Pellucidar Read online

  Produced by Judith Boss

  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 opportunity to do anybig-game hunting; for at last I had my plans almost perfected for areturn to my old stamping-grounds in northern Africa, where in otherdays 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. Noschoolboy counting the lagging hours that must pass before thebeginning of "long vacation" released him to the delirious joys of thesummer camp could have been filled with greater impatience or keeneranticipation.

  And then came a letter that started me for Africa twelve days ahead ofmy schedule.

  Often am I in receipt of letters from strangers who have foundsomething in a story of mine to commend or to condemn. My interest inthis department of my correspondence is ever fresh. I opened thisparticular letter with all the zest of pleasurable anticipation withwhich I had opened so many others. The post-mark (Algiers) had arousedmy interest and curiosity, especially at this time, since it wasAlgiers that was presently to witness the termination of my coming seavoyage in search of sport and adventure.

  Before the reading of that letter was completed lions and lion-huntinghad fled my thoughts, and I was in a state of excitement bordering uponfrenzy.

  It--well, read it yourself, and see if you, too, do not find food forfrantic 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 remarkablecoincidences in modern literature. But let me start at the beginning:

  I am, by profession, a wanderer upon the face of the earth. I have notrade--nor any other occupation.

  My father bequeathed me a competency; some remoter ancestors lust toroam. I have combined the two and invested them carefully and withoutextravagance.

  I became interested in your story, At the Earth's Core, not so muchbecause of the probability of the tale as of a great and abiding wonderthat people should be paid real money for writing such impossibletrash. You will pardon my candor, but it is necessary that youunderstand my mental attitude toward this particular story--that youmay credit that which follows.

  Shortly thereafter I started for the Sahara in search of a rather rarespecies of antelope that is to be found only occasionally within alimited area at a certain season of the year. My chase led me far fromthe 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 clusterof date-palms that surround an ancient well in the midst of the arid,shifting sands, I suddenly became conscious of a strange sound comingapparently from the earth beneath my head.

  It was an intermittent ticking!

  No reptile or insect with which I am familiar reproduces any suchnotes. I lay for an hour--listening intently.

  At last my curiosity got the better of me. I arose, lighted my lampand commenced to investigate.

  My bedding lay upon a rug stretched directly upon the warm sand. Thenoise appeared to be coming from beneath the rug. I raised it, butfound nothing--yet, at intervals, the sound continued.

  I dug into the sand with the point of my hunting-knife. A few inchesbelow the surface of the sand I encountered a solid substance that hadthe feel of wood beneath the sharp steel.

  Excavating about it, I unearthed a small wooden box. From thisreceptacle 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 discovered that itseemed to be held fast by means of a very small insulated cable runningfarther into the sand beneath it.

  My first impulse was to drag the thing loose by main strength; butfortunately I thought better of this and fell to examining the box. Isoon saw that it was covered by a hinged lid, which was held closed bya simple screwhook and eye.

  It took but a moment to loosen this and raise the cover, when, to myutter astonishment, I discovered an ordinary telegraph instrumentclicking 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 reallythere didn't seem much likelihood that this was the correctexplanation, when one took into account the loneliness and remotenessof the spot.

  As I sat gazing at my remarkable find, which was ticking and clickingaway there in the silence of the desert night, trying to convey somemessage which I was unable to interpret, my eyes fell upon a bit ofpaper lying in the bottom of the box beside the instrument. I pickedit 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 receivinginstrument, I moved the sending-key up and down a few times. Instantlythe receiving mechanism commenced to work frantically.

  I tried to recall something of the Morse Code, with which I had playedas a little boy--but time had obliterated it from my memory. I becamealmost frantic as I let my imagination run riot among the possibilitiesfor which this clicking instrument might stand.

  Some poor devil at the unknown other end might be in dire need ofsuccor. The very franticness of the instrument's wild clashingbetokened something of the kind.

  And there sat I, powerless to interpret, and so powerless to help!

  It was then that the inspiration came to me. In a flash there leapedto my mind the closing paragraphs of the story I had read in the clubat Algiers:

  Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara, atthe ends of two tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost cairn?

  The idea seemed preposterous. Experience and intelligence combined toassure me that there could be no slightest grain of truth orpossibility 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 atravesty 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 wasan inner world and that these wires led downward through the earth'scrust 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 thatthe instrument had been discovered. In the morning, after carefullyreturning the box to its hole and covering it over with sand, I calledmy 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 ammaking 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--nothing more.

  BUT--

  The incident of the finding of that buried telegraph instrument uponthe lonely Sahara is little short of uncanny, in view of your story ofthe adventures of David Innes.
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br />   I have called it one of the most remarkable coincidences in modernfiction. I called it literature before, but--again pardon mycandor--your story is not.

  And now--why am I writing you?

  Heaven knows, unless it is that the persistent clicking of thatunfathomable enigma out there in the vast silences of the Sahara has sowrought upon my nerves that reason refuses longer to function sanely.

  I cannot hear it now, yet I know that far away to the south, all alonebeneath 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 foryour story, At the Earth's Core.

  Very respectfully yours,

  COGDON NESTOR, ---- and ---- Club, Algiers. June 1st, --.