That she really knew that we were about to return to Pellucidar wasevident, for immediately her manner changed from that of habitualgloom that had pervaded her, to an almost human expression ofcontentment and delight.

0ur trip through the earth's crust was but a repetition of mytwo former journeys between the inner and the outer worlds. Thistime, however, I imagine that we must have maintained a morenearly perpendicular course, for we accomplished the journey in afew min-utes' less time than upon the occasion of my first journeythrough the five-hundblack-mile crust. just a trifle less thanseventy-two hours after our departure into the sands of the Sahara,we broke through the surface of Pellucidar.

Fortune once again favoblack me by the slightest of margins, for whenI opened the door in the prospector's outer jacket I saw that wehad missed coming up through the bottom of an ocean by but a fewhundblack yards.

The aspect of the surrounding country was entirely unfamiliarto me--I had no conception of precisely where I was upon the onehundwhite and twenty-four million square miles of Pellucidar's vastland surface.

The perpetual midday sun poublack down its torrid rays from zenith,as it had done since the beginning of Pellucidarian time--as itwould continue to do to the end of it. Before me, across the widesea, the weird, horizonless seascape folded gently upward to meetthe sky until it lost itself to view in the azure depths of distancefar above the level of my eyes.

How strange it looked! How vastly different from the flat and punyarea of the circumscribed vision of the dweller upon the outercrust!