e center of the
Pellucidarian sky--directly overhead.

Then, too, she must have been impressed by the wondrous mechanism of
the prospector which had bored its way from world to world and back
again. And that it had been driven by a rational being must also have
occurred to her.

Too, she had seen me conversing with other men upon the earth's
surface. She had seen the arrival of the caravan of books and arms,
and ammunition, and the balance of the heterogeneous collection which I
had crammed into the cabin of the iron mole for transportation to
Pellucidar.

She had seen all these evidences of a civilization and brain-power
transcending in scientific achievement anything that her race had
produced; nor once had she seen a creature of her own kind.

There could have been but a single deduction in the mind of the
Mahar--there were other worlds than Pellucidar, and the gilak was a
rational being.

Now the creature at my side was creeping slowly toward the near-by sea.
At my hip hung a long-barreled six-shooter--somehow I had been unable
to find the same sensation of security in the newfangled automatics
that had been perfected since my first departure from the outer
world--and in my hand was a heavy express rifle.

I could have shot the Mahar with ease, for I knew intuitively that she
was escaping--but I did not.

I felt that if she could return to her own kind with the story of her
adventures, the position of the human race within Pellucidar would be
advanced immensely at a single stride, for at once man would take his
proper place in the considerations of the reptilia.

At the edge of the sea the creature paused and looked back at me. Then
she slid sinuously into the surf.

For several minutes I saw no more of her as she luxuriated in the cool
depths.

Then a hundred yards from shore she rose and there for another short
while she floated upon the surface.

Finally she spread her giant wings, flapped them vigorously a score of
times and rose above the blue sea. A single time she circled far
aloft--and then straight as an arrow she sped away.

I watched her until the distant haze enveloped her and she had
disappeared. I was alone.

My first concern was to discover where within Pellucidar I might
be--and in what direction lay the land of the Sarians where Ghak the
Hairy One ruled.

But how was I to guess in which direction lay Sari?

And if I set out to search--what then?

Could I find my way back