THE BATTLE
Early the following morning while several of the women and children
were at the river drawing water the balance of the tribe of Thandar was
startled into wakefulness by piercing shrieks from the direction the
water carriers had taken.
Before the great, hairy men, led by the smooth-skinned Thandar, had
reached the foot of the cliff in their rush to the rescue of the women
several of the latter appeared at the edge of the forest, running
swiftly toward the caves.
Mingled with their screams of terror were cries of: "The bad men! The
bad men!" But these were not needed to acquaint the rescuers with the
cause of the commotion, for at the heels of the women came Thurg and a
score of his vicious brutes. Little better than anthropoid apes were
they. Long armed, hairy, skulking monsters, whose close-set eyes and
retreating foreheads proclaimed more intimate propinquity to the higher
orders of brutes than to civilized man.
Woe betide male or female who fell into their remorseless clutches,
since to the base passions, unrestrained, that mark the primordial they
were addicted to the foulest forms of cannibalism.
In the past their raids upon their neighbors for meat and women had met
with but slight resistance--the terrified cave dwellers scampering to
the safety of their dizzy ledges from whence they might hurl stones and
roll boulders down to the confusion of any foe however ferocious.
Always the bad men caught a few unwary victims before the safety of the
ledges could be attained, but this time there was a difference. Thurg
was delighted. The men were rushing downward to meet him--great indeed
would be the feast which should follow this day's fighting, for with
the men disposed of there would be but little difficulty in storming
the cliff and carrying off all the women and children, and as he
thought upon these things there floated in his little brain the image
of the beautiful girl he had watched come down the evening before from
the caves to meet the smooth-skinned warrior who twice now had bested
Thurg in battle.
That Thandar's men might turn the tables upon him never for a moment
occurred to Thurg. Nor was there little wonder, since, mighty as were
the muscles of the cave men, they were weaklings by comparison with the
half-brutes of Thurg--only the smooth-skinned stranger troubled the
muddy mind of the near-man.
It puzzled him a little, though, to see the long slim sticks that the
enemy carried, and the little slivers in skin bags upon their backs,
and the strange curved branches whose ends were connected by slender
bits of gut. What were these things for!
Soon he was to know--this and other things.
Thandar's warriors did not rush upon Thurg and his brutes in a close
packed, yelling mob. Instead they trotted slowly forward in a long thin
line that stretched out parallel with the base of the cliff. In the
center, directly in front of the charging bad men, was Thandar, calling
directions to his people, first upon one hand and then upon the other.
And in accordance with his commands the ends of the line began to
quicken the pace, so that quickly Thurg saw that there were men
before him, and men upon either hand, and now, at fifty feet, while
all were advancing cautiously, crouched for the final hand-to-hand
encounter, he saw the enemy slip each a sliver into the gut of the bent
branches--there was a sudden chorus of twangs, and Thurg felt a sharp
pain in his neck. Involuntarily he clapped his hand to the spot to find
one of the slivers sticking there, scarce an inch from his jugular.
With a howl of rage he snatched the thing from him, and as he leaped
to the charge to punish these audacious mad-men he noted a dozen of
his henchmen plucking slivers from various portions of their bodies,
while two lay quite still upon the grass with just the ends of slivers
protruding from their breasts.
The sight brought the beast-man to a momentary halt. He saw his fellows
charging in upon the foe--he saw another volley of slivers speed from
the bent branches. Down went another of his fighters, and then the
enemy cast aside their strange weapons at a shouted command from the
smooth-skinned one and grasping their long, slim sticks ran forward to
meet Thurg's people.
Thurg smiled. It would soon be over now. He turned toward one who was
bearing down upon him--it was Thandar. Thurg crouched to meet the
charge. Rage, revenge, the lust for blood fired his bestial brain. With
his huge paws he would tear the puny stick from this creature's grasp,
and this time he would gain his hold upon that smooth throat. He licked
his lips. And then out of the corner of his eye he glanced to the right.
What strange sight was this! His people flying? It was incredible!
And yet it was true. Growling and raging in pain and anger they were
running a gauntlet of fire-sharpened lances. Three lay dead. The others
were streaming blood as they fled before the relentless prodding devils
at their backs.
It was enough for Thurg. He did not wait to close with Thandar. A
single howl of dismay broke from his flabby lips, and then he wheeled
and dashed for the wood. He was the last to pass through the rapidly
converging ends of Thandar's primitive battle line. He was running
so fast that, afterward, Nadara who was watching the battle from the
cliff-side insisted that his feet flew higher than his head at each
frantic leap.
Thandar and his victorious army pursued the enemy through the wood for
a mile or more, then they returned, laughing and shouting, to receive
the plaudits of the old men, the women and the children.
It was a happy day. There was feasting. And Thandar, having in mind
things he had read of savage races, improvised a dance in honor of the
victory.
He knew little more of savage dances than his tribesmen did of the
two-step and the waltz; but he knew that dancing and song and play
marked in themselves a great step upward in the evolution of man from
the lower orders, and so he meant to teach these things to his people.
A red flush spread to his temples as he thought of his dignified father
and his stately mother and with what horrified emotions they would view
him now could they but see him--naked but for a g-string and a panther
skin, moving with leaps and bounds, and now stately waltz steps in a
great circle, clapping his hands in time to his movements, while behind
him strung a score of lusty, naked warriors, mimicking his every antic
with the fidelity of apes.
About them squatted the balance of the tribe more intensely interested
in this, the first ceremonial function of their lives, than with any
other occurrence that had ever befallen them. They, too, now clapped
their hands in time with the dancers.
Nadara stood with parted lips and wide eyes watching the strange
scene. Within her it seemed that something was struggling for
expression--something that she must have known long, long
ago--something that she had forgotten but that she presently must
recall. With it came an insistent urge--her feet could scarce remain
quietly upon the ground, and great waves of melody and song welled into
her heart and throat, though what they were and what they meant she did
not know.
She only knew that she was intensely excited and happy and that her
whole being seemed as light and airy as the soft wind that blew across
the gently swaying treetops of the forest.
Now the dance was done. Thandar had led the warriors back to the feast.
In the center of the circle where the naked bodies of the men had
leaped and swirled to the clapping of many hands was an open space,
deserted. Into it Nadara ran, drawn by some subtile excitement of the
soul which she could not have fathomed had she tried--which she did not
try to fathom.
Around her slim, graceful figure was draped the glossy, black pelt of
Nagoola--another trophy of the prowess of her man. It half concealed
but to accentuate the beauties of her form.
With eyes half-closed she took a half dozen graceful, tentative steps.
Now the eyes of Thandar and several others were upon her, but she did
not see them. Suddenly, with outthrown arms, she commenced to dance,
bending her lithe body, swaying from side to side as she fell, with
graceful abandon, into steps and poses that seemed as natural to her as
repose.
About the little circle she wove her simple yet intricate way, and now
every eye was upon her as every savage heart leaped in unison with her
shapely feet, rising and falling in harmony with her lithe, brown limbs.
And of all the hearts that leaped, fastest leaped the heart of Thandar,
for he saw in the poetry of motion of the untutored girl the proof of
her birth-right--the truth of all that he had guessed of her origin
since her foster father had related the story of her birth upon his
death bed. None but a child of an age-old culture could possess this
inherent talent. Any moment he expected her lips to break forth in
song, nor was he to be disappointed, for presently, as the circling
cave folk commenced to clap their palms in time to her steps, Nadara
lifted her voice in clear and bird-like notes--a worldless paean of
love and life and happiness.
At last, exhausted, she paused, and as her eyes fell upon Thandar they
broke into a merry laugh.
"The king is not the only one who can leap and play upon his feet," she
cried.
Thandar came to the center of the circle and kneeling at her feet took
one of her hands in his and kissed it.
"The king is only mortal and a man," he said. "It is no reproach that
he cannot equal the divine grace of a goddess. You are very wonderful,
my Nadara," he continued, "From loving you I am coming to worship you."
And within the deep and silent wood another was stirred with mighty
emotions by the sight of the half-naked, graceful girl. It was Thurg,
the bad man, who had sneaked back alone to the edge of the forest that
he might seek an opportunity to be revenged upon Thandar and his people.
Half formed in his evil brain had been a certain plan, which the sight
of Nadara, dancing in the firelight, had turned to concrete resolution.
With the dancing and the feasting over, the tribe of Thandar betook
itself by ones and twos to the rocky caves that they expected so soon
to desert for the more comfortable village which they were to build
under the direction of their king, to the east, beside the great water.
At last all was still--the village slept. No sentry guarded their
slumbers, for Thandar, steeped in book learning, must needs add to his
stock of practical knowledge by bitter experience, and never yet had
the cause arisen for a night guard about his village.
Having defeated Thurg and his people he thought that they would not
return again, and certainly not by night, for the people of this wild
island roamed seldom by night, having too much respect for the teeth
and talons of Nagoola to venture forth after darkness had settled upon
the grim forests and the lonely plains.
But a tempest of uncontrolled emotions surged through the hairy breast
of Thurg. He forgot Nagoola. He thought only of revenge--revenge and
the black haired beauty who had so many times eluded him.
And as he saw her dancing in the circle of hand-clapping tribesmen, in
the light of the brush wood fire, his desire for her became a veritable
frenzy.
He could scarce restrain himself from rushing single-handed among his
foes and snatching the girl before their faces. However, caution came
to his rescue, and so he waited, albeit impatiently, until the last of
the cave folk had retired to his cavern.
He had seen into which Nadara had withdrawn--one that lay far up
the face of the steep cliff and directly above the cave occupied by
Thandar. The moon was overcast, the fire at the foot of the cliff had
died to glowing embers, all was wrapped in darkness and in shadow. Far
in the depths of the wood Nagoola coughed and cried. The weird sound
raised the coarse hair at the nape of Thurg's bull neck. He cast an
apprehensive backward glance, then, crouching low, he moved quickly and
silently across the clearing toward the base of the cliff.
Flattened against a protruding boulder there he waited, listening, for
a moment. No sound broke the stillness of the sleeping village. None
had seen his approach--of that he was convinced.
Carefully he began the ascent of the cliff face, made difficult by the
removal of the rough ladders that led from ledge to ledge by day, but
which were withdrawn with the retiring of the community to their dark
holes.
But Thurg had dragged with him from the forest a slim sapling. This he
leaned against the face of the cliff. Its uptilted end just topped the
lowest ledge.
Thurg was almost as large and quite as clumsy in appearance as a
gorilla, yet he was not as far removed from his true arboreal ancestors
as is the great simian, and so he accomplished in silence and with
evident ease what his great bulk might have seemed to have relegated to
the impossible.
Like a huge cat he scrambled up the frail pole until his fingers
clutched the ledge edge above him. Ape-like he drew himself to a
squatting position there. Then he groped for the ladder that the cave
folk had drawn up from below.
This he erected to the next ledge above. Thereafter the way was easy,
for the balance of the ledges were connected by steeply inclined trails
cut into the cliff face. This had been an innovation of Thandar's who
considered the rickety ladders not only a nuisance, but extremely
dangerous to life and limb, for scarce a day passed that some child or
woman did not receive a bad fall because of them.
So Thurg, with Thandar's unintentional aid, came easily to the mouth of
Nadara's cave.
Great had been the temptation as he passed the cave below to enter and
slay his enemy. Never had Thurg so hated any creature as he hated this
smooth-skinned interloper--with all the venom of his mean soul he hated
him.
Now he stooped, listening, just beside the entrance to the cave. He
could hear the regular breathing of the girl within. The hot blood
surged through his brute veins. His huge paws opened and closed
spasmodically. His breath sucked hot between his flabby lips.
Just beneath him Thandar lay dreaming. He saw a wonderful vision of a
beautiful nymph dancing in the firelight. In a circle about her sat the
Smith-Joneses, the Percy Standishes, the Livingston-Brownes, the Quincy
Adams-Cootses, and a hundred more equally aristocratic families of
Boston.
It did not seem strange to Thandar that there was not enough clothing
among the entire assemblage to have recently draped the Laocoön. His
father wore a becoming loin cloth, while the stately Mrs. John Alden
Smith-Jones, his mother, was tastefully arrayed in a scant robe of the
skins of small rodents sewn together with bits of gut.
As the nymph danced the audience kept time to her steps with loudly
clapping palms, and when she was done they approached her one by one,
crawling upon their hands and knees, and kissed her hand.
Suddenly he saw that the nymph was Nadara, and as he sprang forward to
claim her a large man with a coarse matted beard, a slanted forehead,
and close-set eyes, leaped out from among the others, seized Nadara and
fled with her toward a waiting trolley car.
He recognized the man as Thurg, and even in his dream it seemed rather
incongruous that he should be clothed in well-fitting evening clothes.
Nadara screamed once, and the scream roused Thandar from his dream.
Raising upon one elbow he looked toward the entrance of his cave. The
recollection of the dream swept back into his memory. With a little
sigh of relief that it had been but a dream, he settled back once more
upon his bed of grasses, and soon was wrapped in dreamless slumber.