The thing beneath the skin was not Dian—­it was a hideous Mahar.  Instantly I realized the trick that Hooja had played upon me, and the purpose of it.  Rid of me, forever as he doubtless thought, Dian would be at his mercy.  Frantically I tore at the steering wheel in an effort to turn the prospector back toward Pellucidar; but, as on that other occasion, I could not budge the thing a hair.

It is needless to recount the horrors or the monotony of that journey.  It varied but little from the former one which had brought us from the outer to the inner world.  Because of the angle at which we had entered the ground the trip required nearly a day longer, and brought me out here upon the sand of the Sahara instead of in the United States as I had hoped.

For months I have been waiting here for a white man to come.  I dared not leave the prospector for fear I should never be able to find it again—­the shifting sands of the desert would soon cover it, and then my only hope of returning to my Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone forever.

That I ever shall see her again seems but remotely possible, for how may I know upon what part of Pellucidar my return journey may terminate—­and how, without a north or south or an east or a west may I hope ever to find my way across that vast world to the tiny spot where my lost love lies grieving for me?

That is the story as David Innes told it to me in the goat-skin tent upon the rim of the great Sahara Desert.  The next day he took me out to see the prospector—­it was precisely as he had described it.  So huge was it that it could have been brought to this inaccessible part of the world by no means of transportation that existed there—­it could only have come in the way that David Innes said it came—­up through the crust of the earth from the inner world of Pellucidar.

I spent a week with him, and then, abandoned my lion hunt, returned directly to the coast and hurried to London where I purchased a great quantity of stuff which he wished to take back to Pellucidar with him.  There were books, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, cameras, chemicals, telephones, telegraph instruments, wire, tool and more books—­books upon every subject under the sun.  He said he wanted a library with which they could reproduce the wonders of the twentieth century in the Stone Age and if quantity counts for anything I got it for him.

I took the things back to Algeria myself, and accompanied them to the end of the railroad; but from here I was recalled to America upon important business.  However, I was able to employ a very trustworthy man to take charge of the caravan—­the same guide, in fact, who had accompanied me on the previous trip into the Sahara—­and after writing a long letter to Innes in which I gave him my American address, I saw the expedition head south.