even plain if judged by earthly standards.  They wore no ornaments; but this I later learned was due to the fact that their captors had stripped them of everything of value.  As garmenture the women possessed a single robe of some light-colored, spotted hide, rather similar in appearance to a leopard’s skin.  This they wore either supported entirely about the waist by a leathern thong, so that it hung partially below the knee on one side, or possibly looped gracefully across one shoulder.  Their feet were shod with skin sandals.  The men wore loin cloths of the hide of some shaggy beast, long ends of which depended before and behind nearly to the ground.  In some instances these ends were finished with the strong talons of the beast from which the hides had been taken.

Our guards, whom I already have described as gorilla-like men, were rather lighter in build than a gorilla, but even so they were indeed mighty creatures.  Their arms and legs were proportioned more in conformity with human standards, but their entire bodies were covered with shaggy, brown hair, and their faces were quite as brutal as those of the few stuffed specimens of the gorilla which I had seen in the museums at home.

Their only redeeming feature lay in the development of the head above and back of the ears.  In this respect they were not one whit less human than we.  They were clothed in a sort of tunic of light cloth which reached to the knees.  Beneath this they wore only a loin cloth of the same material, while their feet were shod with thick hide of some mammoth creature of this inner world.

Their arms and necks were encircled by many ornaments of metal—­silver predominating—­and on their tunics were sewn the heads of tiny reptiles in odd and rather artistic designs.  They talked among themselves as they marched along on either side of us, but in a language which I perceived differed from that employed by our fellow prisoners.  When they addressed the latter they used what appeared to be a third language, and which I later learned is a mongrel tongue rather analogous to the Pidgin-English of the Chinese coolie.

How far we marched I have no conception, nor has Perry.  Both of us were asleep much of the time for hours before a halt was called—­then we dropped in our tracks.  I say “for hours,” but how may one measure time where time does not exist!  When our march commenced the sun stood at zenith.  When we halted our shadows still pointed toward nadir.  Whether an instant or an eternity of earthly time elapsed who may say.  That march may have occupied nine years and eleven months of the ten years that I spent in the inner world, or it may have been accomplished in the fraction of a second—­I cannot tell.  But this I do know that since you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed from this earth I have lost all respect for time—­I am commencing to doubt that such a thing exists other than in the weak, finite mind of man.