question now is what can we do.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Do you not realize that David Innes lies a prisoner in a dark dungeon
beneath the palace of The Cid of Korsar?” he demanded with more
excitement than I have ever known Jason Gridley to exhibit.
“Well, what of it?” I demanded. “I am sorry, of course; but what in the
world can we do to help him?”
“We can do a lot,” said Jason Gridley, determinedly.
I must confess that as I looked at him I felt considerable solicitude
for the state of his mind for he was evidently laboring under great
excitement.
“Think of it!” he cried. “Think of that poor devil buried there in utter
darkness, silence, solitude—and with those snakes! God!” he shuddered.
“Snakes crawling all over him, winding about his arms and his legs and
his body, creeping across his face as he sleeps, and nothing else to
break the monotony—no human voice, the song of no bird, no ray of
sunlight. Something must be done. He must be saved.”
“But who is going to do it?” I asked.
“I am!” replied Jason Gridley.
* * * * *
TANAR OF PELLUCIDAR
Pellucidar—the hollow center of the Earth, a land of savage men and
prehistoric beasts—is the scene of this exciting novel.
In Pellucidar dwell the Buried People; here is the Land of Awful Shadow;
here the terrible Korsars terrorize the oceans, while dinosaurs and
saber-tooth tigers terrorize the lands.
This is the story of Tanar, a young chieftain and the cave girl
Stellara, and of their struggle for survival against a myriad dangers.
This is an epic of adventure by Tarzan’s creator.
* * * * *
A CAVEMAN CHIEF IN THE WORLD OF THE EARTH’S CORE
When the hard-won peace of the primitive Empire of Pellucidar was
shattered by the invasion of the fierce Korsar sea-rovers, David Innes
sent his caveman horde to battle. One of the bravest of his
club-swinging warriors was Tanar the Fleet One.
Despite the strange weapons of the invaders, David and his skin-clad
band thrust back the Korsars and forced them to flee in their ships—but
with them they took several captives including Tanar.
But that bronzed Sarian was no easy prisoner to keep. The story of how
he outwitted his captors, kidnapped one of their maidens, and fought to
find his way home across unmapped jungles is an adventure novel worthy
of Tarzan’s creator.
* * * * *
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS (1875-1950)
Edgar Rice Burroughs is renowned for his many
novels of fantastic adventure. Unquestionably his best
known creation is that of the jungle hero, Tarzan the
Ape Man, but almost as well known are his stories of
other planets and of Pellucidar beneath the Earth's crust.
Born in Chicago in 1875, he tried his hand at many
businesses without notable success, until at the age of
thirty-five, he turned to writing. With the publication
of Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars, his career
was assured. The gratitude of a multitude of readers
who found in his imagination exactly the kind of escape
reading they loved assured him of a well-earned fortune.
By the time of his death, in 1950, at his home in a
town bearing the name of his brain child, Tarzana, California,
his name was a byword in literature. Over
40,000,000 copies of his books have appeared in 58
different languages.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)