The creature, walking erect and carrying a stick in one hand, advanced
at a slow, lumbering gait. It walked directly toward the gryfs who
moved aside, as though afraid. Tarzan watched intently. The Tor-o-don
was now quite close to one of the triceratops. It swung its head and
snapped at him viciously. Instantly the Tor-o-don sprang in and
commenced to belabor the huge beast across the face with his stick. To
the ape-man's amazement the GRYF, that might have annihilated the
comparatively puny Tor-o-don instantly in any of a dozen ways, cringed
like a whipped cur.
"Whee-oo! Whee-oo!" shouted the Tor-o-don and the GRYF came slowly
toward him. A whack on the median horn brought it to a stop. Then the
Tor-o-don walked around behind it, clambered up its tail and seated
himself astraddle of the huge back. "Whee-oo!" he shouted and prodded
the beast with a sharp point of his stick. The GRYF commenced to move
off.
So rapt had Tarzan been in the scene below him that he had given no
thought to escape, for he realized that for him and Pan-at-lee time had
in these brief moments turned back countless ages to spread before
their eyes a page of the dim and distant past. They two had looked upon
the first man and his primitive beasts of burden.
And now the ridden GRYF halted and looked up at them, bellowing. It was
sufficient. The creature had warned its master of their presence.
Instantly the Tor-o-don urged the beast close beneath the tree which
held them, at the same time leaping to his feet upon the horny back.
Tarzan saw the bestial face, the great fangs, the mighty muscles. From
the loins of such had sprung the human race--and only from such could
it have sprung, for only such as this might have survived the horrid
dangers of the age that was theirs.
The Tor-o-don beat upon his breast and growled horribly--hideous,
uncouth, beastly. Tarzan rose to his full height upon a swaying
branch--straight and beautiful as a demigod--unspoiled by the taint of
civilization--a perfect specimen of what the human race might have been
had the laws of man not interfered with the laws of nature.
The Present fitted an arrow to his bow and drew the shaft far back. The
Past basing its claims upon brute strength sought to reach the other
and drag him down; but the loosed arrow sank deep into the savage heart
and the Past sank back into the oblivion that had claimed his kind.
"Tarzan-jad-guru!" murmured Pan-at-lee, unknowingly giving him out of
the fullness of her admiration the same title that the warriors of her
tribe had bestowed upon him.
The ape-man turned to her. "Pan-at-lee," he said, "these beasts may
keep us treed here indefinitely. I doubt if we can escape together, but
I have a plan. You remain here, hiding yourself in the foliage, while I
start back across the gorge in sight of them and yelling to attract
their attention. Unless they have more brains than I suspect they will
follow me. When they are gone you make for the cliff. Wait for me in
the cave not longer than today. If I do not come by tomorrow's sun you
will have to start back for Kor-ul-JA alone. Here is a joint of deer
meat for you." He had severed one of the deer's hind legs and this he
passed up to her.
"I cannot desert you," she said simply; "it is not the way of my people
to desert a friend and ally. Om-at would never forgive me."
"Tell Om-at that I commanded you to go," replied Tarzan.
"It is a command?" she asked.
"It is! Good-bye, Pan-at-lee. Hasten back to Om-at--you are a fitting
mate for the chief of Kor-ul-JA." He moved off slowly through the trees.
"Good-bye, Tarzan-jad-guru!" she called after him. "Fortunate are my
Om-at and his Pan-at-lee in owning such a friend."
Tarzan, shouting aloud, continued upon his way and the great gryfs,
lured by his voice, followed beneath. His ruse was evidently proving
successful and he was filled with elation as he led the bellowing
beasts farther and farther from Pan-at-lee. He hoped that she would
take advantage of the opportunity afforded her for escape, yet at the
same time he was filled with concern as to her ability to survive the
dangers which lay between Kor-ul-GRYF and Kor-ul-JA. There were lions
and Tor-o-dons and the unfriendly tribe of Kor-ul-lul to hinder her
progress, though the distance in itself to the cliffs of her people was
not great.
He realized her bravery and understood the resourcefulness that she
must share in common with all primitive people who, day by day, must
contend face to face with nature's law of the survival of the fittest,
unaided by any of the numerous artificial protections that civilization
has thrown around its brood of weaklings.
Several times during this crossing of the gorge Tarzan endeavored to
outwit his keen pursuers, but all to no avail. Double as he would he
could not throw them off his track and ever as he changed his course
they changed theirs to conform. Along the verge of the forest upon the
southeastern side of the gorge he sought some point at which the trees
touched some negotiable portion of the cliff, but though he traveled
far both up and down the gorge he discovered no such easy avenue of
escape. The ape-man finally commenced to entertain an idea of the
hopelessness of his case and to realize to the full why the Kor-ul-GRYF
had been religiously abjured by the races of Pal-ul-don for all these
many ages.
Night was falling and though since early morning he had sought
diligently a way out of this cul-de-sac he was no nearer to liberty
than at the moment the first bellowing GRYF had charged him as he
stooped over the carcass of his kill: but with the falling of night
came renewed hope for, in common with the great cats, Tarzan was, to a
greater or lesser extent, a nocturnal beast. It is true he could not
see by night as well as they, but that lack was largely recompensed for
by the keenness of his scent and the highly developed sensitiveness of
his other organs of perception. As the blind follow and interpret their
Braille characters with deft fingers, so Tarzan reads the book of the
jungle with feet and hands and eyes and ears and nose; each
contributing its share to the quick and accurate translation of the
text.
But again he was doomed to be thwarted by one vital weakness--he did
not know the GRYF, and before the night was over he wondered if the
things never slept, for wheresoever he moved they moved also, and
always they barred his road to liberty. Finally, just before dawn, he
relinquished his immediate effort and sought rest in a friendly tree
crotch in the safety of the middle terrace.
Once again was the sun high when Tarzan awoke, rested and refreshed.
Keen to the necessities of the moment he made no effort to locate his
jailers lest in the act he might apprise them of his movements. Instead
he sought cautiously and silently to melt away among the foliage of the
trees. His first move, however, was heralded by a deep bellow from
below.
Among the numerous refinements of civilization that Tarzan had failed
to acquire was that of profanity, and possibly it is to be regretted
since there are circumstances under which it is at least a relief to
pent emotion. And it may be that in effect Tarzan resorted to profanity
if there can be physical as well as vocal swearing, since immediately
the bellow announced that his hopes had been again frustrated, he
turned quickly and seeing the hideous face of the GRYF below him seized
a large fruit from a nearby branch and hurled it viciously at the
horned snout. The missile struck full between the creature's eyes,
resulting in a reaction that surprised the ape-man; it did not arouse
the beast to a show of revengeful rage as Tarzan had expected and
hoped; instead the creature gave a single vicious side snap at the
fruit as it bounded from his skull and then turned sulkily away,
walking off a few steps.
There was that in the act that recalled immediately to Tarzan's mind
similar action on the preceding day when the Tor-o-don had struck one
of the creatures across the face with his staff, and instantly there
sprung to the cunning and courageous brain a plan of escape from his
predicament that might have blanched the cheek of the most heroic.
The gambling instinct is not strong among creatures of the wild; the
chances of their daily life are sufficient stimuli for the beneficial
excitement of their nerve centers. It has remained for civilized man,
protected in a measure from the natural dangers of existence, to invent
artificial stimulants in the form of cards and dice and roulette
wheels. Yet when necessity bids there are no greater gamblers than the
savage denizens of the jungle, the forest, and the hills, for as
lightly as you roll the ivory cubes upon the green cloth they will
gamble with death--their own lives the stake.
And so Tarzan would gamble now, pitting the seemingly wild deductions
of his shrewd brain against all the proofs of the bestial ferocity of
his antagonists that his experience of them had adduced--against all
the age-old folklore and legend that had been handed down for countless
generations and passed on to him through the lips of Pan-at-lee.
Yet as he worked in preparation for the greatest play that man can make
in the game of life, he smiled; nor was there any indication of haste
or excitement or nervousness in his demeanor.
First he selected a long, straight branch about two inches in diameter
at its base. This he cut from the tree with his knife, removed the
smaller branches and twigs until he had fashioned a pole about ten feet
in length. This he sharpened at the smaller end. The staff finished to
his satisfaction he looked down upon the triceratops.
"Whee-oo!" he cried.
Instantly the beasts raised their heads and looked at him. From the
throat of one of them came faintly a low rumbling sound.
"Whee-oo!" repeated Tarzan and hurled the balance of the carcass of the
deer to them.
Instantly the gryfs fell upon it with much bellowing, one of them
attempting to seize it and keep it from the other: but finally the
second obtained a hold and an instant later it had been torn asunder
and greedily devoured. Once again they looked up at the ape-man and
this time they saw him descending to the ground.
One of them started toward him. Again Tarzan repeated the weird cry of
the Tor-o-don. The GRYF halted in his track, apparently puzzled, while
Tarzan slipped lightly to the earth and advanced toward the nearer
beast, his staff raised menacingly and the call of the first-man upon
his lips.
Would the cry be answered by the low rumbling of the beast of burden or
the horrid bellow of the man-eater? Upon the answer to this question
hung the fate of the ape-man.
Pan-at-lee was listening intently to the sounds of the departing gryfs
as Tarzan led them cunningly from her, and when she was sure that they
were far enough away to insure her safe retreat she dropped swiftly
from the branches to the ground and sped like a frightened deer across
the open space to the foot of the cliff, stepped over the body of the
Tor-o-don who had attacked her the night before and was soon climbing
rapidly up the ancient stone pegs of the deserted cliff village. In the
mouth of the cave near that which she had occupied she kindled a fire
and cooked the haunch of venison that Tarzan had left her, and from one
of the trickling streams that ran down the face of the escarpment she
obtained water to satisfy her thirst.
All day she waited, hearing in the distance, and sometimes close at
hand, the bellowing of the gryfs which pursued the strange creature
that had dropped so miraculously into her life. For him she felt the
same keen, almost fanatical loyalty that many another had experienced
for Tarzan of the Apes. Beast and human, he had held them to him with
bonds that were stronger than steel--those of them that were clean and
courageous, and the weak and the helpless; but never could Tarzan claim
among his admirers the coward, the ingrate or the scoundrel; from such,
both man and beast, he had won fear and hatred.
To Pan-at-lee he was all that was brave and noble and heroic and, too,
he was Om-at's friend--the friend of the man she loved. For any one of
these reasons Pan-at-lee would have died for Tarzan, for such is the
loyalty of the simple-minded children of nature. It has remained for
civilization to teach us to weigh the relative rewards of loyalty and
its antithesis. The loyalty of the primitive is spontaneous,
unreasoning, unselfish and such was the loyalty of Pan-at-lee for the
Tarmangani.
And so it was that she waited that day and night, hoping that he would
return that she might accompany him back to Om-at, for her experience
had taught her that in the face of danger two have a better chance than
one. But Tarzan-jad-guru had not come, and so upon the following
morning Pan-at-lee set out upon her return to Kor-ul-JA.
She knew the dangers and yet she faced them with the stolid
indifference of her race. When they directly confronted and menaced her
would be time enough to experience fear or excitement or confidence. In
the meantime it was unnecessary to waste nerve energy by anticipating
them. She moved therefore through her savage land with no greater show
of concern than might mark your sauntering to a corner drug-store for a
sundae. But this is your life and that is Pan-at-lee's and even now as
you read this Pan-at-lee may be sitting upon the edge of the recess of
Om-at's cave while the JA and JATO roar from the gorge below and from
the ridge above, and the Kor-ul-lul threaten upon the south and the
Ho-don from the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho far below, for Pan-at-lee still
lives and preens her silky coat of jet beneath the tropical moonlight
of Pal-ul-don.
But she was not to reach Kor-ul-JA this day, nor the next, nor for many
days after though the danger that threatened her was neither Waz-don
enemy nor savage beast.
She came without misadventure to the Kor-ul-lul and after descending
its rocky southern wall without catching the slightest glimpse of the
hereditary enemies of her people, she experienced a renewal of
confidence that was little short of practical assurance that she would
successfully terminate her venture and be restored once more to her own
people and the lover she had not seen for so many long and weary moons.
She was almost across the gorge now and moving with an extreme caution
abated no wit by her confidence, for wariness is an instinctive trait
of the primitive, something which cannot be laid aside even momentarily
if one would survive. And so she came to the trail that follows the
windings of Kor-ul-lul from its uppermost reaches down into the broad
and fertile Valley of Jad-ben-Otho.
And as she stepped into the trail there arose on either side of her
from out of the bushes that border the path, as though materialized
from thin air, a score of tall, white warriors of the Ho-don. Like a
frightened deer Pan-at-lee cast a single startled look at these
menacers of her freedom and leaped quickly toward the bushes in an
effort to escape; but the warriors were too close at hand. They closed
upon her from every side and then, drawing her knife she turned at bay,
metamorphosed by the fires of fear and hate from a startled deer to a
raging tiger-cat. They did not try to kill her, but only to subdue and
capture her; and so it was that more than a single Ho-don warrior felt
the keen edge of her blade in his flesh before they had succeeded in
overpowering her by numbers. And still she fought and scratched and bit
after they had taken the knife from her until it was necessary to tie
her hands and fasten a piece of wood between her teeth by means of
thongs passed behind her head.
At first she refused to walk when they started off in the direction of
the valley but after two of them had seized her by the hair and dragged
her for a number of yards she thought better of her original decision
and came along with them, though still as defiant as her bound wrists
and gagged mouth would permit.
Near the entrance to Kor-ul-lul they came upon another body of their
warriors with which were several Waz-don prisoners from the tribe of
Kor-ul-lul. It was a raiding party come up from a Ho-don city of the
valley after slaves. This Pan-at-lee knew for the occurrence was by no
means unusual. During her lifetime the tribe to which she belonged had
been sufficiently fortunate, or powerful, to withstand successfully the
majority of such raids made upon them, but yet Pan-at-lee had known of
friends and relatives who had been carried into slavery by the Ho-don
and she knew, too, another thing which gave her hope, as doubtless it
did to each of the other captives--that occasionally the prisoners
escaped from the cities of the hairless whites.
After they had joined the other party the entire band set forth into
the valley and presently, from the conversation of her captors,
Pan-at-lee knew that she was headed for A-lur, the City of Light; while
in the cave of his ancestors, Om-at, chief of the Kor-ul-JA, bemoaned
the loss of both his friend and she that was to have been his mate.
8