I explained the various destructive engines of war which Perry and I could construct after a little experimentation—­gunpowder, rifles, cannon, and the like, and Dian would clap her hands, and throw her arms about my neck, and tell me what a wonderful thing I was.  She was beginning to think that I was omnipotent although I really hadn’t done anything but talk—­but that is the way with women when they love.  Perry used to say that if a fellow was one-tenth as remarkable as his wife or mother thought him, he would have the world by the tail with a down-hill drag.

The first time we started for Sari I stepped into a nest of poisonous vipers before we reached the valley.  A little fellow stung me on the ankle, and Dian made me come back to the cave.  She said that I mustn’t exercise, or it might prove fatal—­if it had been a full-grown snake that struck me she said, I wouldn’t have moved a single pace from the nest—­I’d have died in my tracks, so virulent is the poison.  As it was I must have been laid up for quite a while, though Dian’s poultices of herbs and leaves finally reduced the swelling and drew out the poison.

The episode proved most fortunate, however, as it gave me an idea which added a thousand-fold to the value of my arrows as missiles of offense and defense.  As soon as I was able to be about again, I sought out some adult vipers of the species which had stung me, and having killed them, I extracted their virus, smearing it upon the tips of several arrows.  Later I shot a hyaenodon with one of these, and though my arrow inflicted but a superficial flesh wound the beast crumpled in death almost immediately after he was hit.

We now set out once more for the land of the Sarians, and it was with feelings of sincere regret that we bade good-bye to our beautiful Garden of Eden, in the comparative peace and harmony of which we had lived the happiest moments of our lives.  How long we had been there I did not know, for as I have told you, time had ceased to exist for me beneath that eternal noonday sun—­it may have been an hour, or a month of earthly time; I do not know.

XV

BACK TO EARTH

We crossed the river and passed through the mountains beyond, and finally we came out upon a great level plain which stretched away as far as the eye could reach.  I cannot tell you in what direction it stretched even if you would care to know, for all the while that I was within Pellucidar I never discovered any but local methods of indicating direction—­there is no north, no south, no east, no west.  Up is about the only direction which is well defined, and that, of course, is down to you of the outer crust.  Since the sun neither rises nor sets there is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects such as high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas.

The plain which lies beyond the white cliffs which flank the Darel Az upon the shore nearest the Mountains of the Clouds is about as near to any direction as any Pellucidarian can come.  If you happen not to have heard of the Darel Az, or the white cliffs, or the Mountains of the Clouds you feel that there is something lacking, and long for the good old understandable northeast and southwest of the outer world.