" commanded the intruder, beckoning to me. "The investigators
would speak with you."

"Good-bye, Perry!" I said, clasping the old man's hand. "There may be
nothing but the present and no such thing as time, but I feel that I am
about to take a trip into the hereafter from which I shall never
return. If you and Ghak should manage to escape I want you to promise
me that you will find Dian the Beautiful and tell her that with my last
words I asked her forgiveness for the unintentional affront I put upon
her, and that my one wish was to be spared long enough to right the
wrong that I had done her."

Tears came to Perry's eyes.

"I cannot believe but that you will return, David," he said. "It would
be awful to think of living out the balance of my life without you
among these hateful and repulsive creatures. If you are taken away I
shall never escape, for I feel that I am as well off here as I should
be anywhere within this buried world. Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!" and
then his old voice faltered and broke, and as he hid his face in his
hands the Sagoth guardsman grasped me roughly by the shoulder and
hustled me from the chamber.

XI

FOUR DEAD MAHARS

A MOMENT LATER I WAS STANDING BEFORE A DOZEN Mahars--the social
investigators of Phutra. They asked me many questions, through a
Sagoth interpreter. I answered them all truthfully. They seemed
particularly interested in my account of the outer earth and the
strange vehicle which had brought Perry and me to Pellucidar. I
thought that I had convinced them, and after they had sat in silence
for a long time following my examination, I expected to be ordered
returned to my quarters.

During this apparent silence they were debating through the medium of
strange, unspoken language the merits of my tale. At last the head of
the tribunal communicated the result of their conference to the officer
in charge of the Sagoth guard.

"Come," he said to me, "you are sentenced to the experimental pits for
having dared to insult the intelligence of the mighty ones with the
ridiculous tale you have had the temerity to unfold to them."

"Do you mean that they do not believe me?" I asked, totally astonished.

"Believe you!" he laughed. "Do you mean to say that you expected any
one to believe so impossible a lie?"

It was hopeless, and so I walked in silence beside my guard down
through the dark corridors and runways toward my awful doom. At a low
level we came upo