"Can you make out what they are?" I asked.
"I thought that I saw a hairy hand, but I am not sure. They move
quickly and keep always out of sight. Oh, let us go back! This is an
evil place, and I am afraid."
"Very well," I agreed. "Anyway, this doesn't seem to be a particularly
good hunting ground; and after all that is all that we are looking for."
As we turned to retrace our steps a chorus of hoarse shouts arose upon
all sides of us--half human, half bestial, like the growls and roars
of animals blending with the voices of men; and then, suddenly, from
behind the boles of trees a score of hairy, man-like creatures sprang
toward us.
* * * * *
Instantly I recognized them--nobargans--the same hairy, man-like
creatures that had attacked the abductors of Duare, whom I had rescued
from them. They were armed with crude bows and arrows and with slings
from which they hurled rocks; but, as they closed upon us, it appeared
that they wished to take us alive, for they launched no missiles at us.
But I had no mind to be thus taken so easily, nor to permit Duare to
fall into the hands of these savage beast-men. Raising my pistol, I
loosed the deadly r-ray upon them; and as some fell others leaped
behind the boles of the trees.
"Do not let them take me," said Duare in a level voice unshaken by
emotion. "When you see there is no further hope of escape, shoot me."
The very thought of it turned me cold, but I knew that I should do
it before permitting her to fall into the hands of these degraded
creatures.
A nobargan showed himself, and I dropped him with my pistol; then they
commenced to hurl rocks at me from behind. I wheeled and fired, and in
the same instant a rock felled me to the ground unconscious.
When I regained consciousness I was aware first of an incredible
stench, and then of something rough rubbing against my skin, and of a
rhythmic jouncing of my body. These sensations were vaguely appreciable
in the first dim light of returning reason. With the return of full
control of my faculties they were accounted for; I was being carried
across the shoulder of a powerful nobargan.
The odor from his body was almost suffocating in its intensity, and the
rough hair abrading my skin was only a trifle more annoying than the
motion that his stride imparted to my body.
I sought to push myself from his shoulder; and, realizing that I was no
longer unconscious, he dropped me to the ground. All about me were the
hideous faces and hairy bodies of the nobargans and permeating the air
the horrid stench that emanated from them.
They are, I am sure, the filthiest and most repulsive creatures I have
ever seen. Presumably they are one of evolution's first steps from
beast to man; but they are no improvement upon the beast. For the
privilege of walking upright upon two feet, thus releasing their hands
from the mean servitude of ages, and for the gift of speech they have
sacrificed all that is fine and noble in the beast.
It is true, I believe, that man _descended_ from the beasts; and it
took him countless ages to rise to the level of his progenitors. In
some respects he has not succeeded yet, even at the height of his
vaunted civilization.
As I looked about, I saw Duare being dragged along by her hair by a
huge nobargan. It was then that I discovered that my weapons had been
taken from me. So low in the scale of intelligence are the nobargans,
they cannot use the weapons of civilized man that fall into their
hands, and so they had simply thrown mine aside.
But even though I was disarmed, I could not see Duare suffering this
ignominy and abuse without making an effort to aid her.
I sprang forward before the beasts at my side could prevent and hurled
myself upon the creature that dared to maltreat this daughter of a
jong, this incomparable creature who had aroused within my breast the
first exquisite tortures of love.
I seized him by one hairy arm and swung him around until he faced me,
and then I struck him a terrific blow upon the chin that felled him.
Instantly his fellows broke into loud laughter at his discomfiture; but
that did not prevent them from falling upon me and subduing me, and you
may be assured that their methods were none too gentle.
* * * * *
As the brute that I had knocked down staggered to his feet his eyes
fell upon me, and with a roar of rage he charged me. It might have
fared badly with me had not another of them interfered. He was a burly
creature, and when he interposed himself between me and my antagonist
the latter paused.
"Stop!" commanded my ally, and had I heard a gorilla speak I could
not have been more surprised. It was my introduction to a remarkable
ethnological fact: All the races of mankind on Venus (at least those
that I have come in contact with) speak the same tongue. Perhaps you
can explain it; I cannot. When I have questioned Amtorian savants on
the matter, they were merely dumfounded by the question; they could not
conceive of any other condition; therefore there had never been any
occasion to explain it.
Of course the languages differ in accordance with the culture of the
nations; those with the fewest wants and the fewest experiences have
the fewest words. The language of the nobargans is probably the most
limited; a vocabulary of a hundred words may suffice them. But the
basic root-words are the same everywhere.
The creature that had protected me, it presently developed, was the
jong, or king, of this tribe; and I later learned that his act was not
prompted by humanitarian considerations but by a desire to save me for
another fate.
My act had not been entirely without good results, for during the
balance of the march Duare was no longer dragged along by her hair. She
thanked me for championing her; and that in itself was something worth
being man-handled for, but she cautioned me against antagonizing them
further.
Having discovered that at least one of these creatures could speak at
least one word of the Amtorian language with which I was familiar, I
sought to delve farther in the hope that I might ascertain the purpose
for which they had captured us.
"Why have you seized us?" I inquired of the brute that had spoken that
single word.
He looked at me in surprise, and those near enough to have overheard
my question commenced to laugh and repeat it. Their laugh is far from
light, airy, or reassuring. They bare their teeth in a grimace and emit
a sound that is for all the world like the retching of _mal de mer_,
and there is no laughter in their eyes. It took quite a stretch of my
imagination to identify this as laughter.
"Albargan not know?" asked the jong. Albargan is, literally,
no-hair-man, or without-hair-man, otherwise, hairless man.
"I do not know," I replied. "We were not harming you. We were searching
for the sea coast where our people are."
"Albargan find out soon," and then he laughed again.
I tried to think of some way to bribe him into letting us go; but
inasmuch as he had thrown away as useless the only things of value that
we possessed, it seemed rather hopeless.
"Tell me what you want most," I suggested, "and perhaps I can get it
for you if you will take us to the coast."
"We have what we want," he replied, and that answer made them all
laugh.
I was walking close to Duare now, and she looked up at me with a
hopeless expression. "I am afraid we are in for it," she said.
"It is all my fault. If I had had brains enough to find the ocean this
would never have happened."
"Don't blame yourself. No one could have done more to protect and save
me than you have. Please do not think that I do not appreciate it."
That was a lot for Duare to say, and it was like a ray of sunshine in
the gloom of my despondency. That is a simile entirely earthly, for
there is no sunshine upon Venus. The relative proximity of the sun
lights up the inner cloud envelope brilliantly, but it is a diffused
light that casts no well defined shadows nor produces contrasting
highlights. There is an all pervading glow from above that blends with
the perpetual light emanations from the soil, and the resultant scene
is that of a soft and beautiful pastel.
Our captors conducted us into the forest for a considerable distance;
we marched practically all day. They spoke but seldom and then usually
in monosyllables. They did not laugh again, and for that I was
thankful. One can scarcely imagine a more disagreeable sound.
We had an opportunity to study them during this long march, and there
is a question if either of us was quite sure in his own mind as to
whether they were beast-like men or man-like beasts. Their bodies were
entirely covered with hair; their feet were large and flat, and their
toes were armed, like the fingers, with thick, heavy, pointed nails
that resembled talons. They were large and heavy, with tremendous
shoulders and necks.
Their eyes were extremely close set in a baboon-like face; so that in
some respects their heads bore a more striking similarity to the heads
of dogs than of men. There was no remarkable dissimilarity between
the males and the females, several of which were in the party; and
the latter deported themselves the same as the bulls and appeared to
be upon a plane of equality with these, carrying bows and arrows and
slings for hurling rocks, a small supply of which they carried in skin
pouches slung across their shoulders.
At last we reached an open space beside a small river where there stood
a collection of the rudest and most primitive of shelters. These were
constructed of branches of all sizes and shapes thrown together without
symmetry and covered with a thatch of leaves and grasses. At the bottom
of each was a single aperture through which one might crawl on hands
and knees. They reminded me of the nests of pack rats built upon a
Gargantuan scale.
Here were other members of the tribe, including several young, and
at sight of us they rushed forward with excited cries. It was with
difficulty that the jong and other members of the returning party kept
them from tearing us to pieces.
The former hustled us into one of their evil smelling nests and placed
a guard before the entrance, more to protect us from his fellows, I
suspect, than to prevent our escape.
The hut in which we were was filthy beyond words, but in the dim light
of the interior I found a short stick with which I scraped aside the
foul litter that covered the floor until I had uncovered a space large
enough for us to lie down on the relatively clean earth.
We lay with our heads close to the entrance that we might get the
benefit of whatever fresh air should find its way within. Beyond the
entrance we could see a number of the savages digging two parallel
trenches in the soft earth; each was about seven feet long and two feet
wide.
"Why are they doing that, do you suppose?" asked Duare.
"I do not know," I replied, although I had my suspicions; they looked
remarkably like graves.
"Perhaps we can escape after they have gone to sleep to-night,"
suggested Duare.
"We shall certainly take advantage of the first opportunity," I
replied, but there was no hope within me. I had a premonition that we
should not be alive when the nobargans slept next.
"Look what they're doing now," said Duare, presently; "they're filling
the trenches with wood and dry leaves. You don't suppose--?" she
exclaimed, and caught her breath with a little gasp.
I placed a hand on one of hers and pressed it. "We must not conjure
unnecessary horrors in our imaginations," but I feared that she had
guessed what I had already surmised--that my graves had become pits for
cooking fires.
* * * * *
In silence we watched the creatures working about the two trenches.
They built up walls of stone and earth about a foot high along each of
the long sides of each pit; then they laid poles at intervals of a few
inches across the tops of each pair of walls. Slowly before our eyes we
saw two grilles take shape.
"It is horrible," whispered Duare.
Night came before the preparations were completed; then the savage jong
came to our prison and commanded us to come forth. As we did so we were
seized by several shes and bulls who carried the long stems of tough
jungle vines.
They threw us down and wound the vines about us. They were very clumsy
and inept, not having sufficient intelligence to tie knots; but they
accomplished their purpose in binding us by wrapping these fiber ropes
around and around us until it seemed that it would be impossible to
extricate ourselves even were we given the opportunity.
They bound me more securely than they did Duare, but even so the job
was a clumsy one. Yet I guessed that it would be adequate to their
purpose as they lifted us and laid us on the two parallel grilles.
This done, they commenced to move slowly about us in a rude circle,
while near us, and also inside the circle, squatted a bull that was
engaged in the business of making fire in the most primitive manner,
twirling the end of a sharpened stick in a tinder-filled hole in a log.
From the throats of the circling tribesmen issued strange sounds that
were neither speech nor song, yet I guessed that they were groping
blindly after song just as in their awkward circling they were seeking
self-expression in the rhythm of the dance.
The gloomy wood, feebly illumined by the mysterious ground glow,
brooded darkly above and about the weird and savage scene. In the
distance the roar of a beast rumbled menacingly.
As the hairy men-things circled about us the bull beside the log at
last achieved fire. A slow wisp of smoke rose lazily from the tinder.
The bull added a few dry leaves and blew upon the feeble spark. A tiny
flame burst forth, and a savage cry arose from the circling dancers.
It was answered from the forest by the roar of the beast we had heard
a short time before. Now it was closer, and was followed by the
thundering voices of others of its kind.
The nobargans paused in their dancing to look apprehensively into the
dark wood, voicing their displeasure in grumblings and low growls;
then the bull beside the fire commenced to light torches, a quantity
of which lay prepared beside him; and as he passed them out the others
resumed their dancing.
The circle contracted, and occasionally a dancer would leap in and
pretend to light the faggots beneath us. The blazing torches illumined
the weird scene, casting grotesque shadows that leaped and played like
gigantic demons.
The truth of our predicament was now all too obvious, though I knew
that we both suspected it since long before we had been laid upon the
grilles--we were to be barbecued to furnish the flesh for a cannibal
feast.
Duare turned her head toward me. "Good-by, Carson Napier!" she
whispered. "Before I go, I want you to know that I appreciate the
sacrifice you have made for me. But for me you would be aboard the
Sofal now, safe among loyal friends."
"I would rather be here with you, Duare," I replied, "than to be
anywhere else in the universe without you."
I saw that her eyes were wet as she turned her face from me, but she
did not reply, and then a huge, shaggy bull leaped in with a flaming
torch and ignited the faggots at the lower end of the trench beneath
her.