by my suggestion. He said that
when he was through in the fields he would speak to his father about
the matter.

Some time after this Gr-gr-gr came through the fields where we were,
and his son spoke to him upon the subject, but the old gentleman was
evidently in anything but a good humor, for he cuffed the youngster
and, turning upon me, informed me that he was convinced that I had lied
to him, and that I was one of Hooja's peo-ple.

"Wherefore," he concluded, "we shall slay you as soon as the melons are
cultivated. Hasten, therefore."

And hasten I did. I hastened to cultivate the weeds which grew among
the melon-vines. Where there had been one sickly weed before, I
nourished two healthy ones. When I found a particularly promising
variety of weed growing elsewhere than among my melons, I forthwith dug
it up and transplanted it among my charges.

My masters did not seem to realize my perfidy. They saw me always
laboring diligently in the melon-patch, and as time enters not into the
reckoning of Pellucidar-ians--even of human beings and much less of
brutes and half brutes--I might have lived on indefinitely through this
subterfuge had not that occurred which took me out of the melon-patch
for good and all.

CHAPTER IX

HOOJA'S CUTTHROATS APPEAR

I had built a little shelter of rocks and brush where I might crawl in
and sleep out of the perpetual light and heat of the noonday sun. When
I was tired or hungry I retired to my humble cot.

My masters never interposed the slightest objection. As a matter of
fact, they were very good to me, nor did I see aught while I was among
them to indicate that they are ever else than a simple, kindly folk
when left to themselves. Their awe-inspiring size, terrific strength,
mighty fighting-fangs, and hideous appearance are but the attributes
necessary to the successful waging of their constant battle for
survival, and well do they employ them when the need arises. The only
flesh they eat is that of herbivorous animals and birds. When they
hunt the mighty thag, the prehistoric bos of the outer crust, a single
male, with his fiber rope, will catch and kill the greatest of the
bulls.

Well, as I was about to say, I had this little shelter at the edge of
my melon-patch. Here I was resting from my labors on a certain
occasion when I heard a great hub-bub in the village, which lay about a
quarter of a mile away.

Presently a male came racing toward the field, sho