"What is that?" demanded one of the natives.
"Take up your hampers and hasten on to your village and tell no one, as long as you live, what you have done, not even your mates. If you do not tell, no one will know for we shall not tell."
"We will never tell," cried the men in chorus.
"Do not even talk about it among yourselves," cautioned David, "for even the trees have ears, and if the Korsars come to your village and question you tell them that you saw three men and two women traveling toward the east just beyond the borders of the city of Korsar . Tell them that they were too far away for you to recognize them, but that they may have been The Cid's daughter and her companion with the three men who abducted them."
"We will do as you say," replied the carriers.
"Then be gone," demanded David, and the eight men hurriedly gathered up their hampers and disappeared into the forest toward the north.
When the two girls were sufficiently revived and rested to continue the journey, the party set out again, making their way to the east for a short distance and then turning north again, for it had been Tanar's plan to throw the Korsars off the trail by traveling north, rather than east or south. Later they would turn to the east, far north of the area which the Korsars might be expected to comb in search of them, and then again, after many marches, they would change their direction once more to the south. It was a circuitous route, but it seemed the safest.
The forest changed to pine and cedar and there were windswept wastes dotted with gnarled and stunted trees. The air was cooler than they had ever known it in their native land, and when the wind blew from the north they shivered around roaring camp fires. The animals they met were scarcer and bore heavier fur, and nowhere was there sign of man.
Upon one occasion when they stopped to camp Tanar pointed at the ground before him. "Look!" he cried to David. "My shadow is no longer beneath me," and then, looking up, "the sun is not above us."
"I have noticed that," replied David, "and I am trying to understand the reason for it, and perhaps I shall with the aid of the legends of the Korsars."
As they proceeded their shadows grew longer and longer and the light and heat of the sun diminished until they traveled in a semi-twilight that was always cold.
Long since they had been forced to fashion warmer garments from the pelts of the beasts they had killed. Tanar and Ja wanted to turn back toward the southeast, for their strange homing instinct drew them in that direction toward their own country, but David asked them to accompany him yet a little further for his mind had evolved a strange and wonderful theory and he wished to press on yet a little further to obtain still stronger proof of its correctness.
When they slept they rested beside roaring fires and once, when they awoke, they were covered by a light mantle of a cold, white substance that frightened the Pellucidarians, but that David knew was snow. And the air was full of whirling particles and the wind bit those portions of their faces that were exposed, for now they wore fur caps and hoods and their hands were covered with warm mittens.
"We cannot go much further in this direction," said Ja, "or we shall all perish."
"Perhaps you are right," said David. "You four turn back to the southeast and I will go yet a little further to the north and overtake you when I have satisfied myself that a thing that I believe is true."
"No," cried Tanar, "we shall remain together. Where you go we shall go."
"Yes," said Ja, "we shall not abandon you."
"Just a little further north, then," said David, "and I shall be ready to turn back with you," and so they forged ahead over snow-covered ground into the deepening gloom that filled the souls of the Pellucidarians with terror. But after a while the wind changed and blew from the south and the snow melted and the air became balmy again, and still further on the twilight slowly lifted and the light increased, though the midday sun of Pellucidar was now scarcely visible behind them.
"I cannot understand it," said Ja. "Why should it become lighter again, although the sun is even further away behind us?"
"I do not know," said Tanar. "Ask David."
"I can only guess," said David, "and my guess seems so preposterous that I dare not voice it."
"Look!" cried Stellara, pointing ahead. "It is the sea."
"Yes," said Gura, "a gray sea; it does not look like water."
"And what is that?" cried Tanar. "There is a great fire upon the sea."
"And the sea does not curve upward in the distance," cried Stellara. "Everything is wrong in this country and I am afraid."
David had stopped in his tracks and was staring at the deep red glow ahead. The others gathered around him and watched it, too. "What is it?" demanded Ja.
"As there is a God in heaven it can be but one thing," replied David; "and yet I know that it cannot be that thing. The very idea is ridiculous. It is impossible and outlandish."
"But what might it be?" demanded Stellara.
"The sun," replied David.
"But the sun is almost out of sight behind us," Gura reminded him.
"I do not mean the sun of Pellucidar," replied David; "but the sun of the outer world, the world from which I came."
The others stood in silent awe, watching the edge of a blood red disc that seemed to be floating upon a gray ocean across whose reddened surface a brilliant pathway of red and gold led from the shoreline to the blazing orb, where the sea and sky seemed to meet.
XV MADNESS
"Now," said Stellara, "we can go no further;" nor indeed could they for east and west and north stretched a great, sullen sea and along the shore-line at their feet great ice cakes rose and fell with sullen roars and loud reports as the sea ground the churning mass.
For a long time David Innes, Emperor of Pellucidar, stood staring out across that vast and desolate waste of water. "What lies beyond?" he murmured to himself, and then, shaking his head, he turned away. "Come," he said, "let us strike back for Sari."
His companions received his words with shouts of joy. Smiles replaced the half troubled expressions that had marked their drawn faces since the moment that they had discovered that their beloved noonday sun was being left behind them.
With light steps, with laughter and joking, they faced the long, arduous journey that lay ahead of them.
During the second march, after they had turned back from the northern sea, Gura discovered a strange object to the left of their line of march.
"It looks as though it might be some queer sort of native hut," she said.
"We shall have to investigate it," said David, and the five made their way to the side of the strange object.
It was a large, heavy, wicker basket that lay inverted upon the barren ground. All about it were the rotten remnants of cordage.
At David's suggestion the men turned the basket over upon its side. Beneath it they found well-preserved remnants of oiled silk and a network of fine cord.
"What is it?" asked Stellara.
"It is the basket and all that remains of the gas bag of a balloon," said David.
"What is a balloon," asked the girl, "and how did it get here?"
"I can explain what a balloon is," said David; "but if I were positive that I was correct in my conjecture as to how it came here, I would hold the answer to a thousand questions that have puzzled the men of the outer crust for ages." For a long time he stood silently contemplating the weather-worn basket. His mind submerged in thought was oblivious to all else. "If I only knew," he mused. "If I only knew, and yet how else could it have come here? What else could that red disc upon the horizon of the sea have been other than the midnight sun of the arctic regions."