire in
his first gunpowder factory and that the building would have been
destroyed had they not extinguished the fire by shoveling his gunpowder
onto it?”
Jason grinned as he read the note, and sent it.
“It was unkind of David to tell of that,” came back the reply, “but now
I know that Burroughs is indeed there, as only he could have known of
that incident. I have a long message for him. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” replied Jason.
“Then stand by.”
And this is the message that Abner Perry sent from the bowels of the
earth; from The Empire of Pellucidar.
INTRODUCTION
It must be some fifteen years since David Innes and I broke through the
inner surface of the earth’s crust and emerged into savage Pellucidar,
but when a stationary sun hangs eternally at high noon and there is no
restless moon and there are no stars, time is measureless and so it may
have been a hundred years ago or one. Who knows?
Of course, since David returned to earth and brought back many of the
blessings of civilization we have had the means to measure time, but the
people did not like it. They found that it put restrictions and
limitations upon them that they never had felt before and they came to
hate it and ignore it until David, in the goodness of his heart, issued
an edict abolishing time in Pellucidar.
It seemed a backward step to me, but I am resigned now, and, perhaps,
happier, for when all is said and done, time is a hard master, as you of
the outer world, who are slaves of the sun, would be forced to admit
were you to give the matter thought.
Here, in Pellucidar, we eat when we are hungry, we sleep when we are
tired, we set out upon journeys when we leave and we arrive at our
destinations when we get there; nor are we old because the earth has
circled the sun seventy times since our birth, for we do not know that
this has occurred.
Perhaps I have been here fifteen years, but what matter. When I came I
knew nothing of radio—my researches and studies were along other
lines—but when David came back from the outer world he brought many
scientific works and from these I learned all that I know of radio,
which has been enough to permit me to erect two successful stations; one
here at Greenwich and one at the capital of The Empire of Pellucidar.
But, try as I would, I never could get anything from the outer world,
and after a while I gave up trying, convinced that the earth’s crust was
impervious to radio.
In fact we used our stations but seldom, for, after all, Pellucidar is
only commencing to emerge from the stone age, and in the economy of the
stone age there seems to be no crying need for radio.
But sometimes I played with it and upon several occasions I thought that
I heard voices and other sounds that were not of Pellucidar. They were
too faint to be more than vague suggestions of intriguing possibilities,
but yet they did suggest something most alluring, and so I set myself to
making changes and adjustments until this wonderful thing that has
happened but now was made possible.
And my delight in being able to talk with you is second only to my
relief in being able to appeal to you for help. David is in trouble. He
is a captive in the north, or what he and I call north, for there are no
points of compass known to Pellucidarians.
I have heard from him, however. He has sent me a message and in it he
suggests a startling theory that would make aid from the outer crust
possible if—but first let me tell you the whole story; the story of the
disaster that befell David Innes and what led up to it and then you will
be in a better position to judge as to the practicability of sending
succor to David from the outer crust.
The whole thing dates from our victories over the Mahars, the once
dominant race of Pellucidar. When, with our well organized armies,
equipped with firearms and other weapons unknown to the Mahars or their
gorilla-like mercenaries, the Sagoths, we defeated the reptilian
monsters and drove their slimy hordes from the confines of The Empire,
the human race of the inner world for the first time in its history took
its rightful place among the orders of creation.
But our victories laid the foundation for the disaster that has
overwhelmed us.
For a while there was no Mahar within the boundaries of any of the
kingdoms that constitute The Empire of Pellucidar; but presently we had
word of them here and there—small parties living upon the shores of sea
or lake far from the haunts of man.
They gave us no trouble—their old power had crumbled beyond recall;
their Sagoths were now numbered among the regiments of The Empire; the
Mahars had no longer the means to harm us; yet we did not want them
among us. They are eaters of human flesh and we had no assurance that
lone hunters would be safe from their voracious appetites.
We wanted them to be gone and so David sent a force against them, but
with orders to treat with them first and attempt to persuade them to
leave The Empire peacefully rather than embroil themselves in another
war that might mean total extermination.
Sagoths accompanied the expedition, for they alone of all the creatures
of Pellucidar can converse in the sixth sense, fourth dimension language
of the Mahars.
The story that the expedition brought back was rather pitiful and
aroused David’s sympathies, as stories of persecution and unhappiness
always do.
After the Mahars had been driven from The Empire they had sought a haven
where they might live in peace. They assured us that they had accepted
the inevitable in a spirit of philosophy and entertained no thoughts of
renewing their warfare against the human race or in any way attempting
to win back their lost ascendancy.
Far away upon the shores of a mighty ocean, where there were no signs of
man, they settled in peace, but their peace was not for long.
A great ship came, reminding the Mahars of the first ships they had
seen—the ships that David and I had built—the first ships, as far as we
knew, that ever had sailed the silent seas of Pellucidar.
Naturally it was a surprise to us to learn that there was a race within
the inner world sufficiently far advanced to be able to build ships, but
there was another surprise in store for us. The Mahars assured us that
these people possessed firearms and that because of their ships and
their firearms they were fully as formidable as we and they were much
more ferocious; killing for the pure sport of slaughter.
After the first ship had sailed away the Mahars thought they might be
allowed to live in peace, but this dream was short lived, as presently
the first ship returned and with it were many others manned by thousands
of bloodthirsty enemies against whose weapons the great reptiles had
little or no defense.
Seeking only escape from man, the Mahars left their new home and moved
back a short distance toward The Empire, but now their enemies seemed
bent only upon persecution; they hunted them, and when they found them
the Mahars were again forced to fall back before the ferocity of their
continued attacks.
Eventually they took refuge within the boundaries of The Empire, and
scarcely had David’s expedition to them returned with its report when we
had definite proof of the veracity of their tale through messages from
our northernmost frontier bearing stories of invasion by a strange,
savage race of white men.
Frantic was the message from Goork, King of Thuria, whose far-flung
frontier stretches beyond the Land of Awful Shadow.
Some of his hunters had been surprised and all but a few killed or
captured by the invaders.
He had sent warriors, then, against them, but these, too, had met a like
fate, being greatly outnumbered, and so he sent a runner to David
begging the Emperor to rush troops to his aid.
Scarcely had the first runner arrived when another came, bearing tidings
of the capture and sack of the principal town of the Kingdom of Thuria;
and then a third arrived from the commander of the invaders demanding
that David come with tribute or they would destroy his country and slay
the prisoners they held as hostages.
In reply David dispatched Tanar, son of Ghak, to demand the release of
all prisoners and the departure of the invaders.
Immediately runners were sent to the nearest kingdoms of The Empire and
ere Tanar had reached the Land of Awful Shadow, ten thousand warriors
were marching along the same trail to enforce the demands of the Emperor
and drive the savage foe from Pellucidar.
As David approached the Land of Awful Shadow that lies beneath
Pellucidar’s mysterious satellite, a great column of smoke was
observable in the horizonless distance ahead.
It was not necessary to urge the tireless warriors to greater speed, for
all who saw guessed that the invaders had taken another village and put
it to the torch.
And then came the refugees—women and children only—and behind them a
thin line of warriors striving to hold back swarthy, bearded strangers,
armed with strange weapons that resembled ancient harquebuses with
bell-shaped muzzles—huge, unwieldy things that belched smoke and flame
and stones and bits of metal.
That the Pellucidarians, outnumbered ten to one, were able to hold back
their savage foes at all was due to the more modern firearms that David
and I had taught them to make and use.
Perhaps half the warriors of Thuria were armed with these and they were
all that saved them from absolute rout, and, perhaps, total
annihilation.
Loud were the shouts of joy when the first of the refugees discovered
and recognized the force that had come to their delivery.
Goork and his people had been wavering in allegiance to The Empire, as
were several other distant kingdoms, but I believe that this practical
demonstration of the value of the Federation ended their doubts forever
and left the people of the Land of Awful Shadow and their king the most
loyal subjects that David possessed.
The effect upon the enemy of the appearance of ten thousand well-armed
warriors was quickly apparent. They halted, and, as we advanced, they
withdrew, but though they retreated they gave us a good fight.
David learned from Goork that Tanar had been retained as a hostage, but
though he made several attempts to open negotiations with the enemy for
the purpose of exchanging some prisoners that had fallen into our hands,
for Tanar and other Pellucidarians, he never was able to do so.
Our forces drove the invaders far beyond the limits of The Empire to the
shores of a distant sea, where, with difficulty and the loss of many
men, they at last succeeded in embarking their depleted forces on ships
that were as archaic in design as were their ancient harquebuses.
These ships rose to exaggerated heights at stern and bow, the sterns
being built up in several stories, or housed decks, one atop another.
There was much carving in seemingly intricate designs everywhere above
the water line and each ship carried at her prow a figurehead painted,
like the balance of the ship, in gaudy colors—usually a life size or a
heroic figure of a naked woman or a mermaid.
The men themselves were equally bizarre and colorful, wearing gay cloths
about their heads, wide sashes of bright colors and huge boots with
flapping tops—those that were not half naked and barefoot.
Besides their harquebuses they carried huge pistols and knives stuck in
their belts and at their hips were cutlasses. Altogether, with their
bushy whiskers and fierce faces, they were at once a bad looking and a
picturesque lot.
From some of the last prisoners he took during the fighting at the
seashore, David learned that Tanar was still alive and that the chief of
the invaders had determined to take him home with him in the hope that
he could learn from Tanar the secrets of our superior weapons and
gunpowder, for, notwithstanding my first failures, I had, and not
without some pride, finally achieved a gunpowder that would not only
burn, but that would ignite with such force as to be quite satisfactory.
I am now perfecting a noiseless, smokeless powder, though honesty
compels me to confess that my first experiments have not been entirely
what I had hoped they might be, the first batch detonated having nearly
broken my ear-drums and so filled my eyes with smoke that I thought I
had been blinded.
When David saw the enemy ships sailing away with Tanar he was sick with
grief, for Tanar always has been an especial favorite of the Emperor and
his gracious Empress, Dian the Beautiful. He was like a son to them.
We had no ships upon this sea and David could not follow with his army;
neither, being David, could he abandon the son of his best friend to a
savage enemy before he had exhausted every resource at his command in an
effort toward rescue.
In addition to the prisoners that had fallen into his hands David had
captured one of the small boats that the enemy had used in embarking his
forces, and this it was that suggested to David the mad scheme upon
which he embarked.
The boat was about sixteen feet long and was equipped with both oars and
a sail. It was broad of beam and had every appearance of being staunch
and seaworthy, though pitifully small in which to face the dangers of an
unknown sea, peopled, as are all the waters of Pellucidar, with huge
monsters possessing short tempers and long appetites.
Standing upon the shore, gazing after the diminishing outlines of the
departing ships, David reached his decision. Surrounding him were the
captains and the kings of the Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar and
behind these ten thousand warriors, leaning upon their arms. To one side
the sullen prisoners, heavily guarded, gazed after their departing
comrades, with what sensations of hopelessness and envy one may guess.
David turned toward his people. “Those departing ships have borne away
Tanar, the son of Ghak, and perhaps a score more of the young men of
Pellucidar. It is beyond reason to expect that the enemy ever will bring
our comrades back to us, but it is easy to imagine the treatment they
will receive at the hands of this savage, bloodthirsty race.
“We may not abandon them while a single avenue of pursuit remains open
to us. Here is that avenue.” He waved his hand across the broad ocean.
“And here the means of traversing it.” He pointed to the small boat.
“It would carry scarce twenty men,” cried one, who stood near the
Emperor.
“It need carry but three,” replied David, “for it will sail to rescue,
not by force, but by strategy; or perhaps only to locate the stronghold
of the enemy, that we may return and lead a sufficient force upon it to
overwhelm it.”
“I shall go,” concluded the Emperor. “Who will accompany me?”
Instantly every man within hearing of his voice, saving the prisoners
only, flashed a weapon above his head and pressed forward to offer his
services. David smiled.
“I knew as much,” he said, “but I cannot take you all. I shall need only
one and that shall be Ja of Anoroc, the greatest sailor of Pellucidar.”
A great shout arose, for Ja, the King of Anoroc, who is also the chief
officer of the navy of Pellucidar, is vastly popular throughout The
Empire, and, though all were disappointed in not being chosen, yet they
appreciated the wisdom of David’s selection.
“But two is too small a number to hope for success,” argued Ghak, “and
I, the father of Tanar, should be permitted to accompany you.”
“Numbers, such as we might crowd in that little boat, would avail us
nothing,” replied David, “so why risk a single additional life? If
twenty could pass through the unknown dangers that lie ahead of us, two
may do the same, while with fewer men we can carry a far greater supply
of food and water against the unguessed extent of the great sea that we
face and the periods of calm and the long search.”
“But two are too few to man the boat,” expostulated another, “and Ghak
is right—the father of Tanar should be among his rescuers.”
“Ghak is needed by The Empire,” replied David. “He must remain to
command the armies for the Empress until I return, but there shall be a
third who will embark with us.”
“Who?” demanded Ghak.
“One of the prisoners,” replied David. “For his freedom we should
readily find one willing to guide us to the country of the enemy.”
Nor was this difficult since every prisoner volunteered when the
proposal was submitted to them.
David chose a young fellow who said his name was Fitt and who seemed to
possess a more open and honest countenance than any of his companions.
And then came the provisioning of the boat. Bladders were filled with
fresh water, and quantities of corn and dried fish and jerked meat, as
well as vegetables and fruits, were packed into other bladders, and all
were stored in the boat until it seemed that she might carry no more.
For three men the supplies might have been adequate for a year’s voyage
upon the outer crust, where time enters into all calculations.
The prisoner, Fitt, who was to accompany David and Ja, assured David
that one fourth the quantity of supplies would be ample and that there
were points along the route they might take where their water supply
could be replenished and where game abounded, as well as native fruits,
nuts and vegetables, but David would not cut down by a single ounce the
supplies that he had decided upon.
As the three were about to embark David had a last word with Ghak.
“You have seen the size and the armament of the enemy ships, Ghak,” he
said. “My last injunction to you is to build at once a fleet that can
cope successfully with these great ships of the enemy and while the
fleet is building—and it must be built upon the shores of this sea—send
expeditions forth to search for a waterway from this ocean to our own.
Can you find it, all of our ships can be utilized and the building of
the greater navy accelerated by utilizing the shipyards of Anoroc.
“When you have completed and manned fifty ships set forth to our rescue
if we have not returned by then. Do not destroy these prisoners, but
preserve them well for they alone can guide you to their country.”
And then David I, Emperor of Pellucidar, and Ja, King of Anoroc, with
the prisoner, Fitt, boarded the tiny boat; friendly hands pushed them
out upon the long, oily swells of a Pellucidarian sea; ten thousand
throats cheered them upon their way and ten thousand pairs of eyes
watched them until they had melted into the mist of the upcurving,
horizonless distance of a Pellucidarian seascape.
David had departed upon a vain but glorious adventure, and, in the
distant capital of The Empire, Dian the Beautiful would be weeping.
I
STELLARA
The great ship trembled to the recoil of the cannon; the rattle of
musketry. The roar of the guns aboard her sister ships and the roar of
her own were deafening. Below decks the air was acrid with the fumes of
burnt powder.
Tanar of Pellucidar, chained below with other prisoners, heard these
sounds and smelled the smoke. He heard the rattle of the anchor chain;
he felt the straining of the mast to which his shackles were bent and
the altered motion of the hull told him that the ship was under way.
Presently the firing ceased and the regular rising and falling of the
ship betokened that it was on its course. In the darkness of the hold
Tanar could see nothing. Sometimes the prisoners spoke to one another,
but their thoughts were not happy ones, and so, for the most part, they
remained silent—waiting. For what?
They grew very hungry and very thirsty. By this they knew that the ship
was far at sea. They knew nothing of time. They only knew that they were
hungry and thirsty and that the ship should be far at sea—far out upon
an unknown sea, setting its course for an unknown port.
Presently a hatch was raised and men came with food and water—poor,
rough food and water that smelled badly and tasted worse; but it was
water and they were thirsty.
One of the men said: “Where is he who is called Tanar?”
“I am Tanar,” replied the son of Ghak.
“You are wanted on deck,” said the man, and with a huge key he unlocked
the massive, hand-wrought lock that held Tanar chained to the mast.
“Follow me!”
The bright light of Pellucidar’s perpetual day blinded the Sarian as he
clambered to the deck from the dark hole in which he had been confined
and it was a full minute before his eyes could endure the light, but his
guard hustled him roughly along and Tanar was already stumbling up the
long stairs leading to the high deck at the ship’s stern before he
regained the use of his eyes.
As he mounted the highest deck he saw the chiefs of the Korsar horde
assembled and with them were two women. One appeared elderly and ill
favored, but the other was young and beautiful, but for neither did
Tanar have any eyes—he was interested only in the enemy men, for these
he could fight, these he might kill, which was the sole interest that an
enemy could hold for Tanar, the Sarian, and being what he was Tanar
could not fight women, not even enemy women; but he could ignore them,
and did.
He was led before a huge fellow whose bushy whiskers almost hid his
face—a great, blustering fellow with a scarlet scarf bound about his
head. But for an embroidered, sleeveless jacket, open at the front, the
man was naked above the waist, about which was wound another gaudy sash
into which were stuck two pistols and as many long knives, while at his
side dangled a cutlass, the hilt of which was richly ornamented with
inlays of pearl and semi-precious stones.
A mighty man was The Cid, chief of the Korsars—a burly, blustering,
bully of a man, whose position among the rough and quarrelsome Korsars
might be maintained only by such as he.
Surrounding him upon the high poop of his ship was a company of beefy
ruffians of similar mold, while far below, in the waist of the vessel, a
throng of lesser cutthroats, the common sailors, escaped from the
dangers and demands of an arduous campaign, relaxed according to their
various whims.
Stark brutes were most of these, naked but for shorts and the inevitable
gaudy sashes and head cloths—an unlovely company, yet picturesque.
At The Cid’s side stood a younger man who well could boast as hideous a
countenance as any sun ever shone upon, for across a face that might
have taxed even a mother’s love, ran a repulsive scar from above the
left eye to below the right hand corner of the mouth, cleaving the nose
with a deep, red gash. The left eye was lidless and gazed perpetually
upward and outward, as a dead eye might, while the upper lip was
permanently drawn upward at the right side in a sardonic sneer that
exposed a single fang-like tooth. No, Bohar the Bloody was not
beautiful.
Before these two, The Cid and The Bloody One, Tanar was roughly dragged.
“They call you Tanar?” bellowed The Cid.
Tanar nodded.
“And you are the son of a king!” and he laughed loudly. “With a ship’s
company I could destroy your father’s entire kingdom and make a slave of
him, as I have of his son.”
“You had many ships’ companies,” replied Tanar; “but I did not see any
of them destroying the kingdom of Sari. The army that chased them into
the ocean was commanded by my father, under the Emperor.”
The Cid scowled. “I have made men walk the plank for less than that,” he
growled.
“I do not know what you mean,” said Tanar.
“You shall,” barked The Cid; “and then, by the beard of the sea god,
you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head. Hey!” he shouted to one of his
officers, “have a prisoner fetched and the plank run out. We’ll show
this son of a king who The Cid is and that he is among real men now.”
“Why fetch another?” demanded Bohar the Bloody. “This fellow can walk
and learn his lesson at the same time.”
“But he could not profit by it,” replied The Cid.
“Since when did The Cid become a dry nurse to an enemy?” demanded Bohar,
with a sneer.
Without a word The Cid wheeled and swung an ugly blow to Bohar’s chin,
and as the man went down the chief whipped a great pistol from his sash
and stood over him, the muzzle pointed at Bohar’s head.
“Perhaps that will knock your crooked face straight or bump some brains
into your thick head,” roared The Cid.
Bohar lay on his back glaring up at his chief.
“Who is your master?” demanded The Cid.
“You are,” growled Bohar.
“Then get up and keep a civil tongue in your head,” ordered The Cid.
As Bohar arose he turned a scowling face upon Tanar. It was as though
his one good eye had gathered all the hate and rage and venom in the
wicked heart of the man and was concentrating them upon the Sarian, the
indirect cause of his humiliation, and from that instant Tanar knew that
Bohar the Bloody hated him with a personal hatred distinct from any
natural antipathy that he might have felt for an alien and an enemy.
On the lower deck men were eagerly running a long plank out over the
starboard rail and making the inboard end fast to cleats with stout
lines.
From an opened hatch others were dragging a strapping prisoner from the
kingdom of Thuria, who had been captured in the early fighting in the
Land of Awful Shadow.
The primitive warrior held his head high and showed no terror in the
presence of his rough captors. Tanar, looking down upon him from the
upper deck, was proud of this fellow man of the Empire. The Cid was
watching, too.
“That tribe needs taming,” he said.
The younger of the two women, both of whom had stepped to the edge of
the deck and were looking down upon the scene in the waist, turned to
The Cid.
“They seem brave men; all of them,” she said. “It is a pity to kill one
needlessly.”
“Poof! girl,” exclaimed The Cid. “What do you know of such things? It is
the blood of your mother that speaks. By the beards of the gods, I would
that you had more of your father’s blood in your veins.”
“It is brave blood, the blood of my mother,” replied the girl, “for it
does not fear to be itself before all men. The blood of my father dares
not reveal its good to the eyes of men because it fears ridicule. It
boasts of its courage to hide its cowardice.”
The Cid swore a mighty oath. “You take advantage of our relationship,
Stellara,” he said, “but do not forget that there is a limit beyond
which even you may not go with The Cid, who brooks no insults.”
The girl laughed. “Reserve that talk for those who fear you,” she said.
During this conversation, Tanar, who was standing near, had an
opportunity to observe the girl more closely and was prompted to do so
by the nature of her remarks and the quiet courage of her demeanor. For
the first time he noticed her hair, which was like gold in warm
sunlight, and because the women of his own country were nearly all dark
haired the color of her hair impressed him. He thought it very lovely
and when he looked more closely at her features he realized that they,
too, were lovely, with a sunny, golden loveliness that seemed to reflect
like qualities of heart and character. There was a certain feminine
softness about her that was sometimes lacking in the sturdy,
self-reliant, primitive women of his own race. It was not in any sense a
weakness, however, as was evidenced by her fearless attitude toward The
Cid and by the light of courage that shone from her brave eyes.
Intelligent eyes they were, too—brave, intelligent and beautiful.
But there Tanar’s interest ceased and he was repulsed by the thought
that this woman belonged to the uncouth bully, who ruled with an iron
hand the whiskered brutes of the great fleet, for The Cid’s reference to
their relationship left no doubt in the mind of the Sarian that the
woman was his mate.
And now the attention of all was focused on the actors in the tragedy
below. Men had bound the wrists of the prisoner together behind his back
and placed a blindfold across his eyes.
“Watch below, son of a king,” said The Cid to Tanar, “and you will know
what it means to walk the plank.”
“I am watching,” said Tanar, “and I see that it takes many of your
people to make one of mine do this thing, whatever it may be.”
The girl laughed, but The Cid scowled more deeply, while Bohar cast a
venomous glance at Tanar.
Now men with drawn knives and sharp pikes lined the plank on either side
of the ship’s rail and others lifted the prisoner to the inboard end so
that he faced the opposite end of the plank that protruded far out over
the sea, where great monsters of the deep cut the waves with giant backs
as they paralleled the ship’s course—giant saurians, long extinct upon
the outer crust.
Prodding the defenseless man with knife and pike they goaded him forward
along the narrow plank to the accompaniment of loud oaths and vulgar
jests and hoarse laughter.
Erect and proud, the Thurian marched fearlessly to his doom. He made no
complaint and when he reached the outer end of the plank and his foot
found no new place beyond he made no outcry. Just for an instant he drew
back his foot and hesitated and then, silently, he leaped far out, and,
turning, dove head foremost into the sea.
Tanar turned his eyes away and it chanced that he turned them in the
direction of the girl. To his surprise he saw that she, too, had refused
to look at the last moment and in her face, turned toward his, he saw an
expression of suffering.
Could it be that this woman of The Cid’s brutal race felt sympathy and
sorrow for a suffering enemy?
Tanar doubted it. More likely that something she had eaten that day had
disagreed with her.
“Now,” cried The Cid, “you have seen a man walk the plank and know what
I may do with you, if I choose.”
Tanar shrugged. “I hope I may be as indifferent to my fate as was my
comrade,” he said, “for you certainly got little enough sport out of
him.”
“If I turn you over to Bohar we shall have sport,” replied The Cid. “He
has other means of enlivening a dull day that far surpass the tame
exercise on the plank.”
The girl turned angrily upon The Cid. “You shall not do that!” she
cried. “You promised me that you would not torture any prisoners while I
was with the fleet.”
“If he behaves I shall not,” said The Cid, “but if he does not I shall
turn him over to Bohar the Bloody. Do not forget that I am Chief of
Korsar and that even you may be punished if you interfere.”
Again the girl laughed. “You can frighten the others, Chief of Korsar,”
she said, “but not me.”
“If she were mine,” muttered Bohar threateningly, but the girl
interrupted him.
“I am not, nor ever shall be,” she said.
“Do not be too sure of that,” growled The Cid. “I can give you to whom I
please; let the matter drop.” He turned to the Sarian prisoner. “What is
your name, son of a king?” he asked.
“Tanar.”
“Listen well, Tanar,” said The Cid impressively. “Our prisoners do not
live beyond the time that they be of service to us. Some of you will be
kept to exhibit to the people of Korsar, after which they will be of
little use to me, but you can purchase life and, perhaps, freedom.”
“How?” demanded Tanar.
“Your people were armed with weapons far better than ours,” explained
The Cid; “your powder was more powerful and more dependable. Half the
time ours fails to ignite at the first attempt.”
“That must be embarrassing,” remarked Tanar.
“It is fatal,” said The Cid.
“But what has it to do with me?” asked the prisoner.
“If you will teach us how to make better weapons and such powder as your
people have you shall be spared and shall have your freedom.”
Tanar made no reply—he was thinking—thinking of the supremacy that their
superior weapons gave his people—thinking of the fate that lay in store
for him and for those poor devils in the dark, foul hole below deck.
“Well?” demanded The Cid.
“Will you spare the others, too?” he asked.
“Why should I?”
“I shall need their help,” said Tanar. “I do not know all that is
necessary to make the weapons and the powder.”
As a matter of fact he knew nothing about the manufacture of either, but
he saw here a chance to save his fellow prisoners, or at least to delay
their destruction and gain time in which they might find means to
escape, nor did he hesitate to deceive The Cid, for is not all fair in
war?
“Very well,” said the Korsar chief; “if you and they give me no trouble
you shall all live—provided you teach us how to make weapons and powder
like your own.”
“We cannot live in the filthy hole in which we are penned,” retorted the
Sarian; “neither can we live without food. Soon we shall all sicken and
die. We are people of the open air—we cannot be smothered in dark holes
filled with vermin and be starved, and live.”
“You shall not be returned to the hole,” said The Cid. “There is no
danger that you will escape.”
“And the others?” demanded Tanar.
“They remain where they are!”
“They will all die, and without them I cannot make powder,” Tanar
reminded him.
The Cid scowled. “You would have my ship overrun with enemies,” he
growled.
“They are unarmed.”
“Then they certainly would be killed,” said The Cid. “No one would
survive long among that pack an’ he were not armed;” he waved a hand
contemptuously toward the half naked throng below.
“Then leave the hatches off and give them decent air and more and better
food.”
“I’ll do it,” said The Cid. “Bohar, have the forward hatches removed,
place a guard there with orders to kill any prisoner who attempts to
come on deck and any of our men who attempts to go below; see, too, that
the prisoners get the same rations as our own men.”
It was with a feeling of relief that amounted almost to happiness that
Tanar saw Bohar depart to carry out the orders of The Cid, for he knew
well that his people could not long survive the hideous and unaccustomed
confinement and the vile food that had been his lot and theirs since
they had been brought aboard the Korsar ship.
Presently The Cid went to his cabin and Tanar, left to his own devices,
walked to the stern and leaning on the rail gazed into the hazy
upcurving distance where lay the land of the Sarians, his land, beyond
the haze.
Far astern a small boat rose and fell with the great, long billows.
Fierce denizens of the deep constantly threatened it, storms menaced it,
but on it forged in the wake of the great fleet—a frail and tiny thing
made strong and powerful by the wills of three men.
But this Tanar did not see, for the mist hid it. He would have been
heartened to know that his Emperor was risking his life to save him.
As he gazed and dreamed he became conscious of a presence near him, but
he did not turn, for who was there upon that ship who might have access
to this upper deck, whom he might care to see or speak with?
Presently he heard a voice at his elbow, a low, golden voice that
brought him around facing its owner. It was the girl.
“You are looking back toward your own country?” she said.
“Yes.”
“You will never see it again,” she said, a note of sadness in her voice,
as though she understood his feelings and sympathized.
“Perhaps not, but why should you care? I am an enemy.”
“I do not know why I should care,” replied the girl. “What is your
name?”
“Tanar.”
“Is that all?”
“I am called Tanar the Fleet One.”
“Why?”
“Because in all Sari none can outdistance me.”
“Sari—is that the name of your country?”
“Yes.”
“What is it like?”
“It is a high plateau among the mountains. It is a very lovely country,
with leaping rivers and great trees. It is filled with game. We hunt the
great ryth there and the tarag for meat and for sport and there are
countless lesser animals that give us food and clothing.”
“Have you no enemies? You are not a warlike people as are the Korsars.”
“We defeated the warlike Korsars,” he reminded her.
“I would not speak of that too often,” she said. “The tempers of the
Korsars are short and they love to kill.”
“Why do you not kill me then?” he demanded. “You have a knife and a
pistol in your sash, like the others.”
The girl only smiled.
“Perhaps you are not a Korsar,” he exclaimed. “You were captured as I
was and are a prisoner.”
“I am no prisoner,” she replied.
“But you are not a Korsar,” he insisted.
“Ask The Cid—he will doubtless cutlass you for your impertinence; but
why do you think I am not a Korsar?”
“You are too beautiful and too fine,” he replied. “You have shown
sympathy and that is a finer sentiment far beyond their mental
capability. They are—”
“Be careful, enemy; perhaps I am a Korsar!”
“I do not believe it,” said Tanar.
“Then keep your beliefs to yourself, prisoner,” retorted the girl in a
haughty tone.
“What is this?” demanded a rough voice behind Tanar. “What has this
thing said to you, Stellara?”
Tanar wheeled to face Bohar the Bloody.
“I questioned that she was of the same race as you,” snapped Tanar
before the girl could reply. “It is inconceivable that one so beautiful
could be tainted by the blood of Korsar.”
His face flaming with rage, Bohar laid a hand upon one of his knives and
stepped truculently toward the Sarian. “It is death to insult the
daughter of The Cid,” he cried, whipping the knife from his sash and
striking a wicked blow at Tanar.
The Sarian, light of foot, trained from childhood in the defensive as
well as offensive use of edged weapons, stepped quickly to one side and
then as quickly in again and once more Bohar the Bloody sprawled upon
the deck to a well delivered blow.
Bohar was fairly foaming at the mouth with rage as he jerked his heavy
pistol from his gaudy sash and aiming it at Tanar’s chest from where he
lay upon the deck, pulled the trigger. At the same instant the girl
sprang forward as though to prevent the slaying of the prisoner.
It all happened so quickly that Tanar scarcely knew the sequence of
events, but what he did know was that the powder failed to ignite, and
then he laughed.
“You had better wait until I have taught you how to make powder that
will burn before you try to murder me, Bohar,” he said.
The Bloody One scrambled to his feet and Tanar stood ready to receive
the expected charge, but the girl stepped between them with an imperious
gesture.
“Enough of this!” she cried. “It is The Cid’s wish that this man live.
Would you like to have The Cid know that you tried to pistol him,
Bohar?”
The Bloody One stood glaring at Tanar for several seconds, then he
wheeled and strode away without a word.
“It would seem that Bohar does not like me,” said Tanar, smiling.
“He dislikes nearly every one,” said Stellara, “but he hates you—now.”
“Because I knocked him down, I suppose. I cannot blame him.”
“That is not the real reason,” said the girl.
“What is, then?”
She hesitated and then she laughed. “He is jealous. Bohar wants me for
his mate.”
“But why should he be jealous of me?”
Stellara looked Tanar up and down and then she laughed again. “I do not
know,” she said. “You are not much of a man beside our huge Korsars—with
your beardless face and your small waist. It would take two of you to
make one of them.”
To Tanar her tone implied thinly veiled contempt and it piqued him, but
why it should he did not know and that annoyed him, too. What was she
but the savage daughter of a savage, boorish Korsar?
When he had first learned from Bohar’s lips that she was the daughter
and not the mate of The Cid he had felt an unaccountable relief, half
unconsciously and without at all attempting to analyze his reaction.