st how
deep was Raja's affection for me. One of us could be master, and
logically I was the one. He growled at me. I cuffed him sharply
across the nose. He looked it me for a moment in surprised
bewilderment, and then he growled again. I made another feint at him,
expecting that it would bring him at my throat; but instead he winced
and crouched down.

Raja was subdued!

I stooped and patted him. Then I took a piece of the rope that
constituted a part of my equipment and made a leash for him.

Thus we resumed our journey toward Thuria. The youth who had seen us
was evidently of the Thurians. That he had lost no time in racing
homeward and spreading the word of my coming was evidenced when we had
come within sight of the clearing, and the village--the first real
village, by the way, that I had ever seen constructed by human
Pellucidarians. There was a rude rectangle walled with logs and
boulders, in which were a hundred or more thatched huts of similar
construction. There was no gate. Ladders that could be removed by
night led over the palisade.

Before the village were assembled a great concourse of warriors.
Inside I could see the heads of women and children peering over the top
of the wall; and also, farther back, the long necks of lidi, topped by
their tiny heads. Lidi, by the way, is both the singular and plural
form of the noun that describes the huge beasts of burden of the
Thurians. They are enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long,
with very small heads perched at the top of very long, slender necks.
Their heads are quite forty feet from the ground. Their gait is slow
and deliberate, but so enormous are their strides that, as a matter of
fact, they cover the ground quite rapidly.

Perry has told me that they are almost identical with the fossilized
remains of the diplodocus of the outer crust's Jurassic age. I have to
take his word for it--and I guess you will, unless you know more of
such matters than I.

As we came in sight of the warriors the men set up a great jabbering.
Their eyes were wide in astonishment--only, I presume, because of my
strange garmenture, but as well from the fact that I came in company
with a jalok, which is the Pellucidarian name of the hyaenodon.

Raja tugged at his leash, growling and showing his long white fangs.
He would have liked nothing better than to be at the throats of the
whole aggregation; but I held him in with the leash, though it took all