Pellucidar

saw that I had no token

ey cried. “He has sent you from the island to spy upo

e me. As proof that I was one of Hooja’s people, they pointed to my weapons, which they said were ornamented like those of the island

leave in peace rather than force them to attack me, whereas the Sarians would

usly. They were a bit in awe of him, and kept at a safe distance. It was evident that the

give us food, which he did, and direct me as to the safest portion of the island upon which to attempt a landing, though even as he to

ble to enlist a considerable force of them in an attempt to rush Hooja’s horde

upon the sand I soon slept, and with Raja stretched out beside m

he rose, stretched himself, and without a backward glance plunged into the jungle.

As I entered the jungle where the dugout lay a hare darted from beneath the boat’s side, and a well-aimed cast of my javelin brought it down. I was hungry — I had not real

ont me in an effort to rescue her. For a time I loitered about after I had the canoe at the water’s edge, hoping aga

y new-found friend, though I tried to assure myself

had repaid his debt of gratitude to me, since he had saved my life, or at least my

ut half-way between the mainland and the island. The hot rays of the noonday sun did a great deal toward raising my spirits, and dispelling the mental gloo

ut off from there. I found a shallow reef running far out into the sea and rather precipitous cliffs running almost to the surf. It was a nasty plac

en the sea and the more open forest and meadow of the interior. Farther back there was a range of low but apparently very rocky hills, and here and there all about were visible flat-topped masses of rock — small mountains, in fact — which reminded me of pictures I had seen of landscapes in Ne

-distant butte. Whether they were beast or human, though, I could not make out; but at least they were al

and the fragrant flowers, my cudgel swinging in my hand and my javelin looped across my s

ife within Pellucidar has rather quickened my senses of sight, hearing, and smell, and, too, certain primitive intuitive or instinctive qualities that seem blunted in civilized man. But, though I was

ch I cannot explain between the sensation of casual observation and studied espionage. A sheep might gaze at you without transmitting a warning through your subjective mind, because you are in no danger from a she

in my left hand. I peered to left and right, but I saw nothing. Then, all quite suddenly, th

with a suddenness that brought me to my face upon the ground. Then something heavy and hairy sprang upon my back.

as turned over upon my back to lo

the creature that bent close above me, and of those of the half-dozen others that clustered about. There was the facial length and

ng of a simplified language that had no need for aught but nouns and verbs, but such words as it included were the

pretended not to understand me. One of them swung me to his shoulder as lightly as if I had been a shoat. He was a huge creat

gress in this direction. But my escort never paused. Like ants upon a wall, they scaled that seemingly unscalable barrier, clinging, Heaven knows how, to its ragged perpendicular

captors. They clustered about, jabbering at my guards and attempting to get their hands upon me, whether from curios

n opening appeared. Here my guards set me upon my feet and called out a word whi

ost hairless and with an empty socket where one eye had been. The other eye, sheeplike in its mildness, gave the most s

rders of apes and man — but these brute-men of Gr-gr-gr seemed to set that theory back to zero, for there was less similarity between the black ape-men and these

sticated dogs and ruminants, in which respect they were farther advanced than the human beings

t they were tailless and had a language similar to that of the human race of

constrained to the belief that evolution is not so much a gradual transition from one form to another as it is an accident of breeding, either by crossing or the hazards of birth. In oth

before the entrance to his lair. With elbows on knees and chin in palms he regard

n abbreviated tongue — you would have even greater difficulty in interpreting them than did I. Instead,

gr’s initial declaration. “You

Hooja and he was

has stolen my mate and I have come here t

you do th

hould have tried had you not captured

ll work

not kill m

g we kill. If we knew you were one of Hooja’s people we might kill you, for all Hooja’s people are bad people; but you say you a

ted, “why not let me, who hat

n thought. Then he raised hi

o his work,

ow. My guard conducted me farther into the mesa, where we came presently

hundred acres, were numerous fields of growing things, and working all about with crude implements or with no implements at a

rk cultivating in

s that time never had dragged so heavily as it did during the hour or the year I spent th

t his tribe had lived upon this hilltop always, and that there were other tribes like them dwelling upon other hilltops. They had no wars and had always lived in peace and harmony, menaced only by the larger ca

hat I was Hooja’s enemy, and asked, when they were ready to go, that I be allowed to go with them, or, better still, that they let me

tion. He said that when he was through in the fie

ect, but the old gentleman was evidently in anything but a good humor, for he cuffed the youngster and, tur

ll slay you as soon as the melons

en one sickly weed before, I nourished two healthy ones. When I found a particularly promising variety o

t into the reckoning of Pellucidarians — even of human beings and much less of brutes and half brutes — I might have lived on i