Pellucidar

“ In that moment as I stood before the heartless tribunal I felt that my life would be a very little thing to give could it save to the human race of Pellucidar the chance to come into its own by insuring the eventual extinction of the hated, powerful Mahars. ”

“ In the morning, after carefully returning the box to its hole and covering it over with sand, I called my servants about me, snatched a hurried breakfast, mounted my horse, and started upon a forced march for Algiers.
I arrived here today. In writing you this letter I feel that I am making a fool of myself.
There is no David Innes.
There is no Dian the Beautiful.
There is no world within a world.
Pellucidar is but a realm of your imagination—nothing more. ”

“ He looked at me closely for a moment.
"I have doubted your story that you are from another world," he said at last, "but yet upon no other grounds could your ignorance of the ways of Pellucidar be explained. Do you really mean that you do not know that you offended the Beautiful One, and how?"
"I do not know, Ghak," I replied.
"Then shall I tell you. When a man of Pellucidar intervenes between another man and the woman the other man would have, the woman belongs to the victor. Dian the Beautiful belongs to you. ”

“ What could the men of Pellucidar do without you to lead them?
“They would fight among themselves, and while they fought the Mahars would fall upon them, and even though the Mahar race should die out, of what value would the emancipation of the human race be to them without the knowledge, which you alone may wield, to guide them toward the wonderful civilization of which you have told me so much that I long for its comforts and luxuries as I never before longed for anything.
“No, David; the Mahars cannot harm us if you are at liberty. ”

“ A condemned man snatched from the jaws of death could not have greeted salvation with more joyousness than Tanar of Pellucidar greeted this first slender ray of daylight that he had seen for a seeming eternity. ”

“ Then we called together upon the flag-ship all our captains, to give the affair greater weight and dignity, and all the principal men of Luana. We had conquered them, and they expected either death or slavery; but they deserved neither, and I told them so. It is always my habit here in Pellucidar to impress upon these savage people that mercy is as noble a quality as physical bravery, and that next to the men who fight shoulder to shoulder with one, we should honor the brave men who fight against us, and if we are victorious, award them both the mercy and honor that are their due. ”

“ They saw me always laboring diligently in the melon-patch, and as time enters not into the reckoning of Pellucidarians—even of human beings and much less of brutes and half brutes—I might have lived on indefinitely through this subterfuge had not that occurred which took me out of the melon-patch for good and all. ”

“ Seeing that they were determined to give battle, I leaned over the rail of the Sari and brought the imperial battle-squadron of the Emperor of Pellucidar into action for the first time in the history of a world. In other and simpler words, I fired my revolver at the nearest canoe.
The effect was magical. A warrior rose from his knees, threw his paddle aloft, stiffened into rigidity for an instant, and then toppled overboard. ”

“ Let them have their secret that you and I may return to our people, and lead them to the conquest of all Pellucidar.”
It was plain that Dian was ambitious, and that her ambition had not dulled her reasoning faculties. She was right. Nothing could be gained by remaining bottled up in Phutra for the rest of our lives. ”

“ The Gray Ghost smiled malevolently. “Beagle wanted to know, Mr. Pelham—but you heard me repeat his question. Here's the answer: only a brilliant man would have conceived the idea of pretending to become a criminal himself in order to win his way to me. At least, only an extraordinarily brilliant man would have conceived this particular plan. I congratulate you, Mr. Pelham, and I regret that the association for which I had hoped can never be realized. But no falsehood can successfully impersonate a truth for long. You had a weak spot in your plan, Mr. Pelham.” ”

“ Our neighbour is none so long eared an animal as you imagine. You do not possess the power of reflection, no not you. I grin and joke; but afterwards I reflect. Every low-born clown can stamp and roar, as we do here. Grant a little more real cheerfulness, a spark more of charity, a bit more faith in the blessing of heaven;--what do you imagine that all this would be a sign of?" "Now, that I also reflect," replied one, "I fancy it would be a sign of being a little less of a brute." ”

“ I beg to assure you that the crime which I have committed has arisen from compulsion rather than from any hostility to the man whom it has been my fate to destroy. Considering the amiable character and universally admitted virtues of Mr. Perceval, I feel, if I could murder him in a cool and unjustifiable manner, I should not deserve to live another moment in this world. ”

“ The unhappy youth Marchant, at the time of his execution had only reached the age of eighteen years. He was the son of decent parents, and had been remarkable during the early part of his life, the greater portion of which he had spent in service, for his extreme humanity and gentleness of disposition. The victim of his crime was twenty years old at the time of her death. She was a young woman of prepossessing appearance and of sprightly disposition, and she had often laughed at her fellow-servant and eventual murderer, for a supposed affection which he professed for her. ”

“ Pelham. I never hoped to enlist a gentleman. I must do with such cattle as Beagle, here.” He looked scornfully at his chief lieutenant. “I want a man of imagination, of genius such as you have shown you possess. I need such a man, Mr. Pelham. Your rash infatuation for a girl has ruined you. Your world can know you no longer. Will you come to my world?”
“Turn criminal?” Pelham stared at him. ”

“ The next day while Peter was piling fresh logs under the cauldrons, the Devil came to him and said:
“Today, Peter, you are free. You have served me faithfully and well and I am going to reward you handsomely. Money would be too heavy for you to carry, so I am going to give you this bag which is a magic bag. Whenever you open it and say: “Bag, I need some ducats,’ the bag will always have just as many as you need. Good luck go with you, Peter. However, I don’t believe you’ll have a very good time at first for people will think you’re a devil. ”

“ Well! in the name of heaven what is a plebeian? When God created man did he make patricians and plebeians? Does not the power that awes the vulgar come from tyrants and despots?"
"Ah! if that beautiful young creature should prove an impure, a nameless one!"
"Oh, blasphemer of love, cease your profanity! How could a guilty woman's face show such pure transcendent loveliness!"
Annita was a plebeian. The entrance to her dwelling showed that. There stood no columned porch where the gondola drew up before a simple door-step. ”

“ I have always had an insuperable horror of being placed in what the vulgar call a predicament. In a predicament I was most certainly placed at the present moment. A man at my feet in a fit—the cause of it having very wisely disappeared, devolving upon me the charge of watching, recovering, and conducting home the afflicted person—made a concatenation of disagreeable circumstances, as much unsuited to the temper of Henry Pelham, as his evil fortune could possibly have contrived. ”

“ Pelleas turned the glasses on the magnolias. “On my soul,” he exclaimed, “I thought I saw a tanager!” And when we had stood for a moment to watch hopefully and had been disappointed (“Why shouldn’t an early tanager come, to help us to believe?” he wondered) , he gave a vital spark to what I had said about the path:—
“I suppose that that little path really has no ending,” he said; “you cannot end direction. Yes, the path of In-the-Spring must run right away to the end of the world.” ”

“ I heard that the Duke of Launceston was so angry that he threatened to shoot Sir Alfred Pelham. Of course, he swore to my entire innocence. But the world must love sin. I think where one believed in me, and thought me cruelly outraged and wronged, one hundred believed in my guilt. ”

“ How few there are in the world who retain, after a certain age, the character originally natural to them! We all get, as it were, a second skin; the little foibles, propensities, eccentricities, we first indulged through affectation, conglomerate and encrust till the artificiality grows into nature.
“Pelham,” said Vincent, with a cold smile, “the day will be your’s; the battle is not to the strong—the whigs will triumph. ”

“ A secret that one day may be discovered, and bring ruin and death to me—and you? No, no; they make a mistake in the mettle of Dick Pelham if they think he is going to leave a trap-door open for himself to fall into. ”

“ Mr. Pelly checked a disposition to gasp; that would never do—he might wake himself up, and spoil all. The sweet voice of the picture—it was like a voice, mind you, not like a gramophone—was prompt with its reply:
"I knew him well. But, oh, so long ago! One gets to doubt everything—all that was most real once, that made the very core of our lives. Sometimes I think it was a dream—a sweet dream with terror at the end—a nectar-cup a basilisk was watching, all the while. Four hundred years! ”

“ The young man staggers. He now turns to where he should expect to find strength. Under the pulpit next Sunday is a mind where the mists of doubt are gathering and darkening. He looks up to the "Light of the World" to have these mists dispelled. Instead of seeing his foes battered with their own weapons he sees these weapons, that in every domain are conquering for the devil, here despised. ”

“ Hairpins bothered where her head rested against his shoulder. With her left hand she pulled them out. She shook her riotous chestnut tresses free and they fell about her oval face like the bacchanal crown of a Sybarite. The lad bent his head and buried his lips in them.
She was his—his! Such a night would never come again—could never come again—because this was the first. No thrust-and-parry, drooling calf-talk; no bids for sex-interest here.
Youth, nature and night were stripped to their framework. For this were the worlds made and the constellations hung infinitely. ”

“ I can ask those whom I like to my house—why should I be forced into asking those whom I do not like? In fine, my good Pelham, why should I sour my temper and shorten my life, put my green old age into flannel and physic, and become, from the happiest of sages, the most miserable of fools? Ambition reminds me of what Bacon says of anger—'It is like rain, it breaks itself upon that which it falls on.' Pelham, my boy, taste the Chateau Margot. ”

“ Time is too precious to waste; not another day, not another hour, must be lost. I agree with you that Pelham has reason to suspect that my dear father left behind him, and concealed, a document which may re-establish me in my place among men, and supply damning evidence against those who brought him to his death. ”

“ For a period of some days I continued in the same state of mind; a sort of calm sorrow, full of peace, affection, and religious thoughts. I seemed to have overcome every weakness, and as if I were no longer capable of suffering new anxiety. Fond delusion! it is man's duty to aim at reaching as near to perfection as possible, though he can never attain it here. What now disturbed me was the sight of an unhappy friend, my good Piero, who passed along the gallery within a few yards of me, while I stood at my window. ”

“ It is a melancholy pleasure to me to wander among these vestiges of the departed great man; to trace his various thoughts from his earliest infancy to the time when death robbed the world of what should have been its brightest ornament, and left to it merely the paste and tinsel, the gewgaw and tomfoolery of literature.
Of his father he has left many records. This person, upon whom the honour of being Pellucid’s progenitor devolved, appears to have been a worthy undertaker; an unprofitable one, however, for he never undertook anything well, nor carried it out successfully. ”

“ Tell the fellow to go to the Devil!”
Without waiting for the bailiff’s wife, Peter turned away. Tired and discouraged he took a path into the woods and sat down.
“There doesn’t seem to be any place for me in all the world,” he thought to himself. “They all tell me to go to the Devil—my stepmother, the farmer, and now the bailiff. If I knew the way to hell I think I’d take their advice. I’m sure the Devil would treat me better than they do!” ”

“ About eight o’clock she walked steadily to the spot where criminals are bound; and, whilst the executioner tied her hands—even whilst he wound the halter round her waist—she stood erect and unmoved, with astonishing fortitude. At this moment a gentleman who had greatly interested himself in her behalf adjured her, in the name of that God in whose presence she was about to appear, if she knew anything of the crime for which she was about to suffer, to make it known; when she replied distinctly and clearly, “Before God then, I die innocent!” ”

“ Percival stands waiting for more, one-third of his cigar in abeyance between his finger-tips. Getting no more, he continues:—"Why—you don't mean to say?..." [Pg 115]
"What?"
"Well—it's something like this, if I can put the case. Take somebody you've just met and spoken to...." But Mr. Pellew's prudence became suddenly aware of a direction in which the conversation might drift, and he pulled up short. If he pushed on rashly, how avoid an entanglement of himself in a personal discussion? ”