At the next halt Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack chain to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Dian.  We were all standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her back upon him in such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could scarce repress a smile; but it was a short-lived smile for on the instant the Sly One’s hand fell upon the girl’s bare arm, jerking her roughly toward him.

I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics which prevailed within Pellucidar; but even so I did not need the appealing look which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence my subsequent act.  What the Sly One’s intention was I paused not to inquire; but instead, before he could lay hold of her with his other hand, I placed a right to the point of his jaw that felled him in his tracks.

A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and the Sagoths who had witnessed the brief drama; not, as I later learned, because I had championed the girl, but for the neat and, to them, astounding method by which I had bested Hooja.

And the girl?  At first she looked at me with wide, wondering eyes, and then she dropped her head, her face half averted, and a delicate flush suffused her cheek.  For a moment she stood thus in silence, and then her head went high, and she turned her back upon me as she had upon Hooja.  Some of the prisoners laughed, and I saw the face of Ghak the Hairy One go very black as he looked at me searchingly.  And what I could see of Dian’s cheek went suddenly from red to white.

Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that in some way I had offended Dian the Beautiful I could not prevail upon her to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred—­in fact I might quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all the attention I got.  At last my own foolish pride stepped in and prevented my making any further attempts, and thus a companionship that without my realizing it had come to mean a great deal to me was cut off.  Thereafter I confined my conversation to Perry.  Hooja did not renew his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture near me.

Again the weary and apparently interminable marching became a perfect nightmare of horrors to me.  The more firmly fixed became the realization that the girl’s friendship had meant so much to me, the more I came to miss it; and the more impregnable the barrier of silly pride.  But I was very young and would not ask Ghak for the explanation which I was sure he could give, and that might have made everything all right again.

On the march, or during halts, Dian refused consistently to notice me—­when her eyes wandered in my direction she looked either over my head or directly through me.  At last I became desperate, and determined to swallow my self-esteem, and again beg her to tell me how I had offended, and how I might make reparation.  I made up my mind that I should do this at the next halt.  We were approaching another range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them, instead of winding across them through some high-flung pass we entered a mighty natural tunnel—­a series of labyrinthine grottoes, dark as Erebus.