Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pellucidar Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Arabs, of whom I wrote you at the end of my last letter (Innes began), and whom I thoughtto be enemies intent only upon murdering me, proved to be exceedingly friendly-they weresearching for the very band of marauders that had threatened my existence. The hugerhamphorhynchus-like reptile that I had brought back with me from the inner world-the uglyMahar that Hooja the Sly One had substituted for my dear Dian at the moment of my departure-filled them with wonder and with awe. Nor less so did the mighty subterranean prospector which had carried me to Pellucidar and backagain, and which lay out in the desert about two miles from my camp. With their help I managed to get the unwieldy tons of its great bulk into a vertical position-thenose deep in a hole we had dug in the sand and the rest of it supported by the trunks of date-palmscut for the purpose. It was a mighty engineering job with only wild Arabs and their wilder mounts to do the work ofan electric crane-but finally it was completed, and I was ready for departure. For some time I hesitated to take the Mahar back with me. She had been docile and quiet eversince she had discovered herself virtually a prisoner aboard the "iron mole." It had been, of course, impossible for me to communicate with her since she had no auditory organs and I no knowledge ofher fourth-dimension, sixth-sense method of communication. Naturally I am kind-hearted, and so I found it beyond me to leave even this hateful andrepulsive thing alone in a strange and hostile world. The result was that when I entered the ironmole I took her with me. That she knew that we were about to return to Pellucidar was evident, for immediately hermanner changed from that of habitual gloom that had pervaded her, to an almost human expressionof contentment and delight. Our trip through the earth's crust was but a repetition of my two former journeys between theinner and the outer worlds. This time, however, I imagine that we must have maintained a morenearly perpendicular course, for we accomplished the journey in a few minutes' less time than uponthe occasion of my first journey through the five-hundred-mile crust. Just a trifle less than seventytwo hours after our departure into the sands of the Sahara, we broke through the surface ofPellucidar