In spite of the idyllic setting that my life now took place in,
I could not forget that Savjoda was out there and planning the conquest
of Barsoom.
Two more times, we witnessed the opening of roads to the surface
world. Both openings were brief, too brief to allow a major invasion of
the surface, but certainly things were happening. The most important thing
was that these openings were reminders that Savjoda's plans moved forward
while we did nothing.
In Dhaimira, as I have stated before, there are virtually no metals,
yet somehow, we had to make the tools that would allow us to either escape
this world or catch up with Savjoda. Barsoom is far older than Earth and
the ways of the primitive much farther behind the Barsoomians than the
inhabitants of Earth. It is for that reason that Tamla barely comprehended
the concept of stone tools.
On Earth, even as recently as the reign of the Kalkars, men had chipped
knives and axes out of flint, while Barsoom had lived in the age of steel
for millions of years. Tamla reacted to my inept efforts of making tools
from stone as if I had performed a magic trick.
It took me a few tries to make a useable axe-head, but I got quite
a bit of practice due to the fact that they wore out quite quickly. The
task of constructing a sturdy boat fell mostly to myself. Having been raised
on the dry sea bottoms of Barsoom, the young princess understood little
of the theory behind watercraft.
Over time, a seaworthy craft took shape. I cooked tree sap to pitch
the hull and carved pegs to hold the boards together. The joined and pitched
boards were then covered with animal hide as was a roofed enclosure inside
the craft itself. I made a sail from large leaves sewn together. Tamla
and I sailed on a few short excursions from our camp to survey the coast
and work out problems with the boat's construction.
In spite of the fact that Keltrolna was quite small compared to any
of Earth s continents, it was still of impressive size and variety. We
spent some time exploring all along the western coast where we saw many
wonders.
We had few really good choices for how we should proceed. Tamla thought
that we should head into the South Polar region where she thought there
might some sort of route into the Sea of Omean and from there we might
reach the Sea of Korus. I, on the other hand thought that the course most
likely to succeed would be to make for Savjoda s capital and wait to see
if we could get back when he next opens a road.
We devoted ourselves to the study of what might be called Dhaimiran
"astronomy." We had to create a clear map of our world but we were subject
to the sorts of limitations that were usually faced by astronomers, that
is the vicissitudes of the weather. We also had no telescope although that
was not too much of a handicap. Dhaimira's diameter is approximately three
thousand miles making it only slightly larger than Vah-Nah. The shell of
Barsoom was rather thicker by proportion than that of Earth which encloses
Pellucidar. The result of this was that the atmosphere was considerably
easier to see through than that of Pellucidar. On the other hand, the sun
effectively blanked out a larger portion of the sky than did the sun of
Pellucidar. Luckily for us, our camp was located very near the equator
and we were able to see both polar regions. We discovered two things. The
first was that we could not tell with any certainty the direction of the
planet s rotation, therefore, we remained unsure as to which pole was which.
The second of which was the presence of land masses located over both poles
making a direct sea passage to the surface unlikely.
This is a copy made from the first map we made in
western Keltrolna.
The land of Keltrolna can be seen to encircle all
the other lands and waters, for this is how it appeared from our vantage.
This is the best surmise I could make of the actual
shape of the lands of Dhaimira
if they were to be laid out flat. Geprodna is at the
top of the map and Keltrolna is on the right hand side.
We reluctantly determined that seeking out Savjoda offered us the
best chance of escape. We had, through our geographical explorations, found
a place that we believed to be Savjoda's base of operations. It was almost
on the exact opposite side of the world from us. This made me wonder why
we entered Dhaimira where we did. Were there other plans for Tamla aside
from those stated by the jomads?
I contrived a clock of sorts, really more like an ancient sand glass.
It dribbled a stream of sand from one container to another over a period
of approximately 4000 resting heartbeats. I arbitrarily decided to call
a period where we reversed the containers 20 times a day and 30 of those
periods a month. Both Tamla and I felt much better with a method of time-keeping,
although now that we had one, we became aware of how fast the time was
going by.
It took us half a month to prepare supplies for our voyage. They
consisted of dried meats and wild vegetables and many skins filled with
spring water.
The darmayoks had left us a vial of their water purification chemical,
but we felt it was best to regard that as emergency stores. Also, the water
skins made good ballast and helped keep the boat from rocking too far in
one direction or the other.
We reluctantly determined that seeking out Savjoda offered us the
best chance of escape. We had, through our geographical explorations found
a place that we believed to be Savjoda s base of operations. It was almost
on the exact opposite side of the world from us. This made me wonder why
we entered Dhaimira where we did. Were there other plans for Tamla aside
from those stated by the jomads?
I contrived a clock of sorts, really more like an ancient sand glass.
It dribbled a stream of sand from one container to another over a period
of approximately 4000 resting heartbeats. I arbitrarily decided to call
a period where we reversed the containers twenty times a "day" and thirty
of those periods a "month". Both Tamla and I felt much better with a method
of time-keeping, although now that we had one, we became aware of how fast
the time was going by.
It took us half a month to prepare supplies for our voyage. They
consisted of dried meats and wild vegetables and many skins filled with
spring water.
The darmayoks had left us a vial of their water purification chemical,
but we felt it was best to regard that as emergency stores. Also, the water
skins made good ballast and helped keep the boat from rocking too far in
one direction or the other.
We set out on a calm sea using only the map we had prepared for navigation.
Frequent overcast weather made our progress slow and before more than five
days had passed, we were forced to land at the first island we saw to wait
until we could get our bearings.
The island was lushly forested with the leafy cup trees, not unlike
the one we made our escape from the jomads in, each with its own little
pond. There was ample hunting and forage for us to eat well and replenish
stocks as we needed.
Beyond the forest that lined the coast was a savanna interrupted
by occasional trees and watering holes. The ground cover was both Earthly
grasses as well as Barsoomian yellow moss, thus we were not overly surprised
to see that the land was shared by elephants and wildebeest as well as
wild thoats and zitidars. Here were also various beasts, which were of
obviously Dhaimiran origin, some of which were too fleet of foot for us
to get a clear look at. We also spotted lions and calots which convinced
us that it would be better for us to return to the coastal forest.
After some time, we determined that we were on a large island that
Tamla identified as Penshodai. This island sat at one end of an archipelago
that reached all the way to Geprodna.
If we stayed in the region of these islands for our journey, we would
always be near land and in shallow, warm waters, but we would also be more
exposed to discovery by Savjoda s jomad minions. Even so, the limitations
of our boat and our dependence on being able to see our destination militated
against attempting a long voyage on the open ocean. Thus it was that we
agreed to make our journey along the line of islands.