the Beautiful, his half-savage mate, safe among his
friends, or had Hooja the Sly One succeeded in his nefarious schemes to
abduct her?

Did Abner Perry, the lovable old inventor and paleontologist, still
live?

Had the federated tribes of Pellucidar succeeded in overthrowing the
mighty Mahars, the dominant race of reptilian monsters, and their
fierce, gorilla-like soldiery, the savage Sagoths?

I must admit that I was in a state bordering upon nervous prostration
when I entered the ---- and ---- Club, in Algiers, and inquired for Mr.
Nestor. A moment later I was ushered into his presence, to find myself
clasping hands with the sort of chap that the world holds only too few
of.

He was a tall, smooth-faced man of about thirty, clean-cut, straight,
and strong, and weather-tanned to the hue of a desert Arab. I liked
him immensely from the first, and I hope that after our three months
together in the desert country--three months not entirely lacking in
adventure--he found that a man may be a writer of "impossible trash"
and yet have some redeeming qualities.

The day following my arrival at Algiers we left for the south, Nestor
having made all arrangements in advance, guessing, as he naturally did,
that I could be coming to Africa for but a single purpose--to hasten at
once to the buried telegraph-instrument and wrest its secret from it.

In addition to our native servants, we took along an English
telegraph-operator named Frank Downes. Nothing of interest enlivened
our journey by rail and caravan till we came to the cluster of
date-palms about the ancient well upon the rim of the Sahara.

It was the very spot at which I first had seen David Innes. If he had
ever raised a cairn above the telegraph instrument no sign of it
remained now. Had it not been for the chance that caused Cogdon Nestor
to throw down his sleeping rug directly over the hidden instrument, it
might still be clicking there unheard--and this story still unwritten.

When we reached the spot and unearthed the little box the instrument
was quiet, nor did repeated attempts upon the part of our telegrapher
succeed in winning a response from the other end of the line. After
several days of futile endeavor to raise Pellucidar, we had begun to
despair. I was as positive that the other end of that little cable
protruded through the surface of the inner world as I am that I sit
here today in my study--when about midnight of the fourth day I was
awa