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PELLUCIDAR

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PROLOGUE

I LOST ON PELLUCIDAR

II TRAVELING WITH TERROR

III SHOOTING THE CHUTES--AND AFTER

IV FRIENDSHIP AND TREACHERY

V SURPRISES

VI A PENDENT WORLD

VII FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT

VIII CAPTIVE

IX HOOJA'S CUTTHROATS APPEAR

X THE RAID ON THE CAVE-PRISON

XI ESCAPE

XII KIDNAPED!

XIII RACING FOR LIFE

XIV GORE AND DREAMS

XV CONQUEST AND PEACE

PROLOGUE

SEVERAL YEARS had elapsed since I had found the op-

portunity 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 sum-

mer camp could have been filled with greater im-

patience 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, es-

pecially 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.

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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 fol-

lows.

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 re-

produces 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.

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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 dis-

covered 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 tick-

ing 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 power-

less 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:

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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 in-

telligence 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--noth-

ing 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 coinci-

dences 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

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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 pale-

ontologist, 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 sol-

diery, 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

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