Latest / Classic Adventure Books Collection / 04 - At The Earth's Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Transcript
- Chapter four, Die in the Beautiful. When our guards arose us from sleep, we were much refreshed. They gave us food, strips of dried meat. It was, but it put a new life and strength into us, so that now we too marched with high held heads and took noble strides. At least I did, for I was young and proud. But poor Perry hated walking on earth. I had often seen him call a cab to travel a square. He was paying for it now, and his old legs wobbled, so that I put my arm about him and half carried him through the balance of those frightful marches. The country began to change at last, and we wound up out of the level plain through mighty mountains of virgin granite. The tropical verdure of the lowlands was replaced by heartier vegetation. But even here the effects of constant heat and light were apparent in the immensity of the trees and the pro fusion of foliage and blooms. Crystal streams roared through the rocky channels, fed by the perpetual snows, which we could see far above us. Above the snow capped heights hung masses of heavy clouds. It was these, Perry explained, which evidently served the double purpose of replenishing the melting snows and protecting them from the direct rays of the sun. By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the rather charming tongue of our co captives. Directly ahead of me in the chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain linked us together in a forced companionship which I at least soon rejoiced in, for I found her a willing teacher, and from her I learned the language of her tribe and much of the life and customs of the inner world, at least that part of it which she was familiar. She told me that she was called Diane the Beautiful, and that she belonged to the tribe of Amos, which dwells in the cliffs above the darrel As or shallow Sea. How came you here, I asked her. I was running away from Juwbel the ugly one. She answered, as though that was explanation quite sufficient. Who is Jubal the ugly one? I asked, and why did you run away from him? She looked at me in surprise. Why does a woman run away from a man? She answered my question with another. They do not where I come from, I replied, sometimes they run after them. But she could not understand, nor could I get her to grasp the fact that I was of another world. She was quite as positive that creation was originated solely to produce her own kind and the world she lived in, as are many of the outer world. But jubilisted tell me about him, and why you ran away to be chained by the neck and scourged across the face of a world. Jubil the Ugly One placed his trophy before my father's house. It was the head of a mighty tandor it remained there, and no greater trophy was placed beside it. So I knew that Jubal the Ugly One would come and take me as his mate. None other so powerful wished me, or they would have slain a mightier beast and thus have won me from Jubil. My father is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but a zedak tossed him, and never again had he the full use of his right arm. My brother, Decor, the strong One, had gone to the land of Sari to steal a mate for himself. Thus there was none father, brother or lover to save me from Jubil the ugly one. And I ran away and hid among the hills that skirt the land of Amos, And there these sagoths found me and made me captive. What will they do with you? I asked? Where are they taking us? Again? She looked her incredulity. I can almost believe that you are of another world, she said, for otherwise such ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really mean that you do not know that the sagoths are the creatures of the mayors, the mighty mayors, who think they own Pellucidar and all that walks or grows upon its surface, or creeps or burrows beneath, or swims within its lakes and oceans, or flies through its air. Next you will be telling me that you've never before heard of the Mayor's I was loath to do it and further incur her scorn, but there was no alternative if I were to absorb knowledge. So I made a clean breast of my pitiful ignorance as to the mighty mayors. She was shocked, but she did her very best to enlighten me, though much that she said was as Greek would have been to her. She described the mayors largely by comparison. In this way, they were like unto Thipdars, in that to the hairless liddy. About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had wings and webbed feet, lived in cities built beneath the ground, could swim under water for great distances, and were very, very wise. The Sagoths were their weapons of offense and defense, and the races, like herself, were their hands and feet. They were the slaves and servants who did all the manual labor. The mayors were the heads, the brains of the inner world. I longed to see this wondrous race of supermen. Perry learned the language with me when we halted, as we occasionally did, though sometimes the halts seemed ages apart. He would join in the conversation, as would Ghak, the hairy one. He who was chained just ahead of Dian the beautiful. Ahead of Ghak was Hooja, the sly one. He too, entered the conversation occasionally. Most of his remarks were directed towards Diane the beautiful. It didn't take half an eye to see that he had developed a bad case. But the girl appeared totally oblivious to his thinly veiled advances. Did I say, thinley Field. There is a race of men in New Zealand or Australia, I've forgotten which, who indicate their preference for the lady of their affections by banging her over the head with a bludgeon. By comparison with this method, Hooja's love making might be called thinley veild. At first it caused me to blush violently, although I have seen several old years out at Rector's and in other less fashionable places off Broadway, and in Vienna and Hamburg. But that girl, she was magnificent. It was easy to see that she considered herself as entirely above and apart from her present surroundings. In company. She talked with me and with Perry and with the taciturn Ghak, because we were respectful. But she couldn't even see Hooja the sly one, much less hear him, and that made him furious. He tried to get one of the Sagoths to move the girl up ahead of him in the slave gang, but the fellow only poked him with his spear and told him that he had selected the girl for his own property, that he would buy her from the mayors as soon as they reached Putra Poutra, it seemed was the city of our destination. After passing over the first chain of the mountains, we skirted a salt sea, upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal like creatures there were, with long necks stretching ten or more feet above their enormous bodies, and whose snake heads were split with gaping mouths bristling with countless fangs. There were huge tortoises, too, paddling about among these other reptiles, which Perry said were plesiosaurs of the Lias. I didn't question his veracity. They might have been most anything. Dian told me they were tandoraises or tandors of the sea, and that the other and more fearsome reptiles which occasionally rose from the deep to do battle with them, were as diaryths or sea dearyths. Perry called them ichtheosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of an alligator. I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school. About all that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations of restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well defined belief that any man with a pig's shank and a vivid imagination could restore most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit and take rank as a first class paleontologist. But when I saw these sleek, shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged from the ocean, shaking their giant heads, When I saw the waters roll from their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls, as they glided hither and thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged. As I saw them meat open mouthed, hissing and snorting in their titanic and interminable warring, I realized how futile is man's poor, weak imagination by comparison with nature's incredible genius. And Perry, he was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself. David, he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside that awful sea. David, I used to teach geology, and I thought that I believed what I taught, But now I see that I did not believe it. That it is impossible for man to believe such things as these unless he sees them with his own eyes. We take things for granted, perhaps because we are told them over and over again and have no way of disproving them, like religions, for example, but we don't believe them. We only think we do. If you ever get back to the outer world, you will find that the geologists and paleontologists will be the first who set you down a liar, for they know that no such creatures as they restore ever existed. It is all right to imagine them as existing in an equally imaginary epoch. But now prove At the next halt Hooja, the sly One managed to find enough slack chain to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Diane. We were all standing, and as he edged near the girl, she turned her back upon him in such a truly earthly, feminine manner that I could scarce repress a smile. But it was a short lived smile, for on the instant the sly One's hand fell upon the girl's bare arm, jerking her roughly towards him. I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics which prevailed within Pellucidar, But even so I did not need the appealing look to which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence my subsequent act. What the sly one's intention was, I paused not to inquire, but instead, before he could lay hold of her with his other hand, I placed a right to the point of his jaw that felled him in his tracks. A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and the Sagoths who had witnessed the brief drama, not as I later learned, because I had championed the girl, but for the knee and to them astounding method by which I had bested Hooja and the girl. At first she looked at me with wide, wondering eyes, and then she dropped her head, her face half averted, and a delicate flush suffused her cheeks. For a moment she stood thus in silence, and then her head went high, and she turned her back upon me as she had upon Hooja. Some of the prisoners laughed, and I saw the face of Ghak, the hairy one, go very black as he looked at me searchingly, and what I could see of Diane's cheek went suddenly from red to white. Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that in some way I had offended Diane the Beautiful, I could not prevail upon her to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred. In fact, I might quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all the attention I got. At last, my own foolish pride step in and prevented my making any further attempts, and thus a companionship that, without my realizing it had come to mean a great deal to me, was cut off. Hooja did not renew his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture near me again. The weary and apparently interminable marching became a perfect nightmare of horrors to me. The more firmly fixed became the realization that the girl's friendship had meant so much to me, the more I came to miss it, and the more impregnable the barrier of silly pride. But I was very young and would not ask Ghak for the explanation which I was sure he could give, and that might have made everything all right again. On the march or during halts, Diane refused consistently to notice me. When her eyes wandered in my direction, she looked either over my head or directly through me. At last, I became desperate and determined to swallow my self esteem and again beg her to tell me how I had offended and how I might make reparation. I made up my mind that I should do this. At the next halt. We were approaching another range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them, instead of winding across them through some high flung pass we entered a mighty natural tunnel, a series of labyrinthian grottos, dark as erebus. The guards had no torches or lights of any description. In fact, we had seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered Pellucidar. In a land of perpetual noon, there is no need of light above ground. Yet I marveled that they had no means of lighting their way through these dark, subterranean passages. So we crept along at a snail's pace, with much stumbling and falling, the guards keeping up a singing song chant ahead of us, interspersed with certain high notes which I found always indicated rough places and turns Aults were now more frequent. But I did not wish to speak to Diane until I could see from the expression of her face how she was receiving my apologies. At last, a faint glow ahead forewarned us of the end of the tunnel, for which I, for one was devoutly thankful. Then at a sudden turn, we emerged into the full light of the noonday sun. But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a real catastrophe. Diane was gone, and with her a half dozen other prisoners. The guard saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to behold. Their awesome, beastial faces were contorted in the most diabolical expressions as they accused each other of responsibility for the loss. Finally they fell upon us, beating us with their spear shafts and hatchets. They had already killed two near the head of the line, and were like to have finished the balance of us when their leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all my life had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of beastial rage. I thanked God that Diane had not been one of those left to endure it. Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me, each alternate one had been freed. Commencing with Diane, Hooja was gone. Ghak remained, what could it mean? How had it been accomplished? The commander of the guards was investigating. Soon he discovered that the rude locks which had held the neck bands in place had been deftly picked. Hooja, the sly one, murmured, Ghak, who is now next to me in line? He has taken the girl that you would not have, he continued, glancing at me, that I would not have. I cried, what do you mean? He looked at me closely for a moment. I have doubted your story, that you are from another world, he said at last, But yet upon no other ground could your ignorance of the ways of Pellucidar be explained. Do you really mean that you do not know that you have offended the beautiful one? And how I do not know? Ghak? I replied, Then I shall tell you when a man of Pellucidar intervenes between another man and the woman, the other man would have the woman belongs to the victor. Dian the Beautiful belongs to you. You should have claimed her or released her. Had you taken her hand, it would have indicated your desire to make her your mate. And had you raised her hand above her head and then dropped it, it would have meant that you did not wish her for your mate, and that you released her from all obligations to you. By doing neither, you have put upon her the greatest affront that any man may put upon a woman. Now she is your slave. No man will take her as a mate, or may take her honorably, until he shall have overcome you in con and men do not choose slave women as their mates, at least not the men of Pellucidar. I did not know, ghak, I cried, I did not know. Not for all Pellucidar, would I have harmed Dian the Beautiful by word or look or act of mine. I do not want her as my slave. I do not want her as my But here I stopped the vision of that sweet, innocent face floated before me amidst the soft mists of imagination, and where I had, on the second, believed that I clung only to the memory of a gentle friendship I had lost. Yet now it seemed that it would have been disloyalty to her to have said that I did not want Diane the Beautiful as my mate. I have not thought of her except as a welcome friend in a strange, cruel world. Even now I did not think that I loved her. I believe Ghak must have read the truth more in my expression than in my words, For presently he laid his hand upon my shoulder. Men of another world, he said, I believe you lips may lie, but when the heart speaks through the eyes, it tells only the truth. Your heart has spoken to me. I know now that you meant no affront to Dian the Beautiful. She is not of my tribe, but her mother is my sister. She does not know it. Her mother was stolen by Dian's father, who came with others from the tribe of Amos to battle with us for our women, the most beautiful women of Pellucidar. Then was her father the king of Amos, and her mother was daughter of the king of Sari, to whose power I his son, have succeeded. Diane is the daughter of kings, though her father is no longer king, since this Sadok tossed him and Jubile the ugly One wrested his kingship from him. Because of her lineage, the wrong you did her was greatly magnified in the eyes of all who saw it. She will never forgive you, I am asked Ghak, if there was not some way in which I could release the girl from the bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon her. If ever you find her, yes, he answered, Merely to raise her hand above her head and drop it in the presence of others is sufficient to release her. But how may you ever find her, You, who are doomed to a life of slavery yourself in the buried city of Putra. Is there no escape? I asked Hooja. The sly One escaped and took the others with him, replied Ghak. But there are no more dark places on the way to Putra, and once there it is not so easy. The mayors are very wise. Even if one escaped from Putra, there are the thipdars. They would find you, and then the hairy one shuddered, No, you will never escape the mayors. It was a cheerful prospect. I asked Perry what he thought about it, but he only shrugged his shoulders and continued a long window prayer he had been at for some time. He was wont to say that the only redeeming feature of our captivity was the ample time it gave him for the improvisation of prayers. It was becoming an obsession with him. The Sagoths had begun to take notice of his habit of declaiming throughout entire marches. One of them asked him what he was saying to whom he was talking. The question gave me an idea, so I answered quickly before Perry could say anything. Do not interrupt him. I said, he is a very holy man in the world from which we come. He is speaking to spirits which you cannot see. Do not interrupt him, or they will spring out of the air upon you and rind you limb from limb. Like that, and I jumped towards the great brute with a loud boo that sent him stumbling backward. I took a long chance, I realized, but if we could make any capital out of Perry's harmless Mania. I wanted to make it. While the making was it worked splendidly. The Sagoths treated us both with marked respect during the balance of our journey, and then passed the word along to their masters, the mayors. Two marches after this episode, we came to the city of Putra. The entrance to it was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which guarded a flight of steps leading to the buried city. Sagoths were on guard here, as well as at a hundred or more other towers scattered about over a large plain. End of Chapter four