I MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP FROM EXHAUSTION. When I awokeI was very hungry, and after busying myself searchingfor fruit for a while, I set off through the jungle tofind the beach. I knew that the island was not so largebut that I could easily find the sea if I did but movein a straight line, but there came the difficulty as therewas no way in which I could direct my course and hold it,the sun, of course, being always directly above my head,and the trees so thickly set that I could see no distantobject which might serve to guide me in a straight line.

As it was I must have walked for a great distance since Iate four times and slept twice before I reached the sea,but at last I did so, and my pleasure at the sight of itwas greatly enhanced by the chance discovery of a hiddencanoe among the bushes through which I had stumbled justprior to coming upon the beach.

I can tell you that it did not take me long to pullthat awkward craft down to the water and shove it farout from shore. My experience with Ja had taught me thatif I were to steal another canoe I must be quick aboutit and get far beyond the owner's reach as soon as possible.

I must have come out upon the opposite side of theisland from that at which Ja and I had entered it,for the mainland was nowhere in sight. For a long time Ipaddled around the shore, though well out, before I sawthe mainland in the distance. At the sight of it I lostno time in directing my course toward it, for I had longsince made up my mind to return to Phutra and give myselfup that I might be once more with Perry and Ghak the Hairy One.

I felt that I was a fool ever to have attempted toescape alone, especially in view of the fact that ourplans were already well formulated to make a break forfreedom together. Of course I realized that the chancesof the success of our proposed venture were slim indeed,but I knew that I never could enjoy freedom withoutPerry so long as the old man lived, and I had learnedthat the probability that I might find him was less than slight.

Had Perry been dead, I should gladly have pitted mystrength and wit against the savage and primordial worldin which I found myself. I could have lived in seclusionwithin some rocky cave until I had found the means tooutfit myself with the crude weapons of the Stone Age,and then set out in search of her whose image had nowbecome the constant companion of my waking hours,and the central and beloved figure of my dreams.

But, to the best of my knowledge, Perry still livedand it was my duty and wish to be again with him, that wemight share the dangers and vicissitudes of the strangeworld we had discovered. And Ghak, too; the great,shaggy man had found a place in the hearts of us both,for he was indeed every inch a man and king.Uncouth, perhaps, and brutal, too, if judged too harshlyby the standards of effete twentieth- century civilization,but withal noble, dignified, chivalrous, and loveable.

Chance carried me to the very beach upon which Ihad discovered Ja's canoe, and a short time later Iwas scrambling up the steep bank to retrace my stepsfrom the plain of Phutra. But my troubles came when Ientered the canyon beyond the summit, for here I foundthat several of them centered at the point where Icrossed the divide, and which one I had traversedto reach the pass I could not for the life of me remember.

It was all a matter of chance and so I set off downthat which seemed the easiest going, and in this I madethe same mistake that many of us do in selecting the pathalong which we shall follow out the course of our lives,and again learned that it is not always best to followthe line of least resistance.

By the time I had eaten eight meals and slept twiceI was convinced that I was upon the wrong trail,for between Phutra and the inland sea I had not sleptat all, and had eaten but once. To retrace my stepsto the summit of the divide and explore another canyonseemed the only solution of my problem, but a suddenwidening and levelness of the canyon just before me seemedto suggest that it was about to open into a level country,and with the lure of discovery strong upon me I decidedto proceed but a short distance farther before I turned back.

The next turn of the canyon brought me to its mouth,and before me I saw a narrow plain leading down to an ocean.At my right the side of the canyon continued to thewater's edge, the valley lying to my left, and the footof it running gradually into the sea, where it formeda broad level beach.

Clumps of strange trees dotted the landscape here and therealmost to the water, and rank grass and ferns grew between.From the nature of the vegetation I was convinced thatthe land between the ocean and the foothills was swampy,though directly before me it seemed dry enough all theway to the sandy strip along which the restless watersadvanced and retreated.

Curiosity prompted me to walk down to the beach,for the scene was very beautiful. As I passed alongbeside the deep and tangled vegetation of the swamp Ithought that I saw a movement of the ferns at my left,but though I stopped a moment to look it was not repeated,and if anything lay hid there my eyes could not penetratethe dense foliage to discern it.

Presently I stood upon the beach looking out over thewide and lonely sea across whose forbidding bosom nohuman being had yet ventured, to discover what strangeand mysterious lands lay beyond, or what its invisibleislands held of riches, wonders, or adventure.What savage faces, what fierce and formidable beasts werethis very instant watching the lapping of the waves uponits farther shore! How far did it extend? Perry had toldme that the seas of Pellucidar were small in comparisonwith those of the outer crust, but even so this great oceanmight stretch its broad expanse for thousands of miles.For countless ages it had rolled up and down its countlessmiles of shore, and yet today it remained all unknownbeyond the tiny strip that was visible from its beaches.

The fascination of speculation was strong upon me.It was as though I had been carried back to the birthtime of our own outer world to look upon its lands andseas ages before man had traversed either. Here was anew world, all untouched. It called to me to explore it.I was dreaming of the excitement and adventure which laybefore us could Perry and I but escape the Mahars,when something, a slight noise I imagine, drew my attentionbehind me.

As I turned, romance, adventure, and discovery in theabstract took wing before the terrible embodiment of allthree in concrete form that I beheld advancing upon me.

A huge, slimy amphibian it was, with toad-like body and themighty jaws of an alligator. Its immense carcass must haveweighed tons, and yet it moved swiftly and silently toward me.Upon one hand was the bluff that ran from the canyon to the sea,on the other the fearsome swamp from which the creaturehad sneaked upon me, behind lay the mighty untracked sea,and before me in the center of the narrow way that ledto safety stood this huge mountain of terrible and menacingflesh.

A single glance at the thing was sufficient to assure methat I was facing one of those long-extinct, prehistoriccreatures whose fossilized remains are found withinthe outer crust as far back as the Triassic formation,a gigantic labyrinthodon. And there I was, unarmed, and,with the exception of a loin cloth, as naked as I had comeinto the world. I could imagine how my first ancestorfelt that distant, prehistoric morn that he encounteredfor the first time the terrifying progenitor of the thingthat had me cornered now beside the restless, mysterious sea.

Unquestionably he had escaped, or I should not have beenwithin Pellucidar or elsewhere, and I wished at that momentthat he had handed down to me with the various attributesthat I presumed I have inherited from him, the specificapplication of the instinct of self-preservation which savedhim from the fate which loomed so close before me today.

To seek escape in the swamp or in the ocean would have beensimilar to jumping into a den of lions to escape one uponthe outside. The sea and swamp both were doubtless alivewith these mighty, carnivorous amphibians, and if not,the individual that menaced me would pursue me into eitherthe sea or the swamp with equal facility.

There seemed nothing to do but stand supinely and await my end.I thought of Perry--how he would wonder what had become of me.I thought of my friends of the outer world, and of how theyall would go on living their lives in total ignoranceof the strange and terrible fate that had overtaken me,or unguessing the weird surroundings which had witnessedthe last frightful agony of my extinction. And with thesethoughts came a realization of how unimportant to the lifeand happiness of the world is the existence of any one of us.We may be snuffed out without an instant's warning, and fora brief day our friends speak of us with subdued voices.The following morning, while the first worm is busilyengaged in testing the construction of our coffin,they are teeing up for the first hole to suffer moreacute sorrow over a sliced ball than they did over our,to us, untimely demise. The labyrinthodon was comingmore slowly now. He seemed to realize that escape for mewas impossible, and I could have sworn that his huge,fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable appreciation ofmy predicament, or was it in anticipation of the juicymorsel which would so soon be pulp between thoseformidable teeth?

He was about fifty feet from me when I heard a voicecalling to me from the direction of the bluff at my left.I looked and could have shouted in delight at the sightthat met my eyes, for there stood Ja, waving franticallyto me, and urging me to run for it to the cliff's base.

I had no idea that I should escape the monster that hadmarked me for his breakfast, but at least I should notdie alone. Human eyes would watch me end. It was coldcomfort I presume, but yet I derived some slight peaceof mind from the contemplation of it.

To run seemed ridiculous, especially toward that steepand unscalable cliff, and yet I did so, and as I ran Isaw Ja, agile as a monkey, crawl down the precipitousface of the rocks, clinging to small projections, and thetough creepers that had found root-hold here and there.

The labyrinthodon evidently thought that Ja was comingto double his portion of human flesh, so he was in nohaste to pursue me to the cliff and frighten away thisother tidbit. Instead he merely trotted along behind me.

As I approached the foot of the cliff I saw what Ja intendeddoing, but I doubted if the thing would prove successful.He had come down to within twenty feet of the bottom,and there, clinging with one hand to a small ledge,and with his feet resting, precariously upon tiny bushesthat grew from the solid face of the rock, he loweredthe point of his long spear until it hung some six feetabove the ground.

To clamber up that slim shaft without dragging Ja downand precipitating both to the same doom from which thecopper-colored one was attempting to save me seemedutterly impossible, and as I came near the spear I toldJa so, and that I could not risk him to try to save myself.

But he insisted that he knew what he was doing and wasin no danger himself.

"The danger is still yours," he called, "for unless youmove much more rapidly than you are now, the sithicwill be upon you and drag you back before ever youare halfway up the spear--he can rear up and reachyou with ease anywhere below where I stand."

Well, Ja should know his own business, I thought, and so Igrasped the spear and clambered up toward the red manas rapidly as I could--being so far removed from my simianancestors as I am. I imagine the slow-witted sithic,as Ja called him, suddenly realized our intentions andthat he was quite likely to lose all his meal insteadof having it doubled as he had hoped.

When he saw me clambering up that spear he let out a hissthat fairly shook the ground, and came charging after meat a terrific rate. I had reached the top of the spearby this time, or almost; another six inches would giveme a hold on Ja's hand, when I felt a sudden wrench frombelow and glancing fearfully downward saw the mighty jawsof the monster close on the sharp point of the weapon.

I made a frantic effort to reach Ja's hand, the sithicgave a tremendous tug that came near to jerking Jafrom his frail hold on the surface of the rock,the spear slipped from his fingers, and still clingingto it I plunged feet foremost toward my executioner.

At the instant that he felt the spear come away from Ja'shand the creature must have opened his huge jaws to catch me,for when I came down, still clinging to the butt endof the weapon, the point yet rested in his mouth and theresult was that the sharpened end transfixed his lower jaw.

With the pain he snapped his mouth closed.I fell upon his snout, lost my hold upon the spear,rolled the length of his face and head, across hisshort neck onto his broad back and from there to the ground.

Scarce had I touched the earth than I was upon my feet,dashing madly for the path by which I had entered thishorrible valley. A glance over my shoulder showed methe sithic engaged in pawing at the spear stuck throughhis lower jaw, and so busily engaged did he remain in thisoccupation that I had gained the safety of the cliff topbefore he was ready to take up the pursuit. When he didnot discover me in sight within the valley he dashed,hissing into the rank vegetation of the swamp and that wasthe last I saw of him.