Within the palace they were conducted to a large room, comfortably filled with bewhiskered Korsars decked out in their gaudiest raiment, which far surpassed in brilliancy of coloring and ornamentation the comparatively mean clothes they had worn aboard ship. Upon a dais, at one end of the room, a man was seated upon a large, ornately carved chair. It was The Cid, and as David’s eyes fell upon him his mind suddenly grasped, for the first time, a significant suggestion in the title of the ruler of the Korsars. Previously the name had been only a name to David. He had not considered it as a title; nor had it by association awakened any particular train of thought, but now, coupled with the Moorish palace and the carved throne, it did. The Cid! Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar—El Campeandor—a national hero of eleventh century Spain. What did it mean? His thoughts reverted to the ships of the Korsars—their motley crews with harquebuses and cutlasses—and he recalled the thrilling stories he had read as a boy of the pirates of the Spanish Main. Could it be merely coincidence? Could a nation of people have grown up within the inner world, who so closely resembled the buccaneers of the seventeenth century, or had their forebears in truth found their way hither from the outer crust? David Innes did not know. He was frankly puzzled. But now he was being led to the foot of The Cid’s throne and there was no further opportunity for the delightful speculation that had absorbed his mind momentarily. The cruel, cunning eyes of The Cid looked down upon the three prisoners from out his brutal face. “The Emperor of Pellucidar!” he sneered. “The King of Anoroc! The son of the King of Sari!” and then he laughed uproariously. He extended his hand, his fingers parted and curled in a clutching gesture. “Emperor! King! Prince!” he sneered again, “and yet here you all are in the clutches of The Cid. Emperor—bah! I, The Cid, am the Emperor of all Pellucidar! You and your naked savages!” He turned on David. “Who are you to take the title of Emperor? I could crush you all,” and he closed his fingers in a gesture of rough cruelty. “But I shall not. The Cid is generous and he is grateful, too. You shall have your freedom for a small price that you may easily pay.” He paused as though he expected them to question him, but no one of the three spoke. Suddenly he turned upon David. “Where did you get your firearms and your powder? Who made them for you?” “We made them ourselves,” replied David. “Who taught you to make them?” insisted The Cid. “But never mind; it is enough that you know and we would know. You may win your liberty by teaching us.”