What had happened? He had known, as had everyone in Castrum Mare, that the forces of Sublatus were camped before the fort, but he knew that there had been no battle and so this could not be the army of Sublatus entering Castrum Mare, but it was equally strange if the defenders of Castrum Mare should be marching away from the fort while it was menaced by an enemy army. He could not understand these things, nor could he understand why the people were cheering.
As he stood there watching the approach of the marching column, the shouts of the people took on form and he heard the name of Cassius Hasta distinctly.
"What has happened?" he demanded, shouting to the men in the street.
"Cassius Hasta has returned at the head of a big army, and Fulvus Fupus has already fled and is in hiding."
The shouted question and the equally loud reply were heard by all within the room.
"We are saved," cried Mallius Lepus, "for Cassius Hasta will harm no friend of Septimus Favonius. Aside now, you fools, if you know when you are well off," and he advanced toward the doorway.
"Back, men," cried the officer. "Back to the avenue. Let no hand be raised against Mallius Lepus or these other friends of Cassius Hasta, Emperor of the East."
"I guess this fellow knows which side his bread is buttered on," commented von Harben, with a grin.
Together Favonia, von Harben, Lepus, and Gabula stepped from the deserted building into the avenue. Approaching them they saw the head of a column of marching men; flaming torches lighted the scene until it was almost as bright as day.
"There is Cassius Hasta," exclaimed Mallius Lepus. "It is indeed he, but who are those with him?"
"They must be Sanguinarians," said Favonia. "But look, one of them is garbed like a barbarian, and see the strange warriors with their white plumes that are marching behind them."
"I have never seen the like in all my life," exclaimed Mallius Lepus.
"Neither have I," said von Harben, "but I am sure that I recognize them, for their fame is great and they answer the description that I have heard a thousand times."
"Who are they?" asked Favonia,
"The white giant is Tarzan of the Apes, and the warriors are his Waziri fighting men."
At sight of the legionaries standing before the house, Cassius Hasta halted the column.
"Where is the centurion in command of these troops?" he demanded.
"It is I, glorious Caesar," replied the officer, who had come to arrest the abductors of Favonia.
"Does it happen that you are one of the detachments sent out by Fulvus Fupus to search for Mallius Lepus and the barbarian, von Harben?"
"We are here, Caesar," cried Mallius Lepus, while Favonia, von Harben, and Gabula followed behind him.
"May the gods be praised!" exclaimed Cassius Hasta, as he embraced his old friend. "But where is the barbarian chieftain from Germania, whose fame has reached even to Castra Sanguinarius?"
"This is he," said Mallius Lepus. "This is Erich von Harben."
Tarzan stepped nearer. "You are Erich von Harben?" he asked in English.
"And you are Tarzan of the Apes, I know," returned von Harben, in the same language.
"You look every inch a Roman," said Tarzan with a smile.
"I feel every inch a barbarian, however," grinned von Harben.
"Roman or barbarian, your father will be glad when I bring you back to him."
"You came here in search of me, Tarzan of the Apes?" demanded von Harben.
"And I seemed to have arrived just in time," said the ape- man.
"How can I ever thank you?" exclaimed von Harben.
"Do not thank me, my friend," said the ape-man. "Thank little Nkima!"
THE END
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
TARZAN AT THE EARTH'S CORE
BOOK 13 IN THE TARZAN SERIES
BOOK 4 IN THE PELLUCIDAR SERIES
Serialized in The Blue Book Magazine, September 1929—March 1930
First Book Edition—Metropolitan Books Inc., November 1930
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter 1. The 0-220
Chapter 2. Pellucidar
Chapter 3. The Great Cats.
Chapter 4. The Sagoths
Chapter 5. Brought Down
Chapter 6. A Phororhacos of the Miocene
Chapter 7. The Red Flower Of Zoram
Chapter 8. Jana And Jason
Chapter 9. To The Thipdar's Nest
Chapter 10. Only A Man May Go
Chapter 11. The Cavern Of Clovi
Chapter 12. The Phelian Swamp
Chapter 13. The Horibs
Chapter 14. Through The Dark Forest
Chapter 15. Prisoners
Chapter 16. Escape
Chapter 17. Reunited
FOREWORD
Pellucidar, as every schoolboy knows, is a world within a world, lying, as it does, upon the inner surface of the hollow sphere which is the Earth.
It was discovered by David Innes and Abner Perry upon the occasion when they made the trial trip upon the mechanical prospector invented by Perry, wherewith they hoped to locate new beds of anthracite coal. Owing, however, to their inability to deflect the nose of the prospector, after it had started downward into the Earth's crust, they bored straight through for five hundred miles, and upon the third day, when Perry was already unconscious owing to the consumption of their stock of oxygen, and David was fast losing consciousness, the nose of the prospector broke through the crust of the inner world and the cabin was filled with fresh air.
In the years that have intervened, weird adventures have befallen these two explorers. Perry has never returned to the outer crust, and Innes but once—upon that occasion when he made the difficult and dangerous return trip in the prospector for the purpose of bringing back to the empire he had founded in the inner world the means to bestow upon his primitive people of the stone age the civilization of the twentieth century.