Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar Series: At the Earth's Core, Pellucidar, Tanar of Pellucidar, Tarzan at the Earth's Core, Back to the Stone Age, Land of Terror, Savage Pellucidar, by Edgar Rice Burroughs & John Eric Holmes

Author:Edgar Rice Burroughs & John Eric Holmes [Burroughs, Edgar Rice & Holmes, John Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00FCGMUIM
Barnesnoble: B00FCGMUIM
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1963-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVII

IT WAS at this camp that the mastodons left us. When we awoke I called them many times; but they did not come; and I think we all felt a little depressed about it as we started off once more on the long trek toward Sari.

For some inexplicable reason, I was haunted by a presentiment of evil after the mastodons left us; nor was I alone in this. Both Zor and Kleeto shared my depression. As though to further accentuate our mood, the sky became overcast with dark and ominous clouds; and presently there broke upon us a terrific electrical storm. The wind howled about us, almost hurling us to the ground. The air was filled with flying leaves and branches; and the trees of the forest swayed and groaned ominously. Our situation was most precarious, with trees crashing down all about us. The rain fell in great masses which swept against us with staggering force. I had never seen such a storm before in Pellucidar.

Constantly buffeted by wind and water, we staggered on until at last we came to a comparatively open space which we felt would be far safer than the denser forest. Here we huddled together with our backs toward the storm, waiting like dumb creatures for the battle of the elements to subside.

Great animals, which ordinarily would have threatened our very existence, passed close by us as they fled before the storm; but we had no fear of them for we knew that they were even more terrified than we, and that hunting and feeding were far from their thoughts. Aside from the danger from flying branches, we felt comparatively safe; and so were not as alert as customarily, although, as a matter of course, we could have heard or seen little above the storm and the blinding rain. The crashing thunder, following peal after peal, almost continuously, combined with the howling wind to drown out any other sound.

At the very height of the storm we were suddenly seized from behind by powerful fingers. Our weapons were wrenched from us and our hands secured behind our backs; then, at last, we saw our captors. There were fifteen or twenty of them, the largest men I have ever seen. Even the smallest of them stood fully seven feet in height. Their faces were extremely ugly, and a pair of great, tusk-like yellow teeth imparted no additional beauty to them. They appeared to be very low in the scale of human evolution, being entirely naked and armed only with the most primitive weapons-a very crude stone knife and a club. In addition to these, each of them carried a grass rope.

They paid no more attention to the storm than as though it did not exist; but they seemed mightily pleased over their capture.

"Good," grunted one, pinching Kleeto's flesh.

"What do you intend doing with us?" I demanded.

One of them leaned close to me, leering and blowing his foul breath in my face. "Eat you," he said.

"Stay out of Azar, if you do not want to be eaten," said another.

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