Pellucidar

  CHAPTER III

  SHOOTING THE CHUTES--AND AFTER

  Through the fog I felt my way along by means of my compass. I nolonger heard the bears, nor did I encounter one within the fog.

  Experience has since taught me that these great beasts are asterror-stricken by this phenomenon as a landsman by a fog at sea, andthat no sooner does a fog envelop them than they make the best of theirway to lower levels and a clear atmosphere. It was well for me thatthis was true.

  I felt very sad and lonely as I crawled along the difficult footing.My own predicament weighed less heavily upon me than the loss of Perry,for I loved the old fellow.

  That I should ever win the opposite slopes of the range I began todoubt, for though I am naturally sanguine, I imagine that thebereavement which had befallen me had cast such a gloom over my spiritsthat I could see no slightest ray of hope for the future.

  Then, too, the blighting, gray oblivion of the cold, damp cloudsthrough which I wandered was distressing. Hope thrives best insunlight, and I am sure that it does not thrive at all in a fog.

  But the instinct of self-preservation is stronger than hope. Itthrives, fortunately, upon nothing. It takes root upon the brink ofthe grave, and blossoms in the jaws of death. Now it flourishedbravely upon the breast of dead hope, and urged me onward and upward ina stern endeavor to justify its existence.

  As I advanced the fog became denser. I could see nothing beyond mynose. Even the snow and ice I trod were invisible.

  I could not see below the breast of my bearskin coat. I seemed to befloating in a sea of vapor.

  To go forward over a dangerous glacier under such conditions was littleshort of madness; but I could not have stopped going had I knownpositively that death lay two paces before my nose. In the firstplace, it was too cold to stop, and in the second, I should have gonemad but for the excitement of the perils that beset each forward step.

  For some time the ground had been rougher and steeper, until I had beenforced to scale a considerable height that had carried me from theglacier entirely. I was sure from my compass that I was following theright general direction, and so I kept on.

  Once more the ground was level. From the wind that blew about me Iguessed that I must be upon some exposed peak of ridge.

  And then quite suddenly I stepped out into space. Wildly I turned andclutched at the ground that had slipped from beneath my feet.

  Only a smooth, icy surface was there. I found nothing to clutch orstay my fall, and a moment later so great was my speed that nothingcould have stayed me.

  As suddenly as I had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did Iemerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from acannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could seenothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth andfrozen snow, that rushed past me with express-train velocity.

  I must have slid downward thousands of feet before the steep inclinecurved gently on to a broad, smooth, snow-covered plateau. Across thisI hurtled with slowly diminishing velocity, until at last objects aboutme began to take definite shape.

  Far ahead, miles and miles away, I saw a great valley and mighty woods,and beyond these a broad expanse of water. In the nearer foreground Idiscerned a small, dark blob of color upon the shimmering whiteness ofthe snow.

  "A bear," thought I, and thanked the instinct that had impelled me tocling tenaciously to my rifle during the moments of my awful tumble.

  At the rate I was going it would be but a moment before I should bequite abreast the thing; nor was it long before I came to a sudden stopin soft snow, upon which the sun was shining, not twenty paces from theobject of my most immediate apprehension.

  It was standing upon its hind legs waiting for me. As I scrambled tomy feet to meet it, I dropped my gun in the snow and doubled up withlaughter.

  It was Perry.

  The expression upon his face, combined with the relief I felt at seeinghim again safe and sound, was too much for my overwrought nerves.

  "David!" he cried. "David, my boy! God has been good to an old man.He has answered my prayer."

  It seems that Perry in his mad flight had plunged over the brink atabout the same point as that at which I had stepped over it a shorttime later. Chance had done for us what long periods of rational laborhad failed to accomplish.

  We had crossed the divide. We were upon the side of the Mountains ofthe Clouds that we had for so long been attempting to reach.

  We looked about. Below us were green trees and warm jungles. In thedistance was a great sea.

  "The Lural Az," I said, pointing toward its blue-green surface.

  Somehow--the gods alone can explain it--Perry, too, had clung to hisrifle during his mad descent of the icy slope. For that there wascause for great rejoicing.

  Neither of us was worse for his experience, so after shaking the snowfrom our clothing, we set off at a great rate down toward the warmthand comfort of the forest and the jungle.

  The going was easy by comparison with the awful obstacles we had had toencounter upon the opposite side of the divide. There were beasts, ofcourse, but we came through safely.

  Before we halted to eat or rest, we stood beside a little mountainbrook beneath the wondrous trees of the primeval forest in anatmosphere of warmth and comfort. It reminded me of an early June dayin the Maine woods.

  We fell to work with our short axes and cut enough small trees to builda 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 isno means of measuring time within Pellucidar, there can be no suchthing 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 intothe ground in the building of our shelter, first stripping the leavesand branches from them, and when we awoke we found that many of themhad 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 sameposition when we opened them; nor had it varied a hair's breadth in theinterim.

  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 ofhunger that awoke me. Ptarmigan and wild boar fell before my revolverwithin a dozen moments of my awakening. Perry soon had a roaring fireblazing by the brink of the little stream.

  It was a good and delicious meal we made. Though we did not eat theentire boar, we made a very large hole in him, while the ptarmigan wasbut a mouthful.

  Having satisfied our hunger, we determined to set forth at once insearch of Anoroc and my old friend, Ja the Mezop. We each thought thatby following the little stream downward, we should come upon the largeriver which Ja had told me emptied into the Lural Az op-posite hisisland.

  We did so; nor were we disappointed, for at last after a pleasantjourney--and what journey would not be pleasant after the hardships wehad endured among the peaks of the Mountains of the Clouds--we cameupon a broad flood that rushed majestically onward in the direction ofthe 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 ofthe 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 toSari.

  But how to reach the islands was now the foremost question in ourminds. We must build a canoe.

  Perry is a most resourceful man. He has an axiom which carries thethought-kernel that what man has done, man can do, and it doesn't cutany figure with Perry whether a fellow knows how to do it or not.

  He set out to make gunpowder once, shortly after our escape from Phutraand at the beginning of the confederation of the wild tribes ofPellucidar. He sai
d that some one, without any knowledge of the factthat such a thing might be concocted, had once stumbled upon it byaccident, and so he couldn't see why a fellow who knew all about powderexcept how to make it couldn't do as well.

  He worked mighty hard mixing all sorts of things together, untilfinally he evolved a substance that looked like powder. He had beenvery proud of the stuff, and had gone about the village of the Sariansexhibiting it to every one who would listen to him, and explaining whatits purpose was and what terrific havoc it would work, until finallythe natives became so terrified at the stuff that they wouldn't comewithin a rod of Perry and his invention.

  Finally, I suggested that we experiment with it and see what it woulddo, so Perry built a fire, after placing the powder at a safe distance,and then touched a glowing ember to a minute particle of the deadlyexplosive. It extinguished the ember.

  Repeated experiments with it determined me that in searching for a highexplosive, Perry had stumbled upon a fire-extinguisher that would havemade his fortune for him back in our own world.

  So now he set himself to work to build a scientific canoe. I hadsuggested that we construct a dugout, but Perry convinced me that wemust build something more in keeping with our positions of supermen inthis world of the Stone Age.

  "We must impress these natives with our superiority," he explained."You must not forget, David, that you are emperor of Pellucidar. Assuch you may not with dignity approach the shores of a foreign power inso crude a vessel as a dugout."

  I pointed out to Perry that it wasn't much more incongruous for theemperor to cruise in a canoe, than it was for the prime minister toattempt to build one with his own hands.

  He had to smile at that; but in extenuation of his act he assured methat it was quite customary for prime ministers to give their personalattention to the building of imperial navies; "and this," he said, "isthe imperial navy of his Serene Highness, David I, Emperor of theFederated Kingdoms of Pellucidar."

  I grinned; but Perry was quite serious about it. It had always seemedrather more or less of a joke to me that I should be addressed asmajesty and all the rest of it. Yet my imperial power and dignity hadbeen a very real thing during my brief reign.

  Twenty tribes had joined the federation, and their chiefs had sworneternal fealty to one another and to me. Among them were many powerfulthough savage nations. Their chiefs we had made kings; their triballands kingdoms.

  We had armed them with bows and arrows and swords, in addition to theirown more primitive weapons. I had trained them in military disciplineand in so much of the art of war as I had gleaned from extensivereading of the campaigns of Napoleon, Von Moltke, Grant, and theancients.

  We had marked out as best we could natural boundaries dividing thevarious kingdoms. We had warned tribes beyond these boundaries thatthey must not trespass, and we had marched against and severelypunished those who had.

  We had met and defeated the Mahars and the Sagoths. In short, we haddemonstrated our rights to empire, and very rapidly were we beingrecognized and heralded abroad when my departure for the outer worldand Hooja's treachery had set us back.

  But now I had returned. The work that fate had undone must be doneagain, and though I must need smile at my imperial honors, I none theless felt the weight of duty and obligation that rested upon myshoulders.

  Slowly the imperial navy progressed toward completion. She was awondrous craft, but I had my doubts about her. When I voiced them toPerry, he reminded me gently that my people for many generations hadbeen mine-owners, not ship-builders, and consequently I couldn't beexpected to know much about the matter.

  I was minded to inquire into his hereditary fitness to designbattleships; but inasmuch as I already knew that his father had been aminister in a back-woods village far from the coast, I hesitated lest Ioffend the dear old fellow.

  He was immensely serious about his work, and I must admit that in sofar as appearances went he did extremely well with the meager tools andassistance at his command. We had only two short axes and ourhunting-knives; yet with these we hewed trees, split them into planks,surfaced and fitted them.

  The "navy" was some forty feet in length by ten feet beam. Her sideswere quite straight and fully ten feet high--"for the purpose,"explained Perry, "of adding dignity to her appearance and rendering itless easy for an enemy to board her."

  As a matter of fact, I knew that he had had in mind the safety of hercrew under javelin-fire--the lofty sides made an admirable shelter.Inside she reminded me of nothing so much as a floating trench. Therewas also some slight analogy to a huge coffin.

  Her prow sloped sharply backward from the water-line--quite like a lineof battleship. Perry had designed her more for moral effect upon anenemy, I think, than for any real harm she might inflict, and so thoseparts which were to show were the most imposing.

  Below the water-line she was practically non-existent. She should havehad considerable draft; but, as the enemy couldn't have seen it, Perrydecided to do away with it, and so made her flat-bottomed. It was thisthat caused my doubts about her.

  There was another little idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us bothuntil she was about ready to launch--there was no method of propulsion.Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perrysuggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it wouldbe a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe,even if we could find or wield poles that would reach to the bottom ofthe ocean.

  Finally I suggested that we convert her into a sailing vessel. Whenonce the idea took hold Perry was most enthusiastic about it, andnothing would do but a four-masted, full-rigged ship.

  Again I tried to dissuade him, but he was simply crazy over thepsychological effect which the appearance of this strange and mightycraft would have upon the natives of Pellucidar. So we rigged her withthin hides for sails and dried gut for rope.

  Neither of us knew much about sailing a full-rigged ship; but thatdidn't worry me a great deal, for I was confident that we should neverbe called upon to do so, and as the day of launching approached I waspositive of it.

  We had built her upon a low bank of the river close to where it emptiedinto the sea, and just above high tide. Her keel we had laid uponseveral rollers cut from small trees, the ends of the rollers in turnresting upon parallel tracks of long saplings. Her stern was towardthe water.

  A few hours before we were ready to launch her she made quite animposing picture, for Perry had insisted upon setting every shred of"canvas." I told him that I didn't know much about it, but I was surethat at launching the hull only should have been completed, everythingelse being completed after she had floated safely.

  At the last minute there was some delay while we sought a name for her.I wanted her christened the Perry in honor both of her designer andthat other great naval genius of another world, Captain Oliver HazardPerry, of the United States Navy. But Perry was too modest; hewouldn't hear of it.

  We finally decided to establish a system in the naming of the fleet.Battle-ships of the first-class should bear the names of kingdoms ofthe federation; armored cruisers the names of kings; cruisers the namesof cities, and so on down the line. Therefore, we decided to name thefirst battle-ship Sari, after the first of the federated kingdoms.

  The launching of the Sari proved easier than I contemplated. Perrywanted me to get in and break something over the bow as she floatedout upon the bosom of the river, but I told him that I should feelsafer on dry land until I saw which side up the Sari would float.

  I could see by the expression of the old man's face that my words hadhurt him; but I noticed that he didn't offer to get in himself, and soI felt less contrition than I might otherwise.

  When we cut the ropes and removed the blocks that held the Sari inplace she started for the water with a lunge. Before she hit it shewas going at a reckless speed, for we had laid our tracks quite down tothe water, greased them, and at intervals placed rollers all ready toreceive the ship as she moved
forward with stately dignity. But therewas no dignity in the Sari.

  When she touched the surface of the river she must have been goingtwenty or thirty miles an hour. Her momentum carried her well out intothe stream, until she came to a sudden halt at the end of the long linewhich we had had the foresight to attach to her bow and fasten to alarge tree upon the bank.

  The moment her progress was checked she promptly capsized. Perry wasoverwhelmed. I didn't upbraid him, nor remind him that I had "told himso."

  His grief was so genuine and so apparent that I didn't have the heartto reproach him, even were I inclined to that particular sort ofmeanness.

  "Come, come, old man!" I cried. "It's not as bad as it looks. Give mea hand with this rope, and we'll drag her up as far as we can; and thenwhen the tide goes out we'll try another scheme. I think we can make ago of her yet."

  Well, we managed to get her up into shallow water. When the tidereceded she lay there on her side in the mud, quite a pitiable objectfor the premier battle-ship of a world--"the terror of the seas" wasthe way Perry had occasionally described her.

  We had to work fast; but before the tide came in again we had strippedher of her sails and masts, righted her, and filled her about a quarterfull of rock ballast. If she didn't stick too fast in the mud I wassure that she would float this time right side up.

  I can tell you that it was with palpitating hearts that we sat upon theriver-bank and watched that tide come slowly in. The tides ofPellucidar don't amount to much by comparison with our higher tides ofthe outer world, but I knew that it ought to prove ample to float theSari.

  Nor was I mistaken. Finally we had the satisfaction of seeing thevessel rise out of the mud and float slowly upstream with the tide. Asthe water rose we pulled her in quite close to the bank and clamberedaboard.

  She rested safely now upon an even keel; nor did she leak, for she waswell calked with fiber and tarry pitch. We rigged up a single shortmast and light sail, fastened planking down over the ballast to form adeck, worked her out into midstream with a couple of sweeps, anddropped our primitive stone anchor to await the turn of the tide thatwould bear us out to sea.

  While we waited we devoted the time to the construction of an upperdeck, since the one immediately above the ballast was some seven feetfrom the gunwale. The second deck was four feet above this. In it wasa large, commodious hatch, leading to the lower deck. The sides of theship rose three feet above the upper deck, forming an excellentbreastwork, which we loopholed at intervals that we might lie prone andfire upon an enemy.

  Though we were sailing out upon a peaceful mission in search of myfriend Ja, we knew that we might meet with people of some other islandwho would prove unfriendly.

  At last the tide turned. We weighed anchor. Slowly we drifted downthe great river toward the sea.

  About us swarmed the mighty denizens of the primeval deep--plesiosauriand ichthyosauria with all their horrid, slimy cousins whose names wereas the names of aunts and uncles to Perry, but which I have never beenable to recall an hour after having heard them.

  At last we were safely launched upon the journey to which we had lookedforward for so long, and the results of which meant so much to me.