Before we halted to eat or rest, we stood beside a little mountain
brook beneath the wondrous trees of the primeval forest in an
atmosphere of warmth and comfort. It reminded me of an early June day
in the Maine woods.
We fell to work with our short axes and cut enough small trees to build
a rude protection from the fiercer beasts. Then we lay down to sleep.
How long we slept I do not know. Perry says that inasmuch as there is
no means of measuring time within Pellucidar, there can be no such
thing as time here, and that we may have slept an outer earthly year,
or we may have slept but a second.
But this I know. We had stuck the ends of some of the saplings into the
ground in the building of our shelter, first stripping the leaves and
branches from them, and when we awoke we found that many of them had
thrust forth sprouts.
Personally, I think that we slept at least a month; but who may say?
The sun marked midday when we closed our eyes; it was still in the same
position when we opened them; nor had it varied a hair’s breadth in the
interim.
It is most baffling, this question of elapsed time within Pellucidar.
Anyhow, I was famished when we awoke. I think that it was the pangs of
hunger that awoke me. Ptarmigan and wild boar fell before my revolver
within a dozen moments of my awakening. Perry soon had a roaring fire
blazing by the brink of the little stream.
It was a good and delicious meal we made. Though we did not eat the
entire boar, we made a very large hole in him, while the ptarmigan was
but a mouthful.
Having satisfied our hunger, we determined to set forth at once in
search of Anoroc and my old friend, Ja the Mezop. We each thought that
by following the little stream downward, we should come upon the large
river which Ja had told me emptied into the Lural Az op-posite his
island.
We did so; nor were we disappointed, for at last after a pleasant
journey—and what journey would not be pleasant after the hardships we
had endured among the peaks of the Mountains of the Clouds—we came upon
a broad flood that rushed majestically onward in the direction of the
great sea we had seen from the snowy slopes of the mountains.
For three long marches we followed the left bank of the growing river,
until at last we saw it roll its mighty volume into the vast waters of
the sea. Far out across the rippling ocean we descried three islands.
The one to the left must be Anoroc.
At last we had come close to a solution of our problem—the road to
Sari.
But how to reach the islands was now the foremost question in our
minds. We must build a canoe.
Perry is a most resourceful man. He has an axiom which carries the
thought-kernel that what man has done, man can do, and it doesn’t cut
any figure with Perry whether a fellow knows how to do it or not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account