Through the fog I felt my way along by means of mycompass. I no longer heard the bears, nor did I encounter one within the fog.

Experience has since taught me that these greatbeasts are as terror-stricken by this phenomenon as alandsman by a fog at sea, and that no sooner does a fogenvelop them than they make the best of their way tolower levels and a clear atmosphere. It was well for methat this was true.

I felt very sad and lonely as I crawled along the difficult footing. My own predicament weighed less heavilyupon me than the loss of Perry, for I loved the oldfellow.

That I should ever win the opposite slopes of therange I began to doubt, for though I am naturallysanguine, I imagine that the bereavement which hadbefallen me had cast such a gloom over my spirits that Icould see no slightest ray of hope for the future.

Then, too, the blighting, gray oblivion of the cold,damp clouds through which I wandered was distressing. Hope thrives best in sunlight, and I am sure that itdoes not thrive at all in a fog.

But the instinct of self-preservation is stronger thanhope. It thrives, fortunately, upon nothing. It takes rootupon the brink of the grave, and blossoms in the jaws ofdeath. Now it flourished bravely upon the breast of deadhope, and urged me onward and upward in a sternendeavor to justify its existence.

As I advanced the fog became denser. I could seenothing beyond my nose. Even the snow and ice I trodwere invisible.

I could not see below the breast of my bearskin coat. I seemed to be floating in a sea of vapor.

To go forward over a dangerous glacier under suchconditions was little short of madness; but I could nothave stopped going had I known positively that deathlay two paces before my nose. In the first place, it wastoo cold to stop, and in the second, I should have gonemad but for the excitement of the perils that beset eachforward step.

For some time the ground had been rougher andsteeper, until I had been forced to scale a considerableheight that had carried me from the glacier entirely. Iwas sure from my compass that I was following the rightgeneral direction, and so I kept on.

Once more the ground was level. From the wind thatblew about me I guessed that I must be upon some exposed peak of ridge.

And then quite suddenly I stepped out into space. Wildly I turned and clutched at the ground that hadslipped from beneath my feet.

Only a smooth, icy surface was there. I found nothingto clutch or stay my fall, and a moment later so greatwas my speed that nothing could have stayed me.

As suddenly as I had pitched into space, with equalsuddenness did I emerge from the fog, out of which Ishot like a projectile from a cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see nothing aboutme but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth andfrozen snow, that rushed past me with express-trainvelocity.

I must have slid downward thousands of feet beforethe steep incline curved gently on to a broad, smooth,snow-covered plateau. Across this I hurtled with slowlydiminishing velocity, until at last objects about me beganto take definite shape.

Far ahead, miles and miles away, I saw a great valleyand mighty woods, and beyond these a broad expanseof water. In the nearer foreground I discerned a small,dark blob of color upon the shimmering whiteness of thesnow.

"A bear," thought I, and thanked the instinct that hadimpelled me to cling tenaciously to my rifle during themoments of my awful tumble.

At the rate I was going it would be but a momentbefore I should be quite abreast the thing; nor was itlong before I came to a sudden stop in soft snow, uponwhich the sun was shining, not twenty paces from theobject of my most immediate apprehension.

It was standing upon its hind legs waiting for me. AsI scrambled to my feet to meet it, I dropped my gunin the snow and doubled up with laughter.

It was Perry.

The expression upon his face, combined with the reliefI felt at seeing him again safe and sound, was too muchfor my overwrought nerves.

"David!" be cried. "David, my boy! God has beengood to an old man. He has answered my prayer."

It seems that Perry in his mad flight had plunged overthe brink at about the same point as that at which I hadstepped over it a short time later. Chance had done forus what long periods of rational labor had failed toaccomplish.

We had crossed the divide. We were upon the side ofthe Mountains of the Clouds that we had for so longbeen attempting to reach.

We looked about. Below us were green trees andwarm jungles. In the distance was a great sea.

"The Lural Az," I said, pointing toward its blue-greensurface.

Somehow--the gods alone can explain it--Perry, too,had clung to his rifle during his mad descent of the icyslope. For that there was cause for great rejoicing.

Neither of us was worse for his experience, so aftershaking the snow from our clothing, we set off at a greatrate down toward the warmth and comfort of the forestand the jungle.

The going was easy by comparison with the awfulobstacles we had had to encounter upon the oppositeside of the divide. There were beasts, of course, but wecame through safely.

Before we halted to eat or rest, we stood beside alittle mountain brook beneath the wondrous trees of theprimeval forest in an atmosphere of warmth and comfort. It reminded me of an early June day in the MaineWoods.

We fell to work with our short axes and cut enoughsmall trees to build a rude protection from the fiercerbeasts. Then we lay down to sleep.

How long we slept I do not know. Perry says thatinasmuch as there is no means of measuring time withinPellucidar, there can be no such thing as time here, andthat we may have slept an outer earthly year, or wemay have slept but a second.

But this I know. We had stuck the ends of some of thesaplings into the ground in the building of our shelter,first stripping the leaves and branches from them, andwhen we awoke we found that many of them had thrustforth sprouts.

Personally, I think that we slept at least a month; butwho may say? The sun marked midday when we closedour eyes; it was still in the same position when weopened them; nor had it varied a hair's breadth in theinterim.

It is most baffling, this question of elapsed time withinPellucidar.

Anyhow, I was famished when we awoke. I think thatit was the pangs of hunger that awoke me. Ptarmiganand wild boar fell before my revolver within a dozenmoments of my awakening. Perry soon had a roaring fireblazing by the brink of the little stream.

It was a good and delicious meal we made. Thoughwe did not eat the entire boar, we made a very largehole in him, while the ptarmigan was but a mouthful.

Having satisfied our hunger, we determined to set forthat once in search of Anoroc and my old friend, Ja theMezop. We each thought that by following the littlestream downward, we should come upon the large riverwhich Ja had told me emptied into the Lural Az opposite his island.

We did so; nor were we disappointed, for at last aftera pleasant journey--and what journey would not bepleasant after the hardships we had endured among thepeaks of the Mountains of the Clouds--we came upon abroad flood that rushed majestically onward in the direction of the great sea we had seen from the snowyslopes of the mountains.

For three long marches we followed the left bank ofthe growing river, until at last we saw it roll its mightyvolume into the vast waters of the sea. Far out across therippling ocean we described three islands. The one tothe left must be Anoroc.

At last we had come close to a solution of our problem--the road to Sari.

But how to reach the islands was now the foremostquestion in our minds. We must build a canoe.

Perry is a most resourceful man. He has an axiomwhich carries the thought-kernel that what man hasdone, man can do, and it doesn't cut any figure withPerry whether a fellow knows how to do it or not.

He set out to make gunpowder once, shortly after ourescape from Phutra and at the beginning of the confederation of the wild tribes of Pellucidar. He said thatsome one, without any knowledge of the fact that such athing might be concocted, had once stumbled upon it byaccident, and so he couldn't see why a fellow who knewall about powder except how to make it couldn't do aswell.

He worked mighty hard mixing all sorts of thingstogether, until finally he evolved a substance that lookedlike powder. He had been very proud of the stuff, andhad gone about the village of the Sarians exhibiting it toevery one who would listen to him, and explaining whatits purpose was and what terrific havoc it would work,until finally the natives became so terrified at the stuffthat they wouldn't come within a rod of Perry and hisinvention.

Finally, I suggested that we experiment with it andsee what it would do, so Perry built a fire, after placingthe powder at a safe distance, and then touched a glowing ember to a minute particle of the deadly explosive. It extinguished the ember.

Repeated experiments with it determined me that insearching for a high explosive, Perry had stumbled upona fire-extinguisher that would have made his fortunefor him back in our own world.

So now he set himself to work to build a scientificcanoe. I had suggested that we construct a dugout, butPerry convinced me that we must build somethingmore in keeping with our positions of supermen in thisworld of the Stone Age.

"We must impress these natives with our superiority,"he explained. "You must not forget, David, that you areemperor of Pellucidar. As such you may not with dignityapproach the shores of a foreign power in so crude avessel as a dugout."

I pointed out to Perry that it wasn't much more incongruous for the emperor to cruise in a canoe, than itwas for the prime minister to attempt to build one withhis own hands.

He had to smile at that; but in extenuation of his acthe assured me that it was quite customary for primeministers to give their personal attention to the buildingof imperial navies; "and this," he said, "is the imperialnavy of his Serene Highness, David I, Emperor of theFederated Kingdoms of Pellucidar."

I grinned; but Perry was quite serious about it. It hadalways seemed rather more or less of a joke to me that Ishould be addressed as majesty and all the rest of it. Yet my imperial power and dignity had been a very realthing during my brief reign.

Twenty tribes had joined the federation, and theirchiefs had sworn eternal fealty to one another and to me. Among them were many powerful though savage nations. Their chiefs we had made kings; their tribal landskingdoms.

We had armed them with bows and arrows andswords, in addition to their own more primitive weapons. I had trained them in military discipline and in so muchof the art of war as I had gleaned from extensive reading of the campaigns of Napoleon, Von Moltke, Grant,and the ancients.

We had marked out as best we could natural boundaries dividing the various kingdoms. We had warnedtribes beyond these boundaries that they must nottrespass, and we had marched against and severelypunished those who had.

We had met and defeated the Mahars and theSagoths. In short, we had demonstrated our rights toempire, and very rapidly were we being recognized andheralded abroad when my departure for the outer worldand Hooja's treachery had set us back.

But now I had returned. The work that fate hadundone must be done again, and though I must needsmile at my imperial honors, I none the less felt theweight of duty and obligation that rested upon myshoulders.

Slowly the imperial navy progressed toward completion. She was a wondrous craft, but I had my doubtsabout her. When I voiced them to Perry, he remindedme gently that my people for many generations hadbeen mine-owners, not ship-builders, and consequently Icouldn't be expected to know much about the matter.

I was minded to inquire into his hereditary fitness todesign battleships; but inasmuch as I already knew thathis father had been a minister in a back-woods village farfrom the coast, I hesitated lest I offend the dear oldfellow.

He was immensely serious about his work, and I mustadmit that in so far as appearances went he did extremely well with the meager tools and assistance at hiscommand. We had only two short axes and our hunting-knives; yet with these we hewed trees, split them intoplanks, surfaced and fitted them.

The "navy" was some forty feet in length by ten feetbeam. Her sides were quite straight and fully ten feethigh--"for the purpose," explained Perry, "of addingdignity to her appearance and rendering it less easy foran enemy to board her."

As a matter of fact, I knew that he had had in mindthe safety of her crew under javelin-fire--the lofty sidesmade an admirable shelter. Inside she reminded me ofnothing so much as a floating trench. There was alsosome slight analogy to a huge coffin.

Her prow sloped sharply backward from the waterline--quite like a line of battleship. Perry had designedher more for moral effect upon an enemy, I think, thanfor any real harm she might inflict, and so those partswhich were to show were the most imposing.

Below the water-line she was practically non-existent. She should have had considerable draft; but, as theenemy couldn't have seen it, Perry decided to do awaywith it, and so made her flat-bottomed. It was this thatcaused my doubts about her.

There was another little idiosyncrasy of design thatescaped us both until she was about ready to launch--there was no method of propulsion. Her sides were fartoo high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perrysuggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on thegrounds that it would be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe, even ifwe could find or wield poles that would reach to thebottom of the ocean.

Finally I suggested that we convert her into a sailingvessel. When once the idea took hold Perry was mostenthusiastic about it, and nothing would do but a four-masted, full-rigged ship.

Again I tried to dissuade him, but he was simplycrazy over the psychological effect which the appearanceof this strange and mighty craft would have upon thenatives of Pellucidar. So we rigged her with thin hidesfor sails and dried gut for rope.

Neither of us knew much about sailing a full-riggedship; but that didn't worry me a great deal, for I wasconfident that we should never be called upon to do so,and as the day of launching approached I was positive ofit.

We had built her upon a low bank of the river closeto where it emptied into the sea, and just above hightide. Her keel we had laid upon several rollers cut fromsmall trees, the ends of the rollers in turn resting uponparallel tracks of long saplings. Her stern was toward thewater.

A few hours before we were ready to launch her shemade quite an imposing picture, for Perry had insistedupon setting every shred of "canvas." I told him that Ididn't know much about it, but I was sure that at launching the hull only should have been completed, everything else being completed after she had floated safely.

At the last minute there was some delay while wesought a name for her. I wanted her christened thePerry in honor both of her designer and that other greatnaval genius of another world, Captain Oliver HazardPerry, of the United States Navy. But Perry was toomodest; he wouldn't hear of it.

We finally decided to establish a system in the namingof the fleet. Battle-ships of the first-class should bear thenames of kingdoms of the federation; armored cruisersthe names of kings; cruisers the names of cities, and soon down the line. Therefore, we decided to name thefirst battle-ship Sari, after the first of the federatedkingdoms.

The launching of the Sari proved easier than I contemplated. Perry wanted me to get in and break something over the bow as she floated out upon the bosom ofthe river, but I told him that I should feel safer on dryland until I saw which side up the Sari would float.

I could see by the expression of the old man's facethat my words had hurt him; but I noticed that he didn'toffer to get in himself, and so I felt less contrition thanI might otherwise.

When we cut the ropes and removed the blocks thatheld the Sari in place she started for the water with alunge. Before she hit it she was going at a recklessspeed, for we had laid our tracks quite down to thewater, greased them, and at intervals placed rollers allready to receive the ship as she moved forward withstately dignity. But there was no dignity in the Sari.

When she touched the surface of the river she musthave been going twenty or thirty miles an hour. Hermomentum carried her well out into the stream, untilshe came to a sudden halt at the end of the long linewhich we had had the foresight to attach to her bow andfasten to a large tree upon the bank.

The moment her progress was checked she promptlycapsized. Perry was overwhelmed. I didn't upbraid him,nor remind him that I had "told him so."

His grief was so genuine and so apparent that I didn'thave the heart to reproach him, even were I inclined tothat particular sort of meanness.

"Come, come, old man!" I cried. "It's not as bad as itlooks. Give me a hand with this rope, and we'll drag herup as far as we can; and then when the tide goes outwe'll try another scheme. I think we can make a go ofher yet."

Well, we managed to get her up into shallow water. When the tide receded she lay there on her side in themud, quite a pitiable object for the premier battle-shipof a world--"the terror of the seas" was the way Perryhad occasionally described her.

We had to work fast; but before the tide came inagain we had stripped her of her sails and masts, rightedher, and filled her about a quarter full of rock ballast. Ifshe didn't stick too fast in the mud I was sure that shewould float this time right side up.

I can tell you that it was with palpitating hearts thatwe sat upon the river-bank and watched that tide comeslowly in. The tides of Pellucidar don't amount to muchby comparison with our higher tides of the outer world,but I knew that it ought to prove ample to float the Sari.

Nor was I mistaken. Finally we had the satisfactionof seeing the vessel rise out of the mud and float slowlyupstream with the tide. As the water rose we pulled herin quite close to the bank and clambered aboard.

She rested safely now upon an even keel; nor did sheleak, for she was well calked with fiber and tarry pitch. We rigged up a single short mast and light sail, fastenedplanking down over the ballast to form a deck, workedher out into midstream with a couple of sweeps, anddropped our primitive stone anchor to await the turnof the tide that would bear us out to sea.

While we waited we devoted the time to the construction of an upper deck, since the one immediatelyabove the ballast was some seven feet from the gunwale. The second deck was four feet above this. In it was alarge, commodious hatch, leading to the lower deck. Thesides of the ship rose three feet above the upper deck,forming an excellent breastwork, which we loopholed atintervals that we might lie prone and fire upon anenemy.

Though we were sailing out upon a peaceful missionin search of my friend Ja, we knew that we might meetwith people of some other island who would proveunfriendly.

At last the tide turned. We weighed anchor. Slowlywe drifted down the great river toward the sea.

About us swarmed the mighty denizens of the primeval deep--plesiosauri and ichthyosauria with all theirhorrid, slimy cousins whose names were as the names ofaunts and uncles to Perry, but which I have never beenable to recall an hour after having heard them.

At last we were safely launched upon the journey towhich we had looked forward for so long, and the resultsof which meant so much to me.