possibility in your wild tale--it was fiction pure and simple.

And yet where WERE the other ends of those wires?

What was this instrument--ticking away here in the great Sahara--but

a travesty upon the possible!

Would I have believed in it had I not seen it with my own eyes?

And the initials--D. I.--upon the slip of paper!

David's initials were these--David Innes.

I smiled at my imaginings. I ridiculed the assumption that there

was an inner world and that these wires led downward through the

earth's crust to the surface of Pellucidar. And yet--

Well, I sat there all night, listening to that tantalizing clicking,

now and then moving the sending-key just to let the other end know

that the instrument had been discovered. 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--noth-ing more.

BUT--

The incident of the finding of that buried telegraph instrument

upon the lonely Sahara is little short of uncanny, in view of your

story of the adventures of David Innes.

I have called it one of the most remarkable coinci-dences in

modern fiction. I called it literature before, but--again pardon

my candor--your story is not.

And now--why am I writing you?

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