CHAPTER VII
FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT
I have never been much of a runner; I hate running. But if ever a
sprinter broke into smithereens all world's records it was I that
day when I fled before those hide-ous beasts along the narrow spit
of rocky cliff between two narrow fiords toward the Sojar Az. Just
as I reached the verge of the cliff the foremost of the brutes was
upon me. He leaped and closed his massive jaws upon my shoulder.
The momentum of his flying body, added to that of my own, carried
the two of us over the cliff. It was a hideous fall. The cliff
was almost perpendicular. At its foot broke the sea against a
solid wall of rock.
We struck the cliff-face once in our descent and then plunged into
the salt sea. With the impact with the water the hyaenodon released
his hold upon my shoulder.
As I came sputtering to the surface I looked about for some tiny
foot- or hand-hold where I might cling for a moment of rest and
recuperation. The cliff itself offered me nothing, so I swam toward
the mouth of the fiord.
At the far end I could see that erosion from above had washed down
sufficient rubble to form a narrow ribbon of beach. Toward this
I swam with all my strength. Not once did I look behind me, since
every unnecessary movement in swimming detracts so much from one's
endurance speed. Not until I had drawn myself safely out upon the
beach did I turn my eyes back toward the sea for the hyaenodon.
He was swimming slowly and apparently painfully toward the beach
upon where I stood.
I watched him for a long time, wondering, why it was that such a
doglike animal was not a better swimmer. As he neared me I realized
that he was weakening rapidly. I had gathered a handful of stones
to be ready for his assault when he landed, but in a moment I let
them fall from my hands. It was evident that the brute either was
no swimmer or else was severely in-jured, for by now he was making
practically no head-way. Indeed, it was with quite apparent
difficulty that he kept his nose above the surface of the sea.
He was not more than fifty yards from shore when he went under. I
watched the spot where he had disap-peared, and in a moment I saw
his head reappear. The look of dumb misery in his eyes struck a
chord in my breast, for I love dogs. I forgot that he was a vicious,
primordial wolf-thing--a man-eater, a scourge, and a terror. I
saw only the sad eyes that looked like the eyes of Raja, my dead
collie of the outer world.
I did not stop to weigh and consider. In other words, I did not stop
to think, which I believe must be the way of men who do things--in
contradistinction to those who think much and do nothing. Instead, I
leaped back into the water and swam out toward the drowning beast.
At first he showed his teeth at my approach, but just before
I reached him he went under for the second time, so that I had to
dive to get him.
I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and though he weighed as
much as a Shetland pony, I managed to drag him to shore and well
up upon the beach. Here I found that one of his forelegs was
broken--the crash against the cliff-face must have done it.
By this time all the fight was out of him, so that when I had
gathered a few tiny branches from some of the stunted trees that
grew in the crevices of the cliff, and returned to him he permitted
me to set his broken leg and bind it in splints. I had to tear
part of my shirt into bits to obtain a bandage, but at last the
job was done. Then I sat stroking the savage head and talking to
the beast in the man-dog talk with which you are familiar, if you
ever owned and loved a dog.
When he is well, I thought, he probably will turn upon me and attempt
to devour me, and against that even-tuality I gathered together a
pile of rocks and set to work to fashion a stone-knife. We were
bottled up at the head of the fiord as completely as if we had been
behind prison bars. Before us spread the Sojar Az, and else-where
about us rose unscalable cliffs.
Fortunately a little rivulet trickled down the side of the rocky
wall, giving us ample supply of fresh water--some of which I kept
constantly beside the hyaenodon in a huge, bowl-shaped shell, of
which there were count-less numbers among the rubble of the beach.
For food we subsisted upon shellfish and an occa-sional bird that
I succeeded in knocking over with a rock, for long practice as a
pitcher on prep-school and varsity nines had made me an excellent
shot with a hand-thrown missile.
It was not long before the hyaenodon's leg was suffi-ciently mended
to permit him to rise and hobble about on three legs. I shall
never forget with what intent in-terest I watched his first attempt.
Close at my hand lay my pile of rocks. Slowly the beast came to
his three good feet. He stretched himself, lowered his head, and
lapped water from the drinking-shell at his side, turned and looked
at me, and then hobbled off toward the cliffs.
Thrice he traversed the entire extent of our prison, seeking, I
imagine, a loop-hole for escape, but finding none he returned in my
direction. Slowly he came quite close to me, sniffed at my shoes,
my puttees, my hands, and then limped off a few feet and lay down
again.
Now that he was able to get around, I was a little un-certain as
to the wisdom of my impulsive mercy.
How could I sleep with that ferocious thing prowling about the
narrow confines of our prison?
Should I close my eyes it might be to open them again to the feel of
those mighty jaws at my throat. To say the least, I was uncomfortable.
I have had too much experience with dumb animals to bank very
strongly on any sense of gratitude which may be attributed to them
by inexperienced sentimen-talists. I believe that some animals
love their masters, but I doubt very much if their affection is
the outcome of gratitude--a characteristic that is so rare as to
be only occasionally traceable in the seemingly unselfish acts of
man himself.
But finally I was forced to sleep. Tired nature would be put off
no longer. I simply fell asleep, willy nilly, as I sat looking
out to sea. I had been very uncomfortable since my ducking in the
ocean, for though I could see the sunlight on the water half-way
toward the island and upon the island itself, no ray of it fell upon
us. We were well within the Land of Awful Shadow. A per-petual
half-warmth pervaded the atmosphere, but clothing was slow in
drying, and so from loss of sleep and great physical discomfort, I
at last gave way to nature's demands and sank into profound slumber.
When I awoke it was with a start, for a heavy body was upon me. My
first thought was that the hyaenodon had at last attacked me, but
as my eyes opened and I struggled to rise, I saw that a man was
astride me and three others bending close above him.
I am no weakling--and never have been. My experi-ence in the hard
life of the inner world has turned my thews to steel. Even such
giants as Ghak the Hairy One have praised my strength; but to it
is added another quality which they lack--science.
The man upon me held me down awkwardly, leaving me many openings--one
of which I was not slow in taking advantage of, so that almost
before the fellow knew that I was awake I was upon my feet with
my arms over his shoulders and about his waist and had hurled him
heavily over my head to the hard rubble of the beach, where he lay
quite still.
In the instant that I arose I had seen the hyaenodon lying asleep
beside a boulder a few yards away. So nearly was he the color of
the rock that he was scarcely discernible. Evidently the newcomers
had not seen him.
I had not more than freed myself from one of my antagonists before
the other three were upon me. They did not work silently now, but
charged me with savage cries--a mistake upon their part. The fact
that they did not draw their weapons against me convinced me that
they desired to take me alive; but I fought as desper-ately as if
death loomed immediate and sure.
The battle was short, for scarce had their first wild whoop
reverberated through the rocky fiord, and they had closed upon me,
than a hairy mass of demoniacal rage hurtled among us.
It was the hyaenodon!
In an instant he had pulled down one of the men, and with a single
shake, terrier-like, had broken his neck. Then he was upon another.
In their efforts to vanquish the wolf-dog the savages forgot all
about me, thus giv-ing me an instant in which to snatch a knife
from the loin-string of him who had first fallen and account for
another of them. Almost simultaneously the hyaenodon pulled down
the remaining enemy, crushing his skull with a single bite of those
fearsome jaws.
The battle was over--unless the beast considered me fair prey, too.
I waited, ready for him with knife and bludgeon--also filched from
a dead foeman; but he paid no attention to me, falling to work
instead to devour one of the corpses.
The beast bad been handicapped but little by his splinted leg; but
having eaten he lay down and com-menced to gnaw at the bandage.
I was sitting some little distance away devouring shellfish, of
which, by the way, I was becoming exceedingly tired.
Presently, the hyaenodon arose and came toward me. I did not move.
He stopped in front of me and deliberately raised his bandaged leg
and pawed my knee. His act was as intelligible as words--he wished
the bandage removed.
I took the great paw in one hand and with the other hand untied and
unwound the bandage, removed the splints and felt of the injured
member. As far as I could judge the bone was completely knit. The
joint was stiff; when I bent it a little the brute winced--but he
neither growled nor tried to pull away. Very slowly and gently I
rubbed the joint and applied pressure to it for a few moments.
Then I set it down upon the ground. The hyaenodon walked around
me a few times, and then lay down at my side, his body touching
mine. I laid my hand upon his head. He did not move. Slowly, I
scratched about his ears and neck and down beneath the fierce jaws.
The only sign he gave was to raise his chin a trifle that I might
better caress him.
That was enough! From that moment I have never again felt suspicion
of Raja, as I immediately named him. Somehow all sense of loneliness
vanished, too--I had a dog! I had never guessed precisely what it
was that was lacking to life in Pellucidar, but now I knew it was
the total absence of domestic animals.
Man here had not yet reached the point where he might take the time
from slaughter and escaping slaugh-ter to make friends with any of
the brute creation. I must qualify this statement a trifle and say
that this was true of those tribes with which I was most familiar.
The Thurians do domesticate the colossal lidi, traversing the
great Lidi Plains upon the backs of these gro-tesque and stupendous
monsters, and possibly there may also be other, far-distant peoples
within the great world, who have tamed others of the wild things
of jungle, plain or mountain.
The Thurians practice agriculture in a crude sort of way. It is
my opinion that this is one of the earliest steps from savagery to
civilization. The taming of wild beasts and their domestication
follows.
Perry argues that wild dogs were first domesticated for hunting
purposes; but I do not agree with him. I believe that if their
domestication were not purely the result of an accident, as, for
example, my taming of the hyaenodon, it came about through the
desire of tribes who had previously domesticated flocks and herds
to have some strong, ferocious beast to guard their roam-ing
property. However, I lean rather more strongly to the theory of
accident.
As I sat there upon the beach of the little fiord eating my unpalatable
shell-fish, I commenced to wonder how it had been that the four
savages had been able to reach me, though I had been unable to
escape from my natu-ral prison. I glanced about in all directions,
searching for an explanation. At last my eyes fell upon the bow
of a small dugout protruding scarce a foot from behind a large
boulder lying half in the water at the edge of the beach.
At my discovery I leaped to my feet so suddenly that it brought
Raja, growling and bristling, upon all fours in an instant. For
the moment I had forgotten him. But his savage rumbling did not
cause me any uneasiness. He glanced quickly about in all directions
as if searching for the cause of my excitement. Then, as I walked
rapidly down toward the dugout, he slunk silently after me.
The dugout was similar in many respects to those which I had seen
in use by the Mezops. In it were four paddles. I was much delighted,
as it promptly offered me the escape I had been craving.
I pushed it out into water that would float it, stepped in and
called to Raja to enter. At first he did not seem to understand
what I wished of him, but after I had paddled out a few yards
he plunged through the surf and swam after me. When he had come
alongside I grasped the scruff of his neck, and after a considerable
struggle, in which I several times came near to over-turning the
canoe, I managed to drag him aboard, where he shook himself vigorously
and squatted down before me.
After emerging from the fiord, I paddled southward along the coast,
where presently the lofty cliffs gave way to lower and more level
country. It was here some-where that I should come upon the
principal village of the Thurians. When, after a time, I saw in
the distance what I took to be huts in a clearing near the shore, I
drew quickly into land, for though I had been furnished credentials
by Kolk, I was not sufficiently familiar with the tribal characteristics
of these people to know whether I should receive a friendly welcome
or not; and in case I should not, I wanted to be sure of having
a canoe hidden safely away so that I might undertake the trip to
the island, in any event--provided, of course, that I escaped the
Thurians should they prove bellig-erent.
At the point where I landed the shore was quite low. A forest of
pale, scrubby ferns ran down almost to the beach. Here I dragged
up the dugout, hiding it well within the vegetation, and with some
loose rocks built a cairn upon the beach to mark my cache. Then
I turned my steps toward the Thurian village.
As I proceeded I began to speculate upon the possible actions of
Raja when we should enter the presence of other men than myself. The
brute was padding softly at my side, his sensitive nose constantly
atwitch and his fierce eyes moving restlessly from side to
side--nothing would ever take Raja unawares!
The more I thought upon the matter the greater be-came my
perturbation. I did not want Raja to attack any of the people upon
whose friendship I so greatly depended, nor did I want him injured
or slain by them.
I wondered if Raja would stand for a leash. His head as he paced
beside me was level with my hip. I laid my hand upon it caressingly.
As I did so he turned and looked up into my face, his jaws parting
and his red tongue lolling as you have seen your own dog's beneath
a love pat.
"Just been waiting all your life to be tamed and loved, haven't
you, old man?" I asked. "You're nothing but a good pup, and the
man who put the hyaeno in your name ought to be sued for libel."
Raja bared his mighty fangs with upcurled, snarling lips and licked
my hand.
"You're grinning, you old fraud, you!" I cried. "If you're not,
I'll eat you. I'll bet a doughnut you're nothing but some kid's
poor old Fido, masquerading around as a real, live man-eater."
Raja whined. And so we walked on together toward Thuria--I talking
to the beast at my side, and he seem-ing to enjoy my company no
less than I enjoyed his. If you don't think it's lonesome wandering
all by yourself through savage, unknown Pellucidar, why, just
try it, and you will not wonder that I was glad of the company of
this first dog--this living replica of the fierce and now extinct
hyaenodon of the outer crust that hunted in savage packs the great
elk across the snows of southern France, in the days when the mastodon
roamed at will over the broad continent of which the British Isles
were then a part, and perchance left his footprints and his bones
in the sands of Atlantis as well.
Thus I dreamed as we moved on toward Thuria. My dreaming was rudely
shattered by a savage growl from Raja. I looked down at him. He
had stopped in his tracks as one turned to stone. A thin ridge
of stiff hair bristled along the entire length of his spine. His
yel-low green eyes were fastened upon the scrubby jungle at our
right.
I fastened my fingers in the bristles at his neck and turned my
eyes in the direction that his pointed. At first I saw nothing.
Then a slight movement of the bushes riveted my attention. I
thought it must be some wild beast, and was glad of the primitive
weapons I had taken from the bodies of the warriors who had attacked
me.
Presently I distinguished two eyes peering at us from the vegetation.
I took a step in their direction, and as I did so a youth arose
and fled precipitately in the direction we had been going. Raja
struggled to be after him, but I held tightly to his neck, an act
which he did not seem to relish, for he turned on me with bared
fangs.
I determined that now was as good a time as any to discover just
how deep was Raja's affection for me. One of us could be master,
and logically I was the one. He growled at me. I cuffed him
sharply across the nose. He looked it me for a moment in surprised
bewilderment, and then he growled again. I made another feint at
him, expecting that it would bring him at my throat; but in-stead
he winced and crouched down.
Raja was subdued!
I stooped and patted him. Then I took a piece of the rope that
constituted a part of my equipment and made a leash for him.
Thus we resumed our journey toward Thuria. The youth who had seen
us was evidently of the Thurians. That he had lost no time in
racing homeward and spreading the word of my coming was evidenced
when we had come within sight of the clearing, and the village--the
first real village, by the way, that I had ever seen constructed
by human Pellucidarians. There was a rude rectangle walled with
logs and boulders, in which were a hundred or more thatched huts
of similar con-struction. There was no gate. Ladders that could
be re-moved by night led over the palisade.
Before the village were assembled a great concourse of warriors.
Inside I could see the heads of women and children peering over the
top of the wall; and also, farther back, the long necks of lidi,
topped by their tiny heads. Lidi, by the way, is both the singular
and plural form of the noun that describes the huge beasts of
bur-den of the Thurians. They are enormous quadrupeds, eighty or
a hundred feet long, with very small heads perched at the top of
very long, slender necks. Their heads are quite forty feet from
the ground. Their gait is slow and deliberate, but so enormous
are their strides that, as a matter of fact, they cover the ground
quite rapidly.
Perry has told me that they are almost identical with the fossilized
remains of the diplodocus of the outer crust's Jurassic age. I
have to take his word for it--and I guess you will, unless you know
more of such matters than I.
As we came in sight of the warriors the men set up a great jabbering.
Their eyes were wide in astonishment--only, I presume, because
of my strange garmenture, but as well from the fact that I came
in company with a jalok, which is the Pellucidarian name of the
hyaenodon.
Raja tugged at his leash, growling and showing his long white fangs.
He would have liked nothing better than to be at the throats of
the whole aggregation; but I held him in with the leash, though it
took all my strength to do it. My free hand I held above my head,
palm out, in token of the peacefulness of my mission.
In the foreground I saw the youth who had discov-ered us, and
I could tell from the way he carried him-self that he was quite
overcome by his own importance. The warriors about him were all
fine looking fellows, though shorter and squatter than the Sarians
or the Amozites. Their color, too, was a bit lighter, owing, no
doubt, to the fact that much of their lives is spent within the
shadow of the world that hangs forever above their country.
A little in advance of the others was a bearded fel-low tricked out
in many ornaments. I didn't need to ask to know that he was the
chieftain--doubtless Goork, father of Kolk. Now to him I addressed
myself.
"I am David," I said, "Emperor of the Federated Kingdoms of
Pellucidar. Doubtless you have heard of me?"
He nodded his head affirmatively.
"I come from Sari," I continued, "where I just met Kolk, the son
of Goork. I bear a token from Kolk to his father, which will prove
that I am a friend."
Again the warrior nodded. "I am Goork," he said. "Where is the
token?"
"Here," I replied, and fished into the game-bag where I had placed
it.
Goork and his people waited in silence. My hand searched the inside
of the bag.
It was empty!
The token had been stolen with my arms!
