Adventure Books
04 - At The Earth's Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs
https://www.solgoodmedia.com Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and ambient sounds all ad-free! Step into a world of daily intrigue and timeless tales with our Classic Adventure Podcast Series! Each day, we bring to life a new chapter from a beloved classic, inviting you on an exhilarating journey through some of the greatest adventure stories ever written. Imagine unraveling the mysteries with Sherlock Holmes, exploring bizarre landscapes with Alice, or circumnavigating the globe in just eighty days. Why settle for mundane daily commutes or routine chores when you can escape into the thrilling escapades of "Treasure Island" or the eerie encounters in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? Our podcast transforms your every day into a captivating adventure, perfect for both the literary enthusiast and the casual listener seeking an escape from the ordinary. Join us as we traverse the dark depths of "Heart of Darkness," soar through the imaginative realms of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," and survive the wilds with "Robinson Crusoe." Each episode is crafted to make the classics accessible and exciting, ensuring that whether you're reliving your favorite tales or discovering them for the first time, you're guaranteed a gripping experience. Subscribe to our Classic Adventure Podcast Series today and start your daily adventure! Let us awaken the explorer in you as we delve into these timeless narratives, chapter by chapter, transforming your daily routine into an extraordinary journey through the pages of history's most thrilling adventures. Don't just listen to stories—live them every day with us!
- Duration:
- 25m
- Broadcast on:
- 22 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land. Where you can play over a hundred social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin. So go to luckylandslots.com, that's luckylandslots.com, and get lucky today at Lucky Land. Hey there, it's Salomon from Salgood Media. A lot of our listeners have asked how to get ad-free access to our podcasts. You asked and we answered. We're offering an exclusive one-month free trial to our ad-free streaming platform, packed with over 500 audiobooks, meditation sounds, and engaging podcasts. No strings attached, just pure listening pleasure. Sign up today at salgoodmedia.com and dive into a world of stories and sounds that inspire and relax. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. It's your gateway to unlimited audio enjoyment. That's salgoodmedia.com, S-O-L-G-O-O-D-M-E-D-I-A.com. Check it out, we hope to see you over there. Chapter 4 - Die In The Beautiful When our guards arose us from sleep, we were much refreshed. They gave us food, strips of dried meat it was, but it put a new life and strength into us, so that now we too marched with high-held heads and took noble strides. At least I did, for I was young and proud, but poor Perry hated walking. On earth I had often seen him call a cab to travel a square. He was paying for it now, and his old legs wobbled so that I put my arm about him and half carried him through the balance of those frightful marches. The country began to change at last, and we wound up out of the level plane through mighty mountains of virgin granite. The tropical verger of the lowlands was replaced by hardier vegetation, but even here the effects of constant heat and light were apparent in the immensity of the trees and the profusion of foliage and blooms. Crystal streams roared through the rocky channels, fed by the perpetual snows which we could see far above us. Above the snow-capped heights hung masses of heavy clouds. "It was these," Perry explained, which evidently served the double purpose of replenishing the melting snows and protecting them from the direct rays of the sun. By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the rather charming tongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead of me in the chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain linked us together in a forced companionship which I, at least, soon rejoiced in. For I found her a willing teacher, and from her I learned the language of her tribe, and much of the life and customs of the inner world, at least that part of it with which she was familiar. She told me that she was called Diane the Beautiful, and that she belonged to the tribe of Amos, which dwells in the cliffs above the Darryl Az, or shallow sea. "How came you here?" I asked her. "I was running away from Jubal the ugly one," she answered, as though that was explanation quite sufficient. "Who is Jubal the ugly one?" I asked. "And why did you run away from him?" She looked at me in surprise. "Why does a woman run away from a man?" She answered my question with another. "They do not, where I come from," I replied. Sometimes they run after them. But she could not understand. Nor could I get her to grasp the fact that I was of another world. She was quite as positive that creation was originated solely to produce her own kind, and the world she lived in as are many of the outer world. "But Jubal," I insisted, "tell me about him, and why you ran away to be chained by the neck, and scourged across the face of a world." Jubal the ugly one placed his trophy before my father's house. It was the head of a mighty tandoor. It remained there, and no greater trophy was placed beside it. So I knew that Jubal the ugly one would come and take me as his mate. None other so powerful wished me, or they would have slain a mightier beast and thus have won me from Jubal. My father is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but a sadak tossed him, and never again had he the full use of his right arm. My brother Decor, the strong one, had gone to the land of Sarri to steal a mate for himself. Thus there was none father-brother or lover to save me from Jubal the ugly one, and I ran away and hid among the hills that scoured the land of Amos. And there these segoths found me and made me captive. "What will they do with you?" I asked. "Where are they taking us?" Again she looked her in credulity. "I can almost believe that you are of another world," she said. "For otherwise such ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really mean that you do not know that the segoths are the creatures of the Mayors? The mighty Mayors who think they own Palucidar, and all that walks or grows upon its surface, or creeps or burrows beneath or swims within its lakes and oceans, or flies through its air. Next you will be telling me that you have never before heard of the Mayors. I was loath to do it and further incur her scorn. But there was no alternative if I were to absorb knowledge, so I made a clean breast of my pitiful ignorance as to the mighty Mayors. She was shocked. But she did her very best to enlighten me, though much that she said was as Greek would have been to her. She described the Mayors largely by comparison. In this way they were like unto fitars, in that, to the hairless litty. About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had wings and webbed feet, lived in cities built beneath the ground, could swim underwater for great distances, and were very, very wise. The Seagoths were their weapons of offense and defense, and the races like herself were their hands and feet. They were the slaves and servants, who did all the manual labor. The Mayors were the heads, the brains of the inner world. I longed to see this wondrous race of supermen. Perry learned the language with me. When we halted, as we occasionally did, though sometimes the halts seemed ages apart, he would join in the conversation. As would Gack the hairy one, he who was chained just ahead of Dye and the Beautiful. Ahead of Gack was Huja the sly one. He too entered the conversation occasionally. Most of his remarks were directed towards Dye and the Beautiful. It didn't take half an eye to see that he had developed a bad case, but the girl appeared totally oblivious to his thinly-veiled advances. Did I say thinly-veiled? There is a race of men in New Zealand or Australia I have forgotten which, who indicate their preference for the lady of their affections by banging her over the head with a bludgeon. By comparison with this method, Huja's lovemaking might be called thinly-veiled. At first it caused me to blush violently, although I have seen several old years out at rectors, and in other less fashionable places off Broadway, and in Vienna and Hamburg. But that girl, she was magnificent. It was easy to see that she considered herself as entirely above and apart from her present surroundings and company. She talked with me and with Perry, and with the taciturn Gack because we were respectful. But she couldn't even see Huja the sly one, much less hear him, and that made him furious. He tried to get one of the segoths to move the girl up ahead of him in the slave gang. But the fellow only poked him with his spear and told him that he had selected the girl for his own property, that he would buy her from the mares as soon as they reached Putra. Putra, it seemed, was the city of our destination. After passing over the first chain of the mountains, we scurted a salt sea upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like creatures there were with long necks stretching ten or more feet above their enormous bodies, and whose snake heads were split with gaping mouths, bristling with countless fangs. There were huge tortoises too, paddling about among these other reptiles which Perry said were plesiosaurus of the liars. I didn't question his veracity. They might have been most anything. Diane told me they were tandorases, or tandors of the sea, and that the other and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from the deep to do battle with them, were as deerths, or sea deerths. Perry called them ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of an alligator. I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school. About all that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations of restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined belief that any man with a pig's shank and a vivid imagination could restore most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit, and take rank as a first-class paleontologist. But when I saw these sleek, shiny carcasses, shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged from the ocean, shaking their giant heads, when I saw the waters roll from their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided hither and thither. Now upon the surface now half submerged, as I saw them meet open mouth, hissing, and snorting in their titanic and interminable warring, I realized how futile is man's poor, weak imagination by comparison with nature's incredible genius. And Perry, he was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself. "David," he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside that awful sea. "David, I used to teach geology, and I thought that I believed what I taught. But now I see that I did not believe it, that it is impossible for man to believe such things as these unless he sees them with his own eyes. We take things for granted, perhaps, because we are told them over and over again, and have no way of disproving them, like religions, for example. But we don't believe them, we only think we do. If you ever get back to the outer world, you will find that the geologists and paleontologists will be the first to set you down a liar. For they know that no such creatures as they restore ever existed. It is all right to imagine them as existing in an equally imaginary epoch, but now prove. At the next halt, Huja the sly one managed to find enough slack chain to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Diane. We were all standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her back upon him in such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could scarce repress a smile. But it was a short-lived smile. For on the instant the sly one's hand fell upon the girl's bare arm jerking her roughly towards him. I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics which prevailed within Palucidar, but even so I did not need the appealing look to which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence my subsequent act. What the sly one's intention was I paused not to inquire, but instead before he could lay hold of her with his other hand I placed a right to the point of his jaw that felled him in his tracks. A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and the segoths who had witnessed the brief drama. Not as I later learned because I had championed the girl, but for the neat and to them astounding method by which I had bested Huja and the girl. At first she looked at me with wide, wandering eyes, and then she dropped her head, her face half averted, and a delicate flush suffused her cheeks. For a moment she stood thus in silence, and then her head went high and she turned her back upon me as she had upon Huja. Some of the prisoners laughed, and I saw the face of Gack the hairy one go very black as he looked at me searchingly, and what I could see of Diane's cheek went suddenly from red to white. Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that in some way I had offended Diane the beautiful I could not prevail upon her to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred. In fact I might quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all the attention I got. At last my own foolish pride stepped in and prevented my making any further attempts, and thus a companionship that, without my realizing it, had come to mean a great deal to me, was cut off. Huja did not renew his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture near me. Again the weary and apparently interminable marching became a perfect nightmare of horrors to me. The more firmly fixed became the realization that the girl's friendship had meant so much to me the more I came to miss it, and the more impregnable the barrier of silly pride. But I was very young and would not ask Gack for the explanation which I was sure he could give, and that might have made everything all right again. On the march, or during halts, Diane refused consistently to notice me. When her eyes wandered in my direction she looked either over my head or directly through me. At last I became desperate and determined to swallow my self-esteem, and again beg her to tell me how I had offended and how I might make reparation. I made up my mind that I should do this at the next halt. We were approaching another range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them instead of winding across them through some high-flung pass, we entered a mighty natural tunnel, a series of labyrinthian grottos, dark as arabus. The guards had no torches or lights of any description. In fact we had seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered polucinar. In a land of perpetual noon there is no need of light above ground. Yet I marveled that they had no means of lighting their way through these dark subterranean passages, so we crept along at a snail's pace, with much stumbling and falling. The guards keeping up a sing-song chant ahead of us interspersed with certain high notes which I found always indicated rough places and turns. Alts were now more frequent, but I did not wish to speak to Diane until I could see from the expression of her face how she was receiving my apologies. At last a faint glow ahead for warned us of the end of the tunnel, for which I for one was devoutly thankful. Then at a sudden turn we emerged into the full light of the noon-day sun. But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a real catastrophe. Diane was gone, and with her a half dozen other prisoners the guards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to behold. Their awesome beastio faces were contorted in the most diabolical expressions as they accused each other of responsibility for the loss. Finally they fell upon us, beating us with their spear shafts and hatchets. They had already killed two near the head of the line and were like to have finished the balance of us when their leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all my life had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of beastio rage. I thanked God that Diane had not been one of those left to endure it. Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me, each alternate one had been freed, commencing with Diane. Huja was gone, gak remained. What could it mean? How had it been accomplished? The commander of the guards was investigating. Soon he discovered that the rude locks which had held the neckbands in place had been deftly picked. Huja, the sly one, murmured gak, who is now next to me in line. "He has taken the girl that you would not have," he continued glancing at me. "That I would not have," I cried, "what do you mean?" He looked at me closely for a moment. "I have doubted your story that you are from another world," he said at last. "But yet upon no other ground could your ignorance of the ways of Palucidar be explained. Do you really mean that you do not know that you have offended the beautiful one, and how?" "I do not know, gak," I replied. "Then I shall tell you." When a man of Palucidar intervenes between another man and the woman the other man would have, "The woman belongs to the victor. Die in the beautiful belongs to you. You should have claimed her or released her. Had you taken her hand it would have indicated your desire to make her your mate. And had you raised her hand above her head and then dropped it, it would have meant that you did not wish her for your mate and that you released her from all obligations to you. By doing neither you have put upon her the greatest affront that any man may put upon a woman. Now she is your slave. No man will take her as a mate or may take her honorably until he shall have overcome you in combat. And men do not choose slave women as their mates, at least not the men of Palucidar." "I did not know, gak," I cried. "I did not know. Not for all Palucidar would I have harmed die in the beautiful by word or look or act of mine. I do not want her as my slave, I do not want her as my, but here I stopped. The vision of that sweet, innocent face floated before me amidst the soft mists of imagination. And where I had on the second believed that I clung only to the memory of a gentle friendship I had lost. Yet now it seemed that it would have been disloyalty to her to have said that I did not want die in the beautiful as my mate. I have not thought of her except as a welcome friend in a strange, cruel world. Even now I did not think that I loved her. I believe gak must have read the truth more in my expression than in my words, for presently he laid his hand upon my shoulder. "Man of another world," he said, "I believe you. Lips may lie, but when the heart speaks through the eyes it tells only the truth. Your heart has spoken to me. I know now that you meant no affront to die in the beautiful. She is not of my tribe, but her mother is my sister. She does not know it. Her mother was stolen by Diane's father, who came with others from the tribe of Amos, to battle with us for our women. The most beautiful women of Palucidar. Then was her father the king of Amos, and her mother was daughter of the king of Sarri. To whose power I, his son, have succeeded. Diane is the daughter of kings, though her father is no longer king since the sadock tossed him, and Jubal the ugly one rested his kingship from him. Because of her lineage, the wrong you did her was greatly magnified in the eyes of all who saw it. She will never forgive you. I asked gak if there was not some way in which I could release the girl, from the bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon her. "If ever you find her, yes," he answered, merely to raise her hand above her head and drop it in the presence of others, is sufficient to release her. "But how may you ever find her, you who are doomed to a life of slavery yourself in the buried city of Putra?" "Is there no escape?" I asked. "Pooja the sly one escaped and took the others with him," replied gak. "But there are no more dark places on the way to Putra, and once there it is not so easy. The mares are very wise. Even if one escaped from Putra, there are the thiptars they would find you and then," the hairy one shuttered. "No, you will never escape the mares." It was a cheerful prospect. I asked Perry what he thought about it, but he only shrugged his shoulders and continued a long winded prayer he had been at for some time. He was wont to say that the only redeeming feature of our captivity was the ample time it gave him for the improvisation of prayers. It was becoming an obsession with him. The segoths had begun to take notice of his habit of declaming throughout entire marches. One of them asked him what he was saying, to whom he was talking. The question gave me an idea. So I answered quickly before Perry could say anything. "Do not interrupt him," I said. "He is a very holy man in the world from which we come. He is speaking to spirits which you cannot see. Do not interrupt him or they will spring out of the air upon you and rind you limb from limb, like that." And I jumped towards the great brute with loud "Boo!" that sent him stumbling backward. I took a long chance, I realized, but if we could make any capital out of Perry's harmless mania, I wanted to make it while the making was prime. It worked splendidly. The segoths treated us both with marked respect during the balance of our journey, and then passed the word along to their masters, the Mayors. Two marches after this episode, we came to the city of Putra. The entrance to it was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which guarded a flight of steps leading to the buried city. Segoths were on guard here, as well as at 100 or more other towers scattered about over a large plane. End of chapter four. Looking for excitement? Chumba Casino is here. Play any time, play anywhere. Play on the train, play at the store, play at home, play when you're bored. Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So what are you waiting for? Don't delay! Chumba Casino is free to play. Experience social gameplay like never before. Go to Chumba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots, bingo, slingo, and more. Live the Chumba Life at ChumbaCasino.com. PGW room. No purchase necessary. Avoid web prohibited by law. See terms and conditions, 18 plus. Welcome to Solgood Media, where your journey into a world of endless audio possibilities begins. Imagine a place where you can discover thousands of captivating audio books. Immerse yourself in tranquil sounds for sleep and meditation, and explore timeless stories and lectures that expand your mind and enrich your soul. At SolgoodMedia.com, we believe in the power of stories to transform lives. 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 SolgoodMedia 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 solgoodmedia.com today and start your free trial. That's s-o-l-g-o-o-d-m-e-d-i-a.com.