The Cid seem repulsive, perhaps it was her lesser ruthlessness, which
seemed superlative gentleness by contrast with the brutality of Bohar
and The Cid, but now she seemed capable of a refined cruelty, which was,
after all, what he might have expected to find in one form or another in
the daughter of the Chief of the Korsars.
As one will, when piqued, and just at random, Tanar loosed a bolt in the
hope that it might annoy her. “Bohar knows you better than I,” he said;
“perhaps he knew that he had cause for jealousy.”
“Perhaps,” she replied, enigmatically, “but no one will ever know, for
Bohar will kill you—I know _him_ well enough to know that.”
II
DISASTER
Upon the timeless seas of Pellucidar a voyage may last for an hour or a
year—that depends not upon its duration, but upon the important
occurrences which mark its course.
Curving upward along the inside of the arc of a great circle the Korsar
fleet ploughed the restless sea. Favorable winds carried the ships
onward. The noonday sun hung perpetually at zenith. Men ate when they
were hungry, slept when they were tired, or slept against the time when
sleep might be denied them, for the people of Pellucidar seem endowed
with a faculty that permits them to store sleep, as it were, in times of
ease, against the time when sleep might be denied them, against the more
strenuous periods of hunting and warfare when there is no opportunity
for sleep. Similarly, they eat with unbelievable irregularity.
Tanar had slept and eaten several times since his encounter with Bohar,
whom he had seen upon various occasions since without an actual meeting.
The Bloody One seemed to be biding his time.
Stellara had kept to her cabin with the old woman, who Tanar surmised
was her mother. He wondered if Stellara would look like the mother or
The Cid when she was older, and he shuddered when he considered either
eventuality.
As he stood thus musing, Tanar’s attention was attracted by the actions
of the men on the lower deck. He saw them looking across the port bow
and upward and, following the direction of their eyes with his, he saw
the rare phenomenon of a cloud in the brilliant sky.
Some one must have notified The Cid at about the same time, for he came
from his cabin and looked long and searchingly at the heavens.
In his loud voice The Cid bellowed commands and his wild crew scrambled
to their stations like monkeys, swarming aloft or standing by on deck
ready to do his bidding.
Down came the great sails and reefed were the lesser ones, and
throughout the fleet, scattered over the surface of the shining sea, the
example of the Commander was followed.
The cloud was increasing in size and coming rapidly nearer. No longer
was it the small white cloud that had first attracted their attention,
but a great, bulging, ominous, black mass that frowned down upon the
ocean, turning it a sullen gray where the shadow lay.
The wind that had been blowing gently ceased suddenly. The ship fell off
and rolled in the trough of the sea. The silence that followed cast a
spell of terror over the ship’s company.
Tanar, watching, saw the change. If these rough seafaring men blenched
before the threat of the great cloud the danger must be great indeed.
The Sarians were mountain people. Tanar knew little of the sea, but if
Tanar feared anything on Pellucidar it was the sea. The sight,
therefore, of these savage Korsar sailors cringing in terror was far
from reassuring.
Someone had come to the rail and was standing at his side.
“When that has passed,” said a voice, “there will be fewer ships in the
fleet of Korsar and fewer men to go home to their women.”
He turned and saw Stellara looking upward at the cloud.
“You do not seem afraid,” he said.
“Nor you,” replied the girl. “We seem the only people aboard who are not
afraid.”
“Look down at the prisoners,” he told her. “They show no fear.”
“Why?” she asked.
“They are Pellucidarians,” he replied, proudly.
“We are all of Pellucidar,” she reminded him.
“I refer to The Empire,” he said.
“Why are you not afraid?” she asked. “Are you so much braver than the
Korsars?” There was no sarcasm in her tone.
“I am very much afraid,” replied Tanar. “Mine are mountain people—we
know little of the sea or its ways.”
“But you show no fear,” insisted Stellara.
“That is the result of heredity and training,” he replied.
“The Korsars show their fear,” she mused. She spoke as one who was of
different blood. “They boast much of their bravery,” she continued as
though speaking to herself, “but when the sky frowns they show fear.”
There seemed a little note of contempt in her voice. “See!” she cried.
“It is coming!”
The cloud was tearing toward them now and beneath it the sea was lashed
to fury. Shreds of cloud whirled and twisted at the edges of the great
cloud mass. Shreds of spume whirled and twisted above the angry waves.
And then the storm struck the ship, laying it over on its side.
What ensued was appalling to a mountaineer, unaccustomed to the sea—the
chaos of watery mountains, tumbling, rolling, lashing at the wallowing
ship; the shrieking wind; the driving, blinding spume; the
terror-stricken crew, cowed, no longer swaggering bullies.
Reeling, staggering, clutching at the rail Bohar the Bloody passed Tanar
where he clung with one arm about a stanchion and the other holding
Stellara, who would have been hurled to the deck but for the quick
action of the Sarian.
The face of Bohar was an ashen mask against which the red gash of his
ugly scar stood out in startling contrast. He looked at Tanar and
Stellara, but he passed them by, mumbling to himself.
Beyond them was The Cid, screaming orders that no one could hear. Toward
him Bohar made his way. Above the storm Tanar heard The Bloody One
screaming at his chief.
“Save me! Save me!” he cried. “The boats—lower the boats! The ship is
lost.”
It was apparent, even to a landsman, that no small boat could live in
such a sea even if one could have been lowered. The Cid paid no
attention to his lieutenant, but clung where he was, bawling commands.
A mighty sea rose suddenly above the bow; it hung there for an instant
and then rolled in upon the lower deck—tons of crushing, pitiless,
insensate sea—rolled in upon the huddled, screaming seamen. Naught but
the high prow and the lofty poop showed above the angry waves—just for
an instant the great ship strained and shuddered, battling for life.
“It is the end!” cried Stellara.
Bohar screamed like a dumb brute in the agony of death. The Cid knelt on
the deck, his face buried in his arms. Tanar stood watching, fascinated
by the terrifying might of the elements. He saw man shrink to puny
insignificance before a gust of wind, and a slow smile crossed his face.
The wave receded and the ship, floundering, staggered upward, groaning.
The smile left Tanar’s lips as his eyes gazed down upon the lower deck.
It was almost empty now. A few broken forms lay huddled in the scuppers;
a dozen men, clinging here and there, showed signs of life. The others,
all but those who had reached safety below deck, were gone.
The girl clung tightly to the man. “I did not think she could live
through that,” she said.
“Nor I,” said Tanar.
“But you were not afraid,” she said. “You seemed the only one who was
not afraid.”
“Of what use was Bohar’s screaming?” he asked. “Did it save him?”
“Then you were afraid, but you hid it?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “I do not know what you mean by fear. I
did not want to die, if that is what you mean.”
“Here comes another!” cried Stellara, shuddering, and pressing closer to
him.
Tanar’s arm tightened about the slim figure of the girl. It was an
unconscious gesture of the protective instinct of the male.
“Do not be afraid,” he said.
“I am not—now,” she replied.
At the instant that the mighty comber engulfed the ship the angry
hurricane struck suddenly with renewed fury—struck at a new angle—and
the masts, already straining even to the minimum of canvas that had been
necessary to give the ship headway and keep its nose into the storm,
snapped like dry bones and crashed by the board in a tangle of cordage.
The ship’s head fell away and she rolled in the trough of the great
seas, a hopeless derelict.
Above the screaming of the wind rose Bohar’s screams. “The boats! The
boats!” he repeated like a trained parrot gone mad from terror.
As though sated for the moment and worn out by its own exertions the
storm abated, the wind died, but the great seas rose and fell and the
great ship rolled, helpless. At the bottom of each watery gorge it
seemed that it must be engulfed by the gray green cliff toppling above
it and at the crest of each liquid mountain certain destruction loomed
inescapable.
Bohar, still screaming, scrambled to the lower deck. He found men, by
some miracle still alive in the open, and others cringing in terror
below deck. By dint of curses and blows and the threat of his pistol he
gathered them together and though they whimpered in fright he forced
them to make a boat ready.
There were twenty of them and their gods or their devils must have been
with them, for they lowered a boat and got clear of the floundering hulk
in safety and without the loss of a man.
The Cid, seeing what Bohar contemplated, had tried to prevent the
seemingly suicidal act by bellowing orders at him from above, but they
had no effect and at the last moment The Cid had descended to the lower
deck to enforce his commands, but he had arrived too late.
Now he stood staring unbelievingly at the small boat riding the great
seas in seeming security while the dismasted ship, pounded by the stumps
of its masts, seemed doomed to destruction.
From corners where they had been hiding came the balance of the ship’s
company and when they saw Bohar’s boat and the seemingly relative safety
of the crew they clamored for escape by the other boats. With the idea
once implanted in their minds there followed a mad panic as the
half-brutes fought for places in the remaining boats.
“Come!” cried Stellara. “We must hurry or they will go without us.” She
started to move toward the companionway, but Tanar restrained her.
“Look at them,” he said. “We are safer at the mercy of the sea and the
storm.”
Stellara shrank back close to him. She saw men knifing one another—those
behind knifing those ahead. Men dragging others from the boats and
killing them on deck or being killed. She saw The Cid pistol a seaman in
the back and leap to his place in the first boat to be lowered. She saw
men leaping from the rail in a mad effort to reach this boat and falling
into the sea, or being thrown in if they succeeded in boarding the
tossing shell.
She saw the other boats being lowered and men crushed between them and
the ship’s side—she saw the depths to which fear can plunge the braggart
and the bully as the last of the ship’s company, failing to win places
in the last boat, deliberately leaped into the sea and were drowned.
Standing there upon the high poop of the rolling derelict, Tanar and
Stellara watched the frantic efforts of the oarsmen in the overcrowded
small boats. They saw one boat foul another and both founder. They
watched the drowning men battling for survival. They heard their hoarse
oaths and their screams above the roaring of the sea and the shriek of
the wind as the storm returned as though fearing that some might escape
its fury.
“We are alone,” said Stellara. “They have all gone.”
“Let them go,” replied Tanar. “I would not exchange places with them.”
“But there can be no hope for us,” said the girl.
“There is no more for them,” replied the Sarian, “and at least we are
not crowded into a small boat filled with cutthroats.”
“You are more afraid of the men than you are of the sea,” she said.
“For you, yes,” he replied.
“Why should you fear for me?” she demanded. “Am I not also your enemy?”
He turned his eyes quickly upon her and they were filled with surprise.
“That is so,” he said; “but, somehow, I had forgotten it—you do not seem
like an enemy, as the others do. You do not seem like one of them,
even.”
Clinging to the rail and supporting the girl upon the lurching deck,
Tanar’s lips were close to Stellara’s ear as he sought to make himself
heard above the storm. He sensed the faint aroma of a delicate sachet
that was ever after to be a part of his memory of Stellara.
A sea struck the staggering ship throwing Tanar forward so that his
cheek touched the cheek of the girl and as she turned her head his lips
brushed hers. Each realized that it was an accident, but the effect was
none the less surprising. Tanar, for the first time, felt the girl’s
body against his and consciousness of contact must have been reflected
in his eyes for Stellara shrank back and there was an expression of fear
in hers.
Tanar saw the fear in the eyes of an enemy, but it gave him no pleasure.
He tried to think only of the treatment that would have been accorded a
woman of his tribe had one been at the mercy of the Korsars, but that,
too, failed to satisfy him as it only could if he were to admit that he
was of the same ignoble clay as the men of Korsar.
But whatever thoughts were troubling the minds of Stellara and Tanar
were temporarily submerged by the grim tragedy of the succeeding few
moments as another tremendous sea, the most gigantic that had yet
assailed the broken ship, hurled its countless tons upon her shivering
deck.
To Tanar it seemed, indeed, that this must mark the end since it was
inconceivable that the unmanageable hulk could rise again from the
smother of water that surged completely over her almost to the very
highest deck of the towering poop, where the two clung against the
tearing wind and the frightful pitching of the derelict.
But, as the sea rolled on, the ship slowly, sluggishly struggled to the
surface like an exhausted swimmer who, drowning, struggles weakly
against the inevitability of fate and battles upward for one last gasp
of air that will, at best, but prolong the agony of death.
As the main deck slowly emerged from the receding waters, Tanar was
horrified by the discovery that the forward hatch had been stove in.
That the ship must have taken in considerable water, and that each
succeeding wave that broke over it would add to the quantity, affected
the Sarian less than knowledge of the fact that it was beneath this
hatch that his fellow prisoners were confined.
Through the black menace of his almost hopeless situation had shone a
single bright ray of hope that, should the ship weather the storm, there
would be aboard her a score of his fellow Pellucidarians and that
together they might find the means to rig a makeshift sail and work
their way back to the mainland from which they had embarked; but with
the gaping hatch and the almost certain conclusion to be drawn from it
he realized that it would, indeed, be a miracle if there remained alive
aboard the derelict any other than Stellara and himself.
The girl was looking down at the havoc wrought below and now she turned
her face toward his.
“They must all be drowned,” she said, “and they were your people. I am
sorry.”
“Perhaps they would have chosen it in preference to what might have
awaited them in Korsar,” he said.
“And they have been released only a little sooner than we shall be,” she
continued. “Do you notice how low the ship rides now and how sluggish
she is? The hold must be half filled with water—another such sea as the
last one will founder her.”
For some time they stood in silence, each occupied with his own
thoughts. The bulk rolled in the trough and momentarily it seemed that
she might not roll back in time to avert the disaster of the next
menacing comber, yet each time she staggered drunkenly to oppose a high
side to the hungry waters.
“I believe the storm has spent itself,” said Tanar.
“The wind has died and there has been no sea like the great one that
stove in the forward hatch,” said Stellara, hopefully.
The noonday sun broke from behind the black cloud that had shrouded it
and the sea burst into a blaze of blue and silver beauty. The storm had
passed. The seas diminished. The derelict rolled heavily upon the great
swells, low in the water, but temporarily relieved of the menace of
immediate disaster.
Tanar descended the companionway to the lower deck and approached the
forward hatch. A single glance below revealed only what he could have
anticipated—floating corpses rolling with the roll of the derelict. All
below were dead. With a sigh he turned away and returned to the upper
deck.
The girl did not even question him for she could read in his demeanor
the story of what his eyes had beheld.
“You and I are the only living creatures that remain aboard,” he said.
She waved a hand in a broad gesture that took in the sea about them.
“Doubtless we alone of the entire ship’s company have survived,” she
said. “I see no other ship nor any of the small boats.”
Tanar strained his eyes in all directions. “Nor I,” said he; “but
perhaps some of them have escaped.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it.”
“Yours has been a heavy loss,” sympathized the Sarian. “Besides so many
of your people, you have lost your father and your mother.”
Stellara looked up quickly into his eyes. “They were not my people,” she
said.
“What?” exclaimed Tanar. “They were not your people? But your father,
The Cid, was Chief of the Korsars.”
“He was not my father,” replied the girl.
“And the woman was not your mother?”
“May the gods forbid!” she exclaimed.
“But The Cid! He treated you like a daughter.”
“He thought I was his daughter, but I am not.”
“I do not understand,” said Tanar; “yet I am glad that you are not. I
could not understand how you, who are so different from them, could be a
Korsar.”
“My mother was a native of the island of Amiocap and there The Cid,
raiding for women, seized her. She told me about it many times before
she died.
“Her mate was absent upon a great tandor hunt and she never saw him
again. When I was born The Cid thought that I was his daughter, but my
mother knew better for I bore upon my left shoulder a small, red
birthmark identical with one upon the left shoulder of the mate from
whom she had been stolen—my father.
“My mother never told The Cid the truth, for fear that he would kill me
in accordance with the custom the Korsars follow of destroying the
children of their captives if a Korsar is not the father.”
“And the woman who was with you on board was not your mother?”
“No, she was The Cid’s mate, but not my mother, who is dead.”
Tanar felt a distinct sense of relief that Stellara was not a Korsar,
but why this should be so he did not know, nor, perhaps, did he attempt
to analyze his feelings.
“I am glad,” he said again.
“But why?” she asked.
“Now we do not have to be enemies,” he replied.
“Were we before?”
He hesitated and then he laughed. “I was not your enemy,” he said, “but
you reminded me that you were mine.”
“It has been the habit of a lifetime to think of myself as a Korsar,”
exclaimed Stellara, “although I knew that I was not. I felt no enmity
toward you.”
“Whatever we may have been we must of necessity be friends now,” he told
her.
“That will depend upon you,” she replied.
III
AMIOCAP
The blue waters of the great sea known as Korsar Az wash the shores of a
green island far from the mainland—a long, narrow island with verdure
clad hills and plateaus, its coast line indented by coves and tiny
bays—Amiocap, an island of mystery and romance.
At a distance, and when there is a haze upon the waters, it looks like
two islands, rather than one, so low and narrow it is at one point,
where coves run in on either side and the sea almost meets.
Thus it appeared to the two survivors from the deck of the Korsar
derelict drifting helplessly with the sluggish run of an ocean current
and at the whim of vagrant winds.
Time is not even a word to the people of Pellucidar, so Tanar had given
no thought to that. They had eaten many times, but as there was still an
ample supply of provisions, even for a large ship’s company, he felt no
concern upon that score, but he had been worried by the depletion of
their supply of good water, for the contents of many casks that he had
broached had been undrinkable.
They had slept much, which is the way of Pellucidarians when there is
naught else to do, storing energy for possible future periods of long
drawn exertion.
They had been sleeping thus, for how long who may say in the measureless
present of Pellucidar. Stellara was the first to come on deck from the
cabin she had occupied next to that of The Cid. She looked about for
Tanar, but not seeing him she let her eyes wander out over the upcurving
expanse of water that merged in every direction with the blue domed
vault of the brilliant sky, in the exact center of which hung the great
noonday sun.
But suddenly her gaze was caught and held by something beside the
illimitable waters and the ceaseless sun. She voiced a surprised and
joyous cry and, turning, ran across the deck toward the cabin in which
Tanar slept.
“Tanar! Tanar!” she cried, pounding upon the paneled door. “Land, Tanar,
land!”
The door swung open and the Sarian stepped out upon the deck where
Stellara stood pointing across the starboard rail of the drifting
derelict.
Close by rose the green hills of a long shore line that stretched away
in both directions for many miles, but whether it was the mainland or an
island they could not tell.
“Land!” breathed Tanar. “How good it looks!”
“The pleasant green of the soft foliage often hides terrible beasts and
savage men,” Stellara reminded him.
“But they are the dangers that I know—it is the unknown dangers of the
sea that I do not like. I am not of the sea.”
“You hate the sea?”
“No,” he replied, “I do not hate it; I do not understand it—that is all.
But there is something that I do understand,” and he pointed toward the
land.
There was that in Tanar’s tone that caused Stellara to look quickly in
the direction that be indicated.
“Men!” she exclaimed.
“Warriors,” said Tanar.
“There must be twenty of them in that canoe,” she said.
“And here comes another canoeful behind them.”
From the mouth of a narrow cove the canoes were paddling cut into the
open sea.
“Look!” cried Stellara. “There are many more coming.”
One after another twenty canoes moved in a long column out upon the
quiet waters and as they drew steadily toward the ship the survivors saw
that each was filled with almost naked warriors. Short, heavy spears,
bone-tipped, bristled menacingly; stone knives protruded from every
G-string and stone hatchets swung at every hip.
As the flotilla approached, Tanar went to a cabin and returned with two
of the heavy pistols left behind by a fleeing Korsar when the ship had
been abandoned.
“Do you expect to repulse four hundred warriors with those?” asked the
girl.
Tanar shrugged. “If they have never heard the report of a firearm a few
shots may suffice to frighten them away, for a time at least,” he
explained, “and if we do not go on the shore the current will carry us
away from them in time.”
“But suppose they do not frighten so easily?” she demanded.
“Then I can do no more than my best with the crude weapons and the
inferior powder of the Korsars,” he said with the conscious superiority
of one who had, with his people, so recently emerged from the stone age
that he often instinctively grasped a pistol by the muzzle and used it
as a war club in sudden emergencies when at close quarters.
“Perhaps they will not be unfriendly,” suggested Stellara.
Tanar laughed. “Then they are not of Pellucidar,” he said, “but of some
wondrous country inhabited by what Perry calls angels.”
“Who is Perry?” she demanded. “I never heard of him.”
“He is a madman who says that Pellucidar is the inside of a hollow stone
that is as round as the strange world that hangs forever above the Land
of Awful Shadow, and that upon the outside are seas and mountains and
plains and countless people and a great country from which he comes.”
“He must be quite mad,” said the girl.
“Yet he and David, our Emperor, have brought us many advantages that
were before unknown in Pellucidar, so that now we can kill more warriors
in a single battle than was possible before during the course of a whole
war. Perry calls this civilization and it is indeed a very wonderful
thing.”
“Perhaps he came from the frozen world from which the ancestors of the
Korsars came,” suggested the girl. “They say that that country lies
outside of Pellucidar.”