We had completed these arrangements for our protection after leaving Phutra when the Sagoths who had been sent to recapture the escaped prisoners returned with four of them, of whom Hooja was one.  Dian and two others had eluded them.  It so happened that Hooja was confined in the same building with us.  He told Ghak that he had not seen Dian or the others after releasing them within the dark grotto.  What had become of them he had not the faintest conception—­they might be wandering yet, lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not dead from starvation.

I was now still further apprehensive as to the fate of Dian, and at this time, I imagine, came the first realization that my affection for the girl might be prompted by more than friendship.  During my waking hours she was constantly the subject of my thoughts, and when I slept her dear face haunted my dreams.  More than ever was I determined to escape the Mahars.

“Perry,” I confided to the old man, “if I have to search every inch of this diminutive world I am going to find Dian the Beautiful and right the wrong I unintentionally did her.”  That was the excuse I made for Perry’s benefit.

“Diminutive world!” he scoffed.  “You don’t know what you are talking about, my boy,” and then he showed me a map of Pellucidar which he had recently discovered among the manuscript he was arranging.

“Look,” he cried, pointing to it, “this is evidently water, and all this land.  Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas?  Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here.  These relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents of the outer world.

“We know that the crust of the globe is 500 miles in thickness; then the inside diameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the superficial area 165,480,000 square miles.  Three-fourths of this is land.  Think of it!  A land area of 124,110,000 square miles!  Our own world contains but 53,000,000 square miles of land, the balance of its surface being covered by water.  Just as we often compare nations by their relative land areas, so if we compare these two worlds in the same way we have the strange anomaly of a larger world within a smaller one!

“Where within vast Pellucidar would you search for your Dian?  Without stars, or moon, or changing sun how could you find her even though you knew where she might be found?”

The proposition was a corker.  It quite took my breath away; but I found that it left me all the more determined to attempt it.

“If Ghak will accompany us we may be able to do it,” I suggested.

Perry and I sought him out and put the question straight to him.

“Ghak,” I said, “we are determined to escape from this bondage.  Will you accompany us?”

“They will set the thipdars upon us,” he said, “and then we shall be killed; but—­” he hesitated—­“I would take the chance if I thought that I might possibly escape and return to my own people.”