Pellucidar | Page 8

her own Pel-lucidar.
What had she thought of the outer world's tiny sun?
What had been the effect upon her of the moon and myriad stars of the clear African
nights?

How had she explained them?
With what sensations of awe must she first have watched the sun moving slowly across
the heavens to disappear at last beneath the western horizon, leaving in his wake that
which the Mahar had never before witnessed--the darkness of night? For upon Pellucidar
there is no night. The stationary sun hangs forever in the center of the Pellucidarian
sky--directly overhead.
Then, too, she must have been impressed by the wondrous mechanism of the prospector
which had bored its way from world to world and back again. And that it had been driven
by a rational being must also have occurred to her.
Too, she bad seen me conversing with other men upon the earth's surface. She had seen
the arrival of the caravan of books and arms, and ammunition, and the balance of the
heterogeneous collection which I had crammed into the cabin of the iron mole for
trans-portation to Pellucidar.
She had seen all these evidences of a civilization and brain-power transcending in
scientific achieve-ment anything that her race had produced; nor once had she seen a
creature of her own kind.
There could have been but a single deduction in the mind of the Mahar--there were other
worlds than Pellucidar, and the gilak was a rational being.
Now the creature at my side was creeping slowly toward the near-by sea. At my hip hung
a long-barreled six-shooter--somehow I had been unable to find the same sensation of
security in the newfangled auto-matics that had been perfected since my first departure
from the outer world--and in my hand was a heavy express rifle.
I could have shot the Mahar with ease, for I knew intuitively that she was escaping--but I
did not.
I felt that if she could return to her own kind with the story of her adventures, the position
of the human race within Pellucidar would be advanced immensely at a single stride, for
at once man would take his proper place in the considerations of the reptilia.
At the edge of the sea the creature paused and looked back at me. Then she slid sinuously
into the surf.
For several minutes I saw no more of her as she luxuriated in the cool depths.
Then a hundred yards from shore she rose and there for another short while she floated
upon the surface.
Finally she spread her giant wings, flapped them vigorously a score of times and rose
above the blue sea. A single time she circled far aloft--and then straight as an arrow she
sped away.

I watched her until the distant haze enveloped her and she had disappeared. I was alone.
My first concern was to discover where within Pel-lucidar I might be--and in what
direction lay the land of the Sarians where Ghak the Hairy One ruled.
But how was I to guess in which direction lay Sari?
And if I set out to search--what then?
Could I find my way back to the prospector with its priceless freight of books, firearms,
ammunition, scien-tific instruments, and still more books--its great library of reference
works upon every conceivable branch of ap-plied sciences?
And if I could not, of what value was all this vast storehouse of potential civilization and
progress to be to the world of my adoption?
Upon the other hand, if I remained here alone with it, what could I accomplish
single-handed?
Nothing.
But where there was no east, no west, no north, no south, no stars, no moon, and only a
stationary mid-day sun, how was I to find my way back to this spot should ever I get out
of sight of it?
I didn't know.
For a long time I stood buried in deep thought, when it occurred to me to try out one of
the compasses I had brought and ascertain if it remained steadily fixed upon an unvarying
pole. I reentered the prospector and fetched a compass without.
Moving a considerable distance from the prospector that the needle might not be
influenced by its great bulk of iron and steel I turned the delicate instrument about in
every direction.
Always and steadily the needle remained rigidly fixed upon a point straight out to sea,
apparently pointing toward a large island some ten or twenty miles distant. This then
should be north.
I drew my note-book from my pocket and made a careful topographical sketch of the
locality within the range of my vision. Due north lay the island, far out upon the
shimmering sea.
The spot I had chosen for my observations was the top of a large, flat boulder which rose
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