The People That Time Forgot : Edgar Rice Burroughs

The People That Time Forgot
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter I
I am forced to admit that even though I had traveled a long
distance to place Bowen Tyler's manuscript in the hands of his
father, I was still a trifle skeptical as to its sincerity,
since I could not but recall that it had not been many years
since Bowen had been one of the most notorious practical jokers
of his alma mater. The truth was that as I sat in the Tyler
library at Santa Monica I commenced to feel a trifle foolish
and to wish that I had merely forwarded the manuscript by
express instead of bearing it personally, for I confess that I
do not enjoy being laughed at. I have a well-developed sense
of humor--when the joke is not on me.
Mr. Tyler, Sr., was expected almost hourly. The last steamer
in from Honolulu had brought information of the date of the
expected sailing of his yacht Toreador, which was now
twenty-four hours overdue. Mr. Tyler's assistant secretary,
who had been left at home, assured me that there was no doubt
but that the Toreador had sailed as promised, since he knew
his employer well enough to be positive that nothing short of
an act of God would prevent his doing what he had planned to do.
I was also aware of the fact that the sending apparatus of
the Toreador's wireless equipment was sealed, and that it
would only be used in event of dire necessity. There was,
therefore, nothing to do but wait, and we waited.
We discussed the manuscript and hazarded guesses concerning it
and the strange events it narrated. The torpedoing of the
liner upon which Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., had taken passage for
France to join the American Ambulance was a well-known fact,
and I had further substantiated by wire to the New York office
of the owners, that a Miss La Rue had been booked for passage.
Further, neither she nor Bowen had been mentioned among the list
of survivors; nor had the body of either of them been recovered.
Their rescue by the English tug was entirely probable; the
capture of the enemy U-33 by the tug's crew was not beyond
the range of possibility; and their adventures during the
perilous cruise which the treachery and deceit of Benson
extended until they found themselves in the waters of the far
South Pacific with depleted stores and poisoned water-casks,
while bordering upon the fantastic, appeared logical enough as
narrated, event by event, in the manuscript.
Caprona has always been considered a more or less mythical
land, though it is vouched for by an eminent navigator of the
eighteenth century; but Bowen's narrative made it seem very real,
however many miles of trackless ocean lay between us and it.
Yes, the narrative had us guessing. We were agreed that it was
most improbable; but neither of us could say that anything which
it contained was beyond the range of possibility. The weird
flora and fauna of Caspak were as possible under the thick,
warm atmospheric conditions of the super-heated crater as
they were in the Mesozoic era under almost exactly similar
conditions, which were then probably world-wide. The assistant
secretary had heard of Caproni and his discoveries, but admitted
that he never had taken much stock in the one nor the other.
We were agreed that the one statement most difficult of
explanation was that which reported the entire absence of human
young among the various tribes which Tyler had had intercourse.
This was the one irreconcilable statement of the manuscript.
A world of adults! It was impossible.
We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party
of English sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them;
how many more might have perished! And Miss La Rue--could a
young girl long have survived the horrors of Caspak after
having been separated from all of her own kind? The assistant
secretary wondered if Nobs still was with her, and then we both
smiled at this tacit acceptance of the truth of the whole
uncanny tale:
"I suppose I'm a fool," remarked the assistant secretary; "but
by George, I can't help believing it, and I can see that girl
now, with the big Airedale at her side protecting her from the
terrors of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire
scene--the apelike Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves;
the huge pterodactyls soaring through the heavy air upon their
bat-like wings; the mighty dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks
beneath the dark shadows of preglacial forests--the dragons
which we considered myths until science taught us that they
were the true recollections of the first man, handed down
through countless ages by word of mouth from father to son out
of the unrecorded dawn of humanity."
"It is stupendous--if true," I replied. "And to think that
possibly they are still there--Tyler and Miss La
Rue--surrounded by hideous dangers, and that possibly Bradley
still lives, and some of his party! I can't help hoping all
the time that Bowen and the girl have found the others; the
last Bowen knew of them, there were six left, all told--the
mate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson, Whitely, Brady
and Sinclair. There might be some hope for them if they could
join forces; but separated, I'm afraid they couldn't last long."
"If only they hadn't let the German prisoners capture the U-33!
Bowen should have had better judgment than to have trusted them
at all. The chances are von Schoenvorts succeeded in getting
safely back to Kiel and is strutting around with an Iron Cross
this very minute. With a large supply of oil from the wells
they discovered in Caspak, with plenty of water and ample
provisions, there is no reason why they couldn't have
negotiated the submerged tunnel beneath the barrier cliffs
and made good their escape."
"I don't like 'em," said the assistant secretary; "but
sometimes you got to hand it to 'em."
"Yes," I growled, "and there's nothing I'd enjoy more than
handing it to them!" And then the telephone-bell rang.
The assistant secretary answered, and as I watched him, I saw
his jaw drop and his face go white. "My God!" he exclaimed as
he hung up the receiver as one in a trance. "It can't be!"
"What?" I asked.
"Mr. Tyler is dead," he answered in a dull voice. "He died at
sea, suddenly, yesterday."
The next ten days were occupied in burying Mr. Bowen J. Tyler, Sr.,
and arranging plans for the succor of his son. Mr. Tom Billings,
the late Mr. Tyler's secretary, did it all. He is force, energy,
initiative and good judgment combined and personified. I never
have beheld a more dynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts
and executors as a sculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed,
fashioned and forced them to his will. He had been a classmate
of Bowen Tyler at college, and a fraternity brother, and before,
that he had been an impoverished and improvident cow-puncher
on one of the great Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had picked him
out of thousands of employees and made him; or rather Tyler had
given him the opportunity, and then Billings had made himself.
Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of men as his father, had taken him
into his friendship, and between the two of them they had turned
out a man who would have died for a Tyler as quickly as he would
have for his flag. Yet there was none of the sycophant or fawner
in Billings; ordinarily I do not wax enthusiastic about men, but
this man Billings comes as close to my conception of what a
regular man should be as any I have ever met. I venture to say
that before Bowen J. Tyler sent him to college he had never
heard the word ethics, and yet I am equally sure that in
all his life he never has transgressed a single tenet of the
code of ethics of an American gentleman.
Ten days after they brought Mr. Tyler's body off the Toreador,
we steamed out into the Pacific in search of Caprona. There were
forty in the party, including the master and crew of the
Toreador; and Billings the indomitable was in command. We had
a long and uninteresting search for Caprona, for the old map
upon which the assistant secretary had finally located it was
most inaccurate. When its grim walls finally rose out of the
ocean's mists before us, we were so far south that it was a
question as to whether we were in the South Pacific or
the Antarctic. Bergs were numerous, and it was very cold.
All during the trip Billings had steadfastly evaded questions
as to how we were to enter Caspak after we had found Caprona.
Bowen Tyler's manuscript had made it perfectly evident to all
that the subterranean outlet of the Caspakian River was the
only means of ingress or egress to the crater world beyond the
impregnable cliffs. Tyler's party had been able to navigate
this channel because their craft had been a submarine; but the
Toreador could as easily have flown over the cliffs as
sailed under them. Jimmy Hollis and Colin Short whiled away
many an hour inventing schemes for surmounting the obstacle
presented by the barrier cliffs, and making ridiculous wagers
as to which one Tom Billings had in mind; but immediately we
were all assured that we had raised Caprona, Billings called
us together.
"There was no use in talking about these things," he said,
"until we found the island. At best it can be but conjecture on
our part until we have been able to scrutinize the coast closely.
Each of us has formed a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast
from Bowen's manuscript, and it is not likely that any two of
these pictures resemble each other, or that any of them resemble
the coast as we shall presently find it. I have in view three
plans for scaling the cliffs, and the means for carrying out
each is in the hold. There is an electric drill with plenty
of waterproof cable to reach from the ship's dynamos to the
cliff-top when the Toreador is anchored at a safe distance
from shore, and there is sufficient half-inch iron rod to build
a ladder from the base to the top of the cliff. It would be a
long, arduous and dangerous work to bore the holes and insert
the rungs of the ladder from the bottom upward; yet it can be done.
"I also have a life-saving mortar with which we might be able
to throw a line over the summit of the cliffs; but this plan
would necessitate one of us climbing to the top with the
chances more than even that the line would cut at the summit,
or the hooks at the upper end would slip.
"My third plan seems to me the most feasible. You all saw a
number of large, heavy boxes lowered into the hold before
we sailed. I know you did, because you asked me what they
contained and commented upon the large letter 'H' which was
painted upon each box. These boxes contain the various parts
of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose assembling this upon the strip
of beach described in Bowen's manuscript--the beach where he
found the dead body of the apelike man--provided there is
sufficient space above high water; otherwise we shall have to
assemble it on deck and lower it over the side. After it is
assembled, I shall carry tackle and ropes to the cliff-top, and
then it will be comparatively simple to hoist the search-party
and its supplies in safety. Or I can make a sufficient number
of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the
barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first
reconnaissance reveals."
That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's
towering barrier.
"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan
the summit thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would
have been to waste our time in working out details of a plan to
surmount those." And he jerked his thumb toward the cliffs.
"It would take weeks, possibly months, to construct a ladder
to the top. I had no conception of their formidable height.
Our mortar would not carry a line halfway to the crest of the
lowest point. There is no use discussing any plan other than
the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find the beach and get busy."
Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could
discern surf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all
saw the line of breakers broken by a long sweep of rolling surf
upon a narrow beach. The launch was lowered, and five of us
made a landing, getting a good ducking in the ice-cold waters
in the doing of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the
clean-picked bones of what might have been the skeleton of a
high order of ape or a very low order of man, lying close to
the base of the cliff. Billings was satisfied, as were the
rest of us, that this was the beach mentioned by Bowen, and we
further found that there was ample room to assemble the
sea-plane.
Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting,
with the result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the
large boxes marked "H" upon the beach, and were busily
engaged in opening them. Two days later the plane was
assembled and tuned. We loaded tackles and ropes, water, food
and ammunition in it, and then we each implored Billings to let
us be the one to accompany him. But he would take no one.
That was Billings; if there was any especially difficult or
dangerous work to be done, that one man could do, Billings
always did it himself. If he needed assistance, he never
called for volunteers--just selected the man or men he
considered best qualified for the duty. He said that he
considered the principles underlying all volunteer service
fundamentally wrong, and that it seemed to him that calling
for volunteers reflected upon the courage and loyalty of the
entire command.
We rolled the plane down to the water's edge, and Billings
mounted the pilot's seat. There was a moment's delay as he
assured himself that he had everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis
went over his armament and ammunition to see that nothing had
been omitted. Besides pistol and rifle, there was the
machine-gun mounted in front of him on the plane, and
ammunition for all three. Bowen's account of the terrors of
Caspak had impressed us all with the necessity for proper means
of defense.
At last all was ready. The motor was started, and we pushed
the plane out into the surf. A moment later, and she was
skimming seaward. Gently she rose from the surface of the
water, executed a wide spiral as she mounted rapidly,
circled once far above us and then disappeared over the crest
of the cliffs. We all stood silent and expectant, our eyes
glued upon the towering summit above us. Hollis, who was now
in command, consulted his wrist-watch at frequent intervals.
"Gad," exclaimed Short, "we ought to be hearing from him pretty soon!"
Hollis laughed nervously. "He's been gone only ten minutes,"
he announced.
"Seems like an hour," snapped Short. "What's that? Did you
hear that? He's firing! It's the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and
here we are as helpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand
miles away! We can't do a thing. We don't know what's happening.
Why didn't he let one of us go with him?"
Yes, it was the machine-gun. We would hear it distinctly for
at least a minute. Then came silence. That was two weeks ago.
We have had no sign nor signal from Tom Billings since.
Chapter 2
I'll never forget my first impressions of Caspak as I circled
in, high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked
down through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me.
The hot, humid atmosphere of Caspak condenses as it is fanned
by the cold Antarctic air-currents which sweep across the
crater's top, sending a tenuous ribbon of vapor far out across
the Pacific. Through this the picture gave one the suggestion
of a colossal impressionistic canvas in greens and browns and
scarlets and yellows surrounding the deep blue of the inland
sea--just blobs of color taking form through the tumbling mist.
I dived close to the cliffs and skirted them for several miles
without finding the least indication of a suitable landing-place;
and then I swung back at a lower level, looking for a clearing
close to the bottom of the mighty escarpment; but I could find
none of sufficient area to insure safety. I was flying pretty
low by this time, not only looking for landing places but watching
the myriad life beneath me. I was down pretty well toward the
south end of the island, where an arm of the lake reaches far
inland, and I could see the surface of the water literally
black with creatures of some sort. I was too far up to recognize
individuals, but the general impression was of a vast army of
amphibious monsters. The land was almost equally alive with
crawling, leaping, running, flying things. It was one of the
latter which nearly did for me while my attention was fixed
upon the weird scene below.
The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of
the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a
most terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have
been fully eighty feet long from the end of its long, hideous
beak to the tip of its thick, short tail, with an equal spread
of wings. It was coming straight for me and hissing frightfully--
I could hear it above the whir of the propeller. It was coming
straight down toward the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it
have it right in the breast; but still it came for me, so that
I had to dive and turn, though I was dangerously close to earth.
The thing didn't miss me by a dozen feet, and when I rose, it
wheeled and followed me, but only to the cooler air close to
the level of the cliff-tops; there it turned again and dropped.
Something--man's natural love of battle and the chase, I presume--
impelled me to pursue it, and so I too circled and dived.
The moment I came down into the warm atmosphere of Caspak, the
creature came for me again, rising above me so that it might
swoop down upon me. Nothing could better have suited my armament,
since my machine-gun was pointed upward at an angle of about degrees
and could not be either depressed or elevated by the pilot.
If I had brought someone along with me, we could have raked the
great reptile from almost any position, but as the creature's
mode of attack was always from above, he always found me ready
with a hail of bullets. The battle must have lasted a minute
or more before the thing suddenly turned completely over in the
air and fell to the ground.
Bowen and I roomed together at college, and I learned a lot
from him outside my regular course. He was a pretty good
scholar despite his love of fun, and his particular hobby
was paleontology. He used to tell me about the various forms
of animal and vegetable life which had covered the globe during
former eras, and so I was pretty well acquainted with the
fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals of paleolithic times.
I knew that the thing that had attacked me was some sort of
pterodactyl which should have been extinct millions of years ago.
It was all that I needed to realize that Bowen had exaggerated
nothing in his manuscript.
Having disposed of my first foe, I set myself once more to
search for a landing-place near to the base of the cliffs
beyond which my party awaited me. I knew how anxious they
would be for word from me, and I was equally anxious to relieve
their minds and also to get them and our supplies well within
Caspak, so that we might set off about our business of finding
and rescuing Bowen Tyler; but the pterodactyl's carcass had
scarcely fallen before I was surrounded by at least a dozen of
the hideous things, some large, some small, but all bent upon
my destruction. I could not cope with them all, and so I rose
rapidly from among them to the cooler strata wherein they dared
not follow; and then I recalled that Bowen's narrative
distinctly indicated that the farther north one traveled in
Caspak, the fewer were the terrible reptiles which rendered
human life impossible at the southern end of the island.
There seemed nothing now but to search out a more northerly
landing-place and then return to the Toreador and transport
my companions, two by two, over the cliffs and deposit them at
the rendezvous. As I flew north, the temptation to explore
overcame me. I knew that I could easily cover Caspak and
return to the beach with less petrol than I had in my tanks;
and there was the hope, too, that I might find Bowen or some of
his party. The broad expanse of the inland sea lured me out
over its waters, and as I crossed, I saw at either extremity of
the great body of water an island--one to the south and one to
the north; but I did not alter my course to examine either
closely, leaving that to a later time.
The further shore of the sea revealed a much narrower strip of
land between the cliffs and the water than upon the western
side; but it was a hillier and more open country. There were
splendid landing-places, and in the distance, toward the north,
I thought I descried a village; but of that I was not positive.
However, as I approached the land, I saw a number of human figures
apparently pursuing one who fled across a broad expanse of meadow.
As I dropped lower to have a better look at these people, they
caught the whirring of my propellers and looked aloft. They paused
an instant--pursuers and pursued; and then they broke and raced
for the shelter of the nearest wood. Almost instantaneously a
huge bulk swooped down upon me, and as I looked up, I realized
that there were flying reptiles even in this part of Caspak.
The creature dived for my right wing so quickly that nothing but
a sheer drop could have saved me. I was already close to the
ground, so that my maneuver was extremely dangerous; but I was
in a fair way of making it successfully when I saw that I was
too closely approaching a large tree. My effort to dodge the
tree and the pterodactyl at the same time resulted disastrously.
One wing touched an upper branch; the plane tipped and swung
around, and then, out of control, dashed into the branches of
the tree, where it came to rest, battered and torn, forty feet
above the ground.
Hissing loudly, the huge reptile swept close above the tree in
which my plane had lodged, circled twice over me and then
flapped away toward the south. As I guessed then and was to
learn later, forests are the surest sanctuary from these
hideous creatures, which, with their enormous spread of wing
and their great weight, are as much out of place among trees
as is a seaplane.
For a minute or so I clung there to my battered flyer, now
useless beyond redemption, my brain numbed by the frightful
catastrophe that had befallen me. All my plans for the succor
of Bowen and Miss La Rue had depended upon this craft, and in a
few brief minutes my own selfish love of adventure had wrecked
their hopes and mine. And what effect it might have upon the
future of the balance of the rescuing expedition I could not
even guess. Their lives, too, might be sacrificed to my
suicidal foolishness. That I was doomed seemed inevitable; but
I can honestly say that the fate of my friends concerned me
more greatly than did my own.
Beyond the barrier cliffs my party was even now nervously
awaiting my return. Presently apprehension and fear would
claim them--and they would never know! They would attempt to
scale the cliffs--of that I was sure; but I was not so positive
that they would succeed; and after a while they would turn
back, what there were left of them, and go sadly and mournfully
upon their return journey to home. Home! I set my jaws and
tried to forget the word, for I knew that I should never again
see home.
And what of Bowen and his girl? I had doomed them too. They would
never even know that an attempt had been made to rescue them.
If they still lived, they might some day come upon the ruined
remnants of this great plane hanging in its lofty sepulcher and
hazard vain guesses and be filled with wonder; but they would
never know; and I could not but be glad that they would not
know that Tom Billings had sealed their death-warrants by his
criminal selfishness.
All these useless regrets were getting me in a bad way; but at
last I shook myself and tried to put such things out of my mind
and take hold of conditions as they existed and do my level
best to wrest victory from defeat. I was badly shaken up and
bruised, but considered myself mighty lucky to escape with my life.
The plane hung at a precarious angle, so that it was with
difficulty and considerable danger that I climbed from it into
the tree and then to the ground.
My predicament was grave. Between me and my friends lay an
inland sea fully sixty miles wide at this point and an
estimated land-distance of some three hundred miles around the
northern end of the sea, through such hideous dangers as I am
perfectly free to admit had me pretty well buffaloed. I had
seen quite enough of Caspak this day to assure me that Bowen
had in no way exaggerated its perils. As a matter of fact, I
am inclined to believe that he had become so accustomed to them
before he started upon his manuscript that he rather slighted them.
As I stood there beneath that tree--a tree which should have been
part of a coal-bed countless ages since--and looked out across
a sea teeming with frightful life--life which should have been
fossil before God conceived of Adam--I would not have given a
minim of stale beer for my chances of ever seeing my friends or
the outside world again; yet then and there I swore to fight my
way as far through this hideous land as circumstances would permit.
I had plenty of ammunition, an automatic pistol and a heavy rifle--
the latter one of twenty added to our equipment on the strength of
Bowen's description of the huge beasts of prey which ravaged Caspak.
My greatest danger lay in the hideous reptilia whose low nervous
organizations permitted their carnivorous instincts to function
for several minutes after they had ceased to live.
But to these things I gave less thought than to the sudden
frustration of all our plans. With the bitterest of thoughts I
condemned myself for the foolish weakness that had permitted me
to be drawn from the main object of my flight into premature
and useless exploration. It seemed to me then that I must be
totally eliminated from further search for Bowen, since, as I
estimated it, the three hundred miles of Caspakian territory I
must traverse to reach the base of the cliffs beyond which my
party awaited me were practically impassable for a single
individual unaccustomed to Caspakian life and ignorant of all
that lay before him. Yet I could not give up hope entirely.
My duty lay clear before me; I must follow it while life
remained to me, and so I set forth toward the north.
The country through which I took my way was as lovely as it was
unusual--I had almost said unearthly, for the plants, the
trees, the blooms were not of the earth that I knew. They were
larger, the colors more brilliant and the shapes startling,
some almost to grotesqueness, though even such added to the
charm and romance of the landscape as the giant cacti render
weirdly beautiful the waste spots of the sad Mohave. And over
all the sun shone huge and round and red, a monster sun above a
monstrous world, its light dispersed by the humid air of
Caspak--the warm, moist air which lies sluggish upon the breast
of this great mother of life, Nature's mightiest incubator.
All about me, in every direction, was life. It moved through
the tree-tops and among the boles; it displayed itself in
widening and intermingling circles upon the bosom of the sea;
it leaped from the depths; I could hear it in a dense wood at
my right, the murmur of it rising and falling in ceaseless
volumes of sound, riven at intervals by a horrid scream or a
thunderous roar which shook the earth; and always I was haunted
by that inexplicable sensation that unseen eyes were watching
me, that soundless feet dogged my trail. I am neither nervous
nor highstrung; but the burden of responsibility upon me
weighed heavily, so that I was more cautious than is my wont.
I turned often to right and left and rear lest I be surprised,
and I carried my rifle at the ready in my hand. Once I could
have sworn that among the many creatures dimly perceived amidst
the shadows of the wood I saw a human figure dart from one
cover to another, but I could not be sure.
For the most part I skirted the wood, making occasional detours
rather than enter those forbidding depths of gloom, though many
times I was forced to pass through arms of the forest which
extended to the very shore of the inland sea. There was so
sinister a suggestion in the uncouth sounds and the vague
glimpses of moving things within the forest, of the menace of
strange beasts and possibly still stranger men, that I always
breathed more freely when I had passed once more into open country.
I had traveled northward for perhaps an hour, still haunted by
the conviction that I was being stalked by some creature which
kept always hidden among the trees and shrubbery to my right
and a little to my rear, when for the hundredth time I was
attracted by a sound from that direction, and turning, saw some
animal running rapidly through the forest toward me. There was
no longer any effort on its part at concealment; it came on
through the underbrush swiftly, and I was confident that
whatever it was, it had finally gathered the courage to charge
me boldly. Before it finally broke into plain view, I became
aware that it was not alone, for a few yards in its rear a
second thing thrashed through the leafy jungle. Evidently I
was to be attacked in force by a pair of hunting beasts or men.
And then through the last clump of waving ferns broke the
figure of the foremost creature, which came leaping toward me
on light feet as I stood with my rifle to my shoulder covering
the point at which I had expected it would emerge. I must have
looked foolish indeed if my surprise and consternation were in
any way reflected upon my countenance as I lowered my rifle and
gazed incredulous at the lithe figure of the girl speeding
swiftly in my direction. But I did not have long to stand thus
with lowered weapon, for as she came, I saw her cast an
affrighted glance over her shoulder, and at the same moment
there broke from the jungle at the same spot at which I had
seen her, the hugest cat I had ever looked upon.
At first I took the beast for a saber-tooth tiger, as it was
quite the most fearsome-appearing beast one could imagine; but
it was not that dread monster of the past, though quite
formidable enough to satisfy the most fastidious thrill-hunter.
On it came, grim and terrible, its baleful eyes glaring above
its distended jaws, its lips curled in a frightful snarl which
exposed a whole mouthful of formidable teeth. At sight of me
it had abandoned its impetuous rush and was now sneaking slowly
toward us; while the girl, a long knife in her hand, took her
stand bravely at my left and a little to my rear. She had
called something to me in a strange tongue as she raced toward
me, and now she spoke again; but what she said I could not
then, of course, know--only that her tones were sweet, well
modulated and free from any suggestion of panic.
Facing the huge cat, which I now saw was an enormous panther, I
waited until I could place a shot where I felt it would do the
most good, for at best a frontal shot at any of the large
carnivora is a ticklish matter. I had some advantage in that
the beast was not charging; its head was held low and its back
exposed; and so at forty yards I took careful aim at its spine
at the junction of neck and shoulders. But at the same
instant, as though sensing my intention, the great creature
lifted its head and leaped forward in full charge. To fire at
that sloping forehead I knew would be worse than useless, and
so I quickly shifted my aim and pulled the trigger, hoping
against hope that the soft-nosed bullet and the heavy charge of
powder would have sufficient stopping effect to give me time to
place a second shot.
In answer to the report of the rifle I had the satisfaction of
seeing the brute spring into the air, turning a complete
somersault; but it was up again almost instantly, though in the
brief second that it took it to scramble to its feet and get
its bearings, it exposed its left side fully toward me, and a
second bullet went crashing through its heart. Down it went
for the second time--and then up and at me. The vitality of
these creatures of Caspak is one of the marvelous features of
this strange world and bespeaks the low nervous organization of
the old paleolithic life which has been so long extinct in
other portions of the world.
I put a third bullet into the beast at three paces, and then I
thought that I was done for; but it rolled over and stopped at
my feet, stone dead. I found that my second bullet had torn
its heart almost completely away, and yet it had lived to
charge ferociously upon me, and but for my third shot would
doubtless have slain me before it finally expired--or as Bowen
Tyler so quaintly puts it, before it knew that it was dead.
With the panther quite evidently conscious of the fact that
dissolution had overtaken it, I turned toward the girl, who was
regarding me with evident admiration and not a little awe,
though I must admit that my rifle claimed quite as much of her
attention as did I. She was quite the most wonderful animal
that I have ever looked upon, and what few of her charms her
apparel hid, it quite effectively succeeded in accentuating.
A bit of soft, undressed leather was caught over her left
shoulder and beneath her right breast, falling upon her left
side to her hip and upon the right to a metal band which
encircled her leg above the knee and to which the lowest point
of the hide was attached. About her waist was a loose leather
belt, to the center of which was attached the scabbard
belonging to her knife. There was a single armlet between her
right shoulder and elbow, and a series of them covered her left
forearm from elbow to wrist. These, I learned later, answered
the purpose of a shield against knife attack when the left arm
is raised in guard across the breast or face.
Her masses of heavy hair were held in place by a broad metal
band which bore a large triangular ornament directly in the
center of her forehead. This ornament appeared to be a huge
turquoise, while the metal of all her ornaments was beaten,
virgin gold, inlaid in intricate design with bits of
mother-of-pearl and tiny pieces of stone of various colors.
From the left shoulder depended a leopard's tail, while her
feet were shod with sturdy little sandals. The knife was her
only weapon. Its blade was of iron, the grip was wound with
hide and protected by a guard of three out-bowing strips of
flat iron, and upon the top of the hilt was a knob of gold.
I took in much of this in the few seconds during which we stood
facing each other, and I also observed another salient feature
of her appearance: she was frightfully dirty! Her face and
limbs and garment were streaked with mud and perspiration, and
yet even so, I felt that I had never looked upon so perfect and
beautiful a creature as she. Her figure beggars description,
and equally so, her face. Were I one of these writer-fellows,
I should probably say that her features were Grecian, but being
neither a writer nor a poet I can do her greater justice by
saying that she combined all of the finest lines that one sees
in the typical American girl's face rather than the pronounced
sheeplike physiognomy of the Greek goddess. No, even the dirt
couldn't hide that fact; she was beautiful beyond compare.
As we stood looking at each other, a slow smile came to her
face, parting her symmetrical lips and disclosing a row of
strong white teeth.
"Galu?" she asked with rising inflection.
And remembering that I read in Bowen's manuscript that Galu
seemed to indicate a higher type of man, I answered by pointing
to myself and repeating the word. Then she started off on a
regular catechism, if I could judge by her inflection, for I
certainly understood no word of what she said. All the time
the girl kept glancing toward the forest, and at last she
touched my arm and pointed in that direction.
Turning, I saw a hairy figure of a manlike thing standing
watching us, and presently another and another emerged from the
jungle and joined the leader until there must have been at
least twenty of them. They were entirely naked. Their bodies
were covered with hair, and though they stood upon their feet
without touching their hands to the ground, they had a very
ape-like appearance, since they stooped forward and had very
long arms and quite apish features. They were not pretty to
look upon with their close-set eyes, flat noses, long upper
lips and protruding yellow fangs.
"Alus!" said the girl.
I had reread Bowen's adventures so often that I knew them
almost by heart, and so now I knew that I was looking upon the
last remnant of that ancient man-race--the Alus of a forgotten
period--the speechless man of antiquity.
"Kazor!" cried the girl, and at the same moment the Alus
came jabbering toward us. They made strange growling, barking
noises, as with much baring of fangs they advanced upon us.
They were armed only with nature's weapons--powerful muscles
and giant fangs; yet I knew that these were quite sufficient to
overcome us had we nothing better to offer in defense, and so I
drew my pistol and fired at the leader. He dropped like a
stone, and the others turned and fled. Once again the girl
smiled her slow smile and stepping closer, caressed the barrel
of my automatic. As she did so, her fingers came in contact
with mine, and a sudden thrill ran through me, which I
attributed to the fact that it had been so long since I had
seen a woman of any sort or kind.
She said something to me in her low, liquid tones; but I could
not understand her, and then she pointed toward the north and
started away. I followed her, for my way was north too; but
had it been south I still should have followed, so hungry was I
for human companionship in this world of beasts and reptiles
and half-men.
We walked along, the girl talking a great deal and seeming
mystified that I could not understand her. Her silvery laugh
rang merrily when I in turn essayed to speak to her, as though
my language was the quaintest thing she ever had heard.
Often after fruitless attempts to make me understand she would
hold her palm toward me, saying, "Galu!" and then touch my
breast or arm and cry, "Alu, alu!" I knew what she meant,
for I had learned from Bowen's narrative the negative gesture
and the two words which she repeated. She meant that I was no
Galu, as I claimed, but an Alu, or speechless one. Yet every
time she said this she laughed again, and so infectious were
her tones that I could only join her. It was only natural,
too, that she should be mystified by my inability to comprehend
her or to make her comprehend me, for from the club-men, the
lowest human type in Caspak to have speech, to the golden race
of Galus, the tongues of the various tribes are identical--except
for amplifications in the rising scale of evolution. She, who
is a Galu, can understand one of the Bo-lu and make herself
understood to him, or to a hatchet-man, a spear-man or an archer.
The Ho-lus, or apes, the Alus and myself were the only creatures
of human semblance with which she could hold no converse; yet it
was evident that her intelligence told her that I was neither
Ho-lu nor Alu, neither anthropoid ape nor speechless man.
Yet she did not despair, but set out to teach me her language;
and had it not been that I worried so greatly over the fate of
Bowen and my companions of the Toreador, I could have wished
the period of instruction prolonged.
I never have been what one might call a ladies' man, though I
like their company immensely, and during my college days and
since have made various friends among the sex. I think that I
rather appeal to a certain type of girl for the reason that I
never make love to them; I leave that to the numerous others
who do it infinitely better than I could hope to, and take my
pleasure out of girls' society in what seem to be more rational
ways--dancing, golfing, boating, riding, tennis, and the like.
Yet in the company of this half-naked little savage I found a
new pleasure that was entirely distinct from any that I ever
had experienced. When she touched me, I thrilled as I had
never before thrilled in contact with another woman. I could
not quite understand it, for I am sufficiently sophisticated
to know that this is a symptom of love and I certainly did not
love this filthy little barbarian with her broken, unkempt
nails and her skin so besmeared with mud and the green of
crushed foliage that it was difficult to say what color it
originally had been. But if she was outwardly uncouth, her
clear eyes and strong white, even teeth, her silvery laugh and
her queenly carriage, bespoke an innate fineness which dirt
could not quite successfully conceal.
The sun was low in the heavens when we came upon a little river
which emptied into a large bay at the foot of low cliffs.
Our journey so far had been beset with constant danger, as is
every journey in this frightful land. I have not bored you with
a recital of the wearying successions of attacks by the multitude
of creatures which were constantly crossing our path or
deliberately stalking us. We were always upon the alert; for
here, to paraphrase, eternal vigilance is indeed the price of life.
I had managed to progress a little in the acquisition of a
knowledge of her tongue, so that I knew many of the animals and
reptiles by their Caspakian names, and trees and ferns and grasses.
I knew the words for sea and river and cliff, for sky
and sun and cloud. Yes, I was getting along finely, and then
it occurred to me that I didn't know my companion's name; so I
pointed to myself and said, "Tom," and to her and raised my
eyebrows in interrogation. The girl ran her fingers into that mass
of hair and looked puzzled. I repeated the action a dozen times.
"Tom," she said finally in that clear, sweet, liquid voice. "Tom!"
I had never thought much of my name before; but when she spoke
it, it sounded to me for the first time in my life like a
mighty nice name, and then she brightened suddenly and tapped
her own breast and said: "Ajor!"
"Ajor!" I repeated, and she laughed and struck her palms together.
Well, we knew each other's names now, and that was some satisfaction.
I rather liked hers--Ajor! And she seemed to like mine, for she
repeated it.
We came to the cliffs beside the little river where it empties
into the bay with the great inland sea beyond. The cliffs were
weather-worn and rotted, and in one place a deep hollow ran
back beneath the overhanging stone for several feet, suggesting
shelter for the night. There were loose rocks strewn all about
with which I might build a barricade across the entrance to the
cave, and so I halted there and pointed out the place to Ajor,
trying to make her understand that we would spend the night there.
As soon as she grasped my meaning, she assented with the
Caspakian equivalent of an affirmative nod, and then touching
my rifle, motioned me to follow her to the river. At the bank
she paused, removed her belt and dagger, dropping them to the
ground at her side; then unfastening the lower edge of her
garment from the metal leg-band to which it was attached,
slipped it off her left shoulder and let it drop to the ground
around her feet. It was done so naturally, so simply and so
quickly that it left me gasping like a fish out of water.
Turning, she flashed a smile at me and then dived into the
river, and there she bathed while I stood guard over her.
For five or ten minutes she splashed about, and when she
emerged her glistening skin was smooth and white and beautiful.
Without means of drying herself, she simply ignored what to me
would have seemed a necessity, and in a moment was arrayed in
her simple though effective costume.
It was now within an hour of darkness, and as I was nearly
famished, I led the way back about a quarter of a mile to a
low meadow where we had seen antelope and small horses a short
time before. Here I brought down a young buck, the report of my
rifle sending the balance of the herd scampering for the woods,
where they were met by a chorus of hideous roars as the
carnivora took advantage of their panic and leaped among them.
With my hunting-knife I removed a hind-quarter, and then we
returned to camp. Here I gathered a great quantity of wood
from fallen trees, Ajor helping me; but before I built a fire,
I also gathered sufficient loose rock to build my barricade
against the frightful terrors of the night to come.
I shall never forget the expression upon Ajor's face as she saw
me strike a match and light the kindling beneath our camp-fire.
It was such an expression as might transform a mortal face with
awe as its owner beheld the mysterious workings of divinity.
It was evident that Ajor was quite unfamiliar with modern
methods of fire-making. She had thought my rifle and pistol
wonderful; but these tiny slivers of wood which from a magic
rub brought flame to the camp hearth were indeed miracles to her.
As the meat roasted above the fire, Ajor and I tried once again
to talk; but though copiously filled with incentive, gestures
and sounds, the conversation did not flourish notably. And then
Ajor took up in earnest the task of teaching me her language.
She commenced, as I later learned, with the simplest form of
speech known to Caspak or for that matter to the world--that
employed by the Bo-lu. I found it far from difficult, and even
though it was a great handicap upon my instructor that she could
not speak my language, she did remarkably well and demonstrated
that she possessed ingenuity and intelligence of a high order.
After we had eaten, I added to the pile of firewood so that I
could replenish the fire before the entrance to our barricade,
believing this as good a protection against the carnivora as we
could have; and then Ajor and I sat down before it, and the
lesson proceeded, while from all about us came the weird and
awesome noises of the Caspakian night--the moaning and the
coughing and roaring of the tigers, the panthers and the lions,
the barking and the dismal howling of a wolf, jackal and
hyaenadon, the shrill shrieks of stricken prey and the hissing
of the great reptiles; the voice of man alone was silent.
But though the voice of this choir-terrible rose and fell from
far and near in all directions, reaching at time such a
tremendous volume of sound that the earth shook to it, yet so
engrossed was I in my lesson and in my teacher that often I was
deaf to what at another time would have filled me with awe.
The face and voice of the beautiful girl who leaned so eagerly
toward me as she tried to explain the meaning of some word or
correct my pronunciation of another quite entirely occupied my
every faculty of perception. The firelight shone upon her
animated features and sparkling eyes; it accentuated the
graceful motions of her gesturing arms and hands; it sparkled
from her white teeth and from her golden ornaments, and
glistened on the smooth firmness of her perfect skin. I am
afraid that often I was more occupied with admiration of this
beautiful animal than with a desire for knowledge; but be that
as it may, I nevertheless learned much that evening, though
part of what I learned had naught to do with any new language.
Ajor seemed determined that I should speak Caspakian as quickly
as possible, and I thought I saw in her desire a little of that
all-feminine trait which has come down through all the ages
from the first lady of the world--curiosity. Ajor desired that
I should speak her tongue in order that she might satisfy a
curiosity concerning me that was filling her to a point where
she was in danger of bursting; of that I was positive. She was
a regular little animated question-mark. She bubbled over
with interrogations which were never to be satisfied unless
I learned to speak her tongue. Her eyes sparkled with
excitement; her hand flew in expressive gestures; her little
tongue raced with time; yet all to no avail. I could say man
and tree and cliff and lion and a number of
other words in perfect Caspakian; but such a vocabulary was
only tantalizing; it did not lend itself well to a very general
conversation, and the result was that Ajor would wax so wroth
that she would clench her little fists and beat me on the
breast as hard as ever she could, and then she would sink back
laughing as the humor of the situation captured her.
She was trying to teach me some verbs by going through the
actions herself as she repeated the proper word. We were very
much engrossed--so much so that we were giving no heed to what
went on beyond our cave--when Ajor stopped very suddenly,
crying: "Kazor!" Now she had been trying to teach me that
ju meant stop; so when she cried kazor and at the same
time stopped, I thought for a moment that this was part of my
lesson--for the moment I forgot that kazor means beware.
I therefore repeated the word after her; but when I saw the
expression in her eyes as they were directed past me and saw
her point toward the entrance to the cave, I turned quickly--
to see a hideous face at the small aperture leading out into
the night. It was the fierce and snarling countenance of a
gigantic bear. I have hunted silvertips in the White
Mountains of Arizona and thought them quite the largest and
most formidable of big game; but from the appearance of the
head of this awful creature I judged that the largest grizzly I
had ever seen would shrink by comparison to the dimensions of a
Newfoundland dog.
Our fire was just within the cave, the smoke rising through the
apertures between the rocks that I had piled in such a way that
they arched inward toward the cliff at the top. The opening by
means of which we were to reach the outside was barricaded with
a few large fragments which did not by any means close it
entirely; but through the apertures thus left no large animal
could gain ingress. I had depended most, however, upon our
fire, feeling that none of the dangerous nocturnal beasts of
prey would venture close to the flames. In this, however, I
was quite evidently in error, for the great bear stood with his
nose not a foot from the blaze, which was now low, owing to the
fact that I had been so occupied with my lesson and my teacher
that I had neglected to replenish it.
Ajor whipped out her futile little knife and pointed to my rifle.
At the same time she spoke in a quite level voice entirely devoid
of nervousness or any evidence of fear or panic. I knew she was
exhorting me to fire upon the beast; but this I did not wish to
do other than as a last resort, for I was quite sure that even
my heavy bullets would not more than further enrage him--in which
case he might easily force an entrance to our cave.
Instead of firing, I piled some more wood upon the fire, and as
the smoke and blaze arose in the beast's face, it backed away,
growling most frightfully; but I still could see two ugly
points of light blazing in the outer darkness and hear its
growls rumbling terrifically without. For some time the
creature stood there watching the entrance to our frail
sanctuary while I racked my brains in futile endeavor to plan
some method of defense or escape. I knew full well that should
the bear make a determined effort to get at us, the rocks I had
piled as a barrier would come tumbling down about his giant
shoulders like a house of cards, and that he would walk
directly in upon us.
Ajor, having less knowledge of the effectiveness of firearms
than I, and therefore greater confidence in them, entreated me
to shoot the beast; but I knew that the chance that I could
stop it with a single shot was most remote, while that I should
but infuriate it was real and present; and so I waited for what
seemed an eternity, watching those devilish points of fire
glaring balefully at us, and listening to the ever-increasing
volume of those seismic growls which seemed to rumble upward
from the bowels of the earth, shaking the very cliffs beneath
which we cowered, until at last I saw that the brute was again
approaching the aperture. It availed me nothing that I piled
the blaze high with firewood, until Ajor and I were near to
roasting; on came that mighty engine of destruction until once
again the hideous face yawned its fanged yawn directly within
the barrier's opening. It stood thus a moment, and then the
head was withdrawn. I breathed a sigh of relief, the thing had
altered its intention and was going on in search of other and
more easily procurable prey; the fire had been too much for it.
But my joy was short-lived, and my heart sank once again as a
moment later I saw a mighty paw insinuated into the opening--a
paw as large around as a large dishpan. Very gently the paw
toyed with the great rock that partly closed the entrance,
pushed and pulled upon it and then very deliberately drew it
outward and to one side. Again came the head, and this time
much farther into the cavern; but still the great shoulders
would not pass through the opening. Ajor moved closer to me
until her shoulder touched my side, and I thought I felt a
slight tremor run through her body, but otherwise she gave no
indication of fear. Involuntarily I threw my left arm about
her and drew her to me for an instant. It was an act of
reassurance rather than a caress, though I must admit that
again and even in the face of death I thrilled at the contact
with her; and then I released her and threw my rifle to my
shoulder, for at last I had reached the conclusion that nothing
more could be gained by waiting. My only hope was to get as
many shots into the creature as I could before it was upon me.
Already it had torn away a second rock and was in the very act
of forcing its huge bulk through the opening it had now made.
So now I took careful aim between its eyes; my right fingers
closed firmly and evenly upon the small of the stock, drawing
back my trigger-finger by the muscular action of the hand.
The bullet could not fail to hit its mark! I held my breath lest
I swerve the muzzle a hair by my breathing. I was as steady and
cool as I ever had been upon a target-range, and I had the full
consciousness of a perfect hit in anticipation; I knew that I
could not miss. And then, as the bear surged forward toward
me, the hammer fell--futilely, upon an imperfect cartridge.
Almost simultaneously I heard from without a perfectly hellish
roar; the bear gave voice to a series of growls far
transcending in volume and ferocity anything that he had yet
essayed and at the same time backed quickly from the cave.
For an instant I couldn't understand what had happened to
cause this sudden retreat when his prey was practically within
his clutches. The idea that the harmless clicking of the
hammer had frightened him was too ridiculous to entertain.
However, we had not long to wait before we could at least guess
at the cause of the diversion, for from without came mingled
growls and roars and the sound of great bodies thrashing about
until the earth shook. The bear had been attacked in the rear
by some other mighty beast, and the two were now locked in a
titanic struggle for supremacy. With brief respites, during
which we could hear the labored breathing of the contestants,
the battle continued for the better part of an hour until the
sounds of combat grew gradually less and finally ceased entirely.
At Ajor's suggestion, made by signs and a few of the words we
knew in common, I moved the fire directly to the entrance to
the cave so that a beast would have to pass directly through
the flames to reach us, and then we sat and waited for the
victor of the battle to come and claim his reward; but though
we sat for a long time with our eyes glued to the opening, we
saw no sign of any beast.
At last I signed to Ajor to lie down, for I knew that she must
have sleep, and I sat on guard until nearly morning, when the
girl awoke and insisted that I take some rest; nor would she be
denied, but dragged me down as she laughingly menaced me with
her knife.
Chapter 3
When I awoke, it was daylight, and I found Ajor squatting
before a fine bed of coals roasting a large piece of
antelope-meat. Believe me, the sight of the new day and the
delicious odor of the cooking meat filled me with renewed
happiness and hope that had been all but expunged by the
experience of the previous night; and perhaps the slender
figure of the bright-faced girl proved also a potent restorative.
She looked up and smiled at me, showing those perfect teeth,
and dimpling with evident happiness--the most adorable picture
that I had ever seen. I recall that it was then I first
regretted that she was only a little untutored savage and
so far beneath me in the scale of evolution.
Her first act was to beckon me to follow her outside, and there
she pointed to the explanation of our rescue from the bear--a
huge saber-tooth tiger, its fine coat and its flesh torn to
ribbons, lying dead a few paces from our cave, and beside it,
equally mangled, and disemboweled, was the carcass of a huge
cave-bear. To have had one's life saved by a saber-tooth
tiger, and in the twentieth century into the bargain, was an
experience that was to say the least unique; but it had
happened--I had the proof of it before my eyes.
So enormous are the great carnivora of Caspak that they must
feed perpetually to support their giant thews, and the result
is that they will eat the meat of any other creature and will
attack anything that comes within their ken, no matter how
formidable the quarry. From later observation--I mention this
as worthy the attention of paleontologists and naturalists--I
came to the conclusion that such creatures as the cave-bear,
the cave-lion and the saber-tooth tiger, as well as the larger
carnivorous reptiles make, ordinarily, two kills a day--one in
the morning and one after night. They immediately devour the
entire carcass, after which they lie up and sleep for a few hours.
Fortunately their numbers are comparatively few; otherwise there
would be no other life within Caspak. It is their very voracity
that keeps their numbers down to a point which permits other
forms of life to persist, for even in the season of love the
great males often turn upon their own mates and devour them,
while both males and females occasionally devour their young.
How the human and semihuman races have managed to survive
during all the countless ages that these conditions must have
existed here is quite beyond me.
After breakfast Ajor and I set out once more upon our
northward journey. We had gone but a little distance when we
were attacked by a number of apelike creatures armed with clubs.
They seemed a little higher in the scale than the Alus. Ajor told
me they were Bo-lu, or clubmen. A revolver-shot killed one and
scattered the others; but several times later during the day we
were menaced by them, until we had left their country and
entered that of the Sto-lu, or hatchet-men. These people were
less hairy and more man-like; nor did they appear so anxious to
destroy us. Rather they were curious, and followed us for some
distance examining us most closely. They called out to us,
and Ajor answered them; but her replies did not seem to
satisfy them, for they gradually became threatening, and I
think they were preparing to attack us when a small deer that
had been hiding in some low brush suddenly broke cover and
dashed across our front. We needed meat, for it was near
one o'clock and I was getting hungry; so I drew my pistol
and with a single shot dropped the creature in its tracks.
The effect upon the Bo-lu was electrical. Immediately they
abandoned all thoughts of war, and turning, scampered for the
forest which fringed our path.
That night we spent beside a little stream in the Sto-lu country.
We found a tiny cave in the rock bank, so hidden away that
only chance could direct a beast of prey to it, and after
we had eaten of the deer-meat and some fruit which Ajor
gathered, we crawled into the little hole, and with sticks and
stones which I had gathered for the purpose I erected a strong
barricade inside the entrance. Nothing could reach us without
swimming and wading through the stream, and I felt quite secure
from attack. Our quarters were rather cramped. The ceiling
was so low that we could not stand up, and the floor so narrow
that it was with difficulty that we both wedged into it
together; but we were very tired, and so we made the most of
it; and so great was the feeling of security that I am sure I
fell asleep as soon as I had stretched myself beside Ajor.
During the three days which followed, our progress was
exasperatingly slow. I doubt if we made ten miles in the
entire three days. The country was hideously savage, so that
we were forced to spend hours at a time in hiding from one or
another of the great beasts which menaced us continually.
There were fewer reptiles; but the quantity of carnivora seemed
to have increased, and the reptiles that we did see were
perfectly gigantic. I shall never forget one enormous specimen
which we came upon browsing upon water-reeds at the edge of the
great sea. It stood well over twelve feet high at the rump,
its highest point, and with its enormously long tail and neck it
was somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred feet in length.
Its head was ridiculously small; its body was unarmored, but its
great bulk gave it a most formidable appearance. My experience
of Caspakian life led me to believe that the gigantic creature
would but have to see us to attack us, and so I raised my rifle
and at the same time drew away toward some brush which offered
concealment; but Ajor only laughed, and picking up a stick, ran
toward the great thing, shouting. The little head was raised
high upon the long neck as the animal stupidly looked here and
there in search of the author of the disturbance. At last its
eyes discovered tiny little Ajor, and then she hurled the stick
at the diminutive head. With a cry that sounded not unlike the
bleat of a sheep, the colossal creature shuffled into the water
and was soon submerged.
As I slowly recalled my collegiate studies and paleontological
readings in Bowen's textbooks, I realized that I had looked
upon nothing less than a diplodocus of the Upper Jurassic; but
how infinitely different was the true, live thing from the
crude restorations of Hatcher and Holland! I had had the idea
that the diplodocus was a land-animal, but evidently it is
partially amphibious. I have seen several since my first
encounter, and in each case the creature took to the sea for
concealment as soon as it was disturbed. With the exception of
its gigantic tail, it has no weapon of defense; but with this
appendage it can lash so terrific a blow as to lay low even a
giant cave-bear, stunned and broken. It is a stupid, simple,
gentle beast--one of the few within Caspak which such a
description might even remotely fit.
For three nights we slept in trees, finding no caves or other
places of concealment. Here we were free from the attacks of
the large land carnivora; but the smaller flying reptiles, the
snakes, leopards, and panthers were a constant menace, though
by no means as much to be feared as the huge beasts that roamed
the surface of the earth.
At the close of the third day Ajor and I were able to converse
with considerable fluency, and it was a great relief to both of
us, especially to Ajor. She now did nothing but ask questions
whenever I would let her, which could not be all the time, as
our preservation depended largely upon the rapidity with which
I could gain knowledge of the geography and customs of Caspak,
and accordingly I had to ask numerous questions myself.
I enjoyed immensely hearing and answering her, so naive were
many of her queries and so filled with wonder was she at the
things I told her of the world beyond the lofty barriers of
Caspak; not once did she seem to doubt me, however marvelous my
statements must have seemed; and doubtless they were the cause
of marvel to Ajor, who before had never dreamed that any life
existed beyond Caspak and the life she knew.
Artless though many of her questions were, they evidenced a
keen intellect and a shrewdness which seemed far beyond her
years of her experience. Altogether I was finding my little
savage a mighty interesting and companionable person, and I
often thanked the kind fate that directed the crossing of
our paths. From her I learned much of Caspak, but there still
remained the mystery that had proved so baffling to Bowen
Tyler--the total absence of young among the ape, the semihuman
and the human races with which both he and I had come in
contact upon opposite shores of the inland sea. Ajor tried to
explain the matter to me, though it was apparent that she could
not conceive how so natural a condition should demand explanation.
She told me that among the Galus there were a few babies, that
she had once been a baby but that most of her people "came up,"
as he put it, "cor sva jo," or literally, "from the beginning";
and as they all did when they used that phrase, she would wave
a broad gesture toward the south.
"For long," she explained, leaning very close to me and
whispering the words into my ear while she cast apprehensive
glances about and mostly skyward, "for long my mother kept me
hidden lest the Wieroo, passing through the air by night,
should come and take me away to Oo-oh." And the child shuddered
as she voiced the word. I tried to get her to tell me more;
but her terror was so real when she spoke of the Wieroo and the
land of Oo-oh where they dwell that I at last desisted, though
I did learn that the Wieroo carried off only female babes and
occasionally women of the Galus who had "come up from the
beginning." It was all very mysterious and unfathomable, but I
got the idea that the Wieroo were creatures of imagination--the
demons or gods of her race, omniscient and omnipresent. This led
me to assume that the Galus had a religious sense, and further
questioning brought out the fact that such was the case.
Ajor spoke in tones of reverence of Luata, the god of heat
and life. The word is derived from two others: Lua,
meaning sun, and ata, meaning variously eggs, life,
young, and reproduction. She told me that they
worshiped Luata in several forms, as fire, the sun, eggs and
other material objects which suggested heat and reproduction.
I had noticed that whenever I built a fire, Ajor outlined in
the air before her with a forefinger an isosceles triangle,
and that she did the same in the morning when she first viewed
the sun. At first I had not connected her act with anything in
particular, but after we learned to converse and she had
explained a little of her religious superstitions, I realized
that she was making the sign of the triangle as a Roman Catholic
makes the sign of the cross. Always the short side of the triangle
was uppermost. As she explained all this to me, she pointed to
the decorations on her golden armlets, upon the knob of her
dagger-hilt and upon the band which encircled her right leg
above the knee--always was the design partly made up of isosceles
triangles, and when she explained the significance of this
particular geometric figure, I at once grasped its appropriateness.
We were now in the country of the Band-lu, the spearmen of Caspak.
Bowen had remarked in his narrative that these people were
analogous to the so-called Cro-Magnon race of the Upper
Paleolithic, and I was therefore very anxious to see them.
Nor was I to be disappointed; I saw them, all right! We had left
the Sto-lu country and literally fought our way through cordons
of wild beasts for two days when we decided to make camp a
little earlier than usual, owing to the fact that we had
reached a line of cliffs running east and west in which were
numerous likely cave-lodgings. We were both very tired, and
the sight of these caverns, several of which could be easily
barricaded, decided us to halt until the following morning.
It took but a few minutes' exploration to discover one particular
cavern high up the face of the cliff which seemed ideal for
our purpose. It opened upon a narrow ledge where we could build
our cook-fire; the opening was so small that we had to lie flat
and wriggle through it to gain ingress, while the interior was
high-ceiled and spacious. I lighted a faggot and looked about;
but as far as I could see, the chamber ran back into the cliff.
Laying aside my rifle, pistol and heavy ammunition-belt, I
left Ajor in the cave while I went down to gather firewood.
We already had meat and fruits which we had gathered just
before reaching the cliffs, and my canteen was filled with
fresh water. Therefore, all we required was fuel, and as I always
saved Ajor's strength when I could, I would not permit her to
accompany me. The poor girl was very tired; but she would have
gone with me until she dropped, I know, so loyal was she. She was
the best comrade in the world, and sometimes I regretted and
sometimes I was glad that she was not of my own caste, for had
she been, I should unquestionably have fallen in love with her.
As it was, we traveled together like two boys, with huge respect
for each other but no softer sentiment.
There was little timber close to the base of the cliffs, and so
I was forced to enter the wood some two hundred yards distant.
I realize now how foolhardy was my act in such a land as
Caspak, teeming with danger and with death; but there is a
certain amount of fool in every man; and whatever proportion of
it I own must have been in the ascendant that day, for the
truth of the matter is that I went down into those woods
absolutely defenseless; and I paid the price, as people usually
do for their indiscretions. As I searched around in the brush
for likely pieces of firewood, my head bowed and my eyes upon
the ground, I suddenly felt a great weight hurl itself upon me.
I struggled to my knees and seized my assailant, a huge, naked
man--naked except for a breechcloth of snakeskin, the head
hanging down to the knees. The fellow was armed with a
stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet. In his black
hair were several gay-colored feathers. As we struggled to and
fro, I was slowly gaining advantage of him, when a score of his
fellows came running up and overpowered me.
They bound my hands behind me with long rawhide thongs and then
surveyed me critically. I found them fine-looking specimens of
manhood, for the most part. There were some among them who bore
a resemblance to the Sto-lu and were hairy; but the majority had
massive heads and not unlovely features. There was little about
them to suggest the ape, as in the Sto-lu, Bo-lu and Alus.
I expected them to kill me at once, but they did not. Instead they
questioned me; but it was evident that they did not believe my
story, for they scoffed and laughed.
"The Galus have turned you out," they cried. "If you go back
to them, you will die. If you remain here, you will die.
We shall kill you; but first we shall have a dance and you
shall dance with us--the dance of death."
It sounded quite reassuring! But I knew that I was not to be
killed immediately, and so I took heart. They led me toward
the cliffs, and as we approached them, I glanced up and was
sure that I saw Ajor's bright eyes peering down upon us from
our lofty cave; but she gave no sign if she saw me; and we
passed on, rounded the end of the cliffs and proceeded along
the opposite face of them until we came to a section literally
honeycombed with caves. All about, upon the ground and
swarming the ledges before the entrances, were hundreds of
members of the tribe. There were many women but no babes or
children, though I noticed that the females had better
developed breasts than any that I had seen among the
hatchet-men, the club-men, the Alus or the apes. In fact,
among the lower orders of Caspakian man the female breast is
but a rudimentary organ, barely suggested in the apes and Alus,
and only a little more defined in the Bo-lu and Sto-lu, though
always increasingly so until it is found about half developed
in the females of the spear-men; yet never was there an
indication that the females had suckled young; nor were there any
young among them. Some of the Band-lu women were quite comely.
The figures of all, both men and women, were symmetrical though
heavy, and though there were some who verged strongly upon the
Sto-lu type, there were others who were positively handsome and
whose bodies were quite hairless. The Alus are all bearded,
but among the Bo-lu the beard disappears in the women. The Sto-lu
men show a sparse beard, the Band-lu none; and there is little
hair upon the bodies of their women.
The members of the tribe showed great interest in me,
especially in my clothing, the like of which, of course, they
never had seen. They pulled and hauled upon me, and some of
them struck me; but for the most part they were not inclined
to brutality. It was only the hairier ones, who most closely
resembled the Sto-lu, who maltreated me. At last my captors led
me into a great cave in the mouth of which a fire was burning.
The floor was littered with filth, including the bones of many
animals, and the atmosphere reeked with the stench of human
bodies and putrefying flesh. Here they fed me, releasing my
arms, and I ate of half-cooked aurochs steak and a stew which
may have been made of snakes, for many of the long, round
pieces of meat suggested them most nauseatingly.
The meal completed, they led me well within the cavern, which
they lighted with torches stuck in various crevices in the
light of which I saw, to my astonishment, that the walls were
covered with paintings and etchings. There were aurochs, red
deer, saber-tooth tiger, cave-bear, hyaenadon and many other
examples of the fauna of Caspak done in colors, usually of four
shades of brown, or scratched upon the surface of the rock.
Often they were super-imposed upon each other until it required
careful examination to trace out the various outlines. But they
all showed a rather remarkable aptitude for delineation which
further fortified Bowen's comparisons between these people and
the extinct Cro-Magnons whose ancient art is still preserved
in the caverns of Niaux and Le Portel. The Band-lu, however,
did not have the bow and arrow, and in this respect they differ
from their extinct progenitors, or descendants, of Western Europe.
Should any of my friends chance to read the story of my
adventures upon Caprona, I hope they will not be bored by these
diversions, and if they are, I can only say that I am writing
my memoirs for my own edification and therefore setting down
those things which interested me particularly at the time.
I have no desire that the general public should ever have access
to these pages; but it is possible that my friends may, and
also certain savants who are interested; and to them, while I
do not apologize for my philosophizing, I humbly explain that
they are witnessing the groupings of a finite mind after the
infinite, the search for explanations of the inexplicable.
In a far recess of the cavern my captors bade me halt. Again my
hands were secured, and this time my feet as well. During the
operation they questioned me, and I was mighty glad that the
marked similarity between the various tribal tongues of Caspak
enabled us to understand each other perfectly, even though they
were unable to believe or even to comprehend the truth of my
origin and the circumstances of my advent in Caspak; and finally
they left me saying that they would come for me before the dance
of death upon the morrow. Before they departed with their
torches, I saw that I had not been conducted to the farthest
extremity of the cavern, for a dark and gloomy corridor led
beyond my prison room into the heart of the cliff.
I could not but marvel at the immensity of this great
underground grotto. Already I had traversed several hundred
yards of it, from many points of which other corridors diverged.
The whole cliff must be honeycombed with apartments and passages
of which this community occupied but a comparatively small part,
so that the possibility of the more remote passages being the
lair of savage beasts that have other means of ingress and egress
than that used by the Band-lu filled me with dire forebodings.
I believe that I am not ordinarily hysterically apprehensive;
yet I must confess that under the conditions with which I was
confronted, I felt my nerves to be somewhat shaken. On the
morrow I was to die some sort of nameless death for the
diversion of a savage horde, but the morrow held fewer terrors
for me than the present, and I submit to any fair-minded man if
it is not a terrifying thing to lie bound hand and foot in the
Stygian blackness of an immense cave peopled by unknown dangers
in a land overrun by hideous beasts and reptiles of the
greatest ferocity. At any moment, perhaps at this very moment,
some silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where it
laired in some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthily
upon me. I craned my neck about, and stared through the inky
darkness for the twin spots of blazing hate which I knew would
herald the coming of my executioner. So real were the
imaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a cold
sweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close before
me; yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the grave-like
stillness of the cavern.
During that period of eternity many events of my life passed
before my mental vision, a vast parade of friends and
occurrences which would be blotted out forever on the morrow.
I cursed myself for the foolish act which had taken me from the
search-party that so depended upon me, and I wondered what
progress, if any, they had made. Were they still beyond the
barrier cliffs, awaiting my return? Or had they found a way
into Caspak? I felt that the latter would be the truth, for
the party was not made up of men easily turned from a purpose.
Quite probable it was that they were already searching for me;
but that they would ever find a trace of me I doubted. Long since,
had I come to the conclusion that it was beyond human prowess
to circle the shores of the inland sea of Caspak in the face
of the myriad menaces which lurked in every shadow by day and
by night. Long since, had I given up any hope of reaching
the point where I had made my entry into the country, and so I
was now equally convinced that our entire expedition had been
worse than futile before ever it was conceived, since Bowen J.
Tyler and his wife could not by any possibility have survived
during all these long months; no more could Bradley and his
party of seamen be yet in existence. If the superior force and
equipment of my party enabled them to circle the north end of
the sea, they might some day come upon the broken wreck of my
plane hanging in the great tree to the south; but long before
that, my bones would be added to the litter upon the floor of
this mighty cavern.
And through all my thoughts, real and fanciful, moved the image
of a perfect girl, clear-eyed and strong and straight and
beautiful, with the carriage of a queen and the supple,
undulating grace of a leopard. Though I loved my friends,
their fate seemed of less importance to me than the fate of
this little barbarian stranger for whom, I had convinced
myself many a time, I felt no greater sentiment than passing
friendship for a fellow-wayfarer in this land of horrors. Yet I
so worried and fretted about her and her future that at last
I quite forgot my own predicament, though I still struggled
intermittently with bonds in vain endeavor to free myself; as
much, however, that I might hasten to her protection as that I
might escape the fate which had been planned for me. And while
I was thus engaged and had for the moment forgotten my
apprehensions concerning prowling beasts, I was startled into
tense silence by a distinct and unmistakable sound coming from
the dark corridor farther toward the heart of the cliff--the
sound of padded feet moving stealthily in my direction.
I believe that never before in all my life, even amidst the
terrors of childhood nights, have I suffered such a sensation
of extreme horror as I did that moment in which I realized that
I must lie bound and helpless while some horrid beast of prey
crept upon me to devour me in that utter darkness of the Bandlu
pits of Caspak. I reeked with cold sweat, and my flesh
crawled--I could feel it crawl. If ever I came nearer to
abject cowardice, I do not recall the instance; and yet it was
not that I was afraid to die, for I had long since given myself
up as lost--a few days of Caspak must impress anyone with the
utter nothingness of life. The waters, the land, the air
teem with it, and always it is being devoured by some other
form of life. Life is the cheapest thing in Caspak, as it
is the cheapest thing on earth and, doubtless, the cheapest
cosmic production. No, I was not afraid to die; in fact, I
prayed for death, that I might be relieved of the frightfulness
of the interval of life which remained to me--the waiting, the
awful waiting, for that fearsome beast to reach me and to strike.
Presently it was so close that I could hear its breathing, and
then it touched me and leaped quickly back as though it had
come upon me unexpectedly. For long moments no sound broke the
sepulchral silence of the cave. Then I heard a movement on the
part of the creature near me, and again it touched me, and I
felt something like a hairless hand pass over my face and down
until it touched the collar of my flannel shirt. And then,
subdued, but filled with pent emotion, a voice cried: "Tom!"
I think I nearly fainted, so great was the reaction. "Ajor!"
I managed to say. "Ajor, my girl, can it be you?"
"Oh, Tom!" she cried again in a trembly little voice and flung
herself upon me, sobbing softly. I had not known that Ajor
could cry.
As she cut away my bonds, she told me that from the entrance to
our cave she had seen the Band-lu coming out of the forest with
me, and she had followed until they took me into the cave,
which she had seen was upon the opposite side of the cliff in
which ours was located; and then, knowing that she could do
nothing for me until after the Band-lu slept, she had hastened
to return to our cave. With difficulty she had reached it,
after having been stalked by a cave-lion and almost seized.
I trembled at the risk she had run.
It had been her intention to wait until after midnight, when
most of the carnivora would have made their kills, and then
attempt to reach the cave in which I was imprisoned and rescue me.
She explained that with my rifle and pistol--both of which
she assured me she could use, having watched me so many
times--she planned upon frightening the Band-lu and forcing
them to give me up. Brave little girl! She would have risked
her life willingly to save me. But some time after she reached
our cave she heard voices from the far recesses within, and
immediately concluded that we had but found another entrance
to the caves which the Band-lu occupied upon the other face of
the cliff. Then she had set out through those winding passages
and in total darkness had groped her way, guided solely by a
marvelous sense of direction, to where I lay. She had had to
proceed with utmost caution lest she fall into some abyss in
the darkness and in truth she had thrice come upon sheer drops
and had been forced to take the most frightful risks to pass them.
I shudder even now as I contemplate what this girl passed through
for my sake and how she enhanced her peril in loading herself
down with the weight of my arms and ammunition and the
awkwardness of the long rifle which she was unaccustomed to bearing.
I could have knelt and kissed her hand in reverence and
gratitude; nor am I ashamed to say that that is precisely what
I did after I had been freed from my bonds and heard the story
of her trials. Brave little Ajor! Wonder-girl out of the dim,
unthinkable past! Never before had she been kissed; but she
seemed to sense something of the meaning of the new caress,
for she leaned forward in the dark and pressed her own lips
to my forehead. A sudden urge surged through me to seize her
and strain her to my bosom and cover her hot young lips with
the kisses of a real love, but I did not do so, for I knew that
I did not love her; and to have kissed her thus, with passion,
would have been to inflict a great wrong upon her who had
offered her life for mine.
No, Ajor should be as safe with me as with her own mother, if
she had one, which I was inclined to doubt, even though she
told me that she had once been a babe and hidden by her mother.
I had come to doubt if there was such a thing as a mother in
Caspak, a mother such as we know. From the Bo-lu to the Kro-lu
there is no word which corresponds with our word mother.
They speak of ata and cor sva jo, meaning reproduction
and from the beginning, and point toward the south; but no
one has a mother.
After considerable difficulty we gained what we thought was our
cave, only to find that it was not, and then we realized that
we were lost in the labyrinthine mazes of the great cavern.
We retraced our steps and sought the point from which we had
started, but only succeeded in losing ourselves the more.
Ajor was aghast--not so much from fear of our predicament; but
that she should have failed in the functioning of that wonderful
sense she possessed in common with most other creatures
Caspakian, which makes it possible for them to move unerringly
from place to place without compass or guide.
Hand in hand we crept along, searching for an opening into
the outer world, yet realizing that at each step we might be
burrowing more deeply into the heart of the great cliff, or
circling futilely in the vague wandering that could end only
in death. And the darkness! It was almost palpable, and
utterly depressing. I had matches, and in some of the more
difficult places I struck one; but we couldn't afford to waste
them, and so we groped our way slowly along, doing the best we
could to keep to one general direction in the hope that it would
eventually lead us to an opening into the outer world. When I
struck matches, I noticed that the walls bore no paintings; nor
was there other sign that man had penetrated this far within
the cliff, nor any spoor of animals of other kinds.
It would be difficult to guess at the time we spent wandering
through those black corridors, climbing steep ascents, feeling
our way along the edges of bottomless pits, never knowing at what
moment we might be plunged into some abyss and always haunted
by the ever-present terror of death by starvation and thirst.
As difficult as it was, I still realized that it might have
been infinitely worse had I had another companion than
Ajor--courageous, uncomplaining, loyal little Ajor! She was
tired and hungry and thirsty, and she must have been
discouraged; but she never faltered in her cheerfulness.
I asked her if she was afraid, and she replied that here the
Wieroo could not get her, and that if she died of hunger, she
would at least die with me and she was quite content that such
should be her end. At the time I attributed her attitude to
something akin to a doglike devotion to a new master who had
been kind to her. I can take oath to the fact that I did not
think it was anything more.
Whether we had been imprisoned in the cliff for a day or a week
I could not say; nor even now do I know. We became very tired
and hungry; the hours dragged; we slept at least twice, and then
we rose and stumbled on, always weaker and weaker. There were
ages during which the trend of the corridors was always upward.
It was heartbreaking work for people in the state of exhaustion
in which we then were, but we clung tenaciously to it. We stumbled
and fell; we sank through pure physical inability to retain our
feet; but always we managed to rise at last and go on. At first,
wherever it had been possible, we had walked hand in hand lest
we become separated, and later, when I saw that Ajor was
weakening rapidly, we went side by side, I supporting her with
an arm about her waist. I still retained the heavy burden of
my armament; but with the rifle slung to my back, my hands
were free. When I too showed indisputable evidences of
exhaustion, Ajor suggested that I lay aside my arms and
ammunition; but I told her that as it would mean certain death
for me to traverse Caspak without them, I might as well take
the chance of dying here in the cave with them, for there was
the other chance that we might find our wayto liberty.
There came a time when Ajor could no longer walk, and then
it was that I picked her up in my arms and carried her.
She begged me to leave her, saying that after I found an exit,
I could come back and get her; but she knew, and she knew that I
knew, that if ever I did leave her, I could never find her again.
Yet she insisted. Barely had I sufficient strength to take a
score of steps at a time; then I would have to sink down and
rest for five to ten minutes. I don't know what force
urged me on and kept me going in the face of an absolute
conviction that my efforts were utterly futile. I counted us
already as good as dead; but still I dragged myself along until
the time came that I could no longer rise, but could only crawl
along a few inches at a time, dragging Ajor beside me. Her sweet
voice, now almost inaudible from weakness, implored me to
abandon her and save myself--she seemed to think only of me.
Of course I couldn't have left her there alone, no matter how
much I might have desired to do so; but the fact of the matter
was that I didn't desire to leave her. What I said to her then
came very simply and naturally to my lips. It couldn't very
well have been otherwise, I imagine, for with death so close, I
doubt if people are much inclined to heroics. "I would rather
not get out at all, Ajor," I said to her, "than to get out
without you." We were resting against a rocky wall, and Ajor
was leaning against me, her head on my breast. I could feel
her press closer to me, and one hand stroked my arm in a weak
caress; but she didn't say anything, nor were words necessary.
After a few minutes' more rest, we started on again upon our
utterly hopeless way; but I soon realized that I was weakening
rapidly, and presently I was forced to admit that I was through.
"It's no use, Ajor," I said, "I've come as far as I can. It may
be that if I sleep, I can go on again after," but I knew that
that was not true, and that the end was near. "Yes, sleep,"
said Ajor. "We will sleep together--forever."
She crept close to me as I lay on the hard floor and pillowed
her head upon my arm. With the little strength which remained
to me, I drew her up until our lips touched, and, then I
whispered: "Good-bye!" I must have lost consciousness almost
immediately, for I recall nothing more until I suddenly awoke
out of a troubled sleep, during which I dreamed that I was
drowning, to find the cave lighted by what appeared to be
diffused daylight, and a tiny trickle of water running down the
corridor and forming a puddle in the little depression in which
it chanced that Ajor and I lay. I turned my eyes quickly upon
Ajor, fearful for what the light might disclose; but she still
breathed, though very faintly. Then I searched about for an
explanation of the light, and soon discovered that it came from
about a bend in the corridor just ahead of us and at the top of
a steep incline; and instantly I realized that Ajor and I had
stumbled by night almost to the portal of salvation. Had chance
taken us a few yards further, up either of the corridors which
diverged from ours just ahead of us, we might have been
irrevocably lost; we might still be lost; but at least we could
die in the light of day, out of the horrid blackness of this
terrible cave.
I tried to rise, and found that sleep had given me back a
portion of my strength; and then I tasted the water and was
further refreshed. I shook Ajor gently by the shoulder; but
she did not open her eyes, and then I gathered a few drops of
water in my cupped palm and let them trickle between her lips.
This revived her so that she raised her lids, and when she saw
me, she smiled.
"What happened?" she asked. "Where are we?"
"We are at the end of the corridor," I replied, and daylight is
coming in from the outside world just ahead. We are saved, Ajor!"
She sat up then and looked about, and then, quite womanlike,
she burst into tears. It was the reaction, of course; and then
too, she was very weak. I took her in my arms and quieted her
as best I could, and finally, with my help, she got to her
feet; for she, as well as I, had found some slight recuperation
in sleep. Together we staggered upward toward the light, and
at the first turn we saw an opening a few yards ahead of us and
a leaden sky beyond--a leaden sky from which was falling a
drizzling rain, the author of our little, trickling stream
which had given us drink when we were most in need of it.
The cave had been damp and cold; but as we crawled through the
aperture, the muggy warmth of the Caspakian air caressed and
confronted us; even the rain was warmer than the atmosphere of
those dark corridors. We had water now, and warmth, and I was
sure that Caspak would soon offer us meat or fruit; but as we
came to where we could look about, we saw that we were upon the
summit of the cliffs, where there seemed little reason to
expect game. However, there were trees, and among them we soon
descried edible fruits with which we broke our long fast.
Chapter 4
We spent two days upon the cliff-top, resting and recuperating.
There was some small game which gave us meat, and the little
pools of rainwater were sufficient to quench our thirst.
The sun came out a few hours after we emerged from the cave,
and in its warmth we soon cast off the gloom which our recent
experiences had saddled upon us.
Upon the morning of the third day we set out to search for a
path down to the valley. Below us, to the north, we saw a
large pool lying at the foot of the cliffs, and in it we could
discern the women of the Band-lu lying in the shallow waters,
while beyond and close to the base of the mighty barrier-cliffs
there was a large party of Band-lu warriors going north to hunt.
We had a splendid view from our lofty cliff-top. Dimly, to the
west, we could see the farther shore of the inland sea, and
southwest the large southern island loomed distinctly before us.
A little east of north was the northern island, which Ajor,
shuddering, whispered was the home of the Wieroo--the land
of Oo-oh. It lay at the far end of the lake and was barely
visible to us, being fully sixty miles away.
From our elevation, and in a clearer atmosphere, it would have
stood out distinctly; but the air of Caspak is heavy with
moisture, with the result that distant objects are blurred
and indistinct. Ajor also told me that the mainland east of Oo-oh
was her land--the land of the Galu. She pointed out the cliffs
at its southern boundary, which mark the frontier, south of
which lies the country of Kro-lu--the archers. We now had but
to pass through the balance of the Band-lu territory and that
of the Kro-lu to be within the confines of her own land; but
that meant traversing thirty-five miles of hostile country
filled with every imaginable terror, and possibly many beyond
the powers of imagination. I would certainly have given a lot
for my plane at that moment, for with it, twenty minutes would
have landed us within the confines of Ajor's country.
We finally found a place where we could slip over the edge of
the cliff onto a narrow ledge which seemed to give evidence of
being something of a game-path to the valley, though it
apparently had not been used for some time. I lowered Ajor at
the end of my rifle and then slid over myself, and I am free to
admit that my hair stood on end during the process, for the
drop was considerable and the ledge appallingly narrow, with a
frightful drop sheer below down to the rocks at the base of the
cliff; but with Ajor there to catch and steady me, I made it
all right, and then we set off down the trail toward the valley.
There were two or three more bad places, but for the most part
it was an easy descent, and we came to the highest of the
Band-lu caves without further trouble. Here we went more
slowly, lest we should be set upon by some member of the tribe.
We must have passed about half the Band-lu cave-levels before
we were accosted, and then a huge fellow stepped out in front
of me, barring our further progress.
"Who are you?" he asked; and he recognized me and I him, for he
had been one of those who had led me back into the cave and
bound me the night that I had been captured. From me his gaze
went to Ajor. He was a fine-looking man with clear, intelligent
eyes, a good forehead and superb physique--by far the highest
type of Caspakian I had yet seen, barring Ajor, of course.
"You are a true Galu," he said to Ajor, "but this man is of a
different mold. He has the face of a Galu, but his weapons and
the strange skins he wears upon his body are not of the Galus
nor of Caspak. Who is he?"
"He is Tom," replied Ajor succinctly.
"There is no such people," asserted the Band-lu quite
truthfully, toying with his spear in a most suggestive manner.
"My name is Tom," I explained, "and I am from a country
beyond Caspak." I thought it best to propitiate him if possible,
because of the necessity of conserving ammunition as well as to
avoid the loud alarm of a shot which might bring other Band-lu
warriors upon us. "I am from America, a land of which you
never heard, and I am seeking others of my countrymen who are
in Caspak and from whom I am lost. I have no quarrel with you
or your people. Let us go our way in peace."
"You are going there?" he asked, and pointed toward the north.
"I am," I replied.
He was silent for several minutes, apparently weighing some
thought in his mind. At last he spoke. "What is that?"
he asked. "And what is that?" He pointed first at my rifle
and then to my pistol.
"They are weapons," I replied, "weapons which kill at a
great distance." I pointed to the women in the pool beneath us.
"With this," I said, tapping my pistol, "I could kill as many
of those women as I cared to, without moving a step from where
we now stand."
He looked his incredulity, but I went on. "And with this"--I
weighed my rifle at the balance in the palm of my right
hand--"I could slay one of those distant warriors." And I waved
my left hand toward the tiny figures of the hunters far to the north.
The fellow laughed. "Do it," he cried derisively, "and then it
may be that I shall believe the balance of your strange story."
"But I do not wish to kill any of them," I replied. "Why should I?"
"Why not?" he insisted. "They would have killed you when they
had you prisoner. They would kill you now if they could get
their hands on you, and they would eat you into the bargain.
But I know why you do not try it--it is because you have spoken
lies; your weapon will not kill at a great distance. It is
only a queerly wrought club. For all I know, you are nothing
more than a lowly Bo-lu."
"Why should you wish me to kill your own people?" I asked.
"They are no longer my people," he replied proudly. "Last night,
in the very middle of the night, the call came to me. Like that
it came into my head"--and he struck his hands together smartly
once--"that I had risen. I have been waiting for it and
expecting it for a long time; today I am a Krolu. Today I go
into the coslupak" (unpeopled country, or literally, no man's
land) "between the Band-lu and the Kro-lu, and there I fashion
my bow and my arrows and my shield; there I hunt the red deer
for the leathern jerkin which is the badge of my new estate.
When these things are done, I can go to the chief of the Kro-lu,
and he dare not refuse me. That is why you may kill those low
Band-lu if you wish to live, for I am in a hurry.
"But why do you wish to kill me?" I asked.
He looked puzzled and finally gave it up. "I do not know,"
he admitted. "It is the way in Caspak. If we do not kill, we
shall be killed, therefore it is wise to kill first whomever
does not belong to one's own people. This morning I hid in my
cave till the others were gone upon the hunt, for I knew that
they would know at once that I had become a Kro-lu and would
kill me. They will kill me if they find me in the coslupak;
so will the Kro-lu if they come upon me before I have won my
Kro-lu weapons and jerkin. You would kill me if you could, and
that is the reason I know that you speak lies when you say that
your weapons will kill at a great distance. Would they, you
would long since have killed me. Come! I have no more time to
waste in words. I will spare the woman and take her with me to
the Kro-lu, for she is comely." And with that he advanced upon
me with raised spear.
My rifle was at my hip at the ready. He was so close that I did
not need to raise it to my shoulder, having but to pull the trigger
to send him into Kingdom Come whenever I chose; but yet I hesitated.
It was difficult to bring myself to take a human life. I could
feel no enmity toward this savage barbarian who acted almost as
wholly upon instinct as might a wild beast, and to the last moment
I was determined to seek some way to avoid what now seemed inevitable.
Ajor stood at my shoulder, her knife ready in her hand and a sneer
on her lips at his suggestion that he would take her with him.
Just as I thought I should have to fire, a chorus of screams
broke from the women beneath us. I saw the man halt and glance
downward, and following his example my eyes took in the panic
and its cause. The women had, evidently, been quitting the
pool and slowly returning toward the caves, when they were
confronted by a monstrous cave-lion which stood directly
between them and their cliffs in the center of the narrow
path that led down to the pool among the tumbled rocks.
Screaming, the women were rushing madly back to the pool.
"It will do them no good," remarked the man, a trace of
excitement in his voice. "It will do them no good, for the
lion will wait until they come out and take as many as he can
carry away; and there is one there," he added, a trace of
sadness in his tone, "whom I hoped would soon follow me to
the Kro-lu. Together have we come up from the beginning."
He raised his spear above his head and poised it ready to hurl
downward at the lion. "She is nearest to him," he muttered.
"He will get her and she will never come to me among the
Kro-lu, or ever thereafter. It is useless! No warrior lives
who could hurl a weapon so great a distance."
But even as he spoke, I was leveling my rifle upon the great
brute below; and as he ceased speaking, I squeezed the trigger.
My bullet must have struck to a hair the point at which I had
aimed, for it smashed the brute's spine back of his shoulders
and tore on through his heart, dropping him dead in his tracks.
For a moment the women were as terrified by the report of the
rifle as they had been by the menace of the lion; but when they
saw that the loud noise had evidently destroyed their enemy,
they came creeping cautiously back to examine the carcass.
The man, toward whom I had immediately turned after firing,
lest he should pursue his threatened attack, stood staring at
me in amazement and admiration.
"Why," he asked, "if you could do that, did you not kill me
long before?"
"I told you," I replied, "that I had no quarrel with you. I do
not care to kill men with whom I have no quarrel."
But he could not seem to get the idea through his head. "I can
believe now that you are not of Caspak," he admitted, "for no
Caspakian would have permitted such an opportunity to escape him."
This, however, I found later to be an exaggeration, as the tribes
of the west coast and even the Kro-lu of the east coast are far
less bloodthirsty than he would have had me believe. "And your
weapon!" he continued. "You spoke true words when I thought you
spoke lies." And then, suddenly: "Let us be friends!"
I turned to Ajor. "Can I trust him?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "Why not? Has he not asked to be friends?"
I was not at the time well enough acquainted with Caspakian
ways to know that truthfulness and loyalty are two of the
strongest characteristics of these primitive people. They are
not sufficiently cultured to have become adept in hypocrisy,
treason and dissimulation. There are, of course, a few exceptions.
"We can go north together," continued the warrior. "I will
fight for you, and you can fight for me. Until death will I
serve you, for you have saved So-al, whom I had given up as dead."
He threw down his spear and covered both his eyes with the palms
of his two hands. I looked inquiringly toward Ajor, who
explained as best she could that this was the form of the
Caspakian oath of allegiance. "You need never fear him after
this," she concluded.
"What should I do?" I asked.
"Take his hands down from before his eyes and return his spear
to him," she explained.
I did as she bade, and the man seemed very pleased. I then
asked what I should have done had I not wished to accept
his friendship. They told me that had I walked away, the moment
that I was out of sight of the warrior we would have become
deadly enemies again. "But I could so easily have killed him
as he stood there defenseless!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," replied the warrior, "but no man with good sense blinds
his eyes before one whom he does not trust."
It was rather a decent compliment, and it taught me just how
much I might rely on the loyalty of my new friend. I was glad
to have him with us, for he knew the country and was evidently
a fearless warrior. I wished that I might have recruited a
battalion like him.
As the women were now approaching the cliffs, Tomar the warrior
suggested that we make our way to the valley before they could
intercept us, as they might attempt to detain us and were
almost certain to set upon Ajor. So we hastened down the
narrow path, reaching the foot of the cliffs but a short
distance ahead of the women. They called after us to stop; but
we kept on at a rapid walk, not wishing to have any trouble
with them, which could only result in the death of some of them.
We had proceeded about a mile when we heard some one behind us
calling To-mar by name, and when we stopped and looked around,
we saw a woman running rapidly toward us. As she approached
nearer I could see that she was a very comely creature, and
like all her sex that I had seen in Caspak, apparently young.
"It is So-al!" exclaimed To-mar. "Is she mad that she follows
me thus?"
In another moment the young woman stopped, panting, before us.
She paid not the slightest attention to Ajor or me; but
devouring To-mar with her sparkling eyes, she cried: "I have
risen! I have risen!"
"So-al!" was all that the man could say.
"Yes," she went on, "the call came to me just before I quit the
pool; but I did not know that it had come to you. I can see it
in your eyes, To-mar, my To-mar! We shall go on together!"
And she threw herself into his arms.
It was a very affecting sight, for it was evident that these
two had been mates for a long time and that they had each
thought that they were about to be separated by that strange
law of evolution which holds good in Caspak and which was
slowly unfolding before my incredulous mind. I did not then
comprehend even a tithe of the wondrous process, which goes on
eternally within the confines of Caprona's barrier cliffs nor
am I any too sure that I do even now.
To-mar explained to So-al that it was I who had killed the
cave-lion and saved her life, and that Ajor was my woman and
thus entitled to the same loyalty which was my due.
At first Ajor and So-al were like a couple of stranger cats on
a back fence but soon they began to accept each other under
something of an armed truce, and later became fast friends.
So-al was a mighty fine-looking girl, built like a tigress as
to strength and sinuosity, but withal sweet and womanly.
Ajor and I came to be very fond of her, and she was, I think,
equally fond of us. To-mar was very much of a man--a savage, if
you will, but none the less a man.
Finding that traveling in company with To-mar made our journey
both easier and safer, Ajor and I did not continue on our way
alone while the novitiates delayed their approach to the Kro-lu
country in order that they might properly fit themselves in the
matter of arms and apparel, but remained with them. Thus we
became well acquainted--to such an extent that we looked
forward with regret to the day when they took their places
among their new comrades and we should be forced to continue
upon our way alone. It was a matter of much concern to To-mar
that the Krolu would undoubtedly not receive Ajor and me in a
friendly manner, and that consequently we should have to avoid
these people.
It would have been very helpful to us could we have made
friends with them, as their country abutted directly upon that
of the Galus. Their friendship would have meant that Ajor's
dangers were practically passed, and that I had accomplished
fully one-half of my long journey. In view of what I had
passed through, I often wondered what chance I had to complete
that journey in search of my friends. The further south I
should travel on the west side of the island, the more
frightful would the dangers become as I neared the stampinggrounds
of the more hideous reptilia and the haunts of
the Alus and the Ho-lu, all of which were at the southern half
of the island; and then if I should not find the members of my
party, what was to become of me? I could not live for long in
any portion of Caspak with which I was familiar; the moment my
ammunition was exhausted, I should be as good as dead.
There was a chance that the Galus would receive me; but even
Ajor could not say definitely whether they would or not, and
even provided that they would, could I retrace my steps from
the beginning, after failing to find my own people, and return
to the far northern land of Galus? I doubted it. However, I
was learning from Ajor, who was more or less of a fatalist, a
philosophy which was as necessary in Caspak to peace of mind as
is faith to the devout Christian of the outer world.
Chapter 5
We were sitting before a little fire inside a safe grotto one
night shortly after we had quit the cliff-dwellings of the
Band-lu, when So-al raised a question which it had never
occurred to me to propound to Ajor. She asked her why she had
left her own people and how she had come so far south as the
country of the Alus, where I had found her.
At first Ajor hesitated to explain; but at last she consented,
and for the first time I heard the complete story of her origin
and experiences. For my benefit she entered into greater
detail of explanation than would have been necessary had I been
a native Caspakian.
"I am a cos-ata-lo," commenced Ajor, and then she turned
toward me. "A cos-ata-lo, my Tom, is a woman" (lo)
"who did not come from an egg and thus on up from the beginning."
(Cor sva jo.) "I was a babe at my mother's breast. Only among
the Galus are such, and then but infrequently. The Wieroo get
most of us; but my mother hid me until I had attained such size
that the Wieroo could not readily distinguish me from one who
had come up from the beginning. I knew both my mother and my
father, as only such as I may. My father is high chief among
the Galus. His name is Jor, and both he and my mother came up
from the beginning; but one of them, probably my mother, had
completed the seven cycles" (approximately seven hundred years),
"with the result that their offspring might be cos-ata-lo,
or born as are all the children of your race, my Tom, as you
tell me is the fact. I was therefore apart from my fellows in
that my children would probably be as I, of a higher state of
evolution, and so I was sought by the men of my people; but
none of them appealed to me. I cared for none. The most
persistent was Du-seen, a huge warrior of whom my father stood
in considerable fear, since it was quite possible that Du-seen
could wrest from him his chieftainship of the Galus. He has a
large following of the newer Galus, those most recently come up
from the Kro-lu, and as this class is usually much more
powerful numerically than the older Galus, and as Du-seen's
ambition knows no bounds, we have for a long time been
expecting him to find some excuse for a break with Jor the High
Chief, my father.
"A further complication lay in the fact that Duseen wanted me,
while I would have none of him, and then came evidence to my
father's ears that he was in league with the Wieroo; a hunter,
returning late at night, came trembling to my father, saying
that he had seen Du-seen talking with a Wieroo in a lonely spot
far from the village, and that plainly he had heard the words:
`If you will help me, I will help you--I will deliver into your
hands all cos-ata-lo among the Galus, now and hereafter;
but for that service you must slay Jor the High Chief and bring
terror and confusion to his followers.'
"Now, when my father heard this, he was angry; but he was also
afraid--afraid for me, who am cosata-lo. He called me to
him and told me what he had heard, pointing out two ways in
which we might frustrate Du-seen. The first was that I go to
Du-seen as his mate, after which he would be loath to give me
into the hands of the Wieroo or to further abide by the wicked
compact he had made--a compact which would doom his own
offspring, who would doubtless be as am I, their mother.
The alternative was flight until Du-seen should have been overcome
and punished. I chose the latter and fled toward the south.
Beyond the confines of the Galu country is little danger from
the Wieroo, who seek ordinarily only Galus of the highest orders.
There are two excellent reasons for this: One is that from
the beginning of time jealousy had existed between the Wieroo
and the Galus as to which would eventually dominate the world.
It seems generally conceded that that race which first
reaches a point of evolution which permits them to produce
young of their own species and of both sexes must dominate all
other creatures. The Wieroo first began to produce their own
kind--after which evolution from Galu to Wieroo ceased
gradually until now it is unknown; but the Wieroo produce only
males--which is why they steal our female young, and by stealing
cos-ata-lo they increase their own chances of eventually
reproducing both sexes and at the same time lessen ours.
Already the Galus produce both male and female; but so
carefully do the Wieroo watch us that few of the males ever
grow to manhood, while even fewer are the females that are not
stolen away. It is indeed a strange condition, for while our
greatest enemies hate and fear us, they dare not exterminate
us, knowing that they too would become extinct but for us.
"Ah, but could we once get a start, I am sure that when all
were true cos-ata-lo there would have been evolved at last
the true dominant race before which all the world would be
forced to bow."
Ajor always spoke of the world as though nothing existed
beyond Caspak. She could not seem to grasp the truth of my
origin or the fact that there were countless other peoples
outside her stern barrier-cliffs. She apparently felt that
I came from an entirely different world. Where it was and
how I came to Caspak from it were matters quite beyond her
with which she refused to trouble her pretty head.
"Well," she continued, "and so I ran away to hide, intending
to pass the cliffs to the south of Galu and find a retreat in
the Kro-lu country. It would be dangerous, but there seemed no
other way.
"The third night I took refuge in a large cave in the cliffs at
the edge of my own country; upon the following day I would
cross over into the Kro-lu country, where I felt that I should
be reasonably safe from the Wieroo, though menaced by countless
other dangers. However, to a cos-ata-lo any fate is
preferable to that of falling into the clutches of the
frightful Wieroo, from whose land none returns.
"I had been sleeping peacefully for several hours when I was
awakened by a slight noise within the cavern. The moon was
shining brightly, illumining the entrance, against which I saw
silhouetted the dread figure of a Wieroo. There was no escape.
The cave was shallow, the entrance narrow. I lay very still,
hoping against hope, that the creature had but paused here to
rest and might soon depart without discovering me; yet all the
while I knew that he came seeking me.
"I waited, scarce breathing, watching the thing creep
stealthily toward me, its great eyes luminous in the darkness
of the cave's interior, and at last I knew that those eyes were
directed upon me, for the Wieroo can see in the darkness better
than even the lion or the tiger. But a few feet separated us
when I sprang to my feet and dashed madly toward my menacer in
a vain effort to dodge past him and reach the outside world.
It was madness of course, for even had I succeeded temporarily,
the Wieroo would have but followed and swooped down upon me
from above. As it was, he reached forth and seized me, and
though I struggled, he overpowered me. In the duel his long,
white robe was nearly torn from him, and he became very angry,
so that he trembled and beat his wings together in his rage.
"He asked me my name; but I would not answer him, and that
angered him still more. At last he dragged me to the entrance
of the cave, lifted me in his arms, spread his great wings and
leaping into the air, flapped dismally through the night.
I saw the moonlit landscape sliding away beneath me, and then
we were out above the sea and on our way to Oo-oh, the country
of the Wieroo.
"The dim outlines of Oo-oh were unfolding below us when there
came from above a loud whirring of giant wings. The Wieroo and
I glanced up simultaneously, to see a pair of huge jo-oos"
(flying reptiles--pterodactyls) "swooping down upon us. The Wieroo
wheeled and dropped almost to sea-level, and then raced southward
in an effort to outdistance our pursuers. The great creatures,
notwithstanding their enormous weight, are swift on their wings;
but the Wieroo are swifter. Even with my added weight, the
creature that bore me maintained his lead, though he could not
increase it. Faster than the fastest wind we raced through the
night, southward along the coast. Sometimes we rose to great
heights, where the air was chill and the world below but a blur
of dim outlines; but always the jo-oos stuck behind us.
"I knew that we had covered a great distance, for the rush of
the wind by my face attested the speed of our progress, but I
had no idea where we were when at last I realized that the
Wieroo was weakening. One of the jo-oos gained on us and
succeeded in heading us, so that my captor had to turn in
toward the coast. Further and further they forced him to the
left; lower and lower he sank. More labored was his breathing,
and weaker the stroke of his once powerful wings. We were not
ten feet above the ground when they overtook us, and at the
edge of a forest. One of them seized the Wieroo by his right
wing, and in an effort to free himself, he loosed his grasp
upon me, dropping me to earth. Like a frightened ecca I
leaped to my feet and raced for the sheltering sanctuary of the
forest, where I knew neither could follow or seize me. Then I
turned and looked back to see two great reptiles tear my
abductor asunder and devour him on the spot.
"I was saved; yet I felt that I was lost. How far I was from
the country of the Galus I could not guess; nor did it seem
probable that I ever could make my way in safety to my native land.
"Day was breaking; soon the carnivora would stalk forth for
their first kill; I was armed only with my knife. About me was
a strange landscape--the flowers, the trees, the grasses, even,
were different from those of my northern world, and presently
there appeared before me a creature fully as hideous as the
Wieroo--a hairy manthing that barely walked erect. I shuddered,
and then I fled. Through the hideous dangers that my forebears
had endured in the earlier stages of their human evolution I
fled; and always pursuing was the hairy monster that had
discovered me. Later he was joined by others of his kind.
They were the speechless men, the Alus, from whom you rescued
me, my Tom. From then on, you know the story of my adventures,
and from the first, I would endure them all again because they
led me to you!"
It was very nice of her to say that, and I appreciated it.
I felt that she was a mighty nice little girl whose friendship
anyone might be glad to have; but I wished that when she
touched me, those peculiar thrills would not run through me.
It was most discomforting, because it reminded me of love; and
I knew that I never could love this half-baked little barbarian.
I was very much interested in her account of the Wieroo, which
up to this time I had considered a purely mythological creature;
but Ajor shuddered so at even the veriest mention of the name
that I was loath to press the subject upon her, and so the
Wieroo still remained a mystery to me.
While the Wieroo interested me greatly, I had little time to
think about them, as our waking hours were filled with the
necessities of existence--the constant battle for survival
which is the chief occupation of Caspakians. To-mar and So-al
were now about fitted for their advent into Kro-lu society and
must therefore leave us, as we could not accompany them without
incurring great danger ourselves and running the chance of
endangering them; but each swore to be always our friend and
assured us that should we need their aid at any time we had but
to ask it; nor could I doubt their sincerity, since we had been
so instrumental in bringing them safely upon their journey
toward the Kro-lu village.
This was our last day together. In the afternoon we should
separate, To-mar and So-al going directly to the Kro-lu
village, while Ajor and I made a detour to avoid a conflict
with the archers. The former both showed evidence of nervous
apprehension as the time approached for them to make their
entry into the village of their new people, and yet both were
very proud and happy. They told us that they would be well
received as additions to a tribe always are welcomed, and the
more so as the distance from the beginning increased, the
higher tribes or races being far weaker numerically than
the lower. The southern end of the island fairly swarms with the
Ho-lu, or apes; next above these are the Alus, who are slightly
fewer in number than the Ho-lu; and again there are fewer Bolu
than Alus, and fewer Sto-lu than Bo-lu. Thus it goes until the
Kro-lu are fewer in number than any of the others; and here the
law reverses, for the Galus outnumber the Kro-lu. As Ajor
explained it to me, the reason for this is that as evolution
practically ceases with the Galus, there is no less among them
on this score, for even the cos-ata-lo are still considered
Galus and remain with them. And Galus come up both from the
west and east coasts. There are, too, fewer carnivorous
reptiles at the north end of the island, and not so many of the
great and ferocious members of the cat family as take their
hideous toll of life among the races further south.
By now I was obtaining some idea of the Caspakian scheme of
evolution, which partly accounted for the lack of young among
the races I had so far seen. Coming up from the beginning, the
Caspakian passes, during a single existence, through the various
stages of evolution, or at least many of them, through which the
human race has passed during the countless ages since life first
stirred upon a new world; but the question which continued to
puzzle me was: What creates life at the beginning, cor sva jo?
I had noticed that as we traveled northward from the Alus'
country the land had gradually risen until we were now several
hundred feet above the level of the inland sea. Ajor told me
that the Galus country was still higher and considerably colder,
which accounted for the scarcity of reptiles. The change in
form and kinds of the lower animals was even more marked than
the evolutionary stages of man. The diminutive ecca, or
small horse, became a rough-coated and sturdy little pony in
the Kro-lu country. I saw a greater number of small lions
and tigers, though many of the huge ones still persisted,
while the woolly mammoth was more in evidence, as were several
varieties of the Labyrinthadonta. These creatures, from which
God save me, I should have expected to find further south; but
for some unaccountable reason they gain their greatest bulk in
the Kro-lu and Galu countries, though fortunately they are rare.
I rather imagine that they are a very early life which is
rapidly nearing extinction in Caspak, though wherever they
are found, they constitute a menace to all forms of life.
It was mid-afternoon when To-mar and So-al bade us good-bye.
We were not far from Kro-lu village; in fact, we had approached
it much closer than we had intended, and now Ajor and I were to
make a detour toward the sea while our companions went directly
in search of the Kro-lu chief.
Ajor and I had gone perhaps a mile or two and were just about
to emerge from a dense wood when I saw that ahead of us which
caused me to draw back into concealment, at the same time
pushing Ajor behind me. What I saw was a party of Band-lu
warriors--large, fierce-appearing men. From the direction of
their march I saw that they were returning to their caves, and
that if we remained where we were, they would pass without
discovering us.
Presently Ajor nudged me. "They have a prisoner," she whispered.
"He is a Kro-lu."
And then I saw him, the first fully developed Krolu I had seen.
He was a fine-looking savage, tall and straight with a regal carriage.
To-mar was a handsome fellow; but this Kro-lu showed plainly in
his every physical attribute a higher plane of evolution.
While To-mar was just entering the Kro-lu sphere, this man,
it seemed to me, must be close indeed to the next stage of
his development, which would see him an envied Galu.
"They will kill him?" I whispered to Ajor.
"The dance of death," she replied, and I shuddered, so recently
had I escaped the same fate. It seemed cruel that one who must
have passed safely up through all the frightful stages of human
evolution within Caspak, should die at the very foot of his goal.
I raised my rifle to my shoulder and took careful aim at one of
the Band-lu. If I hit him, I would hit two, for another was
directly behind the first.
Ajor touched my arm. "What would you do?" she asked. "They are
all our enemies."
"I am going to save him from the dance of death," I replied,
"enemy or no enemy," and I squeezed the trigger. At the
report, the two Band-lu lunged forward upon their faces.
I handed my rifle to Ajor, and drawing my pistol, stepped out
in full view of the startled party. The Band-lu did not run
away as had some of the lower orders of Caspakians at the sound
of the rifle. Instead, the moment they saw me, they let out a
series of demoniac war-cries, and raising their spears above
their heads, charged me.
The Kro-lu stood silent and statuesque, watching the proceedings.
He made no attempt to escape, though his feet were not bound
and none of the warriors remained to guard him. There were
ten of the Band-lu coming for me. I dropped three of them
with my pistol as rapidly as a man might count by three, and
then my rifle spoke close to my left shoulder, and another of
them stumbled and rolled over and over upon the ground.
Plucky little Ajor! She had never fired a shot before in all
her life, though I had taught her to sight and aim and how to
squeeze the trigger instead of pulling it. She had practiced
these new accomplishments often, but little had I thought they
would make a marksman of her so quickly.
With six of their fellows put out of the fight so easily, the
remaining six sought cover behind some low bushes and commenced
a council of war. I wished that they would go away, as I had
no ammunition to waste, and I was fearful that should they
institute another charge, some of them would reach us, for they
were already quite close. Suddenly one of them rose and
launched his spear. It was the most marvelous exhibition of
speed I have ever witnessed. It seemed to me that he had
scarce gained an upright position when the weapon was half-way
upon its journey, speeding like an arrow toward Ajor. And then
it was, with that little life in danger, that I made the best
shot I have ever made in my life! I took no conscious aim; it
was as though my subconscious mind, impelled by a stronger
power even than that of self-preservation, directed my hand.
Ajor was in danger! Simultaneously with the thought my pistol
flew to position, a streak of incandescent powder marked the
path of the bullet from its muzzle; and the spear, its point
shattered, was deflected from its path. With a howl of dismay
the six Band-lu rose from their shelter and raced away toward
the south.
I turned toward Ajor. She was very white and wide-eyed, for
the clutching fingers of death had all but seized her; but a
little smile came to her lips and an expression of great pride
to her eyes. "My Tom!" she said, and took my hand in hers.
That was all--"My Tom!" and a pressure of the hand. Her Tom!
Something stirred within my bosom. Was it exaltation or was it
consternation? Impossible! I turned away almost brusquely.
"Come!" I said, and strode off toward the Kro-lu prisoner.
The Kro-lu stood watching us with stolid indifference.
I presume that he expected to be killed; but if he did, he showed
no outward sign of fear. His eyes, indicating his greatest
interest, were fixed upon my pistol or the rifle which Ajor
still carried. I cut his bonds with my knife. As I did so, an
expression of surprise tinged and animated the haughty reserve
of his countenance. He eyed me quizzically.
"What are you going to do with me?" he asked.
"You are free," I replied. "Go home, if you wish."
"Why don't you kill me?" he inquired. "I am defenseless."
"Why should I kill you? I have risked my life and that of this
young lady to save your life. Why, therefore should I now take it?"
Of course, I didn't say "young lady" as there is no Caspakian
equivalent for that term; but I have to allow myself considerable
latitude in the translation of Caspakian conversations. To speak
always of a beautiful young girl as a "she" may be literal; but
it seems far from gallant.
The Kro-lu concentrated his steady, level gaze upon me for at
least a full minute. Then he spoke again.
"Who are you, man of strange skins?" he asked. "Your she is
Galu; but you are neither Galu nor Krolu nor Band-lu, nor any
other sort of man which I have seen before. Tell me from
whence comes so mighty a warrior and so generous a foe."
"It is a long story," I replied, "but suffice it to say that I
am not of Caspak. I am a stranger here, and--let this sink
in--I am not a foe. I have no wish to be an enemy of any man
in Caspak, with the possible exception of the Galu warrior Du-seen."
"Du-seen!" he exclaimed. "You are an enemy of Du-seen? And why?"
"Because he would harm Ajor," I replied. "You know him?"
"He cannot know him," said Ajor. "Du-seen rose from the Kro-lu
long ago, taking a new name, as all do when they enter a new sphere.
He cannot know him, as there is no intercourse between the Kro-lu
and the Galu."
The warrior smiled. "Du-seen rose not so long ago," he said,
"that I do not recall him well, and recently he has taken it
upon himself to abrogate the ancient laws of Caspak; he had had
intercourse with the Kro-lu. Du-seen would be chief of the
Galus, and he has come to the Kro-lu for help.
Ajor was aghast. The thing was incredible. Never had Kro-lu
and Galu had friendly relations; by the savage laws of Caspak
they were deadly enemies, for only so can the several races
maintain their individuality.
"Will the Kro-lu join him?" asked Ajor. "Will they invade the
country of Jor my father?"
"The younger Kro-lu favor the plan," replied the warrior,
"since they believe they will thus become Galus immediately.
They hope to span the long years of change through which they
must pass in the ordinary course of events and at a single
stride become Galus. We of the older Kro-lu tell them that
though they occupy the land of the Galu and wear the skins and
ornaments of the golden people, still they will not be Galus
till the time arrives that they are ripe to rise. We also tell
them that even then they will never become a true Galu race,
since there will still be those among them who can never rise.
It is all right to raid the Galu country occasionally for
plunder, as our people do; but to attempt to conquer it and
hold it is madness. For my part, I have been content to wait
until the call came to me. I feel that it cannot now be long."
"What is your name?" asked Ajor.
"Chal-az, " replied the man.
"You are chief of the Kro-lu?" Ajor continued.
"No, it is Al-tan who is chief of the Kro-lu of the east,"
answered Chal-az.
"And he is against this plan to invade my father's country?"
"Unfortunately he is rather in favor of it," replied the man,
"since he has about come to the conclusion that he is batu.
He has been chief ever since, before I came up from the
Band-lu, and I can see no change in him in all those years.
In fact, he still appears to be more Band-lu than Kro-lu.
However, he is a good chief and a mighty warrior, and if
Du-seen persuades him to his cause, the Galus may find
themselves under a Kro-lu chieftain before long--Du-seen as
well as the others, for Al-tan would never consent to occupy a
subordinate position, and once he plants a victorious foot in
Galu, he will not withdraw it without a struggle."
I asked them what batu meant, as I had not before heard
the word. Literally translated, it is equivalent to through,
finished, done-for, as applied to an individual's evolutionary
progress in Caspak, and with this information was developed the
interesting fact that not every individual is capable of rising
through every stage to that of Galu. Some never progress
beyond the Alu stage; others stop as Bo-lu, as Sto-lu, as
Bandlu or as Kro-lu. The Ho-lu of the first generation may
rise to become Alus; the Alus of the second generation may
become Bo-lu, while it requires three generations of Bo-lu to
become Band-lu, and so on until Kro-lu's parent on one side
must be of the sixth generation.
It was not entirely plain to me even with this explanation,
since I couldn't understand how there could be different
generations of peoples who apparently had no offspring. Yet I
was commencing to get a slight glimmer of the strange laws
which govern propagation and evolution in this weird land.
Already I knew that the warm pools which always lie close to
every tribal abiding-place were closely linked with the
Caspakian scheme of evolution, and that the daily immersion of
the females in the greenish slimy water was in response to some
natural law, since neither pleasure nor cleanliness could be
derived from what seemed almost a religious rite. Yet I was
still at sea; nor, seemingly, could Ajor enlighten me, since
she was compelled to use words which I could not understand and
which it was impossible for her to explain the meanings of.
As we stood talking, we were suddenly startled by a commotion
in the bushes and among the boles of the trees surrounding us,
and simultaneously a hundred Kro-lu warriors appeared in a
rough circle about us. They greeted Chal-az with a volley of
questions as they approached slowly from all sides, their heavy
bows fitted with long, sharp arrows. Upon Ajor and me they
looked with covetousness in the one instance and suspicion in
the other; but after they had heard Chal-az's story, their
attitude was more friendly. A huge savage did all the talking.
He was a mountain of a man, yet perfectly proportioned.
"This is Al-tan the chief," said Chal-az by way of introduction.
Then he told something of my story, and Al-tan asked me many
questions of the land from which I came. The warriors crowded
around close to hear my replies, and there were many expressions
of incredulity as I spoke of what was to them another world, of
the yacht which had brought me over vast waters, and of the
plane that had borne me Jo-oo-like over the summit of the
barrier-cliffs. It was the mention of the hydroaeroplane
which precipitated the first outspoken skepticism, and then
Ajor came to my defense.
"I saw it with my own eyes!" she exclaimed. "I saw him flying
through the air in battle with a Jo-oo. The Alus were chasing
me, and they saw and ran away."
"Whose is this she?" demanded Al-tan suddenly, his eyes fixed
fiercely upon Ajor.
For a moment there was silence. Ajor looked up at me, a hurt
and questioning expression on her face. "Whose she is this?"
repeated Al-tan.
"She is mine," I replied, though what force it was that
impelled me to say it I could not have told; but an instant
later I was glad that I had spoken the words, for the reward
of Ajor's proud and happy face was reward indeed.
Al-tan eyed her for several minutes and then turned to me.
"Can you keep her?" he asked, just the tinge of a sneer upon
his face.
I laid my palm upon the grip of my pistol and answered that
I could. He saw the move, glanced at the butt of the automatic
where it protruded from its holster, and smiled. Then he
turned and raising his great bow, fitted an arrow and drew the
shaft far back. His warriors, supercilious smiles upon their
faces, stood silently watching him. His bow was the longest
and the heaviest among them all. A mighty man indeed must he
be to bend it; yet Al-tan drew the shaft back until the stone
point touched his left forefinger, and he did it with
consummate ease. Then he raised the shaft to the level of
his right eye, held it there for an instant and released it.
When the arrow stopped, half its length protruded from the
opposite side of a six-inch tree fifty feet away. Al-tan and
his warriors turned toward me with expressions of immense
satisfaction upon their faces, and then, apparently for Ajor's
benefit, the chieftain swaggered to and fro a couple of times,
swinging his great arms and his bulky shoulders for all the
world like a drunken prize-fighter at a beach dancehall.
I saw that some reply was necessary, and so in a single motion,
I drew my gun, dropped it on the still quivering arrow and
pulled the trigger. At the sound of the report, the Kro-lu
leaped back and raised their weapons; but as I was smiling,
they took heart and lowered them again, following my eyes to
the tree; the shaft of their chief was gone, and through the
bole was a little round hole marking the path of my bullet.
It was a good shot if I do say it myself, "as shouldn't" but
necessity must have guided that bullet; I simply had to
make a good shot, that I might immediately establish my position
among those savage and warlike Caspakians of the sixth sphere.
That it had its effect was immediately noticeable, but I am none
too sure that it helped my cause with Al-tan. Whereas he might
have condescended to tolerate me as a harmless and interesting
curiosity, he now, by the change in his expression, appeared to
consider me in a new and unfavorable light. Nor can I wonder,
knowing this type as I did, for had I not made him ridiculous
in the eyes of his warriors, beating him at his own game?
What king, savage or civilized, could condone such impudence?
Seeing his black scowls, I deemed it expedient, especially on
Ajor's account, to terminate the interview and continue upon
our way; but when I would have done so, Al-tan detained us with
a gesture, and his warriors pressed around us.
"What is the meaning of this?" I demanded, and before Al-tan
could reply, Chal-az raised his voice in our behalf.
"Is this the gratitude of a Kro-lu chieftain, Al-tan," he
asked, "to one who has served you by saving one of your
warriors from the enemy--saving him from the death dance of
the Band-lu?"
Al-tan was silent for a moment, and then his brow cleared, and
the faint imitation of a pleasant expression struggled for
existence as he said: "The stranger will not be harmed.
I wished only to detain him that he may be feasted tonight in
the village of Al-tan the Kro-lu. In the morning he may go
his way. Al-tan will not hinder him."
I was not entirely reassured; but I wanted to see the interior
of the Kro-lu village, and anyway I knew that if Al-tan
intended treachery I would be no more in his power in the
morning than I now was--in fact, during the night I might
find opportunity to escape with Ajor, while at the instant
neither of us could hope to escape unscathed from the
encircling warriors. Therefore, in order to disarm him of
any thought that I might entertain suspicion as to his
sincerity, I promptly and courteously accepted his invitation.
His satisfaction was evident, and as we set off toward his village,
he walked beside me, asking many questions as to the country
from which I came, its peoples and their customs. He seemed
much mystified by the fact that we could walk abroad by day or
night without fear of being devoured by wild beasts or savage
reptiles, and when I told him of the great armies which we
maintained, his simple mind could not grasp the fact that they
existed solely for the slaughtering of human beings.
"I am glad," he said, "that I do not dwell in your country
among such savage peoples. Here, in Caspak, men fight with men
when they meet--men of different races--but their weapons are
first for the slaying of beasts in the chase and in defense.
We do not fashion weapons solely for the killing of man as do
your peoples. Your country must indeed be a savage country,
from which you are fortunate to have escaped to the peace and
security of Caspak."
Here was a new and refreshing viewpoint; nor could I take
exception to it after what I had told Altan of the great war
which had been raging in Europe for over two years before I
left home.
On the march to the Kro-lu village we were continually stalked
by innumerable beasts of prey, and three times we were attacked
by frightful creatures; but Altan took it all as a matter of
course, rushing forward with raised spear or sending a heavy
shaft into the body of the attacker and then returning to our
conversation as though no interruption had occurred. Twice were
members of his band mauled, and one was killed by a huge and
bellicose rhinoceros; but the instant the action was over,
it was as though it never had occurred. The dead man was
stripped of his belongings and left where he had died; the
carnivora would take care of his burial. The trophies that
these Kro-lu left to the meat-eaters would have turned an
English big-game hunter green with envy. They did, it is true,
cut all the edible parts from the rhino and carry them home;
but already they were pretty well weighted down with the spoils
of the chase, and only the fact that they are particularly fond
of rhino-meat caused them to do so.
They left the hide on the pieces they selected, as they use it
for sandals, shield-covers, the hilts of their knives and
various other purposes where tough hide is desirable. I was
much interested in their shields, especially after I saw one
used in defense against the attack of a saber-tooth tiger.
The huge creature had charged us without warning from a clump of
dense bushes where it was lying up after eating. It was met
with an avalanche of spears, some of which passed entirely
through its body, with such force were they hurled. The charge
was from a very short distance, requiring the use of the spear
rather than the bow and arrow; but after the launching of the
spears, the men not directly in the path of the charge sent bolt
after bolt into the great carcass with almost incredible rapidity.
The beast, screaming with pain and rage, bore down upon Chal-az
while I stood helpless with my rifle for fear of hitting one of
the warriors who were closing in upon it. But Chal-az was ready.
Throwing aside his bow, he crouched behind his large oval shield,
in the center of which was a hole about six inches in diameter.
The shield was held by tight loops to his left arm, while in his
right hand he grasped his heavy knife. Bristling with spears
and arrows, the great cat hurled itself upon the shield, and down
went Chal-az upon his back with the shield entirely covering him.
The tiger clawed and bit at the heavy rhinoceros hide with which
the shield was faced, while Chal-az, through the round hole in
the shield's center, plunged his blade repeatedly into the vitals
of the savage animal. Doubtless the battle would have gone to
Chal-az even though I had not interfered; but the moment that I
saw a clean opening, with no Kro-lu beyond, I raised my rifle and
killed the beast.
When Chal-az arose, he glanced at the sky and remarked that it
looked like rain. The others already had resumed the march
toward the village. The incident was closed. For some
unaccountable reason the whole thing reminded me of a friend
who once shot a cat in his backyard. For three weeks he talked
of nothing else.
It was almost dark when we reached the village--a large
palisaded enclosure of several hundred leaf-thatched huts set
in groups of from two to seven. The huts were hexagonal in
form, and where grouped were joined so that they resembled the
cells of a bee-hive. One hut meant a warrior and his mate, and
each additional hut in a group indicated an additional female.
The palisade which surrounded the village was of logs set close
together and woven into a solid wall with tough creepers which
were planted at their base and trained to weave in and out to
bind the logs together. The logs slanted outward at an angle
of about thirty degrees, in which position they were held by
shorter logs embedded in the ground at right angles to them and
with their upper ends supporting the longer pieces a trifle
above their centers of equilibrium. Along the top of the
palisade sharpened stakes had been driven at all sorts of angles.
The only opening into the inclosure was through a small
aperture three feet wide and three feet high, which was closed
from the inside by logs about six feet long laid horizontally,
one upon another, between the inside face of the palisade and
two other braced logs which paralleled the face of the wall
upon the inside.
As we entered the village, we were greeted by a not unfriendly
crowd of curious warriors and women, to whom Chal-az generously
explained the service we had rendered him, whereupon they
showered us with the most well-meant attentions, for Chal-az, it
seemed, was a most popular member of the tribe. Necklaces of
lion and tiger-teeth, bits of dried meat, finely tanned hides
and earthen pots, beautifully decorated, they thrust upon us
until we were loaded down, and all the while Al-tan glared
balefully upon us, seemingly jealous of the attentions heaped
upon us because we had served Chal-az.
At last we reached a hut that they set apart for us, and there
we cooked our meat and some vegetables the women brought us,
and had milk from cows--the first I had had in Caspak--and
cheese from the milk of wild goats, with honey and thin bread
made from wheat flour of their own grinding, and grapes and the
fermented juice of grapes. It was quite the most wonderful
meal I had eaten since I quit the Toreador and Bowen J.
Tyler's colored chef, who could make pork-chops taste like
chicken, and chicken taste like heaven.
Chapter 6
After dinner I rolled a cigaret and stretched myself at ease
upon a pile of furs before the doorway, with Ajor's head
pillowed in my lap and a feeling of great content pervading me.
It was the first time since my plane had topped the barriercliffs
of Caspak that I had felt any sense of peace or security.
My hand wandered to the velvet cheek of the girl I had claimed
as mine, and to her luxuriant hair and the golden fillet which
bound it close to her shapely head. Her slender fingers
groping upward sought mine and drew them to her lips, and then
I gathered her in my arms and crushed her to me, smothering
her mouth with a long, long kiss. It was the first time that
passion had tinged my intercourse with Ajor. We were alone,
and the hut was ours until morning.
But now from beyond the palisade in the direction of the main
gate came the hallooing of men and the answering calls and
queries of the guard. We listened. Returning hunters, no doubt.
We heard them enter the village amidst the barking dogs. I have
forgotten to mention the dogs of Kro-lu. The village swarmed
with them, gaunt, wolflike creatures that guarded the herd by
day when it grazed without the palisade, ten dogs to a cow.
By night the cows were herded in an outer inclosure roofed
against the onslaughts of the carnivorous cats; and the dogs,
with the exception of a few, were brought into the village;
these few well-tested brutes remained with the herd. During the
day they fed plentifully upon the beasts of prey which they
killed in protection of the herd, so that their keep amounted
to nothing at all.
Shortly after the commotion at the gate had subsided, Ajor and
I arose to enter the hut, and at the same time a warrior
appeared from one of the twisted alleys which, lying between
the irregularly placed huts and groups of huts, form the
streets of the Kro-lu village. The fellow halted before us and
addressed me, saying that Al-tan desired my presence at his hut.
The wording of the invitation and the manner of the messenger
threw me entirely off my guard, so cordial was the one and
respectful the other, and the result was that I went willingly,
telling Ajor that I would return presently. I had laid my arms
and ammunition aside as soon as we had taken over the hut, and
I left them with Ajor now, as I had noticed that aside from
their hunting-knives the men of Kro-lu bore no weapons about
the village streets. There was an atmosphere of peace and
security within that village that I had not hoped to experience
within Caspak, and after what I had passed through, it must have
cast a numbing spell over my faculties of judgment and reason.
I had eaten of the lotus-flower of safety; dangers no longer
threatened for they had ceased to be.
The messenger led me through the labyrinthine alleys to an open
plaza near the center of the village. At one end of this plaza
was a long hut, much the largest that I had yet seen, before
the door of which were many warriors. I could see that the
interior was lighted and that a great number of men were
gathered within. The dogs about the plaza were as thick as
fleas, and those I approached closely evinced a strong desire
to devour me, their noses evidently apprising them of the fact
that I was of an alien race, since they paid no attention
whatever to my companion. Once inside the council-hut, for
such it appeared to be, I found a large concourse of warriors
seated, or rather squatted, around the floor. At one end of
the oval space which the warriors left down the center of the
room stood Al-tan and another warrior whom I immediately
recognized as a Galu, and then I saw that there were many
Galus present. About the walls were a number of flaming
torches stuck in holes in a clay plaster which evidently
served the purpose of preventing the inflammable wood and
grasses of which the hut was composed from being ignited by
the flames. Lying about among the warriors or wandering
restlessly to and fro were a number of savage dogs.
The warriors eyed me curiously as I entered, especially the
Galus, and then I was conducted into the center of the group
and led forward toward Al-tan. As I advanced I felt one of the
dogs sniffing at my heels, and of a sudden a great brute leaped
upon my back. As I turned to thrust it aside before its fangs
found a hold upon me, I beheld a huge Airedale leaping
frantically about me. The grinning jaws, the half-closed eyes,
the back-laid ears spoke to me louder than might the words of
man that here was no savage enemy but a joyous friend, and then
I recognized him, and fell to one knee and put my arms about
his neck while he whined and cried with joy. It was Nobs, dear
old Nobs. Bowen Tyler's Nobs, who had loved me next to his master.
"Where is the master of this dog?" I asked, turning toward Al-tan.
The chieftain inclined his head toward the Galu standing at
his side. "He belongs to Du-seen the Galu," he replied.
"He belongs to Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., of Santa Monica," I
retorted, "and I want to know where his master is."
The Galu shrugged. "The dog is mine," he said. "He came to me
cor-sva-jo, and he is unlike any dog in Caspak, being kind
and docile and yet a killer when aroused. I would not part
with him. I do not know the man of whom you speak."
So this was Du-seen! This was the man from whom Ajor had fled.
I wondered if he knew that she was here. I wondered if they
had sent for me because of her; but after they had commenced to
question me, my mind was relieved; they did not mention Ajor.
Their interest seemed centered upon the strange world from
which I had come, my journey to Caspak and my intentions now
that I had arrived. I answered them frankly as I had nothing
to conceal and assured them that my only wish was to find my
friends and return to my own country. In the Galu Du-seen and
his warriors I saw something of the explanation of the term
"golden race" which is applied to them, for their ornaments and
weapons were either wholly of beaten gold or heavily decorated
with the precious metal. They were a very imposing set of
men--tall and straight and handsome. About their heads were
bands of gold like that which Ajor wore, and from their left
shoulders depended the leopard-tails of the Galus. In addition
to the deer-skin tunic which constituted the major portion of
their apparel, each carried a light blanket of barbaric yet
beautiful design--the first evidence of weaving I had seen
in Caspak. Ajor had had no blanket, having lost it during her
flight from the attentions of Du-seen; nor was she so heavily
incrusted with gold as these male members of her tribe.
The audience must have lasted fully an hour when Al-tan
signified that I might return to my hut. All the time Nobs had
lain quietly at my feet; but the instant that I turned to
leave, he was up and after me. Duseen called to him; but
the terrier never even so much as looked in his direction.
I had almost reached the doorway leading from the council-hall
when Al-tan rose and called after me. "Stop!" he shouted.
"Stop, stranger! The beast of Du-seen the Galu follows you."
"The dog is not Du-seen's," I replied. "He belongs to my
friend, as I told you, and he prefers to stay with me until his
master is found." And I turned again to resume my way. I had
taken but a few steps when I heard a commotion behind me, and
at the same moment a man leaned close and whispered "Kazar!"
close to my ear--kazar, the Caspakian equivalent of beware.
It was To-mar. As he spoke, he turned quickly away as though
loath to have others see that he knew me, and at the same
instant I wheeled to discover Du-seen striding rapidly after me.
Al-tan followed him, and it was evident that both were angry.
Du-seen, a weapon half drawn, approached truculently.
"The beast is mine," he reiterated. "Would you steal him?"
"He is not yours nor mine," I replied, "and I am not stealing him.
If he wishes to follow you, he may; I will not interfere; but if
he wishes to follow me, he shall; nor shall you prevent."
I turned to Al-tan. "Is not that fair?" I demanded. "Let the dog
choose his master."
Du-seen, without waiting for Al-tan's reply, reached for Nobs
and grasped him by the scruff of the neck. I did not interfere,
for I guessed what would happen; and it did. With a savage growl
Nobs turned like lightning upon the Galu, wrenched loose from
his hold and leaped for his throat. The man stepped back and
warded off the first attack with a heavy blow of his fist,
immediately drawing his knife with which to meet the
Airedale's return. And Nobs would have returned, all right,
had not I spoken to him. In a low voice I called him to heel.
For just an instant he hesitated, standing there trembling and
with bared fangs, glaring at his foe; but he was well trained
and had been out with me quite as much as he had with Bowen--in
fact, I had had most to do with his early training; then he
walked slowly and very stiff-legged to his place behind me.
Du-seen, red with rage, would have had it out with the two of
us had not Al-tan drawn him to one side and whispered in his
ear--upon which, with a grunt, the Galu walked straight back to
the opposite end of the hall, while Nobs and I continued upon
our way toward the hut and Ajor. As we passed out into the
village plaza, I saw Chal-az--we were so close to one another
that I could have reached out and touched him--and our eyes
met; but though I greeted him pleasantly and paused to speak to
him, he brushed past me without a sign of recognition. I was
puzzled at his behavior, and then I recalled that To-mar,
though he had warned me, had appeared not to wish to seem
friendly with me. I could not understand their attitude,
and was trying to puzzle out some sort of explanation, when
the matter was suddenly driven from my mind by the report of
a firearm. Instantly I broke into a run, my brain in a whirl of
forebodings, for the only firearms in the Kro-lu country were
those I had left in the hut with Ajor.
That she was in danger I could not but fear, as she was now
something of an adept in the handling of both the pistol and
rifle, a fact which largely eliminated the chance that the shot
had come from an accidentally discharged firearm. When I left
the hut, I had felt that she and I were safe among friends; no
thought of danger was in my mind; but since my audience with
Al-tan, the presence and bearing of Duseen and the strange
attitude of both To-mar and Chal-az had each contributed toward
arousing my suspicions, and now I ran along the narrow, winding
alleys of the Kro-lu village with my heart fairly in my mouth.
I am endowed with an excellent sense of direction, which has
been greatly perfected by the years I have spent in the
mountains and upon the plains and deserts of my native state,
so that it was with little or no difficulty that I found my way
back to the hut in which I had left Ajor. As I entered the
doorway, I called her name aloud. There was no response.
I drew a box of matches from my pocket and struck a light and
as the flame flared up, a half-dozen brawny warriors leaped upon
me from as many directions; but even in the brief instant that
the flare lasted, I saw that Ajor was not within the hut, and
that my arms and ammunition had been removed.
As the six men leaped upon me, an angry growl burst from
behind them. I had forgotten Nobs. Like a demon of hate he
sprang among those Kro-lu fighting-men, tearing, rending, ripping
with his long tusks and his mighty jaws. They had me down in an
instant, and it goes without saying that the six of them could
have kept me there had it not been for Nobs; but while I was
struggling to throw them off, Nobs was springing first upon one
and then upon another of them until they were so put to it to
preserve their hides and their lives from him that they could
give me only a small part of their attention. One of them was
assiduously attempting to strike me on the head with his stone
hatchet; but I caught his arm and at the same time turned over
upon my belly, after which it took but an instant to get my
feet under me and rise suddenly.
As I did so, I kept a grip upon the man's arm, carrying it over
one shoulder. Then I leaned suddenly forward and hurled my
antagonist over my head to a hasty fall at the opposite side of
the hut. In the dim light of the interior I saw that Nobs had
already accounted for one of the others--one who lay very quiet
upon the floor--while the four remaining upon their feet were
striking at him with knives and hatchets.
Running to one side of the man I had just put out of the
fighting, I seized his hatchet and knife, and in another moment
was in the thick of the argument. I was no match for these
savage warriors with their own weapons and would soon have gone
down to ignominious defeat and death had it not been for Nobs,
who alone was a match for the four of them. I never saw any
creature so quick upon its feet as was that great Airedale, nor
such frightful ferocity as he manifested in his attacks. It was
as much the latter as the former which contributed to the
undoing of our enemies, who, accustomed though they were to
the ferocity of terrible creatures, seemed awed by the sight of
this strange beast from another world battling at the side of
his equally strange master. Yet they were no cowards, and only
by teamwork did Nobs and I overcome them at last. We would
rush for a man, simultaneously, and as Nobs leaped for him upon
one side, I would strike at his head with the stone hatchet
from the other.
As the last man went down, I heard the running of many feet
approaching us from the direction of the plaza. To be captured
now would mean death; yet I could not attempt to leave the
village without first ascertaining the whereabouts of Ajor and
releasing her if she were held a captive. That I could escape
the village I was not at all sure; but of one thing I was
positive; that it would do neither Ajor nor myself any service
to remain where I was and be captured; so with Nobs, bloody but
happy, following at heel, I turned down the first alley and
slunk away in the direction of the northern end of the village.
Friendless and alone, hunted through the dark labyrinths of
this savage community, I seldom have felt more helpless than
at that moment; yet far transcending any fear which I may
have felt for my own safety was my concern for that of Ajor.
What fate had befallen her? Where was she, and in whose power?
That I should live to learn the answers to these queries I doubted;
but that I should face death gladly in the attempt--of that I
was certain. And why? With all my concern for the welfare of
my friends who had accompanied me to Caprona, and of my best
friend of all, Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., I never yet had experienced
the almost paralyzing fear for the safety of any other creature
which now threw me alternately into a fever of despair and into
a cold sweat of apprehension as my mind dwelt upon the fate on
one bit of half-savage femininity of whose very existence even
I had not dreamed a few short weeks before.
What was this hold she had upon me? Was I bewitched, that my
mind refused to function sanely, and that judgment and reason
were dethroned by some mad sentiment which I steadfastly
refused to believe was love? I had never been in love. I was
not in love now--the very thought was preposterous. How could
I, Thomas Billings, the right-hand man of the late Bowen J.
Tyler, Sr., one of America's foremost captains of industry and
the greatest man in California, be in love with a--a--the word
stuck in my throat; yet by my own American standards Ajor could
be nothing else; at home, for all her beauty, for all her
delicately tinted skin, little Ajor by her apparel, by the
habits and customs and manners of her people, by her life,
would have been classed a squaw. Tom Billings in love with
a squaw! I shuddered at the thought.
And then there came to my mind, in a sudden, brilliant flash
upon the screen of recollection the picture of Ajor as I had
last seen her, and I lived again the delicious moment in which
we had clung to one another, lips smothering lips, as I left
her to go to the council hall of Al-tan; and I could have
kicked myself for the snob and the cad that my thoughts had
proven me--me, who had always prided myself that I was neither
the one nor the other!
These things ran through my mind as Nobs and I made our way
through the dark village, the voices and footsteps of those who
sought us still in our ears. These and many other things, nor
could I escape the incontrovertible fact that the little figure
round which my recollections and my hopes entwined themselves
was that of Ajor--beloved barbarian! My reveries were broken in
upon by a hoarse whisper from the black interior of a hut past
which we were making our way. My name was called in a low
voice, and a man stepped out beside me as I halted with
raised knife. It was Chal-az.
"Quick!" he warned. "In here! It is my hut, and they will not
search it."
I hesitated, recalled his attitude of a few minutes before; and
as though he had read my thoughts, he said quickly: "I could
not speak to you in the plaza without danger of arousing
suspicions which would prevent me aiding you later, for word
had gone out that Al-tan had turned against you and would
destroy you--this was after Du-seen the Galu arrived."
I followed him into the hut, and with Nobs at our heels we
passed through several chambers into a remote and windowless
apartment where a small lamp sputtered in its unequal battle
with the inky darkness. A hole in the roof permitted the smoke
from burning oil egress; yet the atmosphere was far from lucid.
Here Chal-az motioned me to a seat upon a furry hide spread
upon the earthen floor.
"I am your friend," he said. "You saved my life; and I am no
ingrate as is the batu Al-tan. I will serve you, and there
are others here who will serve you against Al-tan and this
renegade Galu, Du-seen."
"But where is Ajor?" I asked, for I cared little for my own
safety while she was in danger.
"Ajor is safe, too," he answered. "We learned the designs of
Al-tan and Du-seen. The latter, learning that Ajor was here,
demanded her; and Al-tan promised that he should have her;
but when the warriors went to get her To-mar went with them.
Ajor tried to defend herself. She killed one of the warriors,
and then To-mar picked her up in his arms when the others had
taken her weapons from her. He told the others to look after the
wounded man, who was really already dead, and to seize you upon
your return, and that he, To-mar, would bear Ajor to Al-tan;
but instead of bearing her to Al-tan, he took her to his own
hut, where she now is with So-al, To-mar's she. It all
happened very quickly. To-mar and I were in the council-hut
when Du-seen attempted to take the dog from you. I was seeking
To-mar for this work. He ran out immediately and accompanied
the warriors to your hut while I remained to watch what went
on within the council-hut and to aid you if you needed aid.
What has happened since you know."
I thanked him for his loyalty and then asked him to take me to
Ajor; but he said that it could not be done, as the village
streets were filled with searchers. In fact, we could hear
them passing to and fro among the huts, making inquiries, and
at last Chal-az thought it best to go to the doorway of his
dwelling, which consisted of many huts joined together, lest
they enter and search.
Chal-az was absent for a long time--several hours which seemed
an eternity to me. All sounds of pursuit had long since
ceased, and I was becoming uneasy because of his protracted
absence when I heard him returning through the other apartments
of his dwelling. He was perturbed when he entered that in which
I awaited him, and I saw a worried expression upon his face.
"What is wrong?" I asked. "Have they found Ajor?"
"No," he replied; "but Ajor has gone. She learned that you
had escaped them and was told that you had left the village,
believing that she had escaped too. So-al could not detain her.
She made her way out over the top of the palisade, armed with
only her knife."
"Then I must go," I said, rising. Nobs rose and shook himself.
He had been dead asleep when I spoke.
"Yes," agreed Chal-az, "you must go at once. It is almost dawn.
Du-seen leaves at daylight to search for her." He leaned
close to my ear and whispered: "There are many to follow and
help you. Al-tan has agreed to aid Du-seen against the Galus
of Jor; but there are many of us who have combined to rise
against Al-tan and prevent this ruthless desecration of the
laws and customs of the Kro-lu and of Caspak. We will rise as
Luata has ordained that we shall rise, and only thus. No batu
may win to the estate of a Galu by treachery and force of arms
while Chal-az lives and may wield a heavy blow and a sharp spear
with true Kro-lus at his back!"
"I hope that I may live to aid you," I replied. "If I had my
weapons and my ammunition, I could do much. Do you know where
they are?"
"No," he said, "they have disappeared." And then: "Wait!
You cannot go forth half armed, and garbed as you are. You are
going into the Galu country, and you must go as a Galu. Come!"
And without waiting for a reply, he led me into another
apartment, or to be more explicit, another of the several huts
which formed his cellular dwelling.
Here was a pile of skins, weapons, and ornaments. "Remove your
strange apparel," said Chal-az, "and I will fit you out as a
true Galu. I have slain several of them in the raids of my
early days as a Kro-lu, and here are their trappings."
I saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and as my clothes were by
now so ragged as to but half conceal my nakedness, I had no
regrets in laying them aside. Stripped to the skin, I donned
the red-deerskin tunic, the leopard-tail, the golden fillet,
armlets and leg-ornaments of a Galu, with the belt, scabbard
and knife, the shield, spear, bow and arrow and the long rope
which I learned now for the first time is the distinctive
weapon of the Galu warrior. It is a rawhide rope, not
dissimilar to those of the Western plains and cow-camps of
my youth. The honda is a golden oval and accurate weight for
the throwing of the noose. This heavy honda, Chal-az
explained, is used as a weapon, being thrown with great force
and accuracy at an enemy and then coiled in for another cast.
In hunting and in battle, they use both the noose and the honda.
If several warriors surround a single foeman or quarry, they rope
it with the noose from several sides; but a single warrior
against a lone antagonist will attempt to brain his foe with
the metal oval.
I could not have been more pleased with any weapon, short of a
rifle, which he could have found for me, since I have been
adept with the rope from early childhood; but I must confess
that I was less favorably inclined toward my apparel. In so
far as the sensation was concerned, I might as well have been
entirely naked, so short and light was the tunic. When I asked
Chal-az for the Caspakian name for rope, he told me ga, and
for the first time I understood the derivation of the word
Galu, which means ropeman.
Entirely outfitted I would not have known myself, so strange
was my garb and my armament. Upon my back were slung my bow,
arrows, shield, and short spear; from the center of my girdle
depended my knife; at my right hip was my stone hatchet; and at
my left hung the coils of my long rope. By reaching my right
hand over my left shoulder, I could seize the spear or arrows;
my left hand could find my bow over my right shoulder, while a
veritable contortionist-act was necessary to place my shield in
front of me and upon my left arm. The shield, long and oval,
is utilized more as back-armor than as a defense against
frontal attack, for the close-set armlets of gold upon the left
forearm are principally depended upon to ward off knife, spear,
hatchet, or arrow from in front; but against the greater
carnivora and the attacks of several human antagonists, the
shield is utilized to its best advantage and carried by loops
upon the left arm.
Fully equipped, except for a blanket, I followed Chal-az from
his domicile into the dark and deserted alleys of Kro-lu.
Silently we crept along, Nobs silent at heel, toward the
nearest portion of the palisade. Here Chal-az bade me
farewell, telling me that he hoped to see me soon among the
Galus, as he felt that "the call soon would come" to him.
I thanked him for his loyal assistance and promised that whether
I reached the Galu country or not, I should always stand ready
to repay his kindness to me, and that he could count on me in
the revolution against Al-tan.
Chapter 7
To run up the inclined surface of the palisade and drop to the
ground outside was the work of but a moment, or would have been
but for Nobs. I had to put my rope about him after we reached
the top, lift him over the sharpened stakes and lower him upon
the outside. To find Ajor in the unknown country to the north
seemed rather hopeless; yet I could do no less than try,
praying in the meanwhile that she would come through unscathed
and in safety to her father.
As Nobs and I swung along in the growing light of the coming
day, I was impressed by the lessening numbers of savage beasts
the farther north I traveled. With the decrease among the
carnivora, the herbivora increased in quantity, though anywhere
in Caspak they are sufficiently plentiful to furnish ample food
for the meateaters of each locality. The wild cattle,
antelope, deer, and horses I passed showed changes in evolution
from their cousins farther south. The kine were smaller and
less shaggy, the horses larger. North of the Kro-lu village I
saw a small band of the latter of about the size of those of
our old Western plains--such as the Indians bred in former days
and to a lesser extent even now. They were fat and sleek, and
I looked upon them with covetous eyes and with thoughts that
any old cow-puncher may well imagine I might entertain after
having hoofed it for weeks; but they were wary, scarce
permitting me to approach within bow-and-arrow range, much less
within roping-distance; yet I still had hopes which I never discarded.
Twice before noon we were stalked and charged by man-eaters;
but even though I was without firearms, I still had ample
protection in Nobs, who evidently had learned something of
Caspakian hunt rules under the tutelage of Du-seen or some
other Galu, and of course a great deal more by experience.
He always was on the alert for dangerous foes, invariably warning
me by low growls of the approach of a large carnivorous animal
long before I could either see or hear it, and then when the
thing appeared, he would run snapping at its heels, drawing the
charge away from me until I found safety in some tree; yet
never did the wily Nobs take an unnecessary chance of a mauling.
He would dart in and away so quickly that not even the
lightning-like movements of the great cats could reach him.
I have seen him tantalize them thus until they fairly screamed
in rage.
The greatest inconvenience the hunters caused me was the delay,
for they have a nasty habit of keeping one treed for an hour or
more if balked in their designs; but at last we came in sight
of a line of cliffs running east and west across our path as
far as the eye could see in either direction, and I knew that
we reached the natural boundary which marks the line between
the Kro-lu and Galu countries. The southern face of these
cliffs loomed high and forbidding, rising to an altitude of
some two hundred feet, sheer and precipitous, without a break
that the eye could perceive. How I was to find a crossing I
could not guess. Whether to search to the east toward the
still loftier barrier-cliffs fronting upon the ocean, or
westward in the direction of the inland sea was a question
which baffled me. Were there many passes or only one? I had
no way of knowing. I could but trust to chance. It never
occurred to me that Nobs had made the crossing at least once,
possibly a greater number of times, and that he might lead me
to the pass; and so it was with no idea of assistance that I
appealed to him as a man alone with a dumb brute so often does.
"Nobs," I said, "how the devil are we going to cross those cliffs?"
I do not say that he understood me, even though I realize that
an Airedale is a mighty intelligent dog; but I do swear that he
seemed to understand me, for he wheeled about, barking joyously
and trotted off toward the west; and when I didn't follow him,
he ran back to me barking furiously, and at last taking hold of
the calf of my leg in an effort to pull me along in the
direction he wished me to go. Now, as my legs were naked and
Nobs' jaws are much more powerful than he realizes, I gave in
and followed him, for I knew that I might as well go west as
east, as far as any knowledge I had of the correct direction went.
We followed the base of the cliffs for a considerable distance.
The ground was rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing
animals, alone, in pairs and in herds--a motley aggregation of
the modern and extinct herbivore of the world. A huge woolly
mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant
fern--a mighty bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him
grazed an aurochs bull with a cow and a calf, close beside a
lone rhinoceros asleep in a dust-hole. Deer, antelope, bison,
horses, sheep, and goats were all in sight at the same time,
and at a little distance a great megatherium reared up on its
huge tail and massive hind feet to tear the leaves from a
tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed flanks with the present--
while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns, passed in the garb of
pre-Glacial man, and before him trotted a creature of a breed
scarce sixty years old. Nobs was a parvenu; but it failed to
worry him.
As we neared the inland sea we saw more flying reptiles and
several great amphibians, but none of them attacked us. As we
were topping a rise in the middle of the afternoon, I saw
something that brought me to a sudden stop. Calling Nobs in a
whisper, I cautioned him to silence and kept him at heel while
I threw myself flat and watched, from behind a sheltering
shrub, a body of warriors approaching the cliff from the south.
I could see that they were Galus, and I guessed that Du-seen
led them. They had taken a shorter route to the pass and so
had overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no
great distance away, and saw with relief that Ajor was not with them.
The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming
from the east overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the
defile formed by this overlapping the party filed. I could see
them climbing upward for a few minutes, and then they
disappeared from view. When the last of them had passed from
sight, I rose and bent my steps in the direction of the
pass--the same pass toward which Nobs had evidently been
leading me. I went warily as I approached it, for fear the
party might have halted to rest. If they hadn't halted, I had
no fear of being discovered, for I had seen that the Galus
marched without point, flankers or rear guard; and when I
reached the pass and saw a narrow, one-man trail leading upward
at a stiff angle, I wished that I were chief of the Galus for a
few weeks. A dozen men could hold off forever in that narrow
pass all the hordes which might be brought up from the south;
yet there it lay entirely unguarded.
The Galus might be a great people in Caspak; but they were
pitifully inefficient in even the simpler forms of military tactics.
I was surprised that even a man of the Stone Age should be so
lacking in military perspicacity. Du-seen dropped far below
par in my estimation as I saw the slovenly formation of his
troop as it passed through an enemy country and entered the
domain of the chief against whom he had risen in revolt; but
Du-seen must have known Jor the chief and known that Jor would
not be waiting for him at the pass. Nevertheless he took
unwarranted chances. With one squad of a home-guard company I
could have conquered Caspak.
Nobs and I followed to the summit of the pass, and there we saw
the party defiling into the Galu country, the level of which
was not, on an average, over fifty feet below the summit of the
cliffs and about a hundred and fifty feet above the adjacent
Kro-lu domain. Immediately the landscape changed. The trees,
the flowers and the shrubs were of a hardier type, and I
realized that at night the Galu blanket might be almost
a necessity. Acacia and eucalyptus predominated among the trees;
yet there were ash and oak and even pine and fir and hemlock.
The tree-life was riotous. The forests were dense and peopled
by enormous trees. From the summit of the cliff I could see
forests rising hundreds of feet above the level upon which I
stood, and even at the distance they were from me I realized
that the boles were of gigantic size.
At last I had come to the Galu country. Though not conceived
in Caspak, I had indeed come up cor-sva jo--from the
beginning I had come up through the hideous horrors of the
lower Caspakian spheres of evolution, and I could not but feel
something of the elation and pride which had filled To-mar and
So-al when they realized that the call had come to them and
they were about to rise from the estate of Band-lus to that of
Kro-lus. I was glad that I was not batu.
But where was Ajor? Though my eyes searched the wide landscape
before me, I saw nothing other than the warriors of Du-seen and
the beasts of the fields and the forests. Surrounded by
forests, I could see wide plains dotting the country as far as
the eye could reach; but nowhere was a sign of a small Galu
she--the beloved she whom I would have given my right hand to see.
Nobs and I were hungry; we had not eaten since the preceding
night, and below us was game-deer, sheep, anything that a
hungry hunter might crave; so down the steep trail we made our
way, and then upon my belly with Nobs crouching low behind me,
I crawled toward a small herd of red deer feeding at the edge
of a plain close beside a forest. There was ample cover, what
with solitary trees and dotting bushes so that I found no
difficulty in stalking up wind to within fifty feet of my
quarry--a large, sleek doe unaccompanied by a fawn. Greatly then
did I regret my rifle. Never in my life had I shot an arrow,
but I knew how it was done, and fitting the shaft to my string,
I aimed carefully and let drive. At the same instant I called
to Nobs and leaped to me feet.
The arrow caught the doe full in the side, and in the same
moment Nobs was after her. She turned to flee with the two of
us pursuing her, Nobs with his great fangs bared and I with my
short spear poised for a cast. The balance of the herd sprang
quickly away; but the hurt doe lagged, and in a moment Nobs was
beside her and had leaped at her throat. He had her down when
I came up, and I finished her with my spear. It didn't take me
long to have a fire going and a steak broiling, and while I
was preparing for my own feast, Nobs was filling himself with
raw venison. Never have I enjoyed a meal so heartily.
For two days I searched fruitlessly back and forth from the
inland sea almost to the barrier cliffs for some trace of Ajor,
and always I trended northward; but I saw no sign of any human
being, not even the band of Galu warriors under Du-seen; and
then I commenced to have misgivings. Had Chal-az spoken the
truth to me when he said that Ajor had quit the village of
the Kro-lu? Might he not have been acting upon the orders of
Al-tan, in whose savage bosom might have lurked some small
spark of shame that he had attempted to do to death one who had
befriended a Kro-lu warrior--a guest who had brought no harm
upon the Kro-lu race--and thus have sent me out upon a
fruitless mission in the hope that the wild beasts would do
what Al-tan hesitated to do? I did not know; but the more I
thought upon it, the more convinced I became that Ajor had
not quitted the Kro-lu village; but if not, what had brought
Du-seen forth without her? There was a puzzler, and once again
I was all at sea.
On the second day of my experience of the Galu country I came
upon a bunch of as magnificent horses as it has ever been my
lot to see. They were dark bays with blazed faces and perfect
surcingles of white about their barrels. Their forelegs were
white to the knees. In height they stood almost sixteen hands,
the mares being a trifle smaller than the stallions, of which
there were three or four in this band of a hundred, which
comprised many colts and half-grown horses. Their markings
were almost identical, indicating a purity of strain that might
have persisted since long ages ago. If I had coveted one of
the little ponies of the Kro-lu country, imagine my state of
mind when I came upon these magnificent creatures! No sooner
had I espied them than I determined to possess one of them; nor
did it take me long to select a beautiful young stallion--a
four-year-old, I guessed him.
The horses were grazing close to the edge of the forest in
which Nobs and I were concealed, while the ground between us
and them was dotted with clumps of flowering brush which
offered perfect concealment. The stallion of my choice grazed
with a filly and two yearlings a little apart from the balance
of the herd and nearest to the forest and to me. At my
whispered "Charge!" Nobs flattened himself to the ground, and I
knew that he would not again move until I called him, unless
danger threatened me from the rear. Carefully I crept forward
toward my unsuspecting quarry, coming undetected to the
concealment of a bush not more than twenty feet from him.
Here I quietly arranged my noose, spreading it flat and open
upon the ground.
To step to one side of the bush and throw directly from the
ground, which is the style I am best in, would take but an
instant, and in that instant the stallion would doubtless be
under way at top speed in the opposite direction. Then he
would have to wheel about when I surprised him, and in doing
so, he would most certainly rise slightly upon his hind feet
and throw up his head, presenting a perfect target for my noose
as he pivoted.
Yes, I had it beautifully worked out, and I waited until he
should turn in my direction. At last it became evident that he
was doing so, when apparently without cause, the filly raised
her head, neighed and started off at a trot in the opposite
direction, immediately followed, of course, by the colts and
my stallion. It looked for a moment as though my last hope was
blasted; but presently their fright, if fright it was, passed,
and they resumed grazing again a hundred yards farther on.
This time there was no bush within fifty feet of them, and I
was at a loss as to how to get within safe roping-distance.
Anywhere under forty feet I am an excellent roper, at fifty
feet I am fair; but over that I knew it would be a matter of
luck if I succeeded in getting my noose about that beautiful
arched neck.
As I stood debating the question in my mind, I was almost upon
the point of making the attempt at the long throw. I had
plenty of rope, this Galu weapon being fully sixty feet long.
How I wished for the collies from the ranch! At a word they
would have circled this little bunch and driven it straight
down to me; and then it flashed into my mind that Nobs had run
with those collies all one summer, that he had gone down to the
pasture with them after the cows every evening and done his
part in driving them back to the milking-barn, and had done it
intelligently; but Nobs had never done the thing alone, and it
had been a year since he had done it at all. However, the
chances were more in favor of my foozling the long throw than
that Nobs would fall down in his part if I gave him the chance.
Having come to a decision, I had to creep back to Nobs and get
him, and then with him at my heels return to a large bush near
the four horses. Here we could see directly through the bush, and
pointing the animals out to Nobs I whispered: "Fetch 'em, boy!"
In an instant he was gone, circling wide toward the rear of
the quarry. They caught sight of him almost immediately and
broke into a trot away from him; but when they saw that he was
apparently giving them a wide berth they stopped again,
though they stood watching him, with high-held heads and
quivering nostrils. It was a beautiful sight. And then Nobs
turned in behind them and trotted slowly back toward me. He did
not bark, nor come rushing down upon them, and when he had come
closer to them, he proceeded at a walk. The splendid creatures
seemed more curious than fearful, making no effort to escape
until Nobs was quite close to them; then they trotted slowly
away, but at right angles.
And now the fun and trouble commenced. Nobs, of course,
attempted to turn them, and he seemed to have selected the
stallion to work upon, for he paid no attention to the others,
having intelligence enough to know that a lone dog could run
his legs off before he could round up four horses that didn't
wish to be rounded up. The stallion, however, had notions of
his own about being headed, and the result was as pretty a race
as one would care to see. Gad, how that horse could run! He seemed
to flatten out and shoot through the air with the very minimum
of exertion, and at his forefoot ran Nobs, doing his best to
turn him. He was barking now, and twice he leaped high against
the stallion's flank; but this cost too much effort and always
lost him ground, as each time he was hurled heels over head by
the impact; yet before they disappeared over a rise in the ground
I was sure that Nob's persistence was bearing fruit; it seemed
to me that the horse was giving way a trifle to the right.
Nobs was between him and the main herd, to which the yearling
and filly had already fled.
As I stood waiting for Nobs' return, I could not but speculate
upon my chances should I be attacked by some formidable beast.
I was some distance from the forest and armed with weapons in
the use of which I was quite untrained, though I had practiced
some with the spear since leaving the Kro-lu country. I must
admit that my thoughts were not pleasant ones, verging almost
upon cowardice, until I chanced to think of little Ajor alone
in this same land and armed only with a knife! I was
immediately filled with shame; but in thinking the matter over
since, I have come to the conclusion that my state of mind was
influenced largely by my approximate nakedness. If you have
never wandered about in broad daylight garbed in a bit of
red-deer skin in inadequate length, you can have no conception
of the sensation of futility that overwhelms one. Clothes, to
a man accustomed to wearing clothes, impart a certain
self-confidence; lack of them induces panic.
But no beast attacked me, though I saw several menacing forms
passing through the dark aisles of the forest. At last I
commenced to worry over Nobs' protracted absence and to fear
that something had befallen him. I was coiling my rope to
start out in search of him, when I saw the stallion leap into
view at almost the same spot behind which he had disappeared,
and at his heels ran Nobs. Neither was running so fast or
furiously as when last I had seen them.
The horse, as he approached me, I could see was laboring hard;
yet he kept gamely to his task, and Nobs, too. The splendid
fellow was driving the quarry straight toward me. I crouched
behind my bush and laid my noose in readiness to throw. As the
two approached my hiding-place, Nobs reduced his speed, and the
stallion, evidently only too glad of the respite, dropped into
a trot. It was at this gait that he passed me; my rope-hand
flew forward; the honda, well down, held the noose open,
and the beautiful bay fairly ran his head into it.
Instantly he wheeled to dash off at right angles. I braced
myself with the rope around my hip and brought him to a
sudden stand. Rearing and struggling, he fought for his liberty
while Nobs, panting and with lolling tongue, came and threw
himself down near me. He seemed to know that his work was done
and that he had earned his rest. The stallion was pretty well
spent, and after a few minutes of struggling he stood with feet
far spread, nostrils dilated and eyes wide, watching me as I
edged toward him, taking in the slack of the rope as I advanced.
A dozen times he reared and tried to break away; but always I
spoke soothingly to him and after an hour of effort I succeeded
in reaching his head and stroking his muzzle. Then I gathered
a handful of grass and offered it to him, and always I talked
to him in a quiet and reassuring voice.
I had expected a battle royal; but on the contrary I found his
taming a matter of comparative ease. Though wild, he was
gentle to a degree, and of such remarkable intelligence that
he soon discovered that I had no intention of harming him.
After that, all was easy. Before that day was done, I had taught
him to lead and to stand while I stroked his head and flanks, and
to eat from my hand, and had the satisfaction of seeing the light
of fear die in his large, intelligent eyes.
The following day I fashioned a hackamore from a piece which I
cut from the end of my long Galu rope, and then I mounted him
fully prepared for a struggle of titanic proportions in which I
was none too sure that he would not come off victor; but he
never made the slightest effort to unseat me, and from then on
his education was rapid. No horse ever learned more quickly
the meaning of the rein and the pressure of the knees. I think
he soon learned to love me, and I know that I loved him; while
he and Nobs were the best of pals. I called him Ace. I had a
friend who was once in the French flying-corps, and when Ace
let himself out, he certainly flew.
I cannot explain to you, nor can you understand, unless you too
are a horseman, the exhilarating feeling of well-being which
pervaded me from the moment that I commenced riding Ace. I was
a new man, imbued with a sense of superiority that led me to
feel that I could go forth and conquer all Caspak single-handed.
Now, when I needed meat, I ran it down on Ace and roped it, and
when some great beast with which we could not cope threatened us,
we galloped away to safety; but for the most part the creatures
we met looked upon us in terror, for Ace and I in combination
presented a new and unusual beast beyond their experience and ken.
For five days I rode back and forth across the southern end of
the Galu country without seeing a human being; yet all the time
I was working slowly toward the north, for I had determined to
comb the territory thoroughly in search of Ajor; but on the
fifth day as I emerged from a forest, I saw some distance ahead
of me a single small figure pursued by many others. Instantly I
recognized the quarry as Ajor. The entire party was fully a
mile away from me, and they were crossing my path at right angles.
Ajor a few hundred yards in advance of those who followed her.
One of her pursuers was far in advance of the others, and was
gaining upon her rapidly. With a word and a pressure of the
knees I sent Ace leaping out into the open, and with Nobs
running close alongside, we raced toward her.
At first none of them saw us; but as we neared Ajor, the pack
behind the foremost pursuer discovered us and set up such a
howl as I never before have heard. They were all Galus, and I
soon recognized the foremost as Du-seen. He was almost upon
Ajor now, and with a sense of terror such as I had never before
experienced, I saw that he ran with his knife in his hand, and
that his intention was to slay rather than capture. I could
not understand it, but I could only urge Ace to greater speed,
and most nobly did the wondrous creature respond to my demands.
If ever a four-footed creature approximated flying, it was Ace
that day.
Du-seen, intent upon his brutal design, had as yet not noticed us.
He was within a pace of Ajor when Ace and I dashed between them,
and I, leaning down to the left, swept my little barbarian into
the hollow of an arm and up on the withers of my glorious Ace.
We had snatched her from the very clutches of Du-seen, who halted,
mystified and raging. Ajor, too, was mystified, as we had come
up from diagonally behind her so that she had no idea that we
were near until she was swung to Ace's back. The little savage
turned with drawn knife to stab me, thinking that I was some
new enemy, when her eyes found my face and she recognized me.
With a little sob she threw her arms about my neck, gasping:
"My Tom! My Tom!"
And then Ace sank suddenly into thick mud to his belly, and
Ajor and I were thrown far over his head. He had run into one
of those numerous springs which cover Caspak. Sometimes they
are little lakes, again but tiny pools, and often mere
quagmires of mud, as was this one overgrown with lush grasses
which effectually hid its treacherous identity. It is a wonder
that Ace did not break a leg, so fast he was going when he
fell; but he didn't, though with four good legs he was unable
to wallow from the mire. Ajor and I had sprawled face down in
the covering grasses and so had not sunk deeply; but when we
tried to rise, we found that there was not footing, and
presently we saw that Du-seen and his followers were coming
down upon us. There was no escape. It was evident that we
were doomed.
"Slay me!" begged Ajor. "Let me die at thy loved hands rather
than beneath the knife of this hateful thing, for he will kill me.
He has sworn to kill me. Last night he captured me, and when
later he would have his way with me, I struck him with my
fists and with my knife I stabbed him, and then I escaped,
leaving him raging in pain and thwarted desire. Today they
searched for me and found me; and as I fled, Du-seen ran after
me crying that he would slay me. Kill me, my Tom, and then fall
upon thine own spear, for they will kill you horribly if they
take you alive."
I couldn't kill her--not at least until the last moment; and I
told her so, and that I loved her, and that until death came, I
would live and fight for her.
Nobs had followed us into the bog and had done fairly well at
first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could
only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Du-seen
and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp.
I saw that Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors.
The alliance against Jor the chief had, therefore, been
consummated, and this horde was already marching upon the
Galu city. I sighed as I thought how close I had been to saving
not only Ajor but her father and his people from defeat and death.
Beyond the swamp was a dense wood. Could we have reached this,
we would have been safe; but it might as well have been a
hundred miles away as a hundred yards across that hidden lake
of sticky mud. Upon the edge of the swamp Du-seen and his
horde halted to revile us. They could not reach us with their
hands; but at a command from Du-seen they fitted arrows to
their bows, and I saw that the end had come. Ajor huddled
close to me, and I took her in my arms. "I love you, Tom," she
said, "only you." Tears came to my eyes then, not tears of
self-pity for my predicament, but tears from a heart filled
with a great love--a heart that sees the sun of its life and
its love setting even as it rises.
The renegade Galus and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for
the word from Du-seen that would launch that barbed avalanche
of death upon us, when there broke from the wood beyond the
swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon the ears of
man--the sharp staccato of at least two score rifles fired
rapidly at will. Down went the Galu and Kro-lu warriors like
tenpins before that deadly fusillade.
What could it mean? To me it meant but one thing, and that was
that Hollis and Short and the others had scaled the cliffs and
made their way north to the Galu country upon the opposite side
of the island in time to save Ajor and me from almost certain death.
I didn't have to have an introduction to them to know that the
men who held those rifles were the men of my own party; and when,
a few minutes later, they came forth from their concealment,
my eyes verified my hopes. There they were, every man-jack of
them; and with them were a thousand straight, sleek warriors of
the Galu race; and ahead of the others came two men in the garb
of Galus. Each was tall and straight and wonderfully muscled;
yet they differed as Ace might differ from a perfect specimen
of another species. As they approached the mire, Ajor held forth
her arms and cried, "Jor, my chief! My father!" and the elder
of the two rushed in knee-deep to rescue her, and then the other
came close and looked into my face, and his eyes went wide, and
mine too, and I cried: "Bowen! For heaven's sake, Bowen Tyler!"
It was he. My search was ended. Around me were all my company
and the man we had searched a new world to find. They cut
saplings from the forest and laid a road into the swamp before
they could get us all out, and then we marched back to the city
of Jor the Galu chief, and there was great rejoicing when Ajor
came home again mounted upon the glossy back of the stallion Ace.
Tyler and Hollis and Short and all the rest of us Americans
nearly worked our jaws loose on the march back to the village,
and for days afterward we kept it up. They told me how they had
crossed the barrier cliffs in five days, working twenty-four
hours a day in three eight-hour shifts with two reliefs to each
shift alternating half-hourly. Two men with electric drills
driven from the dynamos aboard the Toreador drilled two
holes four feet apart in the face of the cliff and in the same
horizontal planes. The holes slanted slightly downward. Into these
holes the iron rods brought as a part of our equipment and for
just this purpose were inserted, extending about a foot beyond
the face of the rock, across these two rods a plank was laid,
and then the next shift, mounting to the new level, bored two
more holes five feet above the new platform, and so on.
During the nights the searchlights from the Toreador were
kept playing upon the cliff at the point where the drills were
working, and at the rate of ten feet an hour the summit was
reached upon the fifth day. Ropes were lowered, blocks lashed
to trees at the top, and crude elevators rigged, so that by the
night of the fifth day the entire party, with the exception of
the few men needed to man the Toreador, were within Caspak
with an abundance of arms, ammunition and equipment.
From then on, they fought their way north in search of me,
after a vain and perilous effort to enter the hideous
reptile-infested country to the south. Owing to the number of
guns among them, they had not lost a man; but their path was
strewn with the dead creatures they had been forced to slay to
win their way to the north end of the island, where they had
found Bowen and his bride among the Galus of Jor.
The reunion between Bowen and Nobs was marked by a frantic
display upon Nobs' part, which almost stripped Bowen of the
scanty attire that the Galu custom had vouchsafed him. When we
arrived at the Galu city, Lys La Rue was waiting to welcome us.
She was Mrs. Tyler now, as the master of the Toreador had
married them the very day that the search-party had found them,
though neither Lys nor Bowen would admit that any civil or
religious ceremony could have rendered more sacred the bonds
with which God had united them.
Neither Bowen nor the party from the Toreador had seen any
sign of Bradley and his party. They had been so long lost now
that any hopes for them must be definitely abandoned. The Galus
had heard rumors of them, as had the Western Kro-lu and Band-lu;
but none had seen aught of them since they had left Fort Dinosaur
months since.
We rested in Jor's village for a fortnight while we prepared
for the southward journey to the point where the Toreador
was to lie off shore in wait for us. During these two weeks
Chal-az came up from the Krolu country, now a full-fledged Galu.
He told us that the remnants of Al-tan's party had been slain
when they attempted to re-enter Kro-lu. Chal-az had been made
chief, and when he rose, had left the tribe under a new leader
whom all respected.
Nobs stuck close to Bowen; but Ace and Ajor and I went out upon
many long rides through the beautiful north Galu country.
Chal-az had brought my arms and ammunition up from Kro-lu with
him; but my clothes were gone; nor did I miss them once I
became accustomed to the free attire of the Galu.
At last came the time for our departure; upon the following
morning we were to set out toward the south and the Toreador
and dear old California. I had asked Ajor to go with us; but
Jor her father had refused to listen to the suggestion. No pleas
could swerve him from his decision: Ajor, the cos-ata-lo,
from whom might spring a new and greater Caspakian race, could
not be spared. I might have any other she among the Galus;
but Ajor--no!
The poor child was heartbroken; and as for me, I was slowly
realizing the hold that Ajor had upon my heart and wondered how
I should get along without her. As I held her in my arms that
last night, I tried to imagine what life would be like without
her, for at last there had come to me the realization that I
loved her--loved my little barbarian; and as I finally tore
myself away and went to my own hut to snatch a few hours' sleep
before we set off upon our long journey on the morrow, I
consoled myself with the thought that time would heal the wound
and that back in my native land I should find a mate who would
be all and more to me than little Ajor could ever be--a woman
of my own race and my own culture.
Morning came more quickly than I could have wished. I rose and
breakfasted, but saw nothing of Ajor. It was best, I thought,
that I go thus without the harrowing pangs of a last farewell.
The party formed for the march, an escort of Galu warriors
ready to accompany us. I could not even bear to go to Ace's
corral and bid him farewell. The night before, I had given him
to Ajor, and now in my mind the two seemed inseparable.
And so we marched away, down the street flanked with its stone
houses and out through the wide gateway in the stone wall which
surrounds the city and on across the clearing toward the forest
through which we must pass to reach the northern boundary of
Galu, beyond which we would turn south. At the edge of the
forest I cast a backward glance at the city which held my
heart, and beside the massive gateway I saw that which brought
me to a sudden halt. It was a little figure leaning against
one of the great upright posts upon which the gates swing--a
crumpled little figure; and even at this distance I could see
its shoulders heave to the sobs that racked it. It was the
last straw.
Bowen was near me. "Good-bye old man," I said. "I'm going back."
He looked at me in surprise. "Good-bye, old man," he said, and
grasped my hand. "I thought you'd do it in the end."
And then I went back and took Ajor in my arms and kissed the
tears from her eyes and a smile to her lips while together we
watched the last of the Americans disappear into the forest.