Is that any way to
treat a friend? I'm surprised at you, Perry, and if I'd thought for a
moment that you cared no more for me than this I should not have
returned to chance death at the hands of the Mahars for your sake."

The old man looked at me for a long time before he spoke. There was a
puzzled expression upon his wrinkled face, and a look of hurt sorrow in
his eyes.

"David, my boy," he said, "how could you for a moment doubt my love for
you? There is something strange here that I cannot understand. I know
that I am not mad, and I am equally sure that you are not; but how in
the world are we to account for the strange hallucinations that each of
us seems to harbor relative to the passage of time since last we saw
each other. You are positive that months have gone by, while to me it
seems equally certain that not more than an hour ago I sat beside you
in the amphitheater. Can it be that both of us are right and at the
same time both are wrong? First tell me what time is, and then maybe I
can solve our problem. Do you catch my meaning?"

I didn't and said so.

"Yes," continued the old man, "we are both right. To me, bent over my
book here, there has been no lapse of time. I have done little or
nothing to waste my energies and so have required neither food nor
sleep, but you, on the contrary, have walked and fought and wasted
strength and tissue which must needs be rebuilt by nutriment and food,
and so, having eaten and slept many times since last you saw me you
naturally measure the lapse of time largely by these acts. As a matter
of fact, David, I am rapidly coming to the conviction that there is no
such thing as time--surely there can be no time here within Pellucidar,
where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, the
Mahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here
in all their literary works but a single tense, the present. There
seems to be neither past nor future with them. Of course it is
impossible for our outer-earthly minds to grasp such a condition, but
our recent experiences seem to demonstrate its existence."

It was too big a subject for me, and I said so, but Perry seemed to
enjoy nothing better than speculating upon it, and after listening with
interest to my account of the adventures through which I had passed he
returned once more to the subject, which he was enlarging upon with
considerable fluency when he was interrupted by the entrance