Part 2
Zartan had ventured into the forests and jungles of every continent on earth, had seen the tallest trees and most extraordinary vegetation those lands had to offer—and yet now felt as a small child stumbling into the woods for the first time. Here the trees were so big around they might have been carved into castle towers, while their height was unknowable, as their tops were lost in the clouds. Each extended a massive tangle of gnarled branches in every direction, which bore massive broad leaves as tough as leather, and moreover were entwined with vines and ensconced with moss and mushrooms so that it was difficult to know where one tree ended and another began—and yet harder to find a path between them.
Using his cutlass as a scythe, Zartan hacked his way a little into this morass, hoping Bob had not flown far. He was soon swallowed up by the woods, no longer able to hear his compatriots on the beach. He stumbled on, heedless, working his way deeper into the jungle.
“Bob!” he called. “Flap your feathered bottom back here!” He wrenched his arm free of a vine, planted his boot accidentally into a puddle of muck, and cursed. He disliked the heavy air of this place, disliked the alien flora, and felt he had made a bad choice. It was a small comfort when his parrot came diving back, breaking through the trees and squawking up a storm.
“No good! No good! No good!” the bird screeched.
“I know, you told me so,” said Bob. “I’ll commandeer a dog or two and go back as soon as we get out of here. But first let me scrape this mud off my boot so I can plant it squarely in the backside of Bo!”
Finding a ridged stone, Bob tried to scrape the sole of his boot, but the stone slipped away from him, and a moment later revealed itself to be a tail of a monstrous lizard, which was rather unpleasant upon being awakened. It looked rather like a crocodile, but with longer legs that could (Zartan figured, in that fleeting second) give chase, and a massive jaw of long, sharp, fearsome teeth. Zartan doubted that anyone could survive a single bite from this horrible giant. He realized all of this in a flash, a fraction of a second where the animal twisted with lightning speed and endeavored to swallow him whole.
Zartan’s time in Pellucidar would have been brief indeed were it not for Bo, his friend who had confessed to being of the Kosar people, a race of sea-faring giants in this inner world. He had discovered his human friend missing and plunged after him in the woods, following the path of hewn vegetation and arriving just in time to see the amphibious terror awaken. Kosars are a fearless people, and Bo was considered foolhardy and brazen even among Kosars. He now proved himself undersold even on that measure, leaping at once into the very maw of the beast as the jaw snapped shut with a noise that shook the trees. Zartan, still frozen from amazement, thought that Bo had sacrificed himself to save him, and swore to give the Kosar proper homage should he survive himself.