At the Earth's Core

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  IX

  THE FACE OF DEATH

  I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion. When I awoke I was veryhungry, and after busying myself searching for fruit for a while, I setoff through the jungle to find the beach. I knew that the island wasnot so large but that I could easily find the sea if I did but move ina straight line, but there came the difficulty as there was no way inwhich I could direct my course and hold it, the sun, of course, beingalways directly above my head, and the trees so thickly set that Icould see no distant object which might serve to guide me in a straightline.

  As it was I must have walked for a great distance since I ate fourtimes and slept twice before I reached the sea, but at last I did so,and my pleasure at the sight of it was greatly enhanced by the chancediscovery of a hidden canoe among the bushes through which I hadstumbled just prior to coming upon the beach.

  I can tell you that it did not take me long to pull that awkward craftdown to the water and shove it far out from shore. My experience withJa had taught me that if I were to steal another canoe I must be quickabout it and get far beyond the owner's reach as soon as possible.

  I must have come out upon the opposite side of the island from that atwhich Ja and I had entered it, for the mainland was nowhere in sight.For a long time I paddled around the shore, though well out, before Isaw the mainland in the distance. At the sight of it I lost no time indirecting my course toward it, for I had long since made up my mind toreturn to Phutra and give myself up that I might be once more withPerry and Ghak the Hairy One.

  I felt that I was a fool ever to have attempted to escape alone,especially in view of the fact that our plans were already wellformulated to make a break for freedom together. Of course I realizedthat the chances of the success of our proposed venture were slimindeed, but I knew that I never could enjoy freedom without Perry solong as the old man lived, and I had learned that the probability thatI might find him was less than slight.

  Had Perry been dead, I should gladly have pitted my strength and witagainst the savage and primordial world in which I found myself. Icould have lived in seclusion within some rocky cave until I had foundthe means to outfit myself with the crude weapons of the Stone Age, andthen set out in search of her whose image had now become the constantcompanion of my waking hours, and the central and beloved figure of mydreams.

  But, to the best of my knowledge, Perry still lived and it was my dutyand wish to be again with him, that we might share the dangers andvicissitudes of the strange world we had discovered. And Ghak, too;the great, shaggy man had found a place in the hearts of us both, forhe was indeed every inch a man and king. Uncouth, perhaps, and brutal,too, if judged too harshly by the standards of effete twentieth-centurycivilization, but withal noble, dignified, chivalrous, and loveable.

  Chance carried me to the very beach upon which I had discovered Ja'scanoe, and a short time later I was scrambling up the steep bank toretrace my steps from the plain of Phutra. But my troubles came when Ientered the canyon beyond the summit, for here I found that several ofthem centered at the point where I crossed the divide, and which one Ihad traversed to reach the pass I could not for the life of me remember.

  It was all a matter of chance and so I set off down that which seemedthe easiest going, and in this I made the same mistake that many of usdo in selecting the path along which we shall follow out the course ofour lives, and again learned that it is not always best to follow theline of least resistance.

  By the time I had eaten eight meals and slept twice I was convincedthat I was upon the wrong trail, for between Phutra and the inland seaI had not slept at all, and had eaten but once. To retrace my steps tothe summit of the divide and explore another canyon seemed the onlysolution of my problem, but a sudden widening and levelness of thecanyon just before me seemed to suggest that it was about to open intoa level country, and with the lure of discovery strong upon me Idecided to proceed but a short distance farther before I turned back.

  The next turn of the canyon brought me to its mouth, and before me Isaw a narrow plain leading down to an ocean. At my right the side ofthe canyon continued to the water's edge, the valley lying to my left,and the foot of it running gradually into the sea, where it formed abroad level beach.

  Clumps of strange trees dotted the landscape here and there almost tothe water, and rank grass and ferns grew between. From the nature ofthe vegetation I was convinced that the land between the ocean and thefoothills was swampy, though directly before me it seemed dry enoughall the way to the sandy strip along which the restless waters advancedand retreated.

  Curiosity prompted me to walk down to the beach, for the scene was verybeautiful. As I passed along beside the deep and tangled vegetation ofthe swamp I thought that I saw a movement of the ferns at my left, butthough I stopped a moment to look it was not repeated, and if anythinglay hid there my eyes could not penetrate the dense foliage to discernit.

  Presently I stood upon the beach looking out over the wide and lonelysea across whose forbidding bosom no human being had yet ventured, todiscover what strange and mysterious lands lay beyond, or what itsinvisible islands held of riches, wonders, or adventure. What savagefaces, what fierce and formidable beasts were this very instantwatching the lapping of the waves upon its farther shore! How far didit extend? Perry had told me that the seas of Pellucidar were small incomparison with those of the outer crust, but even so this great oceanmight stretch its broad expanse for thousands of miles. For countlessages it had rolled up and down its countless miles of shore, and yettoday it remained all unknown beyond the tiny strip that was visiblefrom its beaches.

  The fascination of speculation was strong upon me. It was as though Ihad been carried back to the birth time of our own outer world to lookupon its lands and seas ages before man had traversed either. Here wasa new world, all untouched. It called to me to explore it. I wasdreaming of the excitement and adventure which lay before us couldPerry and I but escape the Mahars, when something, a slight noise Iimagine, drew my attention behind me.

  As I turned, romance, adventure, and discovery in the abstract tookwing before the terrible embodiment of all three in concrete form thatI beheld advancing upon me.

  A huge, slimy amphibian it was, with toad-like body and the mighty jawsof an alligator. Its immense carcass must have weighed tons, and yetit moved swiftly and silently toward me. Upon one hand was the bluffthat ran from the canyon to the sea, on the other the fearsome swampfrom which the creature had sneaked upon me, behind lay the mightyuntracked sea, and before me in the center of the narrow way that ledto safety stood this huge mountain of terrible and menacing flesh.

  A single glance at the thing was sufficient to assure me that I wasfacing one of those long-extinct, prehistoric creatures whosefossilized remains are found within the outer crust as far back as theTriassic formation, a gigantic labyrinthodon. And there I was,unarmed, and, with the exception of a loin cloth, as naked as I hadcome into the world. I could imagine how my first ancestor felt thatdistant, prehistoric morn that he encountered for the first time theterrifying progenitor of the thing that had me cornered now beside therestless, mysterious sea.

  Unquestionably he had escaped, or I should not have been withinPellucidar or elsewhere, and I wished at that moment that he had handeddown to me with the various attributes that I presumed I have inheritedfrom him, the specific application of the instinct of self-preservationwhich saved him from the fate which loomed so close before me today.

  To seek escape in the swamp or in the ocean would have been similar tojumping into a den of lions to escape one upon the outside. The seaand swamp both were doubtless alive with these mighty, carnivorousamphibians, and if not, the individual that menaced me would pursue meinto either the sea or the swamp with equal facility.

  There seemed nothing to do but stand supinely and await my end. Ithought of Perry--how he would wonder what had become of me. I thoughtof my friends of the outer world, and of how they all would go onliving their lives in
total ignorance of the strange and terrible fatethat had overtaken me, or unguessing the weird surroundings which hadwitnessed the last frightful agony of my extinction. And with thesethoughts came a realization of how unimportant to the life andhappiness of the world is the existence of any one of us. We may besnuffed out without an instant's warning, and for a brief day ourfriends speak of us with subdued voices. The following morning, whilethe first worm is busily engaged in testing the construction of ourcoffin, they are teeing up for the first hole to suffer more acutesorrow over a sliced ball than they did over our, to us, untimelydemise. The labyrinthodon was coming more slowly now. He seemed torealize that escape for me was impossible, and I could have sworn thathis huge, fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable appreciation of mypredicament, or was it in anticipation of the juicy morsel which wouldso soon be pulp between those formidable teeth?

  He was about fifty feet from me when I heard a voice calling to me fromthe direction of the bluff at my left. I looked and could have shoutedin delight at the sight that met my eyes, for there stood Ja, wavingfrantically to me, and urging me to run for it to the cliff's base.

  I had no idea that I should escape the monster that had marked me forhis breakfast, but at least I should not die alone. Human eyes wouldwatch me end. It was cold comfort I presume, but yet I derived someslight peace of mind from the contemplation of it.

  To run seemed ridiculous, especially toward that steep and unscalablecliff, and yet I did so, and as I ran I saw Ja, agile as a monkey,crawl down the precipitous face of the rocks, clinging to smallprojections, and the tough creepers that had found root-hold here andthere.

  The labyrinthodon evidently thought that Ja was coming to double hisportion of human flesh, so he was in no haste to pursue me to the cliffand frighten away this other tidbit. Instead he merely trotted alongbehind me.

  As I approached the foot of the cliff I saw what Ja intended doing, butI doubted if the thing would prove successful. He had come down towithin twenty feet of the bottom, and there, clinging with one hand toa small ledge, and with his feet resting, precariously upon tiny bushesthat grew from the solid face of the rock, he lowered the point of hislong spear until it hung some six feet above the ground.

  To clamber up that slim shaft without dragging Ja down andprecipitating both to the same doom from which the copper-colored onewas attempting to save me seemed utterly impossible, and as I came nearthe spear I told Ja so, and that I could not risk him to try to savemyself.

  But he insisted that he knew what he was doing and was in no dangerhimself.

  "The danger is still yours," he called, "for unless you move much morerapidly than you are now, the sithic will be upon you and drag you backbefore ever you are halfway up the spear--he can rear up and reach youwith ease anywhere below where I stand."

  Well, Ja should know his own business, I thought, and so I grasped thespear and clambered up toward the red man as rapidly as I could--beingso far removed from my simian ancestors as I am. I imagine theslow-witted sithic, as Ja called him, suddenly realized our intentionsand that he was quite likely to lose all his meal instead of having itdoubled as he had hoped.

  When he saw me clambering up that spear he let out a hiss that fairlyshook the ground, and came charging after me at a terrific rate. I hadreached the top of the spear by this time, or almost; another sixinches would give me a hold on Ja's hand, when I felt a sudden wrenchfrom below and glancing fearfully downward saw the mighty jaws of themonster close on the sharp point of the weapon.

  I made a frantic effort to reach Ja's hand, the sithic gave atremendous tug that came near to jerking Ja from his frail hold on thesurface of the rock, the spear slipped from his fingers, and stillclinging to it I plunged feet foremost toward my executioner.

  At the instant that he felt the spear come away from Ja's hand thecreature must have opened his huge jaws to catch me, for when I camedown, still clinging to the butt end of the weapon, the point yetrested in his mouth and the result was that the sharpened endtransfixed his lower jaw.

  With the pain he snapped his mouth closed. I fell upon his snout, lostmy hold upon the spear, rolled the length of his face and head, acrosshis short neck onto his broad back and from there to the ground.

  Scarce had I touched the earth than I was upon my feet, dashing madlyfor the path by which I had entered this horrible valley. A glanceover my shoulder showed me the sithic engaged in pawing at the spearstuck through his lower jaw, and so busily engaged did he remain inthis occupation that I had gained the safety of the cliff top before hewas ready to take up the pursuit. When he did not discover me in sightwithin the valley he dashed, hissing into the rank vegetation of theswamp and that was the last I saw of him.