Pellucidar Read online

  CHAPTER II

  TRAVELING WITH TERROR

  We made camp there beside the peaceful river. There Perry told me allthat had befallen him since I had departed for the outer crust.

  It seemed that Hooja had made it appear that I had intentionally leftDian behind, and that I did not purpose ever returning to Pellucidar.He told them that I was of another world and that I had tired of thisand of its inhabitants.

  To Dian he had explained that I had a mate in the world to which I wasreturning; that I had never intended taking Dian the Beautiful backwith me; and that she had seen the last of me.

  Shortly afterward Dian had disappeared from the camp, nor had Perryseen or heard aught of her since.

  He had no conception of the time that had elapsed since I had departed,but guessed that many years had dragged their slow way into the past.

  Hooja, too, had disappeared very soon after Dian had left. TheSarians, under Ghak the Hairy One, and the Amozites under Dacor theStrong One, Dian's brother, had fallen out over my supposed defection,for Ghak would not believe that I had thus treacherously deceived anddeserted them.

  The result had been that these two powerful tribes had fallen upon oneanother with the new weapons that Perry and I had taught them to makeand to use. Other tribes of the new federation took sides with theoriginal disputants or set up petty revolutions of their own.

  The result was the total demolition of the work we had so well started.

  Taking advantage of the tribal war, the Mahars had gathered theirSagoths in force and fallen upon one tribe after another in rapidsuccession, wreaking awful havoc among them and reducing them for themost part to as pitiable a state of terror as that from which we hadraised them.

  Alone of all the once-mighty federation the Sarians and the Amoziteswith a few other tribes continued to maintain their defiance of theMahars; but these tribes were still divided among themselves, nor hadit seemed at all probable to Perry when he had last been among themthat any attempt at re-amalgamation would be made.

  "And thus, your majesty," he concluded, "has faded back into theoblivion of the Stone Age our wondrous dream and with it has gone theFirst Empire of Pellucidar."

  We both had to smile at the use of my royal title, yet I was indeedstill "Emperor of Pellucidar," and some day I meant to rebuild what thevile act of the treacherous Hooja had torn down.

  But first I would find my empress. To me she was worth forty empires.

  "Have you no clue as to the whereabouts of Dian?" I asked.

  "None whatever," replied Perry. "It was in search of her that I cameto the pretty pass in which you discovered me, and from which, David,you saved me.

  "I knew perfectly well that you had not intentionally deserted eitherDian or Pellucidar. I guessed that in some way Hooja the Sly One wasat the bottom of the matter, and I determined to go to Amoz, where Iguessed that Dian might come to the protection of her brother, and domy utmost to convince her, and through her Dacor the Strong One, thatwe had all been victims of a treacherous plot to which you were noparty.

  "I came to Amoz after a most trying and terrible journey, only to findthat Dian was not among her brother's people and that they knew naughtof her whereabouts.

  "Dacor, I am sure, wanted to be fair and just, but so great were hisgrief and anger over the disappearance of his sister that he could notlisten to reason, but kept repeating time and again that only yourreturn to Pellucidar could prove the honesty of your intentions.

  "Then came a stranger from another tribe, sent I am sure at theinstigation of Hooja. He so turned the Amozites against me that I wasforced to flee their country to escape assassination.

  "In attempting to return to Sari I became lost, and then the Sagothsdiscovered me. For a long time I eluded them, hiding in caves andwading in rivers to throw them off my trail.

  "I lived on nuts and fruits and the edible roots that chance threw inmy way.

  "I traveled on and on, in what directions I could not even guess; andat last I could elude them no longer and the end came as I had longforeseen that it would come, except that I had not foreseen that youwould be there to save me."

  We rested in our camp until Perry had regained sufficient strength totravel again. We planned much, rebuilding all our shatteredair-castles; but above all we planned most to find Dian.

  I could not believe that she was dead, yet where she might be in thissavage world, and under what frightful conditions she might be living,I could not guess.

  When Perry was rested we returned to the prospector, where he fittedhimself out fully like a civilized human being--under-clothing, socks,shoes, khaki jacket and breeches and good, substantial puttees.

  When I had come upon him he was clothed in rough sadak sandals, agee-string and a tunic fashioned from the shaggy hide of a thag. Nowhe wore real clothing again for the first time since the ape-folk hadstripped us of our apparel that long-gone day that had witnessed ouradvent within Pellucidar.

  With a bandoleer of cartridges across his shoulder, two six-shooters athis hips, and a rifle in his hand he was a much rejuvenated Perry.

  Indeed he was quite a different person altogether from the rather shakyold man who had entered the prospector with me ten or eleven yearsbefore, for the trial trip that had plunged us into such wondrousadventures and into such a strange and hitherto undreamed-of-world.

  Now he was straight and active. His muscles, almost atrophied fromdisuse in his former life, had filled out.

  He was still an old man of course, but instead of appearing ten yearsolder than he really was, as he had when we left the outer world, henow appeared about ten years younger. The wild, free life ofPellucidar had worked wonders for him.

  Well, it must need have done so or killed him, for a man of Perry'sformer physical condition could not long have survived the dangers andrigors of the primitive life of the inner world.

  Perry had been greatly interested in my map and in the "royalobservatory" at Greenwich. By use of the pedometers we had retracedour way to the prospector with ease and accuracy.

  Now that we were ready to set out again we decided to follow adifferent route on the chance that it might lead us into more familiarterritory.

  I shall not weary you with a repetition of the countless adventures ofour long search. Encounters with wild beasts of gigantic size were ofalmost daily occurrence; but with our deadly express rifles we rancomparatively little risk when one recalls that previously we had bothtraversed this world of frightful dangers inadequately armed withcrude, primitive weapons and all but naked.

  We ate and slept many times--so many that we lost count--and so I donot know how long we roamed, though our map shows the distances anddirections quite accurately. We must have covered a great manythousand square miles of territory, and yet we had seen nothing in theway of a familiar landmark, when from the heights of a mountain-rangewe were crossing I descried far in the distance great masses ofbillowing clouds.

  Now clouds are practically unknown in the skies of Pellucidar. Themoment that my eyes rested upon them my heart leaped. I seized Perry'sarm and, pointing toward the horizonless distance, shouted:

  "The Mountains of the Clouds!"

  "They lie close to Phutra, and the country of our worst enemies, theMahars," Perry remonstrated.

  "I know it," I replied, "but they give us a starting-point from whichto prosecute our search intelligently. They are at least a familiarlandmark.

  "They tell us that we are upon the right trail and not wandering far inthe wrong direction.

  "Furthermore, close to the Mountains of the Clouds dwells a goodfriend, Ja the Mezop. You did not know him, but you know all that hedid for me and all that he will gladly do to aid me.

  "At least he can direct us upon the right direction toward Sari."

  "The Mountains of the Clouds constitute a mighty range," replied Perry."They must cover an enormous territory. How are you to find yourfriend in all the great country that is visible from their ruggedflanks?"
<
br />   "Easily," I answered him, "for Ja gave me minute directions. I recallalmost his exact words:

  "'You need merely come to the foot of the highest peak of the Mountainsof the Clouds. There you will find a river that flows into the LuralAz.

  "'Directly opposite the mouth of the river you will see three largeislands far out--so far that they are barely discernible. The one tothe extreme left as you face them from the mouth of the river isAnoroc, where I rule the tribe of Anoroc.'"

  And so we hastened onward toward the great cloud-mass that was to beour guide for several weary marches. At last we came close to thetowering crags, Alp-like in their grandeur.

  Rising nobly among its noble fellows, one stupendous peak reared itsgiant head thousands of feet above the others. It was he whom wesought; but at its foot no river wound down toward any sea.

  "It must rise from the opposite side," suggested Perry, casting arueful glance at the forbidding heights that barred our furtherprogress. "We cannot endure the arctic cold of those high flungpasses, and to traverse the endless miles about this interminable rangemight require a year or more. The land we seek must lie upon theopposite side of the mountains."

  "Then we must cross them," I insisted.

  Perry shrugged.

  "We can't do it, David," he repeated. "We are dressed for the tropics.We should freeze to death among the snows and glaciers long before wehad discovered a pass to the opposite side."

  "We must cross them," I reiterated. "We will cross them."

  I had a plan, and that plan we carried out. It took some time.

  First we made a permanent camp part way up the slopes where there wasgood water. Then we set out in search of the great, shaggy cave bearof the higher altitudes.

  He is a mighty animal--a terrible animal. He is but little larger thanhis cousin of the lesser, lower hills; but he makes up for it in theawfulness of his ferocity and in the length and thickness of his shaggycoat. It was his coat that we were after.

  We came upon him quite unexpectedly. I was trudging in advance along arocky trail worn smooth by the padded feet of countless ages of wildbeasts. At a shoulder of the mountain around which the path ran Icame face to face with the Titan.

  I was going up for a fur coat. He was coming down for breakfast. Eachrealized that here was the very thing he sought.

  With a horrid roar the beast charged me.

  At my right the cliff rose straight upward for thousands of feet.

  At my left it dropped into a dim, abysmal canyon.

  In front of me was the bear.

  Behind me was Perry.

  I shouted to him in warning, and then I raised my rifle and fired intothe broad breast of the creature. There was no time to take aim; thething was too close upon me.

  But that my bullet took effect was evident from the howl of rage andpain that broke from the frothing jowls. It didn't stop him, though.

  I fired again, and then he was upon me. Down I went beneath his ton ofmaddened, clawing flesh and bone and sinew.

  I thought my time had come. I remember feeling sorry for poor oldPerry, left all alone in this inhospitable, savage world.

  And then of a sudden I realized that the bear was gone and that I wasquite unharmed. I leaped to my feet, my rifle still clutched in myhand, and looked about for my antagonist.

  I thought that I should find him farther down the trail, probablyfinishing Perry, and so I leaped in the direction I supposed him to be,to find Perry perched upon a projecting rock several feet above thetrail. My cry of warning had given him time to reach this point ofsafety.

  There he squatted, his eyes wide and his mouth ajar, the picture ofabject terror and consternation.

  "Where is he?" he cried when he saw me. "Where is he?"

  "Didn't he come this way?" I asked.

  "Nothing came this way," replied the old man. "But I heard hisroars--he must have been as large as an elephant."

  "He was," I admitted; "but where in the world do you suppose hedisappeared to?"

  Then came a possible explanation to my mind. I returned to the pointat which the bear had hurled me down and peered over the edge of thecliff into the abyss below.

  Far, far down I saw a small brown blotch near the bottom of the canon.It was the bear.

  My second shot must have killed him, and so his dead body, afterhurling me to the path, had toppled over into the abyss. I shivered atthe thought of how close I, too, must have been to going over with him.

  It took us a long time to reach the carcass, and arduous labor toremove the great pelt. But at last the thing was accomplished, and wereturned to camp dragging the heavy trophy behind us.

  Here we devoted another considerable period to scraping and curing it.When this was done to our satisfaction we made heavy boots, trousers,and coats of the shaggy skin, turning the fur in.

  From the scraps we fashioned caps that came down around our ears, withflaps that fell about our shoulders and breasts. We were now fairlywell equipped for our search for a pass to the opposite side of theMountains of the Clouds.

  Our first step now was to move our camp upward to the very edge of theperpetual snows which cap this lofty range. Here we built a snug,secure little hut, which we provisioned and stored with fuel for itsdiminutive fireplace.

  With our hut as a base we sallied forth in search of a pass across therange.

  Our every move was carefully noted upon our maps which we now kept induplicate. By this means we were saved tedious and unnecessaryretracing of ways already explored.

  Systematically we worked upward in both directions from our base, andwhen we had at last discovered what seemed might prove a feasible passwe moved our belongings to a new hut farther up.

  It was hard work--cold, bitter, cruel work. Not a step did we take inadvance but the grim reaper strode silently in our tracks.

  There were the great cave bears in the timber, and gaunt, leanwolves--huge creatures twice the size of our Canadian timber-wolves.Farther up we were assailed by enormous white bears--hungry, devilishfellows, who came roaring across the rough glacier tops at the firstglimpse of us, or stalked us stealthily by scent when they had not yetseen us.

  It is one of the peculiarities of life within Pellucidar that man ismore often the hunted than the hunter. Myriad are the huge-belliedcarnivora of this primitive world. Never, from birth to death, arethose great bellies sufficiently filled, so always are their mightyowners prowling about in search of meat.

  Terribly armed for battle as they are, man presents to them in hisprimal state an easy prey, slow of foot, puny of strength, ill-equippedby nature with natural weapons of defense.

  The bears looked upon us as easy meat. Only our heavy rifles saved usfrom prompt extinction. Poor Perry never was a raging lion at heart,and I am convinced that the terrors of that awful period must havecaused him poignant mental anguish.

  When we were abroad pushing our trail farther and farther toward thedistant break which, we assumed, marked a feasible way across therange, we never knew at what second some great engine of clawed andfanged destruction might rush upon us from behind, or lie in wait forus beyond an ice-hummock or a jutting shoulder of the craggy steeps.

  The roar of our rifles was constantly shattering the world-old silenceof stupendous canons upon which the eye of man had never before gazed.And when in the comparative safety of our hut we lay down to sleep thegreat beasts roared and fought without the walls, clawed and batteredat the door, or rushed their colossal frames headlong against the hut'ssides until it rocked and trembled to the impact.

  Yes, it was a gay life.

  Perry had got to taking stock of our ammunition each time we returnedto the hut. It became something of an obsession with him.

  He'd count our cartridges one by one and then try to figure how long itwould be before the last was expended and we must either remain in thehut until we starved to death or venture forth, empty, to fill thebelly of some hungry bear.

  I must admit that
I, too, felt worried, for our progress was indeedsnail-like, and our ammunition could not last forever. In discussingthe problem, finally we came to the decision to burn our bridges behindus and make one last supreme effort to cross the divide.

  It would mean that we must go without sleep for a long period, and withthe further chance that when the time came that sleep could no longerbe denied we might still be high in the frozen regions of perpetualsnow and ice, where sleep would mean certain death, exposed as we wouldbe to the attacks of wild beasts and without shelter from the hideouscold.

  But we decided that we must take these chances and so at last we setforth from our hut for the last time, carrying such necessities as wefelt we could least afford to do without. The bears seemed unusuallytroublesome and determined that time, and as we clambered slowly upwardbeyond the highest point to which we had previously attained, the coldbecame infinitely more intense.

  Presently, with two great bears dogging our footsteps we entered adense fog.

  We had reached the heights that are so often cloud-wrapped for longperiods. We could see nothing a few paces beyond our noses.

  We dared not turn back into the teeth of the bears which we could heargrunting behind us. To meet them in this bewildering fog would havebeen to court instant death.

  Perry was almost overcome by the hopelessness of our situation. Heflopped down on his knees and began to pray.

  It was the first time I had heard him at his old habit since my returnto Pellucidar, and I had thought that he had given up his littleidiosyncrasy; but he hadn't. Far from it.

  I let him pray for a short time undisturbed, and then as I was about tosuggest that we had better be pushing along one of the bears in ourrear let out a roar that made the earth fairly tremble beneath our feet.

  It brought Perry to his feet as if he had been stung by a wasp, andsent him racing ahead through the blinding fog at a gait that I knewmust soon end in disaster were it not checked.

  Crevasses in the glacier-ice were far too frequent to permit ofreckless speed even in a clear atmosphere, and then there were hideousprecipices along the edges of which our way often led us. I shiveredas I thought of the poor old fellow's peril.

  At the top of my lungs I called to him to stop, but he did not answerme. And then I hurried on in the direction he had gone, faster by farthan safety dictated.

  For a while I thought I heard him ahead of me, but at last, though Ipaused often to listen and to call to him, I heard nothing more, noteven the grunting of the bears that had been behind us. All wasdeathly silence--the silence of the tomb. About me lay the thick,impenetrable fog.

  I was alone. Perry was gone--gone forever, I had not the slightestdoubt.

  Somewhere near by lay the mouth of a treacherous fissure, and far downat its icy bottom lay all that was mortal of my old friend, AbnerPerry. There would his body be preserved in its icy sepulcher forcountless ages, until on some far distant day the slow-moving river ofice had wound its snail-like way down to the warmer level, there todisgorge its grisly evidence of grim tragedy, and what in that farfuture age, might mean baffling mystery.