Reptiles that they are, the rough surface of a great stone is to them as plush as upholstery to us.  Here they lolled, blinking their hideous eyes, and doubtless conversing with one another in their sixth-sense-fourth-dimension language.

For the first time I beheld their queen.  She differed from the others in no feature that was appreciable to my earthly eyes, in fact all Mahars look alike to me:  but when she crossed the arena after the balance of her female subjects had found their bowlders, she was preceded by a score of huge Sagoths, the largest I ever had seen, and on either side of her waddled a huge thipdar, while behind came another score of Sagoth guardsmen.

At the barrier the Sagoths clambered up the steep side with truly apelike agility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon her wings with her two frightful dragons close beside her, and settled down upon the largest bowlder of them all in the exact center of that side of the amphitheater which is reserved for the dominant race.  Here she squatted, a most repulsive and uninteresting queen; though doubtless quite as well assured of her beauty and divine right to rule as the proudest monarch of the outer world.

And then the music started—­music without sound!  The Mahars cannot hear, so the drums and fifes and horns of earthly bands are unknown among them.  The “band” consists of a score or more Mahars.  It filed out in the center of the arena where the creatures upon the rocks might see it, and there it performed for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Their technic consisted in waving their tails and moving their heads in a regular succession of measured movements resulting in a cadence which evidently pleased the eye of the Mahar as the cadence of our own instrumental music pleases our ears.  Sometimes the band took measured steps in unison to one side or the other, or backward and again forward—­it all seemed very silly and meaningless to me, but at the end of the first piece the Mahars upon the rocks showed the first indications of enthusiasm that I had seen displayed by the dominant race of Pellucidar.  They beat their great wings up and down, and smote their rocky perches with their mighty tails until the ground shook.  Then the band started another piece, and all was again as silent as the grave.  That was one great beauty about Mahar music—­if you didn’t happen to like a piece that was being played all you had to do was shut your eyes.

When the band had exhausted its repertory it took wing and settled upon the rocks above and behind the queen.  Then the business of the day was on.  A man and woman were pushed into the arena by a couple of Sagoth guardsmen.  I leaned forward in my seat to scrutinize the female—­hoping against hope that she might prove to be another than Dian the Beautiful.  Her back was toward me for a while, and the sight of the great mass of raven hair piled high upon her head filled me with alarm.