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.
Presently a door in one side of the arena wall was opened to admit
a huge, shaggy, bull-like creature.
"A Bos," whispered Perry, excitedly. "His kind roamed the outer
crust with the cave bear and the mammoth ages and ages ago. We
have been carried back a million years, David, to the childhood of
a planet--is it not wondrous?"
But I saw only the raven hair of a half-naked girl, and my heart
stood still in dumb misery at the sight of her, nor had I any eyes
for the wonders of natural history.
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