At the Earth's Core

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  VI

  THE BEGINNING OF HORROR

  Within Pellucidar one time is as good as another. There were no nightsto mask our attempted escape. All must be done in broad day-light--allbut the work I had to do in the apartment beneath the building. So wedetermined to put our plan to an immediate test lest the Mahars whomade it possible should awake before I reached them; but we were doomedto disappointment, for no sooner had we reached the main floor of thebuilding on our way to the pits beneath, than we encountered hurryingbands of slaves being hastened under strong Sagoth guard out of theedifice to the avenue beyond.

  Other Sagoths were darting hither and thither in search of otherslaves, and the moment that we appeared we were pounced upon andhustled into the line of marching humans.

  What the purpose or nature of the general exodus we did not know, butpresently through the line of captives ran the rumor that two escapedslaves had been recaptured--a man and a woman--and that we weremarching to witness their punishment, for the man had killed a Sagothof the detachment that had pursued and overtaken them.

  At the intelligence my heart sprang to my throat, for I was sure thatthe two were of those who escaped in the dark grotto with Hooja the SlyOne, and that Dian must be the woman. Ghak thought so too, as didPerry.

  "Is there naught that we may do to save her?" I asked Ghak.

  "Naught," he replied.

  Along the crowded avenue we marched, the guards showing unusual crueltytoward us, as though we, too, had been implicated in the murder oftheir fellow. The occasion was to serve as an object-lesson to allother slaves of the danger and futility of attempted escape, and thefatal consequences of taking the life of a superior being, and so Iimagine that Sagoths felt amply justified in making the entireproceeding as uncomfortable and painful to us as possible.

  They jabbed us with their spears and struck at us with the hatchets atthe least provocation, and at no provocation at all. It was a mostuncomfortable half-hour that we spent before we were finally herdedthrough a low entrance into a huge building the center of which wasgiven up to a good-sized arena. Benches surrounded this open spaceupon three sides, and along the fourth were heaped huge bowlders whichrose in receding tiers toward the roof.

  At first I couldn't make out the purpose of this mighty pile of rock,unless it were intended as a rough and picturesque background for thescenes which were enacted in the arena before it, but presently, afterthe wooden benches had been pretty well filled by slaves and Sagoths, Idiscovered the purpose of the bowlders, for then the Mahars began tofile into the enclosure.

  They marched directly across the arena toward the rocks upon theopposite side, where, spreading their bat-like wings, they rose abovethe high wall of the pit, settling down upon the bowlders above. Thesewere the reserved seats, the boxes of the elect.

  Reptiles that they are, the rough surface of a great stone is to themas plush as upholstery to us. Here they lolled, blinking their hideouseyes, and doubtless conversing with one another in theirsixth-sense-fourth-dimension language.

  For the first time I beheld their queen. She differed from the othersin no feature that was appreciable to my earthly eyes, in fact allMahars look alike to me: but when she crossed the arena after thebalance of her female subjects had found their bowlders, she waspreceded by a score of huge Sagoths, the largest I ever had seen, andon either side of her waddled a huge thipdar, while behind came anotherscore of Sagoth guardsmen.

  At the barrier the Sagoths clambered up the steep side with trulyapelike agility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon herwings with her two frightful dragons close beside her, and settled downupon the largest bowlder of them all in the exact center of that sideof the amphitheater which is reserved for the dominant race. Here shesquatted, a most repulsive and uninteresting queen; though doubtlessquite as well assured of her beauty and divine right to rule as theproudest monarch of the outer world.

  And then the music started--music without sound! The Mahars cannothear, so the drums and fifes and horns of earthly bands are unknownamong them. The "band" consists of a score or more Mahars. It filedout in the center of the arena where the creatures upon the rocks mightsee it, and there it performed for fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Their technic consisted in waving their tails and moving their heads ina regular succession of measured movements resulting in a cadence whichevidently pleased the eye of the Mahar as the cadence of our owninstrumental music pleases our ears. Sometimes the band took measuredsteps in unison to one side or the other, or backward and againforward--it all seemed very silly and meaningless to me, but at the endof the first piece the Mahars upon the rocks showed the firstindications of enthusiasm that I had seen displayed by the dominantrace of Pellucidar. They beat their great wings up and down, and smotetheir rocky perches with their mighty tails until the ground shook.Then the band started another piece, and all was again as silent as thegrave. That was one great beauty about Mahar music--if you didn'thappen to like a piece that was being played all you had to do was shutyour eyes.

  When the band had exhausted its repertory it took wing and settled uponthe rocks above and behind the queen. Then the business of the day wason. A man and woman were pushed into the arena by a couple of Sagothguardsmen. I leaned forward in my seat to scrutinize thefemale--hoping against hope that she might prove to be another thanDian the Beautiful. Her back was toward me for a while, and the sightof the great mass of raven hair piled high upon her head filled me withalarm.

  Presently a door in one side of the arena wall was opened to admit ahuge, shaggy, bull-like creature.

  "A Bos," whispered Perry, excitedly. "His kind roamed the outer crustwith the cave bear and the mammoth ages and ages ago. We have beencarried back a million years, David, to the childhood of a planet--isit not wondrous?"

  But I saw only the raven hair of a half-naked girl, and my heart stoodstill in dumb misery at the sight of her, nor had I any eyes for thewonders of natural history. But for Perry and Ghak I should haveleaped to the floor of the arena and shared whatever fate lay in storefor this priceless treasure of the Stone Age.

  With the advent of the Bos--they call the thing a thag withinPellucidar--two spears were tossed into the arena at the feet of theprisoners. It seemed to me that a bean shooter would have been aseffective against the mighty monster as these pitiful weapons.

  As the animal approached the two, bellowing and pawing the ground withthe strength of many earthly bulls, another door directly beneath uswas opened, and from it issued the most terrific roar that ever hadfallen upon my outraged ears. I could not at first see the beast fromwhich emanated this fearsome challenge, but the sound had the effect ofbringing the two victims around with a sudden start, and then I saw thegirl's face--she was not Dian! I could have wept for relief.

  And now, as the two stood frozen in terror, I saw the author of thatfearsome sound creeping stealthily into view. It was a hugetiger--such as hunted the great Bos through the jungles primeval whenthe world was young. In contour and markings it was not unlike thenoblest of the Bengals of our own world, but as its dimensions wereexaggerated to colossal proportions so too were its coloringsexaggerated. Its vivid yellows fairly screamed aloud; its whites wereas eider down; its blacks glossy as the finest anthracite coal, and itscoat long and shaggy as a mountain goat. That it is a beautiful animalthere is no gainsaying, but if its size and colors are magnified herewithin Pellucidar, so is the ferocity of its disposition. It is notthe occasional member of its species that is a man hunter--all are manhunters; but they do not confine their foraging to man alone, for thereis no flesh or fish within Pellucidar that they will not eat withrelish in the constant efforts which they make to furnish their hugecarcasses with sufficient sustenance to maintain their mighty thews.

  Upon one side of the doomed pair the thag bellowed and advanced, andupon the other tarag, the frightful, crept toward them with gapingmouth and dripping fangs.

  The man seized the spears, handing one of them to
the woman. At thesound of the roaring of the tiger the bull's bellowing became averitable frenzy of rageful noise. Never in my life had I heard suchan infernal din as the two brutes made, and to think it was all lostupon the hideous reptiles for whom the show was staged!

  The thag was charging now from one side, and the tarag from the other.The two puny things standing between them seemed already lost, but atthe very moment that the beasts were upon them the man grasped hiscompanion by the arm and together they leaped to one side, while thefrenzied creatures came together like locomotives in collision.

  There ensued a battle royal which for sustained and frightful ferocitytranscends the power of imagination or description. Time and again thecolossal bull tossed the enormous tiger high into the air, but eachtime that the huge cat touched the ground he returned to the encounterwith apparently undiminished strength, and seemingly increased ire.

  For a while the man and woman busied themselves only with keeping outof the way of the two creatures, but finally I saw them separate andeach creep stealthily toward one of the combatants. The tiger was nowupon the bull's broad back, clinging to the huge neck with powerfulfangs while its long, strong talons ripped the heavy hide into shredsand ribbons.

  For a moment the bull stood bellowing and quivering with pain and rage,its cloven hoofs widespread, its tail lashing viciously from side toside, and then, in a mad orgy of bucking it went careening about thearena in frenzied attempt to unseat its rending rider. It was withdifficulty that the girl avoided the first mad rush of the woundedanimal.

  All its efforts to rid itself of the tiger seemed futile, until indesperation it threw itself upon the ground, rolling over and over. Alittle of this so disconcerted the tiger, knocking its breath from it Iimagine, that it lost its hold and then, quick as a cat, the great thagwas up again and had buried those mighty horns deep in the tarag'sabdomen, pinning him to the floor of the arena.

  The great cat clawed at the shaggy head until eyes and ears were gone,and naught but a few strips of ragged, bloody flesh remained upon theskull. Yet through all the agony of that fearful punishment the thagstill stood motionless pinning down his adversary, and then the manleaped in, seeing that the blind bull would be the least formidableenemy, and ran his spear through the tarag's heart.

  As the animal's fierce clawing ceased, the bull raised his gory,sightless head, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena.With great leaps and bounds he came, straight toward the arena walldirectly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one ofhis mighty springs, completely over the barrier into the midst of theslaves and Sagoths just in front of us. Swinging his bloody horns fromside to side the beast cut a wide swath before him straight upwardtoward our seats. Before him slaves and gorilla-men fought in madstampede to escape the menace of the creature's death agonies, for suchonly could that frightful charge have been.

  Forgetful of us, our guards joined in the general rush for the exits,many of which pierced the wall of the amphitheater behind us. Perry,Ghak, and I became separated in the chaos which reigned for a fewmoments after the beast cleared the wall of the arena, each intent uponsaving his own hide.

  I ran to the right, passing several exits choked with the fear mad mobthat were battling to escape. One would have thought that an entireherd of thags was loose behind them, rather than a single blinded,dying beast; but such is the effect of panic upon a crowd.