“And she has a special guard?”
“A man is always before her door at night,” I assured him.
“Only one?” he demanded, as though he thought the guard insufficient.
“In addition to the regular watch, we consider one man enough; she has
no enemies aboard the _Sofal_.” These people were certainly solicitous
of the welfare and safety of their royalty, I thought; and, it seemed to
me, unnecessarily so. But finally Vilor gave up and departed, after
begging me to give his request further thought.
“He seems even more concerned about the welfare of Duare than you,” I
remarked to Kamlot after Vilor had gone.
“Yes, I noticed that,” replied my lieutenant thoughtfully.
“There is no one more concerned about her than I,” I said, “but I cannot
see that any further precautions are necessary.”
“Nor I,” agreed Kamlot; “she is quite well protected now.”
We had dropped Vilor from our minds and were discussing other matters,
when we heard the voice of the lookout in the crow’s nest shouting, “Voo
notar!” (“A ship!”) Running to the tower deck, we got the bearings of
the stranger as the lookout announced them the second time, and, sure
enough, almost directly abeam on the starboard side we discerned the
superstructure of a ship on the horizon.
For some reason which I do not clearly understand, the visibility on
Venus is usually exceptionally good. Low fogs and haze are rare,
notwithstanding the humidity of the atmosphere. This condition may be
due to the mysterious radiation from that strange element in the
planet’s structure which illuminates her moonless nights; I do not know.
At any rate, we could see a ship, and almost immediately all was
excitement aboard the _Sofal_. Here was another prize, and the men were
eager to be at her. As we changed our course and headed for our victim,
a cheer rose from the men on deck. Weapons were issued, the bow gun and
the two tower guns were elevated to firing positions. The _Sofal_ forged
ahead at full speed.
As we approached our quarry, we saw that it was a ship of about the same
size as the _Sofal_ and bearing the insignia of Thora. Closer inspection
revealed it to be an armed merchantman.
I now ordered all but the gunners into the lower deck house, as I
planned on boarding this vessel as I had the _Sovong_ and did not wish
her to see our deck filled with armed men before we came alongside. As
before, explicit orders were issued; every man knew what was expected of
him; all were cautioned against needless killing. If I were to be a
pirate, I was going to be as humane a pirate as possible. I would not
spill blood needlessly.
I had questioned Kiron, Gamfor, and many another Thoran in my company
relative to the customs and practices of Thoran ships of war until I
felt reasonably familiar with them. I knew for instance that a warship
might search a merchantman. It was upon this that I based my hope of
getting our grappling hooks over the side of our victim before he could
suspect our true design.
When we were within hailing distance of the ship, I directed Kiron to
order her to shut down her engines, as we wished to board and search
her; and right then we ran into our first obstacle. It came in the form
of a pennant suddenly hoisted at the bow of our intended victim. It
meant nothing to me, but it did to Kiron and the other Thorans aboard
the _Sofal_.
“We’ll not board her so easily after all,” said Kiron. “She has an
ongyan on board, and that exempts her from search. It probably also
indicates that she carries a larger complement of soldiers than a
merchantman ordinarily does.”
“Whose friend?” I asked, “Yours?” for ongyan means great friend, in the
sense of eminent or exalted.
Kiron smiled. “It is a title. There are a hundred klongyan in the
oligarchy; one of them is aboard that ship. They are great friends
unquestionably, great friends of themselves; they rule Thora more
tyrannically than any jong and for themselves alone.”
“How will the men feel about attacking a ship bearing so exalted a
personage?” I inquired.
“They will fight among themselves to be the first aboard and to run a
sword through him.”
“They must not kill him,” I replied. “I have a better plan.”
“They will be hard to control once they are in the thick of a fight,”
Kiron assured me; “I have yet to see the officer who can do it. In the
old days, in the days of the jongs, there were order and discipline; but
not now.”
“There will be aboard the _Sofal_,” I averred. “Come with me; I am going
to speak to the men.”
Together we entered the lower deck house where the majority of the
ship’s company was massed, waiting for the command to attack. There were
nearly a hundred rough and burly fighting men, nearly all of whom were
ignorant and brutal. We had been together as commander and crew for too
short a time for me to gauge their sentiments toward me; but I realized
that there must be no question in any mind as to who was captain of the
ship, no matter what they thought of me.
Kiron had called them to attention as we entered, and now every eye was
on me as I started to speak. “We are about to take another ship,” I
began, “on board which is one whom Kiron tells me you will want to kill.
He is an ongyan. I have come here to tell you that he must not be
killed.” Growls of disapproval greeted this statement, but, ignoring
them, I continued, “I have come here to tell you something else, because
I have been informed that no officer can control you after you enter
battle. There are reasons why it will be better for us to hold this man
prisoner than to kill him, but these have nothing to do with the
question; what you must understand is that my orders and the orders of
your other officers must be obeyed.
“We are embarked upon an enterprise that can succeed only if discipline
be enforced. I expect the enterprise to succeed. I will enforce
discipline. Insubordination or disobedience will be punishable by death.
That is all.”
As I left the room, I left behind me nearly a hundred silent men. There
was nothing to indicate what their reaction had been. Purposely, I took
Kiron out with me; I wanted the men to have an opportunity to discuss
the matter among themselves without interference by an officer. I knew
that I had no real authority over them, and that eventually they must
decide for themselves whether they would obey me; the sooner that
decision was reached the better for all of us.
Amtorian ships employ only the most primitive means of
intercommunication. There is a crude and cumbersome hand signalling
system in which flags are employed; then there is a standardized system
of trumpet calls which covers a fairly wide range of conventional
messages, but the most satisfactory medium and the one most used is the
human voice.
Since our quarry had displayed the pennant of the ongyan, we had held a
course parallel to hers and a little distance astern. On her main deck a
company of armed men was congregated. She mounted four guns, which had
been elevated into firing position. She was ready, but I think that as
yet she suspected nothing wrong in our intentions.
Now I gave orders that caused the _Sofal_ to close in upon the other
ship, and as the distance between them lessened I saw indications of
increasing excitement on the decks of our intended victim.
“What are you about?” shouted an officer from her tower deck. “Stand off
there! There is an ongyan aboard us.”
As no reply was made him, and as the _Sofal_ continued to draw nearer,
his excitement waxed. He gesticulated rapidly as he conversed with a fat
man standing at his side; then he screamed, “Stand off! or some one will
suffer for this”; but the _Sofal_ only moved steadily closer. “Stand
off, or I’ll fire!” shouted the captain.
For answer I caused all our starboard guns to be elevated into firing
position. I knew he would not dare fire now, for a single broadside from
the _Sofal_ would have sunk him in less than a minute, a contingency
which I wished to avoid as much as he.
“What do you want of us?” he demanded.
“We want to board you,” I replied, “without bloodshed if possible.”
“This is revolution! This is treason!” shouted the fat man at the
captain’s side. “I order you to stand off and leave us alone. I am the
ongyan, Moosko,” and then to the soldiers on the main deck he screamed,
“Repel them! Kill any man who sets foot upon that deck!”
XIII
CATASTROPHE
At the same moment that the ongyan, Moosko, ordered his soldiers to
repel any attempt to board his ship, her captain ordered full speed
ahead and threw her helm to starboard. She veered away from us and
leaped ahead in an effort to escape. Of course I could have sunk her,
but her loot would have been of no value to me at the bottom of the sea;
instead I directed the trumpeter at my side to sound full speed ahead to
the officer in the tower, and the chase was on.
The _Yan_, whose name was now discernible across her stern, was much
faster than Kiron had led me to believe; but the _Sofal_ was
exceptionally speedy, and it soon became obvious to all that the other
ship could not escape her. Slowly we regained the distance that we had
lost in the first, unexpected spurt of the _Yan_; slowly but surely we
were closing up on her. Then the captain of the _Yan_ did just what I
should have done had I been in his place; he kept the _Sofal_ always
directly astern of him and opened fire on us with his after tower gun
and with a gun similarly placed in the stern on the lower deck. The
maneuver was tactically faultless, since it greatly reduced the number
of guns that we could bring into play without changing our course, and
was the only one that might offer him any hope of escape.
There was something eery in the sound of that first heavy Amtorian gun
that I had heard. I saw nothing, neither smoke nor flame; there was only
a loud staccato roar more reminiscent of machine gun fire than of any
other sound. At first there was no other effect; then I saw a piece of
our starboard rail go and two of my men fall to the deck.
By this time our bow gun was in action. We were in the swell of the
_Yan_’s wake, which made accurate firing difficult. The two ships were
racing ahead at full speed; the prow of the _Sofal_ was throwing white
water and spume far to either side; the sea in the wake of the _Yan_ was
boiling, and a heavy swell that we were quartering kept the ships
rolling. The thrill of the chase and of battle was in our blood, and
above all was the venomous rattle of the big guns.
I ran to the bow to direct the fire of the gun there, and a moment later
we had the satisfaction of seeing the crew of one of the _Yan_’s guns
crumple to the deck man by man, as our gunner got his sights on them and
mowed them down.
The _Sofal_ was gaining rapidly upon the _Yan_, and our guns were
concentrating on the tower gun and the tower of the enemy. The ongyan
had long since disappeared from the upper deck, having doubtlessly
sought safety in a less exposed part of the ship, and in fact there were
only two men left alive upon the tower deck where he had stood beside
the captain; these were two of the crew of the gun that was giving us
most trouble.
I did not understand at the time why the guns of neither ship were more
effective. I knew that the T-ray was supposedly highly destructive, and
so I could not understand why neither ship had been demolished or sunk;
but that was because I had not yet learned that all the vital parts of
the ships were protected by a thin armor of the same metal of which the
large guns were composed, the only substance at all impervious to the
T-ray. Had this not been true, our fire would have long since put the
_Yan_ out of commission, as our T-rays, directed upon her after tower
gun, would have passed on through the tower, killing the men at the
controls and destroying the controls themselves. Eventually this would
have happened, but it would have been necessary first to have destroyed
the protective armor of the tower.
At last we succeeded in silencing the remaining gun, but if we were to
draw up alongside the _Yan_ we must expose ourselves to the fire of
other guns located on her main deck and the forward end of the tower. We
had already suffered some losses, and I knew that we must certainly
expect a great many more if we put ourselves in range of those other
guns; but there seemed no other alternative than to abandon the chase
entirely, and that I had no mind to do.
Giving orders to draw up along her port side, I directed the fire of the
bow gun along her rail where it would rake her port guns one by one as
we moved up on her, and gave orders that each of our starboard guns in
succession should open fire similarly as they came within range of the
_Yan_’s guns. Thus we kept a steady and continuous fire streaming upon
the unhappy craft as we drew alongside her and closed up the distance
between us.
We had suffered a number of casualties, but our losses were nothing
compared to those of the _Yan_, whose decks were now strewn with dead
and dying men. Her plight was hopeless, and her commander must at last
have realized it, for now he gave the signal of surrender and stopped
his engines. A few minutes later we were alongside and our boarding
party had clambered over her rail.
As Kamlot and I stood watching these men who were being led by Kiron to
take possession of the prize and bring certain prisoners aboard the
_Sofal_, I could not but speculate upon what their answer was to be to
my challenge for leadership. I knew that their freedom from the constant
menace of their tyrannical masters was so new to them that they might
well be expected to commit excesses, and I dreaded the result, for I had
determined to make an example of any men who disobeyed me, though I fell
in the attempt. I saw the majority of them spread over the deck under
the command of the great Zog, while Kiron led a smaller detachment to
the upper decks in search of the captain and the ongyan.
Fully five minutes must have elapsed before I saw my lieutenant emerge
from the tower of the _Yan_ with his two prisoners. He conducted them
down the companionway and across the main deck toward the _Sofal_, while
a hundred members of my pirate band watched them in silence. Not a hand
was raised against them as they passed.
Kamlot breathed a sigh of relief as the two men clambered over the rail
of the _Sofal_ and approached us. “I think that our lives hung in the
balance then, quite as much as theirs,” he said, and I agreed with him,
for if my men had started killing aboard the _Yan_ in defiance of my
orders, they would have had to kill me and those loyal to me to protect
their own lives.
The ongyan was still blustering when they were halted in front of me,
but the captain was awed. There was something about the whole incident
that mystified him, and when he got close enough to me to see the color
of my hair and eyes, I could see that he was dumfounded.
“This is an outrage,” shouted Moosko, the ongyan. “I will see that every
last man of you is destroyed for this.” He was trembling, and purple
with rage.
“See that he does not speak again unless he is spoken to,” I instructed
Kiron, and then I turned to the captain. “As soon as we have taken what
we wish from your ship,” I told him, “you will be free to continue your
voyage. I am sorry that you did not see fit to obey me when I ordered
you to stop for boarding; it would have saved many lives. The next time
you are ordered to lay to by the _Sofal_, do so; and when you return to
your country, advise other shipmasters that the _Sofal_ is abroad and
that she is to be obeyed.”
“Do you mind telling me,” he asked, “who you are and under what flag you
sail?”
“For the moment I am a Vepajan,” I replied, “but we sail under our own
flag. No country is responsible for what we do, nor are we responsible
to any country.”
Pressing the crew of the _Yan_ into service, Kamlot, Kiron, Gamfor, and
Zog had all her weapons, such of her provisions as we wished, and the
most valuable and least bulky portion of her cargo transferred to the
_Sofal_ before dark. We then threw her guns overboard and let her
proceed upon her way.
Moosko I retained as a hostage in the event that we should ever need
one; he was being held under guard on the main deck until I could
determine just what to do with him.
The Vepajan women captives we had rescued from the _Sovong_, together
with our own officers who were also quartered on the second deck, left
me no vacant cabin in which to put Moosko, and I did not wish to confine
him below deck in the hole reserved for common prisoners.
I chanced to mention the matter to Kamlot in the presence of Vilor, when
the latter immediately suggested that he would share his own small cabin
with Moosko and be responsible for him. As this seemed an easy solution
of the problem, I ordered Moosko turned over to Vilor, who took him at
once to his cabin.
The pursuit of the _Yan_ had taken us off our course, and now, as we
headed once more toward Vepaja, a dark land mass was dimly visible to
starboard. I could not but wonder what mysteries lay beyond that shadowy
coast line, what strange beasts and men inhabited that _terra incognita_
that stretched away into Strabol and the unexplored equatorial regions
of Venus. To partially satisfy my curiosity, I went to the chart room,
and after determining our position as accurately as I could by dead
reckoning, I discovered that we were off the shore of Noobol. I
remembered having heard Danus mention this country, but I could not
recall what he had told me about it.
Lured by imaginings, I went out onto the tower deck and stood alone,
looking out across the faintly illuminated nocturnal waters of Amtor
toward mysterious Noobol. The wind had risen to almost the proportions
of a gale, the first that I had encountered since my coming to the
Shepherd’s Star; heavy seas were commencing to run, but I had every
confidence in the ship and in the ability of my officers to navigate her
under any circumstances; so I was not perturbed by the increasing
violence of the storm. It occurred to me though that the women aboard
might be frightened, and my thoughts, which were seldom absent from her
for long, returned to Duare. Perhaps she was frightened!
Even no excuse is a good excuse to the man who wishes to see the object
of his infatuation; but now I prided myself that I had a real reason for
seeing her and one that she herself must appreciate, since it was
prompted by solicitude for her welfare. And so I went down the
companionway to the second deck with the intention of whistling before
the door of Duare; but as I had to pass directly by Vilor’s cabin, I
thought that I would take the opportunity to look in on my prisoner.
There was a moment’s silence following my signal, and then Vilor bade me
enter. As I stepped into the cabin, I was surprised to see an angan
sitting there with Moosko and Vilor. Vilor’s embarrassment was obvious;
Moosko appeared ill at ease and the birdman frightened. That they were
disconcerted did not surprise me, for it is not customary for members of
the superior race to fraternize with klangan socially. But if they were
embarrassed, I was not. I was more inclined to be angry. The position of
the Vepajans aboard the _Sofal_ was a delicate one. We were few in
numbers, and our ascendency depended wholly upon the respect we
engendered and maintained in the minds of the Thorans, who constituted
the majority of our company, and who looked up to the Vepajans as their
superiors despite the efforts of their leaders to convince them of the
equality of all men.
“Your quarters are forward,” I said to the angan; “you do not belong
here.”
“It is not his fault,” said Vilor, as the birdman rose to leave the
cabin. “Moosko, strange as it may seem, had never seen an angan; and I
fetched this fellow here merely to satisfy his curiosity. I am sorry if
I did wrong.”
“Of course,” I said, “that puts a slightly different aspect on the
matter, but I think it will be better if the prisoner inspects the
klangan on deck where they belong. He has my permission to do so
tomorrow.”
The angan departed, I exchanged a few more words with Vilor, and then I
left him with his prisoner and turned toward the after cabin where Duare
was quartered, the episode that had just occurred fading from my mind
almost immediately, to be replaced by far more pleasant thoughts.
There was a light in Duare’s cabin as I whistled before her door,
wondering if she would invite me in or ignore my presence. For a time
there was no response to my signal, and I had about determined that she
would not see me, when I heard her soft, low voice inviting me to enter.
“You are persistent,” she said, but there was less anger in her voice
than when last she had spoken to me.
“I came to ask if the storm has frightened you and to assure you that
there is no danger.”
“I am not afraid,” she replied. “Was that all that you wished to say?”
It sounded very much like a dismissal. “No,” I assured her, “nor did I
come solely for the purpose of saying it.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What else could you have to say to me—that you
have not already said?”
“Perhaps I wished to repeat,” I suggested.
“You must not!” she cried.
I came closer to her. “Look at me, Duare; look me in the eyes and tell
me that you do not like to hear me tell you that I love you!”
Her eyes fell. “I must not listen!” she whispered and rose as though to
leave the room.
I was mad with love for her; her near presence sent the hot blood
boiling through my veins; I seized her in my arms and drew her to me;
before she could prevent it, I covered her lips with mine. Then she
partially tore away from me, and I saw a dagger gleaming in her hand.
“You are right,” I said. “Strike! I have done an unforgivable thing. My
only excuse is my great love for you; it swept away reason and honor.”
Her dagger hand dropped to her side. “I cannot,” she sobbed, and,
turning, fled from the room.
I went back to my own cabin, cursing myself for a beast and a cad. I
could not understand how it had been possible for me to have committed
such an unpardonable act. I reviled myself, and at the same time the
memory of that soft body crushed against mine and those perfect lips
against my lips suffused me with a warm glow of contentment that seemed
far removed from repentance.
I lay awake for a long time after I went to bed, thinking of Duare,
recalling all that had ever passed between us. I found a hidden meaning
in her cry, “I must not listen!” I rejoiced in the facts that once she
had refused to consign me to death at the hands of others and that again
she had refused to kill me herself. Her “I cannot” rang in my ears
almost like an avowal of love. My better judgment told that I was quite
mad, but I found joy in hugging my madness to me.
The storm increased to such terrific fury during the night that the
screeching of the wind and the wild plunging of the _Sofal_ awakened me
just before dawn. Arising immediately, I went on deck, where the wind
almost carried me away. Great waves lifted the _Sofal_ on high, only to
plunge her the next moment into watery abysses. The ship was pitching
violently; occasionally a huge wave broke across her bow and flooded the
main deck; across her starboard quarter loomed a great land mass that
seemed perilously close. The situation appeared fraught with danger.
I entered the control room and found both Honan and Gamfor with the
helmsman. They were worried because of our proximity to land. Should
either the engines or the steering device fail, we must inevitably be
driven ashore. I told them to remain where they were, and then I went
down to the second deck house to arouse Kiron, Kamlot, and Zog.
As I turned aft from the foot of the companionway on the second deck, I
noticed that the door of Vilor’s cabin was swinging open and closing
again with each roll of the vessel; but I gave the matter no particular
thought at the time and passed on to awaken my other lieutenants. Having
done so, I kept on to Duare’s cabin, fearing that, if awake, she might
be frightened by the rolling of the ship and the shrieking of the wind.
To my surprise, I found her door swinging on its hinges.
Something, I do not know what, aroused my suspicion that all was not
right far more definitely than the rather unimportant fact that the door
to her outer cabin was unlatched. Stepping quickly inside, I uncovered
the light and glanced quickly about the room. There was nothing amiss
except, perhaps, the fact that the door to the inner cabin where she
slept was also open and swinging on its hinges. I was sure that no one
could be sleeping in there while both those doors were swinging and
banging. It was possible, of course, that Duare was too frightened to
get up and close them.
I stepped to the inner doorway and called her name aloud. There was no
reply. I called again, louder; again, silence was my only answer. Now I
was definitely perturbed. Stepping into the room, I uncovered the light
and looked at the bed. It was empty—Duare was not there! But in the far
corner of the cabin lay the body of the man who had stood guard outside
her door.
Throwing conventions overboard, I hastened to each of the adjoining
cabins where the rest of the Vepajan women were quartered. All were
there except Duare. They had not seen her; they did not know where she
was. Frantic from apprehension, I ran back to Kamlot’s cabin and
acquainted him with my tragic discovery. He was stunned.
“She must be on board,” he cried. “Where else can she be?”
“I know she _must_ be,” I replied, “but something tells me she is not.
We must search the ship at once—from stem to stern.”
Zog and Kiron were emerging from their cabins as I came from Kamlot’s. I
told them of my discovery and ordered the search commenced; then I
hailed a member of the watch and sent him to the crow’s nest to question
the lookout. I wanted to know whether he had seen anything unusual
transpiring on the ship during his watch, for from his lofty perch he
could overlook the entire vessel.
“Muster every man,” I told Kamlot; “account for every human being on
board; search every inch of the ship.”
As the men left to obey my instructions, I recalled the coincidence of
the two cabin doors swinging wide—Duare’s and Vilor’s. I could not
imagine what relation either fact had to the other, but I was
investigating everything, whether it was of a suspicious nature or not;
so I ran quickly to Vilor’s cabin, and the moment that I uncovered the
light I saw that both Vilor and Moosko were missing. But where were
they? No man could have left the _Sofal_ in that storm and lived, even
could he have launched a boat, which would have been impossible of
accomplishment, even in fair weather, without detection.
Coming from Vilor’s cabin, I summoned a sailor and dispatched him to
inform Kamlot that Vilor and Moosko were missing from their cabin and
direct him to send them to me as soon as he located them; then I
returned to the quarters of the Vepajan women for the purpose of
questioning them more carefully.
I was puzzled by the disappearance of Moosko and Vilor, which, taken in
conjunction with the absence of Duare from her cabin, constituted a
mystery of major proportions; and I was trying to discover some link of
circumstance that might point a connection between the two occurrences,
when I suddenly recalled Vilor’s insistence that he be permitted to
guard Duare. Here was the first, faint suggestion of a connecting link.
However, it seemed to lead nowhere. These three people had disappeared
from their cabins, yet reason assured me that they would be found in a
short time, since it was impossible for them to leave the ship, unless—
It was that little word “unless” that terrified me most of all. Since I
had discovered that Duare was not in her cabin, a numbing fear had
assailed me that, considering herself dishonored by my avowal of love,
she had hurled herself overboard. Of what value now the fact that I
constantly upbraided myself for my lack of consideration and control? Of
what weight my vain regrets?
Yet now I saw a tiny ray of hope. If the absence of Vilor and Moosko
from their cabin and Duare from hers were more than a coincidence, then
it were safe to assume that they were together and ridiculous to believe
that all three had leaped overboard.
With these conflicting fears and hopes whirling through my brain, I came
to the quarters of the Vepajan women, which I was about to enter when
the sailor I had sent to question the lookout in the crow’s nest came
running toward me in a state of evident excitement.
“Well,” I demanded, as, breathless, he halted before me, “what did the
lookout have to say?”
“Nothing, my captain,” replied the man, his speech retarded by
excitement and exertion.
“Nothing! and why not?” I snapped.
“The lookout is dead, my captain,” gasped the sailor.
“Dead!”
“Murdered.”
“How?” I asked.
“A sword had been run through his body—from behind, I think. He lay upon
his face.”
“Go at once and inform Kamlot; tell him to replace the lookout and
investigate his death, then to report to me.”
Shaken by this ominous news, I entered the quarters of the women. They
were huddled together in one cabin, pale and frightened, but outwardly
calm.
“Have you found Duare?” one of them asked immediately.
“No,” I replied, “but I have discovered another mystery—the ongyan,
Moosko, is missing and with him the Vepajan, Vilor.”
“Vepajan!” exclaimed Byea, the woman who had questioned me concerning
Duare. “Vilor is no Vepajan.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “If he is not a Vepajan, what is he?”
“He is a Thoran spy,” she replied. “He was sent to Vepaja long ago to
steal the secret of the longevity serum, and when we were captured the
klangan took him, also, by mistake. We learned this, little by little,
aboard the _Sovong_.”
“But why was I not informed when he was brought aboard?” I demanded.
“We supposed that everyone knew it,” explained Byea, “and thought that
Vilor was transferred to the _Sofal_ as a prisoner.”
Another link in the chain of accumulating evidence! Yet I was as far as
ever from knowing where either end of the chain lay.
XIV
STORM
After questioning the women, I went to the main deck, too impatient to
await the reports of my lieutenants in the tower where I belonged. I
found that they had searched the ship and were just coming to me with
their report. None of those previously discovered missing had been
found, but the search had revealed another astounding fact—the five
klangan also were missing!
Searching certain portions of the ship had been rather dangerous work,
as she was rolling heavily, and the deck was still occasionally swept by
the larger seas; but it had been accomplished without mishap, and the
men were now congregated in a large room in the main deck house. Kamlot,
Gamfor, Kiron, Zog, and I had also entered this same room, where we were
discussing the whole mysterious affair. Honan was in the control room of
the tower.
I told them that I had just discovered that Vilor was not Vepajan but a
Thoran spy, and had reminded Kamlot of the man’s request that he be
allowed to guard the janjong. “I learned something else from Byea while
I was questioning the women,” I added. “During their captivity aboard
the _Sovong_, Vilor persisted in annoying Duare with his attentions; he
was infatuated with her.”
“I think that gives us the last bit of evidence we need to enable us to
reconstruct the hitherto seemingly inexplicable happenings of the past
night,” said Gamfor. “Vilor wished to possess Duare; Moosko wished to
escape from captivity. The former had fraternized with the klangan and
made friends of them; that was known to everyone aboard the _Sofal_.
Moosko was an ongyan; during all their lives, doubtless, the klangan
have looked upon the klongyan as the fountain heads of supreme
authority. They would believe his promises, and they would obey his
commands.
“Doubtless Vilor and Moosko worked out the details of the plot together.
They dispatched an angan to kill the lookout, lest their movements
arouse suspicion and be reported before they could carry their plan to a
successful conclusion. The lookout disposed of, the other klangan
congregated in Vilor’s cabin; then Vilor, probably accompanied by
Moosko, went to the cabin of Duare, where they killed the guard and
seized her in her sleep, silenced her with a gag, and carried her to the
gangway outside, where the klangan were waiting.
“A gale was blowing, it is true, but it was blowing toward land which
lay but a short distance to starboard; and the klangan are powerful
fliers.
“There you have what I believe to be a true picture of what happened
aboard the _Sofal_ while we slept.”
“And you believe that the klangan carried these three people to the
shores of Noobol?” I asked.
“I think there can be no question but that such is the fact,” replied
Gamfor.
“I quite agree with him,” interjected Kamlot.
“Then there is but one thing to do,” I announced. “We must turn back and
land a searching party on Noobol.”
“No boat could live in this sea,” objected Kiron.
“The storm will not last forever,” I reminded him. “We shall lie off the
shore until it abates. I am going up to the tower; I wish you men would
remain here and question the crew; it is possible that there may be some
one among them who has overheard something that will cast new light on
the subject. The klangan are great talkers, and they may have dropped
some remark that will suggest the ultimate destination Vilor and Moosko
had in mind.”
As I stepped out onto the main deck, the _Sofal_ rose upon the crest of
a great wave and then plunged nose downward into the watery abyss
beyond, tilting the deck forward at an angle of almost forty-five
degrees. The wet and slippery boards beneath my feet gave them no hold,
and I slid helplessly forward almost fifty feet before I could check my
descent. Then the ship buried her nose in a mountainous wave and a great
wall of water swept the deck from stem to stern, picking me up and
whirling me helplessly upon its crest.
For a moment I was submerged, and then a vagary of the Titan that had
seized me brought my head above the water, and I saw the _Sofal_ rolling
and pitching fifty feet away.
Even in the immensity of interstellar space I had never felt more
helpless nor more hopeless than I did at that moment on the storm-lashed
sea of an unknown world, surrounded by darkness and chaos and what
terrible creatures of this mysterious deep I could not even guess. I was
lost! Even if my comrades knew of the disaster that had overwhelmed me,
they were helpless to give me aid. No boat could live in that sea, as
Kiron had truly reminded us, and no swimmer could breast the terrific
onslaught of those racing, wind-driven mountains of water that might no
longer be described by so puny a word as wave.
Hopeless! I should not have said that; I am never without hope. If I
could not swim against the sea, perhaps I might swim with it; and at no
great distance lay land. I am an experienced distance swimmer and a
powerful man. If any man could survive in such a sea, I knew that I
could; but if I could not, I was determined that I should at least have
the satisfaction of dying fighting.
I was hampered by no clothes, as one could scarcely dignify the Amtorian
loincloth with the name of clothing; my only impediment was my weapons;
and these I hesitated to discard, knowing that my chances for survival
on that unfriendly shore would be slight were I unarmed. Neither the
belt, nor the pistol, nor the dagger inconvenienced me, and their weight
was negligible; but the sword was a different matter. If you have never
tried swimming with a sword dangling from your middle, do not attempt it
in a heavy sea. You might think that it would hang straight down and not
get in the way, but mine did not. The great waves hurled me about
mercilessly, twisting and turning me; and now my sword was buffeting me
in some tender spot, and now it was getting between my legs, and once,
when a wave turned me completely over, it came down on top of me and
struck me on the head; yet I would not discard it.
After the first few minutes of battling with the sea, I concluded that I
was in no immediate danger of being drowned. I could keep my head above
the waves often enough and long enough to insure sufficient air for my
lungs; and, the water being warm, I was in no danger of being chilled to
exhaustion, as so often occurs when men are thrown into cold seas.
Therefore, as closely as I could anticipate any contingency in this
unfamiliar world, there remained but two major and immediate threats
against my life. The first lay in the possibility of attack by some
ferocious monster of the Amtorian deeps; the second, and by far the more
serious, the storm-lashed shore upon which I must presently attempt to
make a safe landing.
This in itself should have been sufficient to dishearten me, for I had
seen seas breaking upon too many shores to lightly ignore the menace of
those incalculable tons of hurtling waters pounding, crashing, crushing,
tearing their way even into the rocky heart of the eternal hills.
I swam slowly in the direction of the shore, which, fortunately for me,
was in the direction that the storm was carrying me. I had no mind to
sap my strength by unnecessarily overexerting myself; and so, as I took
it easily, content to keep afloat as I moved slowly shoreward, daylight
came; and as each succeeding wave lifted me to its summit, I saw the
shore with increasing clearness. It lay about a mile from me, and its
aspect was most forbidding. Huge combers were breaking upon a rocky
coast line, throwing boiling fountains of white spume high in air; above
the howling of the tempest, the thunder of the surf rolled menacingly
across that mile of angry sea to warn me that death lay waiting to
embrace me at the threshold of safety.
I was in a quandary. Death lay all about me; it remained but for me to
choose the place and manner of the assignation; I could drown where I
was, or I could permit myself to be dashed to pieces on the rocks.
Neither eventuality aroused any considerable enthusiasm in my breast. As
a mistress, death seemed sadly lacking in many essentials. Therefore, I
decided not to die.
Thoughts may be, as has been said, things; but they are not everything.
No matter how favorably I thought of living, I knew that I must also do
something about it. My present situation offered me no chance of
salvation; the shore alone could give me life; so I struck out for the
shore. As I drew nearer it, many things, some of them quite irrelevant,
passed through my mind; but some were relevant, among them the Burial
Service. It was not a nice time to think of this, but then we cannot
always control our thoughts; however, “In the midst of life we are in
death” seemed wholly appropriate to my situation. By twisting it a bit,
I achieved something that contained the germ of hope—in the midst of
death there is life. Perhaps—
The tall waves, lifting me high, afforded me for brief instants vantage
points from which I could view the death ahead in the midst of which I
sought for life. The shore line was becoming, at closer range, something
more than an unbroken line of jagged rocks and white water; but details
were yet lacking, for each time I was allowed but a brief glimpse before
being dropped once more to the bottom of a watery chasm.
My own efforts, coupled with the fury of the gale driving me shoreward,
brought me rapidly to the point where I should presently be seized by
the infuriated seas and hurled upon the bombarded rocks that reared
their jagged heads bleakly above the swirling waters of each receding
comber.
A great wave lifted me upon its crest and carried me forward—the end had
come! With the speed of a race horse it swept me toward my doom; a
welter of spume engulfed my head; I was twisted and turned as a cork in
a whirlpool; yet I struggled to lift my mouth above the surface for an
occasional gasp of air; I fought to live for a brief moment longer, that
I might not be dead when I was dashed by the merciless sea against the
merciless rocks—thus dominating is the urge to live.
I was carried on; moments seemed an eternity! Where were the rocks? I
almost yearned for them now to end the bitterness of my futile struggle.
I thought of my mother and of Duare. I even contemplated, with something
akin to philosophic calm, the strangeness of my end. In that other world
that I had left forever no creature would ever have knowledge of my
fate. Thus spoke the eternal egotism of man, who, even in death, desires
an audience.
Now I caught a brief glimpse of rocks. They were upon my left! when they
should have been in front of me. It was incomprehensible. The wave tore
on, carrying me with it; and still I lived, and there was only water
against my naked flesh.
Now the fury of the sea abated, I rose to the crest of a diminishing
comber to look with astonishment upon the comparatively still waters of
an inlet. I had been carried through the rocky gateway of a landlocked
cove, and before me I saw a sandy crescent beach. I had escaped the
black fingers of death; I had been the beneficiary of a miracle!
The sea gave me a final filip that rolled me high upon the sands to
mingle with the wrack and flotsam she had discarded. I stood up and
looked about me. A more devout man would have given thanks, but I felt
that as yet I had been spared temporarily, but Duare was still in peril.
The cove into which I had been swept was formed by the mouth of a canyon
that ran inland between low hills, the sides and summits of which were
dotted with small trees. Nowhere did I see any such giants as grow in
Vepaja; but perhaps, I mused, what I see here are not trees on Venus but
only underbrush. However, I shall call them trees, since many of them
were from fifty to eighty feet in height.
A little river tumbled down the canyon’s bottom to empty into the cove;
pale violet grass, starred with blue and purple flowers, bordered it and
clothed the hills. There were trees with red boles, smooth and glossy as
lacquer. There were trees with azure boles. Whipping in the gale was the
same weird foliage of heliotrope and lavender and violet that had
rendered the forests of Vepaja so unearthly to my eyes. But beautiful
and unusual as was the scene, it could not claim my undivided attention.
A strange freak of fate had thrown me upon this shore to which, I had
reason to believe, Duare must undoubtedly have been carried; and now my
only thought was to take advantage of this fortunate circumstance and
attempt to find and succor her.
I could only assume that in the event her abductors had brought her to
this shore their landing must have been made farther along the coast to
my right, which was the direction from which the _Sofal_ had been
moving. With only this slight and unsatisfactory clue, I started
immediately to scale the side of the canyon and commence my search.
At the summit I paused a moment to survey the surrounding country and
get my bearings. Before me stretched a rolling table-land, tree-dotted
and lush with grass, and beyond that, inland, rose a range of mountains,
vague and mysterious along the distant horizon. My course lay to the
east, along the coast (I shall use the earthly references to points of
compass); the mountains were northward, toward the equator. I am
assuming of course that I am in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
The sea was south of me. I glanced in that direction, looking for the
_Sofal_; there she was, far out and moving toward the east. Evidently my
orders were being carried out, and the _Sofal_ was lying off shore
waiting for calm weather that would permit a landing.
Now I turned my steps toward the east. At each elevation I stopped and
scanned the tableland in all directions, searching for some sign of
those I sought. I saw signs of life, but not of human life. Herbivorous
animals grazed in large numbers upon the flower-starred violet plain.
Many that were close enough to be seen plainly appeared similar in form
to earthly animals, but there was none exactly like anything I had ever
seen on earth. Their extreme wariness and the suggestion of speed and
agility in their conformations suggested that they had enemies; the
wariness, that among these enemies was man; the speed and agility, that
swift and ferocious carnivores preyed upon them.
These observations served to warn me that I must be constantly on the
alert for similar dangers that might threaten me, and I was glad that
the table-land was well supplied with trees growing at convenient
intervals. I had not forgotten the ferocious basto that Kamlot and I had
encountered in Vepaja, and, though I had seen nothing quite so
formidable as yet among the nearer beasts, there were some creatures
grazing at a considerable distance from me whose lines suggested a too
great similarity to those bisonlike omnivores to insure ease of mind.
I moved rather rapidly, as I was beset by fears for Duare’s safety and
felt that if I did not come upon some clue this first day my search
might prove fruitless. The klangan, I believed, must have alighted near
the coast, where they would have remained at least until daylight, and
my hope was that they might have tarried longer. If they had winged away
immediately, my chances of locating them were slight; and now my only
hope lay in the slender possibility that I might come across them before
they took up their flight for the day.
The table-land was cut by gullies and ravines running down to the sea.
Nearly all of these carried streams varying in size from tiny rivulets
to those which might be dignified by the appellation of river, but none
that I encountered offered any serious obstacle to my advance, though
upon one or two occasions I was forced to swim the deeper channels. If
these rivers were inhabited by dangerous reptiles, I saw nothing of
them, though I admit that they were constantly on my mind as I made my
way from bank to bank.
Once, upon the table-land, I saw a large, cat-like creature at a
distance, apparently stalking a herd of what appeared to be a species of
antelope; but either it did not see me or was more interested in its
natural prey, for although I was in plain sight, it paid no attention to
me.
Shortly thereafter I dropped into a small gully, and when I had regained
the higher ground upon the opposite side the beast was no longer in
sight; but even had it been, it would have been driven from my thoughts
by faint sounds that came to me out of the distance far ahead. There
were what sounded like the shouts of men and the unmistakable hum of
Amtorian pistol fire.
Though I searched diligently with my eyes to the far horizon, I could
see no sign of the authors of these noises; but it was enough for me to
know that there were human beings ahead and that there was fighting
there. Being only human, I naturally pictured the woman I loved in the
center of overwhelming dangers, even though my better judgment told me
that the encounter reverberating in the distance might have no
connection with her or her abductors.
Reason aside, however, I broke into a run; and as I advanced the sounds
waxed louder. They led me finally to the rim of a considerable canyon,
the bottom of which formed a level valley of entrancing loveliness,
through which wound a river far larger than any I had yet encountered.
But neither the beauty of the valley nor the magnitude of the river held
my attention for but an instant. Down there upon the floor of that
nameless canyon was a scene that gripped my undivided interest and left
me cold with apprehension. Partially protected by an outcropping of rock
at the river’s edge, six figures crouched or lay. Five of them were
klangan, the sixth a woman. It was Duare!
Facing them, hiding behind trees and rocks, were a dozen hairy, manlike
creatures hurling rocks from slings at the beleaguered six or loosing
crude arrows from still cruder bows. The savages and the klangan were
hurling taunts and insults at one another, as well as missiles; it was
these sounds that I had heard from a distance blending with the staccato
hum of the klangan’s pistols.
Three of the klangan lay motionless upon the turf behind their barrier,
apparently dead. The remaining klangan and Duare crouched with pistols
in their hands, defending their position and their lives. The savages
cast their stone missiles directly at the three whenever one of them
showed any part of his body above the rocky breastwork, but the arrows
they discharged into the air so that they fell behind the barrier.
Scattered about among the trees and behind rocks were the bodies of
fully a dozen hairy savages who had fallen before the fire of the
klangan, but, while Duare’s defenders had taken heavy toll of the enemy,
the outcome of the unequal battle could have been only the total
destruction of the klangan and Duare had it lasted much longer.
The details which have taken long in the telling I took in at a single
glance, nor did I waste precious time in pondering the best course of
action. At any moment one of those crude arrows might pierce the girl I
loved; and so my first thought was to divert the attention of the
savages, and perhaps their fire, from their intended victims to me.
I was slightly behind their position, which gave me an advantage, as
also did the fact that I was above them. Yelling like a Comanche, I
leaped down the steep side of the canyon, firing my pistol as I charged.
Instantly the scene below me changed. The savages, taken partially from
the rear and unexpectedly menaced by a new enemy, leaped to their feet
in momentary bewilderment; and simultaneously the two remaining klangan,
recognizing me and realizing that succor was at hand, sprang from the
shelter of their barrier and ran forward to complete the demoralization
of the savages.
Together we shot down six of the enemy before the rest finally turned
and fled, but they were not routed before one of the klangan was struck
full between the eyes by a jagged bit of rock. I saw him fall, and when
we were no longer menaced by a foe I went to him, thinking that he was
only stunned; but at that time I had no conception of the force with
which these primitive, apelike men cast the missiles from their slings.
The fellow’s skull was crushed, and a portion of the missile had
punctured his brain. He was quite dead when I reached him.
Then I hastened to Duare. She was standing with a pistol in her hand,
tired and dishevelled, but otherwise apparently little worse for the
harrowing experiences through which she had passed. I think that she was
glad to see me, for she certainly must have preferred me to the hairy
apemen from which I had been instrumental in rescuing her; yet a trace
of fear was reflected in her eyes, as though she were not quite sure of
the nature of the treatment she might expect from me. To my shame, her
fears were justified by my past behavior; but I was determined that she
should never again have cause to complain of me. I would win her
confidence and trust, hoping that love might follow in their wake.
There was no light of welcome in her eyes as I approached her, and that
hurt me more than I can express. Her countenance reflected more a
pathetic resignation to whatever new trials my presence might portend.
“You have not been harmed?” I asked. “You are all right?”
“Quite,” she replied. Her eyes passed beyond me, searching the summit of
the canyon wall down which I had charged upon the savages. “Where are
the others?” she asked in puzzled and slightly troubled tones.
“What others?” I inquired.
“Those who came with you from the _Sofal_ to search for me.”
“There were no others; I am quite alone.”
Her countenance assumed an even deeper gloom at this announcement. “Why
did you come alone?” she asked fearfully.
“To be honest with you, it was through no fault of my own that I came at
all at this time,” I explained. “After we missed you from the _Sofal_, I
gave orders to stand by off the coast until the storm abated and we
could land a searching party. Immediately thereafter I was swept
overboard, a most fortunate circumstance as it turned out; and naturally
when I found myself safely ashore my first thought was of you. I was
searching for you when I heard the shouts of the savages and the sound
of pistol fire.”
“You came in time to save me from them,” she said, “but for what? What
are you going to do with me now?”
“I am going to take you to the coast as quickly as possible,” I replied,
“and there we will signal the _Sofal_. She will send a boat to take us
off.”
Duare appeared slightly relieved at this recital of my plans. “You will
win the undying gratitude of the jong, my father, if you return me to
Vepaja unharmed,” she said.
“To have served his daughter shall be reward enough for me,” I replied,
“even though I succeed in winning not even her gratitude.”
“That you already have for what you have just done at the risk of your
life,” she assured me, and there was more graciousness in her voice than
before.
“What became of Vilor and Moosko?” I asked.
Her lip curled in scorn. “When the kloonobargan attacked us, they fled.”
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“They swam the river and ran away in that direction.” She pointed toward
the east.
“Why did the klangan not desert you also?”
“They were told to protect me. They know little else than to obey their
superiors, and, too, they like to fight. Having little intelligence and
no imagination, they are splendid fighters.”
“I cannot understand why they did not fly away from danger and take you
with them when they saw that defeat was certain. That would have insured
the safety of all.”
“By the time they were assured of that, it was too late,” she explained.
“They could not have risen from behind our protection without being
destroyed by the missiles of the kloonobargan.”
This word, by way of parenthesis, is an interesting example of the
derivation of an Amtorian substantive. Broadly, it means savages;
literally, it means hairy men. In the singular, it is nobargan. _Gan_ is
man; _bar_ is hair. _No_ is a contraction of _not_ (with), and is used
as a prefix with the same value that the suffix _y_ has in English;
therefore _nobar_ means hairy, _nobargan_, hairy man. The prefix _kloo_
forms the plural, and we have _kloonobargan_ (hairy men), savages.
After determining that the four klangan were dead, Duare, the remaining
angan, and I started down the river toward the ocean. On the way Duare
told me what had occurred on board the _Sofal_ the preceding night, and
I discovered that it had been almost precisely as Gamfor had pictured
it.
“What was their object in taking you with them?” I asked.
“Vilor wanted me,” she replied.
“And Moosko merely wished to escape?”
“Yes. He thought that he would be killed when the ship reached Vepaja.”
“How did they expect to survive in a wild country like this?” I asked.
“Did they know where they were?”
“They said that they thought that the country was Noobol,” she replied,
“but they were not positive. The Thorans have agents in Noobol who are
fomenting discord in an attempt to overthrow the government. There are
several of these in a city on the coast, and it was Moosko’s intention
to search for this city, where he was certain that he would find friends
who would be able to arrange transportation for himself, Vilor, and me
to Thora.”
We walked on in silence for some time. I was just ahead of Duare, and
the angan brought up the rear. He was crestfallen and dejected. His head
and tail feathers drooped. The klangan are ordinarily so vociferous that
this preternatural silence attracted my attention, and, thinking that he
might have been injured in the fight, I questioned him.
“I was not wounded, my captain,” he replied.
“Then what is the matter with you? Are you sad because of the deaths of
your comrades?”
“It is not that,” he replied; “there are plenty more where they came
from. It is because of my own death that I am sad.”
“But you are not dead!”
“I shall be soon,” he averred.
“What makes you think so?” I demanded.
“When I return to the ship, they will kill me for what I did last night.
If I do not return, I shall be killed here. No one could live alone for
long in such a country as this.”
“If you serve me well and obey me, you will not be killed if we succeed
in the reaching the _Sofal_ again,” I assured him.
At that he brightened perceptibly. “I shall serve you well and obey you,
my captain,” he promised, and presently he was smiling and singing again
as though he had not a single care in the world and there was no such
thing as death.
On several occasions, when I had glanced back at my companions, I had
discovered Duare’s eyes upon me, and in each instance she had turned
them away quickly, as though I had surprised and embarrassed her in some
questionable act. I had spoken to her only when necessary, for I had
determined to atone for my previous conduct by maintaining a purely
official attitude toward her that would reassure her and give her no
cause for apprehension as to my intentions.
This was a difficult rôle for me to play while I yearned to take her
into my arms and tell her again of the great love that was consuming me;
but I had succeeded so far in controlling myself and saw no reason to
believe that I should not be able to continue to do so, at least as long
as Duare continued to give me no encouragement. The very idea that she
might give me encouragement caused me to smile in spite of myself.
Presently, much to my surprise, she said, “You are very quiet. What is
the matter?”
It was the first time that Duare had ever opened a conversation with me
or given me any reason to believe that I existed for her as a
personality; I might have been a clod of earth or a piece of furniture,
for all the interest she had seemed to take in me since those two
occasions upon which I had surprised her as she watched me from the
concealing foliage of her garden.
“There is nothing the matter with me,” I assured her. “I am only
concerned with your welfare and the necessity for getting you back to
the _Sofal_ as quickly as possible.”
“You do not talk any more,” she complained. “Formerly, when I saw you,
you used to talk a great deal.”
“Probably altogether too much,” I admitted, “but you see, now I am
trying not to annoy you.”
Her eyes fell to the ground. “It would not annoy me,” she said almost
inaudibly, but now that I was invited to do the very thing that I had
been longing to do, I became dumb; I could think of nothing to say. “You
see,” she continued in her normal voice, “conditions are very different
now from any that I have ever before encountered. The rules and
restrictions under which I have lived among my own people cannot, I now
realize, be expected to apply to situations so unusual or to people and
places so foreign to those whose lives they were intended to govern.
“I have been thinking a great deal about many things—and you. I
commenced to think these strange thoughts after I saw you the first time
in the garden at Kooaad. I have thought that perhaps it might be nice to
talk to other men than those I am permitted to see in the house of my
father, the jong. I became tired of talking to these same men and to my
women, but custom had made a slave and a coward of me. I did not dare do
the things I most wished to do. I always wanted to talk to you, and now
for the brief time before we shall be again aboard the _Sofal_, where I
must again be governed by the laws of Vepaja, I am going to be free; I
am going to do what I wish; I am going to talk to you.”
This naïve declaration revealed a new Duare, one in the presence of whom
it was going to be most difficult to maintain an austere Platonicism;
yet I continued to steel myself to the carrying out of my resolve.
“Why do you not talk to me?” she demanded when I made no immediate
comment on her confession.
“I do not know what to talk about,” I admitted, “unless I talk about the
one thing that is uppermost in my mind.”
She was silent for a moment, her brows knit in thought, and then she
asked with seeming innocence, “What is that?”
“Love,” I said, looking into her eyes.
Her lids dropped and her lips trembled. “No!” she exclaimed. “We must
not talk of that; it is wrong; it is wicked.”
“Is love wicked on Amtor?” I asked.
“No, no; I do not mean that,” she hastened to deny; “but it is wrong to
speak to me of love until after I am twenty.”
“May I then, Duare?” I asked.
She shook her head, a little sadly I thought. “No, not even then,” she
answered. “You may never speak to me of love, without sinning, nor may I
listen without sinning, for I am the daughter of a jong.”
“Perhaps it would be safer were we not to talk at all,” I said glumly.
“Oh, yes, let us talk,” she begged. “Tell me about the strange world you
are supposed to come from.”
To amuse her, I did as she requested; and walking beside her I devoured
her with my eyes until at last we came to the ocean. Far out I saw the
_Sofal_, and now came the necessity for devising a scheme by which we
might signal her.
On either side of the canyon, through which the river emptied into the
ocean, were lofty cliffs. That on the west side, and nearer us, was the
higher, and to this I made my way, accompanied by Duare and the angan.
The ascent was steep, and most of the way I found it, or made it,
necessary to assist Duare, so that often I had my arm about her as I
half carried her upward.
At first I feared that she might object to this close contact; but she
did not, and in some places where it was quite level and she needed no
help, though I still kept my arm about her, she did not draw away nor
seem to resent the familiarity.
At the summit of the cliff I hastily gathered dead wood and leaves with
the assistance of the angan, and presently we had a signal fire sending
a smoke column into the air. The wind had abated, and the smoke rose far
above the cliff before it was dissipated. I was positive that it would
be seen aboard the _Sofal_, but whether it would be correctly
interpreted, I could not know.
A high sea was still running that would have precluded the landing of a
small boat, but we had the angan, and if the _Sofal_ were to draw in
more closely to shore, he could easily transport us to her deck one at a
time. However, I hesitated to risk Duare in the attempt while the ship
was at its present considerable distance from shore, as what wind there
was would have been directly in the face of the angan.
From the summit of this cliff we could overlook the cliff on the east
side of the canyon, and presently the angan called my attention to
something in that direction. “Men are coming,” he said.
I saw them immediately, but they were still too far away for me to be
able to identify them, though even at a distance I was sure that they
were not of the same race as the savages which had attacked Duare and
the klangan.
Now indeed it became imperative that we attract the attention of the
_Sofal_ immediately, and to that end I built two more fires at intervals
from the first, so that it might be obvious to anyone aboard the ship
that this was in fact a signal rather than an accidental fire or a camp
fire.
Whether or not the _Sofal_ had seen our signal, it was evident that the
party of men approaching must have; and I could not but believe that,
attracted by it, they were coming to investigate. Constantly they were
drawing nearer, and as the minutes passed we saw that they were armed
men of the same race as the Vepajans.
They were still some distance away when we saw the _Sofal_ change her
course and point her bow toward shore. Our signal had been seen, and our
comrades were coming to investigate; but would they be in time? For us
it was a thrilling race. The wind had sprung up again and the sea was
rising once more. I asked the angan if he could breast the gale, for I
had determined to send Duare off at once if I received a favorable
reply.
“I could alone,” he said, “but I doubt that I could if I were carrying
another.”
We watched the _Sofal_ plunging and wallowing in the rising sea as it
forged steadily closer, and we watched the men drawing near with equal
certainty. There was no doubt in my mind as to which would reach us
first; my only hope now was that the _Sofal_ could lessen the distance
in the meantime sufficiently so that it would be safe for the angan to
attempt to carry Duare to her.
Now the men had reached the summit of the cliff on the opposite side of
the canyon, and here they halted and observed us while carrying on a
discussion of some nature.
“Vilor is with them!” exclaimed Duare suddenly.
“And Moosko,” I added. “I see them both now.”
“What shall we do?” cried Duare. “Oh, they must not get me again!”
“They shall not,” I promised her.
Down the canyon side they came now. We watched them swim the river and
cross to the foot of the cliff where we were standing. We watched the
_Sofal_ creeping slowly shoreward. I went to the edge of the cliff and
looked down upon the ascending men. They were half way up now. Then I
returned to Duare and the angan.
“We can wait no longer,” I said, and then to the angan, “Take the
janjong and fly to the ship. She is closer now; you can make it; you
_must_ make it!”
He started to obey, but Duare drew away from him. “I will not go,” she
said quietly. “I will not leave you here alone!”
For those words I would gladly have laid down my life. Here again was
still another Duare. I had expected nothing like this, for I did not
feel that she owed me any such loyalty. It was not as though she had
loved me; one might expect such self-sacrifice on the part of a woman
for the man she loves. I was swept completely from my feet, but only for
an instant. The enemy, if such it were, must by now be almost to the
summit of the cliff, in a moment they would be upon us, and even as the
thought touched my mind, I saw the first of them running toward us.
“Take her!” I cried to the angan. “There is no time to waste now.”
He reached for her, but she attempted to elude him; and then I caught
her, and as I touched her, all my good resolutions were swept away, as I
felt her in my arms. I pressed her to me for an instant; I kissed her,
and then I gave her over to the birdman.
“Hurry!” I cried. “They come!”
Spreading his powerful wings, he rose from the ground, while Duare
stretched her hands toward me. “Do not send me away from you, Carson! Do
not send me away! I love you!”
But it was too late; I would not have called her back could I have done
so, for the armed men were upon me.
Thus I went into captivity in the land of Noobol, an adventure that is
no part of this story; but I went with the knowledge that the woman I
loved, loved me, and I was happy.
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