Hodon shook his head. “We belong in Sari, my mate and I. We may never reach Sari, but we must try.”
“We will reach Sari,” said O-aa. “You and I and Rahna can go anywhere. There is nothing we Sarians cannot do.”
“I thought that you were from Kali where the men are nine feet tall,” said Utan.
“I am from where my mate is from,” said O-aa. “I am a Sarian.”
“If I thought that there was another girl like you in Kali, I would go there,” said Utan.
“There is no other girl like O-aa in all Pellucidar,” said Hodon the Fleet One.
“I believe you,” said Utan.
Jalu’s warriors ate and slept, and then they started back for their village; and Hodon and O-aa took the long trail—in the wrong direction. They moved toward the northeast. But after all it proved to be the right direction, for before they had slept again they met David and his party. For all of them it was like meeting old friends who had returned from death.
Who may say how long it took them to make the incredible march of nearly two thousand five hundred miles down to the Lidi Plains and the Land of Awful Shadow and across to the east coast and back up to Sari? But at last they came to the village, the village that most of them had never expected to see again; and among the first to welcome them was Dian the Beautiful. The John Tyler had made the long trip in safety.
Everyone was happy except Ah-gilak and Gamba. Ah-gilak had been happy until he saw O-aa. Gamba was never happy. Abner Perry was so happy that he cried, for those whom he thought his carelessness had condemned to death were safe and at home again. Already, mentally, he was inventing a submarine.