'Unquestionably,' said David, 'as you will know in a moment. The storm carried away all our rigging, snapping the mast short off at the deck, and left us helpless except for two pairs of oars.
'As you may know, these great sweeps are so heavy that, as a rule, two or three men handle a single oar, and as there were only three of us we could do little more than paddle slowly along with one man paddling on either side while the third relieved first one and then the other at intervals, and even this could be accomplished only after we had cut the great sweeps down to a size that one man might handle without undue fatigue.
'Fitt had laid a course which my compass showed me to be almost due north and this we followed with little or no deviation after the storm had subsided.
'We slept and ate many times before Fitt announced that we were not far from the island of Amiocap, which he says is half way between the point at which we had embarked and the land of Korsar. We still had ample water and provisions to last us the balance of our journey if we had been equipped with a sail, but the slow progress of paddling threatened to find us facing starvation, or death by thirst, long before we could hope to reach Korsar. With this fate staring us in the face we decided to land on Amiocap and refit our craft, but before we could do so we were overtaken by a Korsar ship and being unable either to escape or defend ourselves, we were taken prisoners.
'The vessel was one of those that had formed the armada of The Cid, and was, as far as they knew, the only one that had survived the storm. Shortly before they had found us they had picked up a boat-load of the survivors of The Cid's ship, including The Cid himself, and from The Cid we learned that you and the other prisoners had doubtless been lost with his vessel, which he said was in a sinking condition at the time that he abandoned it. To my surprise I learned that The Cid had also abandoned his own daughter to her fate and I believe that this cowardly act weighed heavily upon his mind, for he was always taciturn and moody, avoiding the companionship of even his own officers.
'She did not die,' said Tanar. 'We escaped together, the sole survivors, as far as we knew, of The Cid's ship, though later we were captured by the members of another boat crew that had also made the island of Amiocap and with them we were brought to Korsar.'
'In my conversation with The Cid and also with the officers and men of the Korsar ship I sought to sound them on their knowledge of the extent of this sea, which is known as the Korsar Az. Among other things I learned that they possess compasses and are conversant with their use and they told me that to the west they had never sailed to the extreme limits of the Korsar Az, which they state reaches on, a vast body of water, for countless leagues beyond the knowledge of man. But to the east they have followed the shore-line from Korsar southward almost to the shore upon which they landed to attack The Empire of Pellucidar.
'Now this suggests, in fact almost proves, that Korsar lies upon the same great continent as The Empire of Pellucidar and if we can escape from prison, we may be able to make our way by land back to our own country.'
'But there is that 'if,'' said Ja. 'We have eaten and slept many times since they threw us into this dark hole, yet we are no nearer escape now than we were at the moment that they put us here; nor do we even know what fate lies in store for us.'
'These other prisoners tell us,' resumed David, 'that the fact that we were not immediately killed, which is the customary fate of prisoners of war among the Korsars, indicates that they are saving us for some purpose; but what that purpose is I cannot conceive.'
'I can,' said Tanar. 'In fact I am quite sure that I know.'
'And what is it?' demanded Ja. 'They wish us to teach them how to make firearms and powder such as ours,' replied the Sarian. 'But where do you suppose they ever got firearms and powder in the first place?'
'Or the great ships they sail,' added Ja; 'ships that are even larger than those which we build? These things were unknown in Pellucidar before David and Perry came to us, yet the Korsars appear to have known of them and used them always.'
'I have an idea,' said David; 'yet it is such a mad idea that I have almost hesitated to entertain it, much less to express it.'
'What is it?' asked Tanar.
'It was suggested to me in my conversations with the Korsars themselves,' replied the Emperor. 'Without exception they have all assured me that their ancestors came from another world—a world above which the sun did not stand perpetually at zenith, but crossed the heavens regularly, leaving the world in darkness half the time. They say that a part of this world is very cold and that their ancestors, who were seafaring men, because, caught with their ships in the frozen waters, their compasses turned in all directions and became useless to them and that when finally they broke through the ice and sailed away into Pellucidar, which they found inhabited only by naked savages and wild beasts. And here they set up their city and built new ships, their numbers being augmented from time to time by other seafaring men from this world from which they say they originally came.
'They intermarried with the natives, which in this part of Pellucidar seemed to have been of a very low order.' David paused.
'Well,' asked Tanar, 'what does it all mean?'
'It means,' said David, 'that if their legend is true, or based upon fact, that their ancestors came from the same outer world from which Perry and I came, but by what avenue?—that is the astounding enigma.'
Many times during their incarceration the three men discussed this subject, but never were they able to arrive at any definite solution of the mystery. Food was brought them many times and several times they slept before Korsar soldiers came and took them from the dungeon.
They were led to the palace of The Cid, the architecture of which but tended to increase the mystery of the origin of this strange race in the mind of David Innes, for the building seemed to show indisputable proof of Moorish influence.
Within the palace they were conducted to a large room, comfortably filled with bewhiskered Korsars decked out in their gaudiest raiment, which far surpassed in brilliancy of coloring and ornamentation the comparatively mean clothes they had worn aboard ship. Upon a dais, at one end of the room, a man was seated upon a large, ornately carved chair. It was The Cid, and as David's eyes fell upon him his mind suddenly grasped, for the first time, a significant suggestion in the title of the ruler of the Korsars.
Previously the name had been only a name to David. He had not considered it as a title; nor had it by association awakened any particular train of thought, but now, coupled with the Moorish palace and the carved throne, it did.
The Cid! Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar—El Campeandor—a national hero of eleventh-century Spain . What did it mean? His thoughts reverted to the ships of the Korsars—their motley crews with harquebuses and cutlasses—and he recalled the thrilling stories he had read as a boy of the pirates of the Spanish Main . Could it be merely coincidence? Could a nation of people have grown up within the inner world, who so closely resembled the buccaneers of the seventeenth century, or had their forebears in truth found their way hither from the outer crust? David Innes did not know. He was frankly puzzled. But now he was being led to the foot of The Cid's throne and there was no further opportunity for the delightful speculation that had absorbed his mind momentarily.
The cruel, cunning eyes of The Cid looked down upon the three prisoners from out his brutal face. 'The Emperor of Pellucidar!' he sneered. 'The King of Anoroc! The son of the king of Sari!' and then he laughed uproariously. He extended his hand, his fingers parted and curled in a clutching gesture. 'Emperor! King! Prince!' he sneered again, 'and yet here you all are in the clutches of The Cid. Emperor—bah! I, The Cid, am the Emperor of all Pellucidar! You and your naked savages!' He turned on David. 'Who are you to take the title of Emperor? I could crush you all,' and he closed his fingers in a gesture of rough cruelty. 'But I shall not. The Cid is generous and he is grateful, too. You shall have your freedom for a small price that you may easily pay.' He paused as though he expected them to question him, but no one of the three spoke. Suddenly he turned upon David. 'Where did you get your firearms and your powder? Who made them for you?'
'We made them ourselves,' replied David.
'Who taught you to make them?' insisted The Cid. 'But never mind; it is enough that you know and we would know. You may win your liberty by teaching us.'
David could make gunpowder, but whether he could make any better gunpowder than the Korsars he did not know. He had left that to Perry and his apprentices in The Empire, and he knew perfectly well that he could not reconstruct a modern rifle such as was being turned out in the arsenals at Sari, for he had neither the drawings to make the machinery, nor the shops in which to make steel. But nevertheless here was one opportunity for possible
