ahar as the cadence of our own
instrumental music pleases our ears. Sometimes the band took measured
steps in unison to one side or the other, or backward and again
forward--it all seemed very silly and meaningless to me, but at the end
of the first piece the Mahars upon the rocks showed the first
indications of enthusiasm that I had seen displayed by the dominant
race of Pellucidar. They beat their great wings up and down, and smote
their rocky perches with their mighty tails until the ground shook.
Then the band started another piece, and all was again as silent as the
grave. That was one great beauty about Mahar music--if you didn't
happen to like a piece that was being played all you had to do was shut
your eyes.

When the band had exhausted its repertory it took wing and settled upon
the rocks above and behind the queen. Then the business of the day was
on. A man and woman were pushed into the arena by a couple of Sagoth
guardsmen. I leaned forward in my seat to scrutinize the
female--hoping against hope that she might prove to be another than
Dian the Beautiful. Her back was toward me for a while, and the sight
of the great mass of raven hair piled high upon her head filled me with
alarm.

Presently a door in one side of the arena wall was opened to admit a
huge, shaggy, bull-like creature.

"A Bos," whispered Perry, excitedly. "His kind roamed the outer crust
with the cave bear and the mammoth ages and ages ago. We have been
carried back a million years, David, to the childhood of a planet--is
it not wondrous?"

But I saw only the raven hair of a half-naked girl, and my heart stood
still in dumb misery at the sight of her, nor had I any eyes for the
wonders of natural history. But for Perry and Ghak I should have
leaped to the floor of the arena and shared whatever fate lay in store
for this priceless treasure of the Stone Age.

With the advent of the Bos--they call the thing a thag within
Pellucidar--two spears were tossed into the arena at the feet of the
prisoners. It seemed to me that a bean shooter would have been as
effective against the mighty monster as these pitiful weapons.

As the animal approached the two, bellowing and pawing the ground with
the strength of many earthly bulls, another door directly beneath us
was opened, and from it issued the most terrific roar that ever had
fallen upon my outraged ears. I could not at first see the beast from
which emanated this fearsome challen