Dian The Beautiful

: At The Earth's Core

WHEN OUR GUARDS AROUSED US FROM SLEEP WE were much refreshed. They

gave us food. Strips of dried meat it was, but it put new life and

strength into us, so that now we too marched with high-held heads, and

took noble strides. At least I did, for I was young and proud; but

poor Perry hated walking. On earth I had often seen him call a cab to

travel a square--he was paying for it now, and his old legs wobbled so

that
put my arm about him and half carried him through the balance of

those frightful marches.



The country began to change at last, and we wound up out of the level

plain through mighty mountains of virgin granite. The tropical verdure

of the lowlands was replaced by hardier vegetation, but even here the

effects of constant heat and light were apparent in the immensity of

the trees and the profusion of foliage and blooms. Crystal streams

roared through their rocky channels, fed by the perpetual snows which

we could see far above us. Above the snowcapped heights hung masses of

heavy clouds. It was these, Perry explained, which evidently served

the double purpose of replenishing the melting snows and protecting

them from the direct rays of the sun.



By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in

which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the

rather charming tongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead of me in the

chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain linked us together

in a forced companionship which I, at least, soon rejoiced in. For I

found her a willing teacher, and from her I learned the language of her

tribe, and much of the life and customs of the inner world--at least

that part of it with which she was familiar.



She told me that she was called Dian the Beautiful, and that she

belonged to the tribe of Amoz, which dwells in the cliffs above the

Darel Az, or shallow sea.



"How came you here?" I asked her.



"I was running away from Jubal the Ugly One," she answered, as though

that was explanation quite sufficient.



"Who is Jubal the Ugly One?" I asked. "And why did you run away from

him?"



She looked at me in surprise.



"Why DOES a woman run away from a man?" she answered my question with

another.



"They do not, where I come from," I replied. "Sometimes they run after

them."



But she could not understand. Nor could I get her to grasp the fact

that I was of another world. She was quite as positive that creation

was originated solely to produce her own kind and the world she lived

in as are many of the outer world.



"But Jubal," I insisted. "Tell me about him, and why you ran away to

be chained by the neck and scourged across the face of a world."



"Jubal the Ugly One placed his trophy before my father's house. It was

the head of a mighty tandor. It remained there and no greater trophy

was placed beside it. So I knew that Jubal the Ugly One would come and

take me as his mate. None other so powerful wished me, or they would

have slain a mightier beast and thus have won me from Jubal. My father

is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but a sadok tossed him, and never

again had he the full use of his right arm. My brother, Dacor the

Strong One, had gone to the land of Sari to steal a mate for himself.

Thus there was none, father, brother, or lover, to save me from Jubal

the Ugly One, and I ran away and hid among the hills that skirt the

land of Amoz. And there these Sagoths found me and made me captive."



"What will they do with you?" I asked. "Where are they taking us?"



Again she looked her incredulity.



"I can almost believe that you are of another world," she said, "for

otherwise such ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really mean that

you do not know that the Sagoths are the creatures of the Mahars--the

mighty Mahars who think they own Pellucidar and all that walks or grows

upon its surface, or creeps or burrows beneath, or swims within its

lakes and oceans, or flies through its air? Next you will be telling

me that you never before heard of the Mahars!"



I was loath to do it, and further incur her scorn; but there was no

alternative if I were to absorb knowledge, so I made a clean breast of

my pitiful ignorance as to the mighty Mahars. She was shocked. But

she did her very best to enlighten me, though much that she said was as

Greek would have been to her. She described the Mahars largely by

comparisons. In this way they were like unto thipdars, in that to the

hairless lidi.



About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had

wings, and webbed feet; lived in cities built beneath the ground; could

swim under water for great distances, and were very, very wise. The

Sagoths were their weapons of offense and defense, and the races like

herself were their hands and feet--they were the slaves and servants

who did all the manual labor. The Mahars were the heads--the

brains--of the inner world. I longed to see this wondrous race of

supermen.



Perry learned the language with me. When we halted, as we occasionally

did, though sometimes the halts seemed ages apart, he would join in the

conversation, as would Ghak the Hairy One, he who was chained just

ahead of Dian the Beautiful. Ahead of Ghak was Hooja the Sly One. He

too entered the conversation occasionally. Most of his remarks were

directed toward Dian the Beautiful. It didn't take half an eye to see

that he had developed a bad case; but the girl appeared totally

oblivious to his thinly veiled advances. Did I say thinly veiled?

There is a race of men in New Zealand, or Australia, I have forgotten

which, who indicate their preference for the lady of their affections

by banging her over the head with a bludgeon. By comparison with this

method Hooja's lovemaking might be called thinly veiled. At first it

caused me to blush violently although I have seen several Old Years out

at Rectors, and in other less fashionable places off Broadway, and in

Vienna, and Hamburg.



But the girl! She was magnificent. It was easy to see that she

considered herself as entirely above and apart from her present

surroundings and company. She talked with me, and with Perry, and with

the taciturn Ghak because we were respectful; but she couldn't even see

Hooja the Sly One, much less hear him, and that made him furious. He

tried to get one of the Sagoths to move the girl up ahead of him in the

slave gang, but the fellow only poked him with his spear and told him

that he had selected the girl for his own property--that he would buy

her from the Mahars as soon as they reached Phutra. Phutra, it seemed,

was the city of our destination.



After passing over the first chain of mountains we skirted a salt sea,

upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like creatures

there were with long necks stretching ten and more feet above their

enormous bodies and whose snake heads were split with gaping mouths

bristling with countless fangs. There were huge tortoises too,

paddling about among these other reptiles, which Perry said were

Plesiosaurs of the Lias. I didn't question his veracity--they might

have been most anything.



Dian told me they were tandorazes, or tandors of the sea, and that the

other, and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from the

deep to do battle with them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths--Perry

called them Ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of an

alligator.



I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school--about all

that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations of

restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined

belief that any man with a pig's shank and a vivid imagination could

"restore" most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit, and take

rank as a first class paleontologist. But when I saw these sleek,

shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged from the

ocean, shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters roll from their

sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided hither and

thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I saw them meet,

open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic and interminable

warring I realized how futile is man's poor, weak imagination by

comparison with Nature's incredible genius.



And Perry! He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself.



"David," he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside that

awful sea. "David, I used to teach geology, and I thought that I

believed what I taught; but now I see that I did not believe it--that

it is impossible for man to believe such things as these unless he sees

them with his own eyes. We take things for granted, perhaps, because

we are told them over and over again, and have no way of disproving

them--like religions, for example; but we don't believe them, we only

think we do. If you ever get back to the outer world you will find

that the geologists and paleontologists will be the first to set you

down a liar, for they know that no such creatures as they restore ever

existed. It is all right to IMAGINE them as existing in an equally

imaginary epoch--but now? poof!"



At the next halt Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack chain

to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Dian. We were all

standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her back upon him in

such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could scarce repress a

smile; but it was a short-lived smile for on the instant the Sly One's

hand fell upon the girl's bare arm, jerking her roughly toward him.



I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics which

prevailed within Pellucidar; but even so I did not need the appealing

look which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence

my subsequent act. What the Sly One's intention was I paused not to

inquire; but instead, before he could lay hold of her with his other

hand, I placed a right to the point of his jaw that felled him in his

tracks.



A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and the

Sagoths who had witnessed the brief drama; not, as I later learned,

because I had championed the girl, but for the neat and, to them,

astounding method by which I had bested Hooja.



And the girl? At first she looked at me with wide, wondering eyes, and

then she dropped her head, her face half averted, and a delicate flush

suffused her cheek. For a moment she stood thus in silence, and then

her head went high, and she turned her back upon me as she had upon

Hooja. Some of the prisoners laughed, and I saw the face of Ghak the

Hairy One go very black as he looked at me searchingly. And what I

could see of Dian's cheek went suddenly from red to white.



Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that in

some way I had offended Dian the Beautiful I could not prevail upon her

to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred--in fact I might

quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all the attention I

got. At last my own foolish pride stepped in and prevented my making

any further attempts, and thus a companionship that without my

realizing it had come to mean a great deal to me was cut off.

Thereafter I confined my conversation to Perry. Hooja did not renew

his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture near me.



Again the weary and apparently interminable marching became a perfect

nightmare of horrors to me. The more firmly fixed became the

realization that the girl's friendship had meant so much to me, the

more I came to miss it; and the more impregnable the barrier of silly

pride. But I was very young and would not ask Ghak for the explanation

which I was sure he could give, and that might have made everything all

right again.



On the march, or during halts, Dian refused consistently to notice

me--when her eyes wandered in my direction she looked either over my

head or directly through me. At last I became desperate, and

determined to swallow my self-esteem, and again beg her to tell me how

I had offended, and how I might make reparation. I made up my mind

that I should do this at the next halt. We were approaching another

range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them, instead of

winding across them through some high-flung pass we entered a mighty

natural tunnel--a series of labyrinthine grottoes, dark as Erebus.



The guards had no torches or light of any description. In fact we had

seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered

Pellucidar. In a land of perpetual noon there is no need of light

above ground, yet I marveled that they had no means of lighting their

way through these dark, subterranean passages. So we crept along at a

snail's pace, with much stumbling and falling--the guards keeping up a

singsong chant ahead of us, interspersed with certain high notes which

I found always indicated rough places and turns.



Halts were now more frequent, but I did not wish to speak to Dian until

I could see from the expression of her face how she was receiving my

apologies. At last a faint glow ahead forewarned us of the end of the

tunnel, for which I for one was devoutly thankful. Then at a sudden

turn we emerged into the full light of the noonday sun.



But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a real

catastrophe--Dian was gone, and with her a half-dozen other prisoners.

The guards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to

behold. Their awesome, bestial faces were contorted in the most

diabolical expressions, as they accused each other of responsibility

for the loss. Finally they fell upon us, beating us with their spear

shafts, and hatchets. They had already killed two near the head of the

line, and were like to have finished the balance of us when their

leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all my

life had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of bestial rage--I

thanked God that Dian had not been one of those left to endure it.



Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me each alternate

one had been freed commencing with Dian. Hooja was gone. Ghak

remained. What could it mean? How had it been accomplished? The

commander of the guards was investigating. Soon he discovered that the

rude locks which had held the neckbands in place had been deftly picked.



"Hooja the Sly One," murmured Ghak, who was now next to me in line.

"He has taken the girl that you would not have," he continued, glancing

at me.



"That I would not have!" I cried. "What do you mean?"



He looked at me closely for a moment.



"I have doubted your story that you are from another world," he said at

last, "but yet upon no other grounds could your ignorance of the ways

of Pellucidar be explained. Do you really mean that you do not know

that you offended the Beautiful One, and how?"



"I do not know, Ghak," I replied.



"Then shall I tell you. When a man of Pellucidar intervenes between

another man and the woman the other man would have, the woman belongs

to the victor. Dian the Beautiful belongs to you. You should have

claimed her or released her. Had you taken her hand, it would have

indicated your desire to make her your mate, and had you raised her

hand above her head and then dropped it, it would have meant that you

did not wish her for a mate and that you released her from all

obligation to you. By doing neither you have put upon her the greatest

affront that a man may put upon a woman. Now she is your slave. No

man will take her as mate, or may take her honorably, until he shall

have overcome you in combat, and men do not choose slave women as their

mates--at least not the men of Pellucidar."



"I did not know, Ghak," I cried. "I did not know. Not for all

Pellucidar would I have harmed Dian the Beautiful by word, or look, or

act of mine. I do not want her as my slave. I do not want her as

my--" but here I stopped. The vision of that sweet and innocent face

floated before me amidst the soft mists of imagination, and where I had

on the second believed that I clung only to the memory of a gentle

friendship I had lost, yet now it seemed that it would have been

disloyalty to her to have said that I did not want Dian the Beautiful

as my mate. I had not thought of her except as a welcome friend in a

strange, cruel world. Even now I did not think that I loved her.



I believe Ghak must have read the truth more in my expression than in

my words, for presently he laid his hand upon my shoulder.



"Man of another world," he said, "I believe you. Lips may lie, but

when the heart speaks through the eyes it tells only the truth. Your

heart has spoken to me. I know now that you meant no affront to Dian

the Beautiful. She is not of my tribe; but her mother is my sister.

She does not know it--her mother was stolen by Dian's father who came

with many others of the tribe of Amoz to battle with us for our

women--the most beautiful women of Pellucidar. Then was her father

king of Amoz, and her mother was daughter of the king of Sari--to whose

power I, his son, have succeeded. Dian is the daughter of kings,

though her father is no longer king since the sadok tossed him and

Jubal the Ugly One wrested his kingship from him. Because of her

lineage the wrong you did her was greatly magnified in the eyes of all

who saw it. She will never forgive you."



I asked Ghak if there was not some way in which I could release the

girl from the bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon her.



"If ever you find her, yes," he answered. "Merely to raise her hand

above her head and drop it in the presence of others is sufficient to

release her; but how may you ever find her, you who are doomed to a

life of slavery yourself in the buried city of Phutra?"



"Is there no escape?" I asked.



"Hooja the Sly One escaped and took the others with him," replied Ghak.

"But there are no more dark places on the way to Phutra, and once there

it is not so easy--the Mahars are very wise. Even if one escaped from

Phutra there are the thipdars--they would find you, and then--" the

Hairy One shuddered. "No, you will never escape the Mahars."



It was a cheerful prospect. I asked Perry what he thought about it;

but he only shrugged his shoulders and continued a longwinded prayer he

had been at for some time. He was wont to say that the only redeeming

feature of our captivity was the ample time it gave him for the

improvisation of prayers--it was becoming an obsession with him. The

Sagoths had begun to take notice of his habit of declaiming throughout

entire marches. One of them asked him what he was saying--to whom he

was talking. The question gave me an idea, so I answered quickly

before Perry could say anything.



"Do not interrupt him," I said. "He is a very holy man in the world

from which we come. He is speaking to spirits which you cannot see--do

not interrupt him or they will spring out of the air upon you and rend

you limb from limb--like that," and I jumped toward the great brute

with a loud "Boo!" that sent him stumbling backward.



I took a long chance, I realized, but if we could make any capital out

of Perry's harmless mania I wanted to make it while the making was

prime. It worked splendidly. The Sagoths treated us both with marked

respect during the balance of the journey, and then passed the word

along to their masters, the Mahars.



Two marches after this episode we came to the city of Phutra. The

entrance to it was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which guarded

a flight of steps leading to the buried city. Sagoths were on guard

here as well as at a hundred or more other towers scattered about over

a large plain.



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