Adventure Books

15- At The Earth's Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 03 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Whether you're a lifelong learner, a parent seeking bedtime stories for your children, or someone looking to unwind after a long day, we have something just for you. We invite you to try Solgadmedia free for one month. Explore our extensive collection and find the perfect audio content that resonates with you. Join our community of passionate listeners and unlock a world of knowledge, relaxation, and inspiration. Visit Solgadmedia.com today and start your free trial. That's S-O-L-G-O-O-D-M-E-D-I-A.com. CHAPTER XV. BACK TO EARTH. We crossed the river and passed through the mountains beyond, and finally we came out upon a great level plane, which stretched away as far as the eye could reach. I cannot tell you in what direction it stretched, even if you would care to know, for all the while that I was within Palucidar. I never discovered any but local methods of indicating direction. There is no north, no south, no east, no west. Up is about the only direction which is well-defined, and that, of course, is down to you of the outer crust. Since the sun neither rises nor sets, there is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects, such as high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas. The plane which lies beyond the white cliffs which flank the Darrel as, upon the shore nearest the mountains of the clouds, is about as near to any direction as any Palucidarian can come. If you happen not to have heard of the Darrel as, or the white cliffs, or the mountains of the clouds, you feel that there is something lacking and long for the good old understandable northeast and southwest of the outer world. We had barely entered the great plane when we discovered two enormous animals approaching us from a great distance. So far were they that we could not distinguish what manner of beasts they might be, but as they came closer, I saw that they were enormous quadrupeds, 80 or 100 feet long, with tiny heads perched at the top of very long necks. Their heads must have been quite 40 feet from the ground. The beasts moved very slowly, that is their action was slow, but their strides covered such a great distance that in reality they traveled considerably faster than a man walks. As they drew still nearer, we discovered that upon the back of each sat a human being. Then Diane knew what they were, though she had never before seen one. They are leadies from the land of the Thorians, she cried. The Thorian lies at the outer verge of the land of awful shadow. The Thorians alone of all the races of Palucidar ride the leadie, for nowhere else than beside the dark country are they found. What is the land of awful shadow, I asked? It is the land which lies beneath the dead world, replied Diane. The dead world which hangs forever between the sun and Palucidar above the land of awful shadow. It is the dead world which makes the great shadow upon this portion of Palucidar. I did not fully understand what she meant, nor am I sure that I do yet, for I have never been to that part of Palucidar from which the dead world is visible. But Perry says that it is the moon of Palucidar, a tiny planet within a planet, and that it revolves around the Earth's axis coincidentally with the Earth, and thus is always above the same spot within Palucidar. I remember that Perry was very much excited when I told him about this dead world, for he seemed to think that it explained the hitherto inexplicable phenomena of notation and the procession of the equinoxes. When the two upon the leadies had come quite close to us, we saw that one was a man and the other a woman. The former had held up his two hands, palms toward us, in a sign of peace, and I had answered him in kind, when he suddenly gave a cry of astonishment and pleasure, and slipping from his enormous mount ran forward toward Diane, throwing his arms about her. In an instant I was white with jealousy, but only for an instant, since Diane quickly drew the man toward me, telling him that I was David, her mate. "And this is my brother, Dacor the strong one, David," she said to me. It appeared that the woman was Dacor's mate. He had found none to his liking among the Sarri, nor farther on, until he had come to the land of the Thoria, and there he had found and fought for this very lovely Thorian maiden, whom he was bringing back to his own people. When they had heard our story and our plans, they decided to accompany us to Sarri. That Dacor and Gac might come to an agreement relative to an alliance. As Dacor was quite as enthusiastic about the proposed annihilation of the Mayhars and Seigoths, as either Diane or I. After a journey which was for Palucidar quite uneventful, we came to the first of the Sarrian villages, which consists of between one and 200 artificial caves, cut into the face of a great cliff. Here to our immense delight, we found both Perry and Gac. The old man was quite overcome at sight of me, for he had long since given me up as dead. When I introduced Diane as my wife, he didn't quite know what to say. But he afterward remarked that with the pick of two worlds, I could not have done better. Gac and Dacor reached a very amicable arrangement, and it was at a council of the headmen of the various tribes of the Sarri that the eventual form of government was tentatively agreed upon. Roughly the various kingdoms were to remain virtually independent, but there was to be one great overlord or emperor. It was decided that I should be the first of the dynasty of the emperors of Palucidar. We set about teaching the women how to make bows and arrows, and poison pouches. The young men hunted the vipers which provided the virus, and it was they who mined the iron ore and fashioned the swords under Perry's direction. Rapidly the fever spread from one tribe to another until representatives from nations so far distant that the Sarrians had never even heard of them, came in to take the oath of allegiance, which we required, and to learn the art of making the new weapons and using them. We sent our young men out as instructors to every nation of the Federation, and the movement had reached colossal proportions even before the Mayhars discovered it. The first intimation they had was when three of their great slave caravans were annihilated in rapid succession. They could not comprehend that the lower orders had suddenly developed a power which rendered them really formidable. In one of the skirmishes with slave caravans, some of our Sarrians took a number of Saguath prisoners, and among them were two who had been members of the guards within the building where we had been confined at Futra. They told us that the Mayhars were frantic with rage when they discovered what had taken place in the cellars of the buildings. The Saguath's knew that something very terrible had befallen their masters, but the Mayhars had been most careful to see that no inkling of the true nature of their vital affliction reached beyond their own race. How long it would take for the race to become extinct, it was impossible even to guess, but that this must eventually happen seemed inevitable. The Mayhars had offered fabulous rewards for the capture of any one of us alive, and at the same time had threatened to inflict the direst punishment upon whomever should harm us. The Saguath's could not understand these seemingly paradoxical instructions, though their purpose was quite evident to me. The Mayhars wanted the great secret, and they knew that we alone could deliver it to them. Perry's experiments and the manufacture of gunpowder and the fashioning of rifles had not progressed as rapidly as we had hoped. There was a whole lot about these two arts which Perry didn't know. We were both assured that the solution of these problems would advance the cause of civilization within Palucidar thousands of years at a single stroke. Then there were various other arts and sciences which we wish to introduce, but our combined knowledge of them did not embrace the mechanical details which alone could render them of commercial or practical value. David said Perry immediately after his latest failure to produce gunpowder that would even burn. One of us must return to the outer world and bring back the information we lack. Here we have all the labor and materials for reproducing anything that has ever been produced above. What we lack is knowledge. Let us go back and get that knowledge in the shape of books. Then this world will indeed be at our feet. And so it was decided that I should return in the prospector, which still lay upon the edge of the forest at the point where we had first penetrated to the surface of the inner world. Diane would not listen to any arrangement for my going which did not include her, and I was not sorry that she wished to accompany me, for I wanted her to see my world, and I wanted my world to see her. With a large force of men we marched to the great iron mole which Perry soon had hoisted into position with its nose pointed back toward the outer crust. He went over all the machinery carefully. He replenished the air tanks and manufactured oil for the engine. That last everything was ready. And we were about to set out when our pickets, a long thin line of which had surrounded our camp at all times, reported that a great body of what appeared to be segoths and mayhars were approaching from the direction of footra. Diane and I were ready to embark, but I was anxious to witness the first clash between two fair-sized armies of the opposing races of Palucidar. I realized that this was to mark the historic beginning of a mighty struggle for possession of a world, and as the first emperor of Palucidar, I felt that it was not alone my duty, but my right to be in the thick of that momentous struggle. As the opposing army approached, we saw that there were many mayhars with the segoth troops, an indication of the vast importance which the dominant race placed upon the outcome of this campaign, for it was not customary with them to take active part in the sorties which their creatures made for slaves, the only form of warfare which they waged upon the lower orders. Gak and Dachor were both with us, having come primarily to view the prospector. I placed Gak with some of his serians on the right of our battle line. Dachor took the left while I commanded the center. Behind us I stationed a sufficient reserve under one of Gak's head men. The segoths advanced steadily with menacing spears, and I let them come until they were within easy bowshot before I gave the word to fire. At the first volley of poisoned tipped arrows, the front ranks of the gorilla men crumpled to the ground, but those behind charged over the prostrate forms of their comrades in a wild mad rush to be upon us with their spears. A second volley stopped them for an instant, and then my reserves sprang through the openings in the firing line to engage them with sword and shield. The clumsy spears of the segoths were no match for the swords of the Sarion and Amozite, who turned the spear thrusts aside with their shields and leaped to close quarters with their lighter handier weapons. Gak took his archers along the enemy's flank, and while the swordsmen engaged them in front, he poured volley after volley into their unprotected left. The Mayhars did little real fighting and were more in the way than otherwise. Though occasionally one of them would fasten its powerful jaw upon the arm or leg of a Sarion. The battle did not last a great while, for when Dachor and I let our men in upon the segoths right with naked swords, they were already so demoralized that they turned and fled before us. We pursued them for some time, taking many prisoners and recovering nearly a hundred slaves, among whom was Huja, the Sly one. He told me that he had been captured while on his way to his own land, but that his life had been spared and hoped that through him, the Mayhars would learn the whereabouts of their great secret. Gak and I were inclined to think that the Sly one had been guiding this expedition to the land of Sarion, where he thought that the book might be found in Perry's possession. But we had no proof of this, and so we took him in and treated him as one of us, although none liked him. And how he rewarded my generosity, you will presently learn. There were a number of Mayhars among our prisoners, and so fearful were our own people of them that they would not approach them unless completely covered from the sight of the reptiles by a piece of skin. Even Diane shared the popular superstition regarding the evil effects of exposure to the eyes of angry Mayhars. And though I laughed at her fears, I was willing enough to humor them if it would relieve her apprehension in any degree. And so she sat apart from the prospector nearing which the Mayhars had been chained, while Perry and I again inspected every portion of the mechanism. At last I took my place in the driving seat and called to one of the men without to fetch Diane. It happened that Huja stood quite close to the doorway of the prospector so that it was he who without my knowledge went to bring her, but how he succeeded in accomplishing the fiendish thing he did, I cannot guess unless there were others in the plot to aid him. Nor can I believe that since all my people were loyal to me and would have made short work of Huja had he suggested the heartless scheme, even had he had time to acquaint another with it. It was all done so quickly that I may only believe that it was the result of a sudden impulse aided by a number of Tahuja fortuitous circumstances occurring at precisely the right moment. All I know is that it was Huja, who brought Diane to the prospector still wrapped from head to toe in the skin of an enormous cave lion, which covered her since the Mayheart prisoners had been brought to the camp. He deposited his burden in the seat beside me. I was all ready to get underway. The goodbyes had been said, Perry had grasped my hand and last long farewell. I closed and barred the outer and inner doors and took my seat again at the driving mechanism and pulled the starting lever. As before on that far gone night that had witnessed our first trial of the Iron Monster, there was a frightful roaring beneath us. The giant frame trembled and vibrated. There was a rush of sound as the loose earth passed up through the hollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. Once more, the thing was off. But on the instant of departure, I was nearly thrown from my seat by the sudden lurching of the prospector. At first I did not realize what had happened, but presently it dawned upon me that just before entering the crust, the towering body had fallen through its supporting scaffolding and that instead of entering the ground vertically, we were plunging into it at a different angle. Where it would bring us out upon the upper crust, I could not even conjecture. And then I turned to note the effect of this strange experience upon Diane. She still sat shrouded in the great skin. Come, come, my cried laughing. Come out of your shell. No, may her eyes can reach you here. And I leaned over and snatched the lion's skin from her. And then I shrank back upon my seat in utter horror. The thing beneath the skin was not Diane. It was a hideous may her. Instantly I realized the trick that Huja had played upon me and the purpose of it. Rid of me forever is he doubtless thought. Diane would be at his mercy. Frankly, I tore the steering wheel in an effort to turn the prospector back toward Palucidar, but as on that other occasion, I could not budge the thing of hair. It is needless to recount the horrors or the monotony of that journey. It varied but little from the former one, which had brought us from the outer to the inner world. Because of the angle at which we had entered the ground, the trip required nearly a day longer. And it brought me out here upon the sand of the Sahara instead of in the United States as I had hoped. For months I have been waiting here for a white man to come. I dared not leave the prospector for fear I should never be able to find it again. The shifting sands of the desert would soon cover it. And then my only hope of returning to my Diane to Palucidar would be gone forever. That I shall ever see her again seems but remotely possible. For how may I know upon what part of Palucidar my return journey may terminate? And how, without a north or south or an east or west, may I hope ever to find my way across that vast world to the tiny spot where my lost love lies grieving for me. That is the story as David Ennis told it to me in the goat skin tent upon the rim of the great Sahara Desert. The next day he took me out to see the prospector. It was precisely as he had described it. So huge was it that it could have been brought to this inaccessible part of the world by no means of transportation that existed there. It could only have come in the way that David Ennis said it came. Up through the crust of the earth from the inner world of Palucidar. I spent a week with him and then abandoned my lion hunt returned directly to the coast and hurried to London where I purchased a great quantity of stuff which he wished to take back to Palucidar with him. There were books, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, cameras, chemicals, telephones, telegraph instruments, wire, tools, and more books. Books upon every subject under the sun. He said he wanted a library with which they could reproduce the wonders of the twentieth century in the Stone Age, and if quantity counts for anything I got it for him. I took the things back to Algeria myself and accompanied them to the end of the railroad. But from here I was recalled to America upon important business; however, I was able to employ a very trustworthy man to take charge of the caravan, the same guide, in fact, who had accompanied me on the previous trip into the Sahara. And after writing a long letter to Ennis in which I gave him my American address, I saw the expedition head south. Among the other things which I sent to Ennis was over five hundred miles of double insulated wire of a very fine gauge. I had it packed on a special reel at his suggestion, as it was his idea that he could fasten one end here before he left, and by paying it out through the end of the prospect or lay a telegraph line between the outer and inner worlds. In my letter I told him to be sure to mark the terminus of the line very plainly with a high cairn, in case I was not able to reach him before he set out, so that I might easily find and communicate with him should he be so fortunate as to reach Palucidar. I received several letters from him after I returned to America; in fact he took advantage of every northward passing caravan to drop me a word of some sort. His last letter was written the day before he intended to depart. Here it is. My dear friend, tomorrow I shall set out in quest of Palucidar and I am. That is if the Arabs don't get me. They have been very nasty of late; I don't know the cause, but on two occasions they have threatened my life. One more friendly than the rest told me today that they intended attacking me tonight. He would be unfortunate should anything of that sort happen, now that I am so nearly ready to depart; however, maybe I will be as well off; for the nearer the hour approaches the slenderer my chances for success appear. Here is the friendly Arab, who is to take this letter north for me. So good-bye, and God bless you for your kindness to me. The Arab tells me to hurry, for he sees a cloud of sand to the south. He thinks it is the party coming to murder me, and he doesn't want to be found with me. So good-bye again. Yours, David Innes. A year later found me at the end of the railroad once more, headed for the spot where I had left Innes. My first disappointment was when I discovered that my old guide had died within a few weeks of my return, nor could I find any member of my former party who could lead me to the same spot. For months I searched that scorching land, interviewing countless desert sheaks in the hope that, last I might find one, who had heard of Innes and his wonderful iron mole. Constantly my eyes scanned the blinding waste of sand, for the rocky kern beneath which I was to find the wires leading to Palucidar, but always was I unsuccessful. And always did these awful questions harass me when I think of David Innes and his strange adventures. Did the Arabs murder him after all, just on the eve of his departure, or did he again turn the nose of his iron monster toward the inner world? Did he reach it, or lie as he's somewhere buried in the heart of the great crust? And if he did come again to Palucidar, was it to break through into the bottom of one of her great island seas, or among some savage race far, far from the land of his heart's desire? Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara at the end of two tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost kern? I wonder. End of chapter 15. End of At the Earth's Core by Edgar I. Sparrows. Hello, it is Ryan, and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on Chumbakasino.com. I looked over the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They're also playing Chumbakasino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumbakasino's home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere. 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