September 24, 2025 • 22 mins
Dive into a thrilling adventure as David Innes, a mining heir, funds the creation of the iron mole, an innovative excavating vehicle crafted by his brilliant yet aging friend Abner Perry. During a daring test run, the vehicle goes awry, drilling 500 miles into the Earths crust and emerging into the mysterious inner world of Pellucidar. In this captivating realm, the Earth functions as a hollow shell, with Pellucidar as its vibrant internal surface, teeming with prehistoric creatures from every geological era. Here, the intelligent yet malevolent Mahars, a species of flying reptile, dominate the landscape, enslaving the primitive humans who inhabit it. Captured by the Mahars fierce Sagoth servants, Innes and Perry find themselves amidst other human captives, including the valiant Ghak, the clever Hooja, and the enchanting Dian. Join them on an exhilarating journey through a world of danger, intrigue, and unexpected alliances.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fifteen of At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. At the
Earth's Core, Chapter fifteen. Back to Earth, we crossed the
river and passed through the mountains beyond, and finally we
came out upon a great level plain which stretched away
(00:23):
as far as the eye could reach. I cannot tell
you in what direction it stretched, even if you would
care to know. For all the while that I was
within Pellucidar, I never discovered any but local methods of
indicating direction. There is no north, no south, no east,
no west. Up is about the only direction which is
well defined, and that, of course is down to you
(00:46):
of the outer crust. Since the sun neither rises nor sets,
there is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects
such as high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas. The plain
which lies beyond the white cliffs which flanked the darrel
Az upon the shore nearest the mountains of the Clouds
is about as near to any direction as any Pellucidarian
(01:08):
can come. If you happen not to have heard of
the darrel Az or the White Cliffs or the mountains
of the Clouds, you feel that there is something lacking
and long for the good old understandable. Northeast and southwest
of the outer world, we had barely entered the great
Plain when we discovered two enormous animals approaching us from
(01:29):
a great distance. So far were they that we could
not distinguish what manner of beasts they might be. But
as they came closer, I saw that they were enormous quadrupeds,
eighty or one hundred feet long, with tiny heads perched
at the top of very long necks. Their heads must
have been quite forty feet from the ground. The beasts
(01:51):
moved very slowly, that is, their action was slow, but
their strides covered such a great distance that in reality
they traveled considerably faster than a man walks. As they
drew still nearer, we discovered that upon the back of
each sat a human being. Then Dion knew what they were,
though she never before had seen one. They are ladies
(02:14):
from the land of the Thorians, she cried. Thoria lies
at the outer verge of the land of awful Shadow.
The Thorians alone, of all the races of Pellucidar ride
the lady. For nowhere else than beside the dark country
are they found. What is the land of Awful Shadow,
I asked. It is the land which lies beneath the
(02:36):
Dead World, replied Dion, the dead World, which hangs forever
between the Sun and Pellucidar, above the land of Awful Shadow.
It is the dead World which makes the great shadow
upon this portion of Pellucidar. I did not fully understand
what she meant, nor am I sure that I do yet,
(02:56):
for I have never been to that part of Pellucidar
from which the Dead World is visible. But Parry says
that it is the moon of Pellucidar, a tiny planet
within a planet, and that it revolves around the Earth's
axis coincidentally with the Earth, and thus is always above
the same spot within Pellucidar. I remember that Parry was
(03:17):
very much excited when I told him about this dead world,
for he seemed to think that it explained the hitherto
inexplicable phenomena of nutation and the procession of the equinoxes.
When the two upon the ladies had come quite close
to us, we saw that one was a man and
the other a woman. The former had held up his
two hands palms toward us in sign of peace, and
(03:40):
I had answered him in kind, when he suddenly gave
a cry of astonishment and pleasure, and, slipping from his
enormous mount, ran forward toward Dian, throwing his arms about her.
In an instant, I was white with jealousy, but only
for an instant, since Dian quickly drew the man toward me,
telling him that I I was David her mate, and
(04:02):
this is my brother Dakhor, the strong one. David, she
said to me, it appeared that the woman was Dakhor's mate.
He had found none to his liking among the Sari
nor farther on until he had come to the land
of the Thoria, and there he had found and fought
for this very lovely Thorian maiden, whom he was bringing
(04:23):
back to his own people. When they had heard our
story and our plans, they decided to accompany us to
Sari that Dakhor and Ghek might come to an agreement
relative to an alliance, as Dakhor was quite as enthusiastic
about the proposed annihilation of the Mahars and Sagoths as
either Dan or I. After a journey which was for
(04:44):
Pellucidar quite uneventful, we came to the first of the
Sarian villages, which consists of between one and two hundred
artificial caves cut into the face of a great cliff. Here,
to our immense delight, we found both Perry and Ghek.
The old man was quite overcome at sight of me,
for he had long since given me up as dead.
(05:06):
When I introduced Dian as my wife, he didn't quite
know what to say, but he afterward remarked that with
the pick of two worlds, I could not have done better.
Ghak and Dacor reached a very amicable agreement, and it
was at a council of the head men of the
various tribes of the Sari that the eventual form of
government was tentatively agreed upon. Roughly, the various kingdoms were
(05:29):
to remain virtually independent, but there was to be one
great overlord or emperor. It was decided that I should
be the first of the dynasty of the emperors of Pellucidar.
We set about teaching the women how to make bows
and arrows and poison pouches. The young men hunted the
vipers which provided the virus, and it was they who
(05:50):
mined the iron ore and fashioned the swords. Under Perry's direction. Rapidly,
the fevers spread from one tribe to another, until representatives
from nation so far distant that the Sarians had never
even heard of them came in to take the oath
of allegiance which we required, and to learn the art
of making the new weapons and using them. We sent
(06:11):
our young men out as instructors to every nation of
the federation, and the movement had reached colossal proportions before
the Mahars discovered it. The first intimation they had was
when three of their great slave caravans were annihilated in
rapid succession. They could not comprehend that the lower orders
had suddenly developed a power which rendered them really formidable.
(06:35):
In one of the skirmishes with slave caravans, some of
our Sarians took a number of Sagoth prisoners, and among
them were two who had been members of the guards
within the building where we had been confined at Futra.
They told us that the Mahars were frantic with rage
when they discovered what had taken place in the cellars
of the buildings. The Sagoths knew that something very terrible
(06:57):
had befallen their masters, but the Maars had been most
careful to see that no inkling of the true nature
of their vital affliction reached beyond their own race. How
long it would take for the race to become extinct
it was impossible even to guess, but that this must
eventually happen seemed inevitable. The Mahars had offered fabulous rewards
(07:20):
for the capture of any one of us alive, and
at the same time had threatened to inflict the direst
punishment upon whomever should harm us. The Sagoths could not
understand these seemingly paradoxical instructions, though their purpose was quite
evident to me. The Mahars wanted the great secret, and
they knew that we alone could deliver it to them.
(07:43):
Perry's experiments in the manufacture of gunpowder and the fashioning
of rifles had not progressed as rapidly as we had hoped.
There was a whole lot about these two arts which
Perry didn't know. We were both assured that the solution
of these problems would advance the cause of civilization. Then
pellucidar thousands of years at a single stroke. Then there
(08:05):
were various other arts and sciences which we wished to introduce,
But our combined knowledge of them did not embrace the
mechanical details which alone could render them of commercial or
practical value. David said Perry, immediately after his latest failure
to produce gunpowder that would even burn. One of us
(08:25):
must return to the outer world and bring back the
information we lack. Here, we have all the labor and
materials for reproducing anything that ever has been produced. Above
what we lack is knowledge. Let us go back and
get that knowledge in the shape of books. Then this
world will indeed be at our feet. And so it
(08:46):
was decided that I should return in the Prospector, which
still lay upon the edge of the forest, at the
point where we had first penetrated to the surface of
the inner world. Dion would not listen to any arrangement
for my going which did not her, and I was
not sorry that she wished to accompany me, for I
wanted her to see my world, and I wanted my
(09:07):
world to see her. With a large force of men,
we marched to the great iron mole, which Perry soon
had hoisted into position, with its nose pointed back toward
the outer crust. We went over all the machinery carefully.
He replenished the air tanks and manufactured oil for the engine.
At last, everything was ready, and we were about to
(09:30):
set out when our pickets, a long, thin line of
which had surrounded our camp at all times, reported that
a great body of what appeared to be Sagoths and
Mahars were approaching from the direction of Phutra. Dian and
I were ready to embark, but I was anxious to
witness the first clash between two fair sized armies of
(09:50):
the opposing races of Pellucidar. I realized that this was
to mark the historic beginnings of a mighty struggle for
possession of a world. As the first emperor of Pellucidar,
I felt that it was not alone my duty, but
my right to be in the thick of that momentous struggle.
As the opposing army approached, we saw that there were
(10:12):
many Mahars with the Sagoth troops, an indication of the
vast importance which the dominant race placed upon the outcome
of this campaign, for it was not customary with them
to take active part in the sorties which their creatures
made for slaves. The only form of warfare which they
waged upon the lower orders Ghak and dhakhor were both
(10:34):
with us, having come primarily to view the prospector. I
placed Ghak with some of Hissarians on the right of
our battle line. Dhakor took the left, while I commanded
the center. Behind us. I stationed a sufficient reserve under
one of Ghak's head men. The Sagoths advanced steadily with
menacing spears, and I let them come until they were
(10:56):
with an easy bowshot before I gave the word to fire.
At the first volley of poisoned tipped arrows, the front
ranks of the guerrilla men crumpled to the ground, but
those behind charged over the prostrate forms of their comrades
in a wild, mad rush to be upon us with
their spears. A second volley stopped them for an instant,
(11:16):
and then my reserve sprang through the openings in the
firing line to engage them with sword and shield. The
clumsy spears of the Sagoths were no match for the
swords of the Sarian and Amozite, who turned the spear
thrust aside with their shields and leaped to close quarters
with their lighter, handier weapons. Ghak took his archers along
(11:37):
the enemy's flank, and while the swordsmen engaged them in front,
he poured volley after volley into their unprotected left. The
Mahars did little real fighting and were more in the
way than otherwise, though occasionally one of them would fasten
its powerful jaw upon the arm or leg of a Sarian.
The battle did not last a great while, for when
(11:59):
Dak and I led our men in upon the Sagoths
right with naked swords, they were already so demoralized that
they turned and fled before us. We pursued them for
some time, taking many prisoners and recovering nearly a hundred slaves,
among whom was Hooja, the sly One. He told me
that he had been captured while on his way to
(12:21):
his own land, but that his life had been spared
in hope that through him the Mahars would learn the
whereabouts of their great secret. Ghak and I were inclined
to think that the sly One had been guiding this
expedition to the land of Sari, where he had thought
that the book might be found in Perry's possession. But
we had no proof of this, and so we took
(12:42):
him in and treated him as one of us, Although
none liked him. And how he rewarded my generosity. You
will presently learn there were a number of Mahars among
our prisoners, and so fearful were our own people of them,
that they would not approach them unless completely covered from
the sight of the reptiles by a piece of skin.
(13:03):
Even Dian shared the popular superstition regarding the evil effects
of exposure to the eyes of angry Mahars. And though
I laughed at her fears, I was willing enough to
humor them if it would relieve her apprehension in any degree.
And so she sat apart from the prospector, near which
the Mahars had been chained, while Perry and I again
(13:24):
inspected every portion of the mechanism. At last, I took
my place in the driving seat and called to one
of the men without to fetch Dian. It happened that
Hooja stood quite close to the doorway of the prospector,
so that it was he who, without my knowledge, went
to bring her. But how he succeeded in accomplishing the
(13:45):
fiendish thing he did, I cannot guess, unless there were
others in the plot to aid him, Nor can I
believe that since all my people were loyal to me
and would have made short work of Hooja had he
suggested the heartly scheme, even had he had time to
acquaint another with it. It was all done so quickly
(14:07):
that I may only believe that it was the result
of sudden impulse, aided by a number of to Hooja
fortuitous circumstances occurring at precisely the right moment. All I
know is that it was Hooja who brought Dian to
the prospector, still wrapped from head to toe in the
skin of an enormous cave lion which covered her since
(14:28):
the mahar prisoners had been brought into camp. He deposited
his burden in the seat beside me. I was all
ready to get under way. The good byes had been said,
Perry had grasped my hand in the last long farewell.
I closed and barred the outer and inner doors, took
my seat again at the driving mechanism, and pulled the
(14:49):
starting lever. As before, on that far gone night that
had witnessed our first trial of the Iron Monster, there
was a frightful roaring beneath us. Giant frame trembled and vibrated.
There was a rush of sound, as the loose earth
passed up through the hollow space between the inner and
outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. Once more
(15:12):
the thing was off, but on the instant of departure,
I was nearly thrown from my seat by the sudden
lurching of the prospector. At first I did not realize
what had happened, but presently it dawned upon me that
just before entering the crust, the towering body had fallen
through its supporting scaffolding, and that instead of entering the
(15:32):
ground vertically, we were plunging into it at a different angle,
where it would bring us out upon the upper crust.
I could not even conjecture, and then I turned to
note the effect of this strange experience upon Dion. She
still sat shrouded in the great skin. Come come, I cried, laughing,
(15:52):
Come out of your shell. No mahar eyes can reach
you here. I leaned over and snatched the lion's skin
from her, and then I shrank back upon my seat
in utter horror. The thing beneath the skin was not Dian.
It was a hideous mahar. Instantly I realized the trick
that Hooja had played upon me. And the purpose of
(16:14):
it rid of me forever, as he doubtless thought Dion
would be at his mercy. Frantically I tore the steering
wheel in an effort to turn the Prospector back toward Pellucidar.
But as on that other occasion, I could not budge
the thing a hair. It is needless to recount the
horrors or the monotony of that journey. It varied but
(16:37):
little from the former one which had brought us from
the outer to the inner world. Because of the angle
at which we had entered the ground, the trip required
nearly a day longer, and brought me out here upon
the sand of the Sahara instead of in the United States,
as I had hoped for months, I had been waiting
here for a white man to come. I dare not
(16:58):
leave the Prospector for fear I should never be able
to find it again. The shifting sands of the desert
would soon cover it, and then my only hope of
returning to my Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone forever.
That I ever shall see her again seems but remotely possible.
For how may I know upon what part of Pellucidar
(17:18):
My return journey may terminate. And how without a north
or south, or an east or a west, may I
hope ever to find my way across that vast world
to the tiny spot where my lost love lies grieving
for me. That is the story, as David Innes told
it to me in the goat's skin tent upon the
rim of the great Sahara Desert. The next day he
(17:41):
took me out to see the prospector. It was precisely
as he had described it. So huge was it that
it could have been brought to this inaccessible part of
the world by no means of transportation that existed there.
It could only have come in the way that David
Inness said. It came up through the crust of the
earth from the inner world of Pellucidar. I spent a
(18:04):
week with him, and then abandoned my lion hunt, returned
directly to the coast, and hurried to London, where I
purchased a great quantity of stuff which he wished to
take back to Pellucidar with him. There were books, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, cameras, chemicals, telephones,
telegraph instruments, wire tool and more. Books. Books upon every
(18:26):
subject under the sun, He said he wanted a library
with which he could reproduce the wonders of the twentieth
century in the Stone Age, and if quantity counts for anything,
I got it for him. I took the things back
to Algeria myself and accompanied them to the end of
the railroad. But from here I was recalled to America
(18:48):
upon important business. However, I was able to employ a
very trustworthy man to take charge of the caravan, the
same guide, in fact, who had accompanied me on the
previous trip into the Sahara. And after writing a long
letter to Innis, in which I gave him my American address,
I saw the expedition head south. Among the other things
(19:09):
which I sent to Innis was over five hundred miles
of double insulated wire of a very fine gage. I
had it packed on a special reel at his suggestion,
as it was his idea that he could fasten one
end here before he left, and by paying it out
through the end of the prospector lay a telegraph line
between the outer and inner worlds. In my letter I
(19:32):
told him to be sure to mark the terminus of
the line very plainly with a high cairn, in case
I was not able to reach him before he set out,
so that I might easily find and communicate with him,
should he be so fortunate as to reach Pellucidar. I
received several letters from him after I returned to America.
In fact, he took advantage of every northward passing caravan
(19:54):
to drop me word of some sort. His last letter
was written the day before he intended to depart. Here.
It is, my dear friend, Tomorrow I shall set out
in quest of Pellucidar and Dion. That is, if the
Arabs don't get me. They have been very nasty of late.
I don't know the cause, but on two occasions they
(20:16):
have threatened my life. One more friendly than the rest
told me to day that they intended attacking me tonight.
It would be unfortunate should anything of that sort happen,
now that I am so nearly ready to depart. However,
maybe I will be as well off. For the nearer
the hour approaches, the slenderer my chances for success appear.
(20:40):
Here is the friendly Arab who's to take this letter
north for me. So good bye, and God bless you
for your kindness to me. The Arab tells me to hurry,
for he sees a cloud of sand to the south.
He thinks it is the party coming to murder me,
and he doesn't want to be found with me, So
good bye again, Yours David Innis. A year later found
(21:03):
me at the end of the railroad, once more headed
for the spot where I had left Innis. My first
disappointment was when I discovered that my old guide had
died within a few weeks of my return. Nor could
I find any member of my former party who could
lead me to the same spot. For months, I searched
that scorching land, interviewing countless desert cheeks, in the hope
(21:26):
that at last I might find one who had heard
of Innis and his wonderful iron mole. Constantly my eyes
scanned the blinding waste of sand for the ricky cairn
beneath which I was to find the wires leading to
pellucidar But always I was unsuccessful. And always do these
awful questions harass me when I think of David Innes
(21:47):
and his strange adventures. Did the Arabs murder him after all,
just on the eve of his departure, or did he
again turn the nose of his iron monster toward the
inner world? Did he reach it, or lies he somewhere
buried in the heart of the great crust. And if
he did come again to Pellucidar, was it to break
(22:08):
through into the bottom of one of her great island seas,
or among some savage race far far from the land
of his heart's desire? Does the answer lie somewhere upon
the bosom of the broad Sahara, at the end of
two tiny wires hidden beneath the lost cairn. I wonder
(22:29):
the end of at the Earth's Core By Edgar Riceborough's
Chapter fifteen of At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. At the
Earth's Core, Chapter fifteen. Back to Earth, we crossed the
river and passed through the mountains beyond, and finally we
came out upon a great level plain which stretched away
(00:23):
as far as the eye could reach. I cannot tell
you in what direction it stretched, even if you would
care to know. For all the while that I was
within Pellucidar, I never discovered any but local methods of
indicating direction. There is no north, no south, no east,
no west. Up is about the only direction which is
well defined, and that, of course is down to you
(00:46):
of the outer crust. Since the sun neither rises nor sets,
there is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects
such as high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas. The plain
which lies beyond the white cliffs which flanked the darrel
Az upon the shore nearest the mountains of the Clouds
is about as near to any direction as any Pellucidarian
(01:08):
can come. If you happen not to have heard of
the darrel Az or the White Cliffs or the mountains
of the Clouds, you feel that there is something lacking
and long for the good old understandable. Northeast and southwest
of the outer world, we had barely entered the great
Plain when we discovered two enormous animals approaching us from
(01:29):
a great distance. So far were they that we could
not distinguish what manner of beasts they might be. But
as they came closer, I saw that they were enormous quadrupeds,
eighty or one hundred feet long, with tiny heads perched
at the top of very long necks. Their heads must
have been quite forty feet from the ground. The beasts
(01:51):
moved very slowly, that is, their action was slow, but
their strides covered such a great distance that in reality
they traveled considerably faster than a man walks. As they
drew still nearer, we discovered that upon the back of
each sat a human being. Then Dion knew what they were,
though she never before had seen one. They are ladies
(02:14):
from the land of the Thorians, she cried. Thoria lies
at the outer verge of the land of awful Shadow.
The Thorians alone, of all the races of Pellucidar ride
the lady. For nowhere else than beside the dark country
are they found. What is the land of Awful Shadow,
I asked. It is the land which lies beneath the
(02:36):
Dead World, replied Dion, the dead World, which hangs forever
between the Sun and Pellucidar, above the land of Awful Shadow.
It is the dead World which makes the great shadow
upon this portion of Pellucidar. I did not fully understand
what she meant, nor am I sure that I do yet,
(02:56):
for I have never been to that part of Pellucidar
from which the Dead World is visible. But Parry says
that it is the moon of Pellucidar, a tiny planet
within a planet, and that it revolves around the Earth's
axis coincidentally with the Earth, and thus is always above
the same spot within Pellucidar. I remember that Parry was
(03:17):
very much excited when I told him about this dead world,
for he seemed to think that it explained the hitherto
inexplicable phenomena of nutation and the procession of the equinoxes.
When the two upon the ladies had come quite close
to us, we saw that one was a man and
the other a woman. The former had held up his
two hands palms toward us in sign of peace, and
(03:40):
I had answered him in kind, when he suddenly gave
a cry of astonishment and pleasure, and, slipping from his
enormous mount, ran forward toward Dian, throwing his arms about her.
In an instant, I was white with jealousy, but only
for an instant, since Dian quickly drew the man toward me,
telling him that I I was David her mate, and
(04:02):
this is my brother Dakhor, the strong one. David, she
said to me, it appeared that the woman was Dakhor's mate.
He had found none to his liking among the Sari
nor farther on until he had come to the land
of the Thoria, and there he had found and fought
for this very lovely Thorian maiden, whom he was bringing
(04:23):
back to his own people. When they had heard our
story and our plans, they decided to accompany us to
Sari that Dakhor and Ghek might come to an agreement
relative to an alliance, as Dakhor was quite as enthusiastic
about the proposed annihilation of the Mahars and Sagoths as
either Dan or I. After a journey which was for
(04:44):
Pellucidar quite uneventful, we came to the first of the
Sarian villages, which consists of between one and two hundred
artificial caves cut into the face of a great cliff. Here,
to our immense delight, we found both Perry and Ghek.
The old man was quite overcome at sight of me,
for he had long since given me up as dead.
(05:06):
When I introduced Dian as my wife, he didn't quite
know what to say, but he afterward remarked that with
the pick of two worlds, I could not have done better.
Ghak and Dacor reached a very amicable agreement, and it
was at a council of the head men of the
various tribes of the Sari that the eventual form of
government was tentatively agreed upon. Roughly, the various kingdoms were
(05:29):
to remain virtually independent, but there was to be one
great overlord or emperor. It was decided that I should
be the first of the dynasty of the emperors of Pellucidar.
We set about teaching the women how to make bows
and arrows and poison pouches. The young men hunted the
vipers which provided the virus, and it was they who
(05:50):
mined the iron ore and fashioned the swords. Under Perry's direction. Rapidly,
the fevers spread from one tribe to another, until representatives
from nation so far distant that the Sarians had never
even heard of them came in to take the oath
of allegiance which we required, and to learn the art
of making the new weapons and using them. We sent
(06:11):
our young men out as instructors to every nation of
the federation, and the movement had reached colossal proportions before
the Mahars discovered it. The first intimation they had was
when three of their great slave caravans were annihilated in
rapid succession. They could not comprehend that the lower orders
had suddenly developed a power which rendered them really formidable.
(06:35):
In one of the skirmishes with slave caravans, some of
our Sarians took a number of Sagoth prisoners, and among
them were two who had been members of the guards
within the building where we had been confined at Futra.
They told us that the Mahars were frantic with rage
when they discovered what had taken place in the cellars
of the buildings. The Sagoths knew that something very terrible
(06:57):
had befallen their masters, but the Maars had been most
careful to see that no inkling of the true nature
of their vital affliction reached beyond their own race. How
long it would take for the race to become extinct
it was impossible even to guess, but that this must
eventually happen seemed inevitable. The Mahars had offered fabulous rewards
(07:20):
for the capture of any one of us alive, and
at the same time had threatened to inflict the direst
punishment upon whomever should harm us. The Sagoths could not
understand these seemingly paradoxical instructions, though their purpose was quite
evident to me. The Mahars wanted the great secret, and
they knew that we alone could deliver it to them.
(07:43):
Perry's experiments in the manufacture of gunpowder and the fashioning
of rifles had not progressed as rapidly as we had hoped.
There was a whole lot about these two arts which
Perry didn't know. We were both assured that the solution
of these problems would advance the cause of civilization. Then
pellucidar thousands of years at a single stroke. Then there
(08:05):
were various other arts and sciences which we wished to introduce,
But our combined knowledge of them did not embrace the
mechanical details which alone could render them of commercial or
practical value. David said Perry, immediately after his latest failure
to produce gunpowder that would even burn. One of us
(08:25):
must return to the outer world and bring back the
information we lack. Here, we have all the labor and
materials for reproducing anything that ever has been produced. Above
what we lack is knowledge. Let us go back and
get that knowledge in the shape of books. Then this
world will indeed be at our feet. And so it
(08:46):
was decided that I should return in the Prospector, which
still lay upon the edge of the forest, at the
point where we had first penetrated to the surface of
the inner world. Dion would not listen to any arrangement
for my going which did not her, and I was
not sorry that she wished to accompany me, for I
wanted her to see my world, and I wanted my
(09:07):
world to see her. With a large force of men,
we marched to the great iron mole, which Perry soon
had hoisted into position, with its nose pointed back toward
the outer crust. We went over all the machinery carefully.
He replenished the air tanks and manufactured oil for the engine.
At last, everything was ready, and we were about to
(09:30):
set out when our pickets, a long, thin line of
which had surrounded our camp at all times, reported that
a great body of what appeared to be Sagoths and
Mahars were approaching from the direction of Phutra. Dian and
I were ready to embark, but I was anxious to
witness the first clash between two fair sized armies of
(09:50):
the opposing races of Pellucidar. I realized that this was
to mark the historic beginnings of a mighty struggle for
possession of a world. As the first emperor of Pellucidar,
I felt that it was not alone my duty, but
my right to be in the thick of that momentous struggle.
As the opposing army approached, we saw that there were
(10:12):
many Mahars with the Sagoth troops, an indication of the
vast importance which the dominant race placed upon the outcome
of this campaign, for it was not customary with them
to take active part in the sorties which their creatures
made for slaves. The only form of warfare which they
waged upon the lower orders Ghak and dhakhor were both
(10:34):
with us, having come primarily to view the prospector. I
placed Ghak with some of Hissarians on the right of
our battle line. Dhakor took the left, while I commanded
the center. Behind us. I stationed a sufficient reserve under
one of Ghak's head men. The Sagoths advanced steadily with
menacing spears, and I let them come until they were
(10:56):
with an easy bowshot before I gave the word to fire.
At the first volley of poisoned tipped arrows, the front
ranks of the guerrilla men crumpled to the ground, but
those behind charged over the prostrate forms of their comrades
in a wild, mad rush to be upon us with
their spears. A second volley stopped them for an instant,
(11:16):
and then my reserve sprang through the openings in the
firing line to engage them with sword and shield. The
clumsy spears of the Sagoths were no match for the
swords of the Sarian and Amozite, who turned the spear
thrust aside with their shields and leaped to close quarters
with their lighter, handier weapons. Ghak took his archers along
(11:37):
the enemy's flank, and while the swordsmen engaged them in front,
he poured volley after volley into their unprotected left. The
Mahars did little real fighting and were more in the
way than otherwise, though occasionally one of them would fasten
its powerful jaw upon the arm or leg of a Sarian.
The battle did not last a great while, for when
(11:59):
Dak and I led our men in upon the Sagoths
right with naked swords, they were already so demoralized that
they turned and fled before us. We pursued them for
some time, taking many prisoners and recovering nearly a hundred slaves,
among whom was Hooja, the sly One. He told me
that he had been captured while on his way to
(12:21):
his own land, but that his life had been spared
in hope that through him the Mahars would learn the
whereabouts of their great secret. Ghak and I were inclined
to think that the sly One had been guiding this
expedition to the land of Sari, where he had thought
that the book might be found in Perry's possession. But
we had no proof of this, and so we took
(12:42):
him in and treated him as one of us, Although
none liked him. And how he rewarded my generosity. You
will presently learn there were a number of Mahars among
our prisoners, and so fearful were our own people of them,
that they would not approach them unless completely covered from
the sight of the reptiles by a piece of skin.
(13:03):
Even Dian shared the popular superstition regarding the evil effects
of exposure to the eyes of angry Mahars. And though
I laughed at her fears, I was willing enough to
humor them if it would relieve her apprehension in any degree.
And so she sat apart from the prospector, near which
the Mahars had been chained, while Perry and I again
(13:24):
inspected every portion of the mechanism. At last, I took
my place in the driving seat and called to one
of the men without to fetch Dian. It happened that
Hooja stood quite close to the doorway of the prospector,
so that it was he who, without my knowledge, went
to bring her. But how he succeeded in accomplishing the
(13:45):
fiendish thing he did, I cannot guess, unless there were
others in the plot to aid him, Nor can I
believe that since all my people were loyal to me
and would have made short work of Hooja had he
suggested the heartly scheme, even had he had time to
acquaint another with it. It was all done so quickly
(14:07):
that I may only believe that it was the result
of sudden impulse, aided by a number of to Hooja
fortuitous circumstances occurring at precisely the right moment. All I
know is that it was Hooja who brought Dian to
the prospector, still wrapped from head to toe in the
skin of an enormous cave lion which covered her since
(14:28):
the mahar prisoners had been brought into camp. He deposited
his burden in the seat beside me. I was all
ready to get under way. The good byes had been said,
Perry had grasped my hand in the last long farewell.
I closed and barred the outer and inner doors, took
my seat again at the driving mechanism, and pulled the
(14:49):
starting lever. As before, on that far gone night that
had witnessed our first trial of the Iron Monster, there
was a frightful roaring beneath us. Giant frame trembled and vibrated.
There was a rush of sound, as the loose earth
passed up through the hollow space between the inner and
outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. Once more
(15:12):
the thing was off, but on the instant of departure,
I was nearly thrown from my seat by the sudden
lurching of the prospector. At first I did not realize
what had happened, but presently it dawned upon me that
just before entering the crust, the towering body had fallen
through its supporting scaffolding, and that instead of entering the
(15:32):
ground vertically, we were plunging into it at a different angle,
where it would bring us out upon the upper crust.
I could not even conjecture, and then I turned to
note the effect of this strange experience upon Dion. She
still sat shrouded in the great skin. Come come, I cried, laughing,
(15:52):
Come out of your shell. No mahar eyes can reach
you here. I leaned over and snatched the lion's skin
from her, and then I shrank back upon my seat
in utter horror. The thing beneath the skin was not Dian.
It was a hideous mahar. Instantly I realized the trick
that Hooja had played upon me. And the purpose of
(16:14):
it rid of me forever, as he doubtless thought Dion
would be at his mercy. Frantically I tore the steering
wheel in an effort to turn the Prospector back toward Pellucidar.
But as on that other occasion, I could not budge
the thing a hair. It is needless to recount the
horrors or the monotony of that journey. It varied but
(16:37):
little from the former one which had brought us from
the outer to the inner world. Because of the angle
at which we had entered the ground, the trip required
nearly a day longer, and brought me out here upon
the sand of the Sahara instead of in the United States,
as I had hoped for months, I had been waiting
here for a white man to come. I dare not
(16:58):
leave the Prospector for fear I should never be able
to find it again. The shifting sands of the desert
would soon cover it, and then my only hope of
returning to my Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone forever.
That I ever shall see her again seems but remotely possible.
For how may I know upon what part of Pellucidar
(17:18):
My return journey may terminate. And how without a north
or south, or an east or a west, may I
hope ever to find my way across that vast world
to the tiny spot where my lost love lies grieving
for me. That is the story, as David Innes told
it to me in the goat's skin tent upon the
rim of the great Sahara Desert. The next day he
(17:41):
took me out to see the prospector. It was precisely
as he had described it. So huge was it that
it could have been brought to this inaccessible part of
the world by no means of transportation that existed there.
It could only have come in the way that David
Inness said. It came up through the crust of the
earth from the inner world of Pellucidar. I spent a
(18:04):
week with him, and then abandoned my lion hunt, returned
directly to the coast, and hurried to London, where I
purchased a great quantity of stuff which he wished to
take back to Pellucidar with him. There were books, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, cameras, chemicals, telephones,
telegraph instruments, wire tool and more. Books. Books upon every
(18:26):
subject under the sun, He said he wanted a library
with which he could reproduce the wonders of the twentieth
century in the Stone Age, and if quantity counts for anything,
I got it for him. I took the things back
to Algeria myself and accompanied them to the end of
the railroad. But from here I was recalled to America
(18:48):
upon important business. However, I was able to employ a
very trustworthy man to take charge of the caravan, the
same guide, in fact, who had accompanied me on the
previous trip into the Sahara. And after writing a long
letter to Innis, in which I gave him my American address,
I saw the expedition head south. Among the other things
(19:09):
which I sent to Innis was over five hundred miles
of double insulated wire of a very fine gage. I
had it packed on a special reel at his suggestion,
as it was his idea that he could fasten one
end here before he left, and by paying it out
through the end of the prospector lay a telegraph line
between the outer and inner worlds. In my letter I
(19:32):
told him to be sure to mark the terminus of
the line very plainly with a high cairn, in case
I was not able to reach him before he set out,
so that I might easily find and communicate with him,
should he be so fortunate as to reach Pellucidar. I
received several letters from him after I returned to America.
In fact, he took advantage of every northward passing caravan
(19:54):
to drop me word of some sort. His last letter
was written the day before he intended to depart. Here.
It is, my dear friend, Tomorrow I shall set out
in quest of Pellucidar and Dion. That is, if the
Arabs don't get me. They have been very nasty of late.
I don't know the cause, but on two occasions they
(20:16):
have threatened my life. One more friendly than the rest
told me to day that they intended attacking me tonight.
It would be unfortunate should anything of that sort happen,
now that I am so nearly ready to depart. However,
maybe I will be as well off. For the nearer
the hour approaches, the slenderer my chances for success appear.
(20:40):
Here is the friendly Arab who's to take this letter
north for me. So good bye, and God bless you
for your kindness to me. The Arab tells me to hurry,
for he sees a cloud of sand to the south.
He thinks it is the party coming to murder me,
and he doesn't want to be found with me, So
good bye again, Yours David Innis. A year later found
(21:03):
me at the end of the railroad, once more headed
for the spot where I had left Innis. My first
disappointment was when I discovered that my old guide had
died within a few weeks of my return. Nor could
I find any member of my former party who could
lead me to the same spot. For months, I searched
that scorching land, interviewing countless desert cheeks, in the hope
(21:26):
that at last I might find one who had heard
of Innis and his wonderful iron mole. Constantly my eyes
scanned the blinding waste of sand for the ricky cairn
beneath which I was to find the wires leading to
pellucidar But always I was unsuccessful. And always do these
awful questions harass me when I think of David Innes
(21:47):
and his strange adventures. Did the Arabs murder him after all,
just on the eve of his departure, or did he
again turn the nose of his iron monster toward the
inner world? Did he reach it, or lies he somewhere
buried in the heart of the great crust. And if
he did come again to Pellucidar, was it to break
(22:08):
through into the bottom of one of her great island seas,
or among some savage race far far from the land
of his heart's desire? Does the answer lie somewhere upon
the bosom of the broad Sahara, at the end of
two tiny wires hidden beneath the lost cairn. I wonder
(22:29):
the end of at the Earth's Core By Edgar Riceborough's
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