"Who are you?" demanded Hodon.
"I am Gamba, the go-sha of Lolo-lolo," replied the frightened man.
"I think we should kill him," said a Mezop. "I do not like the color of his skin."
"Where is Lolo-lolo," asked Hodon.
"It is on the other side of the nameless strait," replied Gamba, "where the country of the Xexots lies."
"You came from the other side of the nameless strait?"
"Yes; I came in a thing called a 'canoe'"
"Did you come alone?" asked Hodon.
"No; I came with a woman who said that she came from a country called Sari, and that her name was Dian the Beautiful."
"Where is she?" demanded Hodon.
"She was captured by the Manats, who live on the other side of this island."
"Can you lead us there?"
"No," replied Gamba; "I am lost. I do not even know the way to the coast where our canoe lies. If I were you, I would not go to the country of the Manats. They are terrible men and they lead tahos, who can kill and devour you. There were twelve Manats who captured Dian, and they had seven tahos with them."
"Can you show us where she was captured?"
"I can show you where I last saw her," replied Gamba; and this he did. There the trail of men and beasts was plain and to these men of the stone age the following of that trail was simple. They marched rapidly and almost without rest; and though ordinarily it was three long marches to the village of the Manats, Hodon and his hundred warriors reached it shortly after the first sleep.
The men who had captured Dian had only just arrived and her captor had taken her to his cave.
"Now," he said, "I am going to give you the beating I promised you. It will teach you to behave." He seized her by the hair and, stooping, picked up a short stick; and as he stooped Dian snatched her bronze dagger that the man had taken from her from the sheath at his side, and as he raised the stick she plunged it into his heart. With a scream he clutched at his breast; and then Dian gave him a push that sent him out of the cave to topple over the ledge and fall to the ground below.
A moment later she heard shouts and war-cries; and she thought that they were caused by the anger of the Manats because of the killing of one of their fellows; and she stood in the shadow of the cave's entrance with the dagger in her hand, determined to sell her life dearly and take a heavy toll of her enemies.
From below rose the shouts of the warriors and the roars and growls of the tahos; and then, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the roar of musketry.
Dian could not believe her ears. What other people in all Pellucidar, other than the men of the empire and the inhabitants of far Korsar, had firearms? It was too good to hope that these might be Sarians; and if they were from Korsar, she was as well off here among the Manats as to be captured by the Korsarians.
She stepped to the mouth of the cave and looked out. The fighting was going on almost directly beneath her. The tahos were doing the most damage among the attackers, but one by one they were being shot down; for the Manat warriors, confused by the noise and the smoke, made only an occasional sally, only to be driven back with heavy losses; and at last the remnants of them turned and fled, as the last of the tahos was killed.
Dian had long since seen that these men were no Korsars. She recognized the copper skins of the Mezops and knew that she had been saved.
She stood upon the ledge and called down to them, and the men looked up and cheered. Then she went down and greeted Hodon and the others; and the first question that she asked was of David. "Why is he not with you?" she asked. "Has anything happened to him?"
"He left Sari in a balloon such as carried you away," explained Hodon, "in the hope that it would take him to the same spot where yours landed. We do not know what became of him."
"Why are you here?" asked Dian.
"We were looking for O-aa, who, when last seen, was adrift on the Sari."
"How did you happen to come here and find me?" asked Dian.
"We landed on the island for water and I saw your sandals on the thwart of your canoe; then we came inland in search of you and we found a man who had seen you captured by these Manats. After that it was easy enough to follow their trail."
They started immediately on the long trek back to the other side of the island; and when they entered the jungle Gamba came down out of a tree where he had been hiding during the fighting.
"This man said that he came here in a canoe with you," said Hodon. "Did he offer to harm you in any way?"
"No," said Dian.
"Then we shall let him live," said Hodon.
PART IV: SAVAGE PELLUCIDAR
I
AS THE JOHN TYLER sailed through the nameless strait toward the Korsar Az in what seemed to David a fruitless search for the ship Lo-har and Hodon the Fleet One, a forgotten incident flashed into David's mind. As he had drifted across the strait in the balloon that Abner Perry had built for him that he might prosecute his search for Dian the Beautiful, he had seen, far below, a canoe with two occupants moving with the current toward the Korsar Az. And now, recalling what one of the Xexots had told him of seeing Dian and Gamba, the former king of Lolo-lolo, escaping in a canoe, he was certain that it must have been Dian and Gamba whom he had seen. So now he was anxious as O-aa to sail on into the Korsar Az.
Ah-gilak, the little old man from Cape Cod who could not recall his name but knew that it was not Dolly Dorcas, didn't care where he sailed the ship he had designed and now skippered. He was just content to sail it, a small version of the great clipper ship he had dreamed of building nearly a hundred years before as soon as he got back to Cape Cod .
Of course Abner Perry was more than anxious to prosecute the search for Dian, since it had been through his carelessness that the balloon had escaped and borne her away. Ja and Jav and Ko and the other Mezops of the crew, being borne to the sea, were happy in this, to them, wonderful ship. Ghak the Hairy One, king of Sari, who commanded the two hundred warriors aboard, would have gone to the fiery sea of Molop Az for either David or Dian. The two hundred warriors, while loyal and valiant, were mostly unhappy. They are hill people, the sea is not their element, and most of them were often sick.
On the Lo-har, Hodon and Dian decided to cruise about the Korsar Az for a while before giving up the search for O-aa, whom they had about given up for lost. Then they would return to Sari.
The Korsar Az is a great ocean extending, roughly, two thousand miles from north to south. It is an unchartered wilderness of unknown waters, and all but a short distance of its enormous shoreline a terra incognita to the crews of the Lo-har and the John Tyler, most of whom thought that its waters extended to the ends of the world and were bordered by lands inhabited by fierce enemies and roved by terrifying beasts, in all but the first of which conceits they were eminently correct.
Leaving Tandar, the island upon which he had found Dian, Hodon cruised to the south, while the John Tyler, entering the great sea from the nameless strait, turned her prow toward the north. Thus, fate separated them farther and farther.
Usually within sight of land, the John Tyler cruised in a north-easterly direction along the great peninsula upon the opposite side of which lie most of the kingdoms of the Empire of Pellucidar. For thirteen or fourteen hundred miles the ship held this course, while Ghak's two hundred sturdy warriors, sick and hating the sea, became more and more unhappy and discontented until they were close upon the verge of mutiny.
They were at heart loyal to Ghak and David; but they were men of the Stone Age, rugged individualists unaccustomed to discipline. Finally they came to Ghak in a body and demanded that the ship turn back and head for home.