'I cannot go much further,' he said. 'Why did you lure me into this crazy escapade?'
'You need not have come,' Tanar reminded him, 'and if you had not you would by now be out of your misery since doubtless all the prisoners have long since been torn to pieces and devoured by the Coripies of the grotto of Xax.'
Jude shuddered. 'I should not mind being dead,' he said, 'but I should hate to be torn to pieces by those horrible creatures.'
'This is a much nicer death,' said Tanar, 'for when we are sufficiently exhausted we shall simply sleep and awake no more.'
'I do not wish to die,' wailed Jude.
'You have never seemed very happy,' said Tanar. 'I should think one as unhappy as you would be glad to die.'
'I enjoy being unhappy,' said Jude. 'I know that I should be most miserable were I happy and anyway I should much rather be alive and unhappy than dead and unable to know that I was unhappy.'
'Take heart,' said Tanar. 'It cannot be much further to the end of this long corridor. Mow came through it and he did not say that it was so great a length that he became either exhausted or hungry and he not only traversed it from end to end in one direction, but he had to turn around and retrace his steps after he reached the opening into the cavern which we left.'
'The Coripies do not eat much; they are accustomed to starving,' said Jude, 'and they sleep less than we.'
'Perhaps you are right,' said Tanar, 'but I am sure that we are nearing the end.'
'I am,' said Jude, 'but not the end that I had wished.'
Even as they discussed the matter they were moving slowly along, when far ahead Tanar discerned a slight luminosity.
'Look,' he said, 'there is light. We are nearing the end.'
The discovery instilled new strength into both the men and with quickened steps they hastened along the tunnel in the direction of the promised escape. As they advanced, the light became more apparent until finally they came to the point where the tunnel they had been traversing opened into a large corridor, which was filled with a subdued light from occasional patches of phosphorescent rock in walls and ceiling, but neither to the right nor the left could they see any sign of daylight.
'Which way now?' demanded Jude.
Tanar shook his head. 'I do not know,' he said.
'At least I shall not die in that awful blackness,' wailed Jude, and perhaps that factor of their seemingly Inevitable doom had weighed most heavily upon the two Pellucidarians, for, living as these people do beneath the brilliant rays of a perpetual noonday sun, darkness is a hideous and abhorrent thing to them, so unaccustomed are they to it.
'In this light, however slight it may be,' said Tanar, 'I can no longer be depressed. I am sure that we shall escape.'
'But in which direction?' again demanded Jude.
'I shall turn to the right,' said Tanar.
Jude shook his head. 'That probably is the wrong direction,' he said.
'If you know that the right direction lies to the left,' said Tanar, 'let us go to the left.'
'I do not know,' said Jude; 'doubtless either direction is wrong.'
'All right,' said Tanar, with a laugh. 'We shall go to the right,' and, turning, he set off at a brisk walk along the larger corridor.
'Do you notice anything, Jude?' asked Tanar.
'No. Why do you ask?' demanded the Himean.
'I smell fresh air from the upper world,' said Tanar, 'and if I am right we must be near the mouth of the tunnel.'
Tanar was almost running now; exhaustion was forgotten in the unexpected hope of immediate deliverance. To be out in the fresh air and the light of day! To be free from the hideous darkness and the constant menace of recapture by the hideous monsters of the underworld! And across that bright hope, like a sinister shadow, came the numbing fear of disappointment.
What if, after all, the breath of air which was now clear and fresh in their nostrils should prove to be entering the corridor through some unscalable shaft, such as the Well of Sounding Water into which he had fallen upon his entrance into the country of the Buried People, or what, if, at the moment of escape, they should meet a party of the Coripies?
So heavily did these thoughts weigh upon Tanar's mind that he slackened his speed until once again he moved in a slow walk.
'What is the matter?' demanded Jude. 'A moment ago you were running and now you are barely crawling along. Do not tell me that you were mistaken and that, after all, we are not approaching the mouth of the corridor.'
'I do not know,' said Tanar. 'We may be about to meet a terrible disappointment and if that is true I wish to delay it as long as possible. It would be a terrible thing to have hope crushed within our breasts now.'
'I suppose it would,' said Jude, 'but that is precisely what I have been expecting.'
'You, I presume, would derive some satisfaction from disappointment,' said Tanar.
'Yes,' said Jude, 'I suppose I would. It is my nature.'
'Then prepare to be unhappy,' cried Tanar, suddenly, 'for here indeed is the mouth of the tunnel.'
He had spoken just as he had rounded a turn in the corridor, and when Jude came to his side the latter saw daylight creeping into the corridor through an opening just in front of them—an opening beyond which he saw the foliage of growing things and the blue sky of Pellucidar.
Emerging again to the light of the sun after their long incarceration in the bowels of the earth, the two men were compelled to cover their eyes with their hands, while they slowly accustomed themselves again to the brilliant light of the noonday sun of Pellucidar.
When he was able to uncover his eyes and look about him, Tanar saw that the mouth of the tunnel was high upon the precipitous side of a lofty mountain. Below them wooded ravines ran down to a mighty forest, just beyond which lay the sparkling waters of a great ocean that, curving upward, merged in the haze of the distance.
Faintly discernible in the mid-distance an island raised its bulk out of the waters of the ocean.
'That,' said Jude, pointing, 'is the island of Hime .'
'Ah, if I, too, could but see my home from here,' sighed Tanar, 'my happiness would be almost complete. I envy you, Jude.'
'It gives me no happiness to see Hime,' said Jude. 'I hate the place.'
'Then you are not going to try to go back to it?' demanded Tanar.
'Certainly, I shall,' said Jude.
'But, why?' asked Tanar.
'There is no other place where I may go,' grumbled Jude. 'At least in Hime they will not kill me for no reason at all as strangers would do if I went elsewhere.'
Jude's attention was suddenly attracted by something below them in a little glade that lay at the upper end of the ravine, which started a little distance below the mouth of the tunnel.
'Look,' he cried, 'there are people.'
Tanar looked in the direction in which Jude was pointing, and when his eyes found the figures far below they first went wide with incredulity and then narrowed with rage.
'God!' he exclaimed, and as he voiced that single exclamation he leaped swiftly downward in the direction of the figures in the glade.
IX LOVE AND TREACHERY
STELLARA, lying upon a pallet of grasses beneath the shade of a large tree, above the beach where the
