"I think," said Gridley, with a smile, "that really I am the only one in the party who has had any faith at all in the theory, but please do not call it my theory for it is not, and even I should not have been surprised had the theory proven to be a false one. But if any of you has been watching the sun for the last few hours, I think that you will have to agree with me that even though there may be no polar opening into an inner world, there must be a great depression at this point in the earth's crust and that we had gone down into it for a considerable distance, for you will notice that the midnight sun is much lower than it should be and that the further we continue upon this course the lower it drops--eventually it will set completely, and if I am not much mistaken we shall soon see the light of the eternal noonday sun of Pellucidar." Suddenly the telephone rang and Hines put the receiver to his ear. "Very good, sir," he said, after a moment, and hung up. "It was Von Horst, Captain, reporting from the observation cabin. He has sighted land dead ahead." "Land!" exclaimed Zuppner. "The only land our chart shows in this direction is Siberia." "Siberia lies over a thousand miles south of 85, and we cannot be over three hundred miles south of 85," said Gridley. "Then we have either discovered a new arctic land, or we are approaching the northern frontiers of Pellucidar," said Lieutenant Hines. "And that is just what we are doing," said Gridley. "Look at your thermometer." "The devil!" exclaimed Zuppner. "It is only twenty degrees above zero Fahrenheit." "You can see the land plainly now," said Tarzan. "It looks desolate enough, but there are only little patches of snow here and there." "This corresponds with the land Innes described north of Korsar," said Gridley. Word was quickly passed around the ship to the other officers and the crew that there was reason to believe that the land below them was Pellucidar. Excitement ran high, and every man who could spare a moment from his duties was aloft on the walkingway, or peering through portholes for a glimpse of the inner world. Steadily the O-220 forged southward and just as the rim of the midnight sun disappeared from view below the horizon astern, the glow of Pellucidar's central sun was plainly visible ahead. The nature of the landscape below was changing rapidly. The barren land had fallen astern, the ship had crossed a range of wooded hills and now before it lay a great forest that stretched on and on seemingly curving upward to be lost eventually in the haze of the distance. This was indeed Pellucidar--the Pellucidar of which Jason Gridley had dreamed. Beyond the forest lay a rolling plain dotted with clumps of trees, a well-watered plain through which wound numerous streams, which emptied into a large river at its opposite side. Great herds of game were grazing in the open pasture land and nowhere was there sight of man.