Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower
end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.
A burly brute with all the refined intelligence of a gorilla stamped upon his bestial face was attempting to push a smaller man to second place, but the smaller one appealed to the high priestess, who in a cold peremptory voice sent the larger to the extreme
end of the line. Tarzan could hear him growling and rumbling as he went slowly to the inferior station.
President Lincoln himself fixed the
end of the line at Omaha, in Nebraska.
There was a date at one
end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two.
With little ceremony Perry and I were chained at the
end of the line, and without further ado the interrupted march was resumed.
He found a loose end of the clothesline which fastened the logs together, and taking a gold nail from his pocket he bent it nearly double, to form a hook, and tied it to the
end of the line. Having baited the hook with some bread which he broke from his loaf, he dropped the line into the water and almost instantly it was seized by a great fish.
Down at the
end of the line towered the tall beggar-man, who must needs twang a bow-string with the best of them.
When we reached the spot and unearthed the little box the instrument was quiet, nor did repeated attempts upon the part of our telegrapher succeed in winning a response from the other
end of the line. After several days of futile endeavor to raise Pellucidar, we had be-gun to despair.
"Lord Greystoke?" asked a man's voice at the other
end of the line.
They were exactly alike, from one
end of the line to the other, and all were cut out of paper and joined together in the centers of their bodies.
"Way for the Prince of Helium!" I shouted; and before the astonished yellow man whose misfortune it was to be at the fighting
end of the line at that particular moment could gather his wits together my sword had decapitated him, and I was rushing like a mad bull down upon those behind him.
I had often seen one placed at the end of a road on a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black arms, bending in every direction, always reminded me of the claws of an immense beetle, and I assure you it was never without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could not help thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs should be made to cleave the air with such precision as to convey to the distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting at a table at one
end of the line to another man similarly placed at the opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition on the part of the sender of the message.