“Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust.  Here man has but reached a stage analogous to the Stone Age of our own world’s history, but for countless millions of years these reptiles have been progressing.  Possibly it is the sixth sense which I am sure they possess that has given them an advantage over the other and more frightfully armed of their fellows; but this we may never know.  They look upon us as we look upon the beasts of our fields, and I learn from their written records that other races of Mahars feed upon men—­they keep them in great droves, as we keep cattle.  They breed them most carefully, and when they are quite fat, they kill and eat them.”

I shuddered.

“What is there horrible about it, David?” the old man asked.  “They understand us no better than we understand the lower animals of our own world.  Why, I have come across here very learned discussions of the question as to whether gilaks, that is men, have any means of communication.  One writer claims that we do not even reason—­that our every act is mechanical, or instinctive.  The dominant race of Pellucidar, David, have not yet learned that men converse among themselves, or reason.  Because we do not converse as they do it is beyond them to imagine that we converse at all.  It is thus that we reason in relation to the brutes of our own world.  They know that the Sagoths have a spoken language, but they cannot comprehend it, or how it manifests itself, since they have no auditory apparatus.  They believe that the motions of the lips alone convey the meaning.  That the Sagoths can communicate with us is incomprehensible to them.

“Yes, David,” he concluded, “it would entail murder to carry out your plan.”

“Very well then, Perry.”  I replied.  “I shall become a murderer.”

He got me to go over the plan again most carefully, and for some reason which was not at the time clear to me insisted upon a very careful description of the apartments and corridors I had just explored.

“I wonder, David,” he said at length, “as you are determined to carry out your wild scheme, if we could not accomplish something of very real and lasting benefit for the human race of Pellucidar at the same time.  Listen, I have learned much of a most surprising nature from these archives of the Mahars.  That you may not appreciate my plan I shall briefly outline the history of the race.

“Once the males were all-powerful, but ages ago the females, little by little, assumed the mastery.  For other ages no noticeable change took place in the race of Mahars.  It continued to progress under the intelligent and beneficent rule of the ladies.  Science took vast strides.  This was especially true of the sciences which we know as biology and eugenics.  Finally a certain female scientist announced the fact that she had discovered a method whereby eggs might be fertilized by chemical means after they were laid—­all true reptiles, you know, are hatched from eggs.