6
The Tor-o-don
Pan-at-lee slept--the troubled sleep, of physical and nervous
exhaustion, filled with weird dreamings. She dreamed that she slept
beneath a great tree in the bottom of the Kor-ul-gryf and that one
of the fearsome beasts was creeping upon her but she could not open
her eyes nor move. She tried to scream but no sound issued from
her lips. She felt the thing touch her throat, her breast, her arm,
and there it closed and seemed to be dragging her toward it. With
a super-human effort of will she opened her eyes. In the instant
she knew that she was dreaming and that quickly the hallucination
of the dream would fade--it had happened to her many times before.
But it persisted. In the dim light that filtered into the dark
chamber she saw a form beside her, she felt hairy fingers upon her
and a hairy breast against which she was being drawn. Jad-ben-Otho!
this was no dream. And then she screamed and tried to fight the
thing from her; but her scream was answered by a low growl and
another hairy hand seized her by the hair of the head. The beast
rose now upon its hind legs and dragged her from the cave to the
moonlit recess without and at the same instant she saw the figure
of what she took to be a Ho-don rise above the outer edge of the
niche.
The beast that held her saw it too and growled ominously but it
did not relinquish its hold upon her hair. It crouched as though
waiting an attack, and it increased the volume and frequency of
its growls until the horrid sounds reverberated through the gorge,
drowning even the deep bellowings of the beasts below, whose mighty
thunderings had broken out anew with the sudden commotion from the
high-flung cave. The beast that held her crouched and the creature
that faced it crouched also, and growled--as hideously as the other.
Pan-at-lee trembled. This was no Ho-don and though she feared the
Ho-don she feared this thing more, with its catlike crouch and its
beastly growls. She was lost--that Pan-at-lee knew. The two things
might fight for her, but whichever won she was lost. Perhaps, during
the battle, if it came to that, she might find the opportunity to
throw herself over into the Kor-ul-gryf.
The thing that held her she had recognized now as a Tor-o-don, but
the other thing she could not place, though in the moonlight she
could see it very distinctly. It had no tail. She could see its
hands and its feet, and they were not the hands and feet of the
races of Pal-ul-don. It was slowly closing upon the Tor-o-don and
in one hand it held a gleaming knife. Now it spoke and to Pan-at-lee's
terror was added an equal weight of consternation.
"When it leaves go of you," it said, "as it will presently to
defend itself, run quickly behind me, Pan-at-lee, and go to the
cave nearest the pegs you descended from the cliff top. Watch from
there. If I am defeated you will have time to escape this slow
thing; if I am not I will come to you there. I am Om-at's friend
and yours."
The last words took the keen edge from Pan-at-lee's terror; but she
did not understand. How did this strange creature know her name?
How did it know that she had descended the pegs by a certain cave?
It must, then, have been here when she came. Pan-at-lee was puzzled.
"Who are you?" she asked, "and from whence do you come?"
"I am Tarzan," he replied, "and just now I came from Om-at, of
Kor-ul-ja, in search of you."
Om-at, gund of Kor-ul-ja! What wild talk was this? She would have
questioned him further, but now he was approaching the Tor-o-don
and the latter was screaming and growling so loudly as to drown
the sound of her voice. And then it did what the strange creature
had said that it would do--it released its hold upon her hair as
it prepared to charge. Charge it did and in those close quarters
there was no room to fence for openings. Instantly the two beasts
locked in deadly embrace, each seeking the other's throat. Pan-at-lee
watched, taking no advantage of the opportunity to escape which
their preoccupation gave her. She watched and waited, for into
her savage little brain had come the resolve to pin her faith to
this strange creature who had unlocked her heart with those four
words--"I am Om-at's friend!" And so she waited, with drawn knife,
the opportunity to do her bit in the vanquishing of the Tor-o-don.
That the newcomer could do it unaided she well knew to be beyond
the realms of possibility, for she knew well the prowess of the
beastlike man with whom it fought. There were not many of them in
Pal-ul-don, but what few there were were a terror to the women of
the Waz-don and the Ho-don, for the old Tor-o-don bulls roamed the
mountains and the valleys of Pal-ul-don between rutting seasons
and woe betide the women who fell in their paths.
With his tail the Tor-o-don sought one of Tarzan's ankles, and
finding it, tripped him. The two fell heavily, but so agile was the
ape-man and so quick his powerful muscles that even in falling he
twisted the beast beneath him, so that Tarzan fell on top and now
the tail that had tripped him sought his throat as had the tail of
In-tan, the Kor-ul-lul. In the effort of turning his antagonist's
body during the fall Tarzan had had to relinquish his knife that
he might seize the shaggy body with both hands and now the weapon
lay out of reach at the very edge of the recess. Both hands were
occupied for the moment in fending off the clutching fingers that
sought to seize him and drag his throat within reach of his foe's
formidable fangs and now the tail was seeking its deadly hold with
a formidable persistence that would not be denied.
Pan-at-lee hovered about, breathless, her dagger ready, but there
was no opening that did not also endanger Tarzan, so constantly
were the two duelists changing their positions. Tarzan felt the
tail slowly but surely insinuating itself about his neck though he
had drawn his head down between the muscles of his shoulders in an
effort to protect this vulnerable part. The battle seemed to be
going against him for the giant beast against which he strove would
have been a fair match in weight and strength for Bolgani, the
gorilla. And knowing this he suddenly exerted a single super-human
effort, thrust far apart the giant hands and with the swiftness of
a striking snake buried his fangs in the jugular of the Tor-o-don.
At the same instant the creature's tail coiled about his own throat
and then commenced a battle royal of turning and twisting bodies as
each sought to dislodge the fatal hold of the other, but the acts
of the ape-man were guided by a human brain and thus it was that the
rolling bodies rolled in the direction that Tarzan wished--toward
the edge of the recess.
The choking tail had shut the air from his lungs, he knew that
his gasping lips were parted and his tongue protruding; and now
his brain reeled and his sight grew dim; but not before he reached
his goal and a quick hand shot out to seize the knife that now lay
within reach as the two bodies tottered perilously upon the brink
of the chasm.
With all his remaining strength the ape-man drove home the
blade--once, twice, thrice, and then all went black before him as
he felt himself, still in the clutches of the Tor-o-don, topple
from the recess.
Fortunate it was for Tarzan that Pan-at-lee had not obeyed his
injunction to make good her escape while he engaged the Tor-o-don,
for it was to this fact that he owed his life. Close beside the
struggling forms during the brief moments of the terrific climax
she had realized every detail of the danger to Tarzan with which
the emergency was fraught and as she saw the two rolling over the
outer edge of the niche she seized the ape-man by an ankle at the
same time throwing herself prone upon the rocky floor. The muscles
of the Tor-o-don relaxed in death with the last thrust of Tarzan's
knife and with its hold upon the ape-man released it shot from
sight into the gorge below.
It was with infinite difficulty that Pan-at-lee retained her hold
upon the ankle of her protector, but she did so and then, slowly,
she sought to drag the dead weight back to the safety of the niche.
This, however, was beyond her strength and she could but hold on
tightly, hoping that some plan would suggest itself before her powers
of endurance failed. She wondered if, after all, the creature was
already dead, but that she could not bring herself to believe--and
if not dead how long it would be before he regained consciousness.
If he did not regain it soon he never would regain it, that she
knew, for she felt her fingers numbing to the strain upon them and
slipping, slowly, slowly, from their hold. It was then that Tarzan
regained consciousness. He could not know what power upheld him,
but he felt that whatever it was it was slowly releasing its hold
upon his ankle. Within easy reach of his hands were two pegs and
these he seized upon just as Pan-at-lee's fingers slipped from
their hold.
As it was he came near to being precipitated into the gorge--only
his great strength saved him. He was upright now and his feet
found other pegs. His first thought was of his foe. Where was he?
Waiting above there to finish him? Tarzan looked up just as the
frightened face of Pan-at-lee appeared over the threshold of the
recess.
"You live?" she cried.
"Yes," replied Tarzan. "Where is the shaggy one?"
Pan-at-lee pointed downward. "There," she said, "dead."
"Good!" exclaimed the ape-man, clambering to her side. "You are
unharmed?" he asked.
"You came just in time," replied Pan-at-lee; "but who are you and
how did you know that I was here and what do you know of Om-at and
where did you come from and what did you mean by calling Om-at,
gund?"
"Wait, wait," cried Tarzan; "one at a time. My, but you are all
alike--the shes of the tribe of Kerchak, the ladies of England, and
their sisters of Pal-ul-don. Have patience and I will try to tell
you all that you wish to know. Four of us set out with Om-at from
Kor-ul-ja to search for you. We were attacked by the Kor-ul-lul
and separated. I was taken prisoner, but escaped. Again I stumbled
upon your trail and followed it, reaching the summit of this cliff
just as the hairy one was climbing up after you. I was coming to
investigate when I heard your scream--the rest you know."
"But you called Om-at, gund of Kor-ul-ja," she insisted. "Es-sat
is gund."
"Es-sat is dead," explained the ape-man. "Om-at slew him and now
Om-at is gund. Om-at came back seeking you. He found Es-sat in your
cave and killed him."
"Yes," said the girl, "Es-sat came to my cave and I struck him down
with my golden breastplates and escaped."
"And a lion pursued you," continued Tarzan, "and you leaped from
the cliff into Kor-ul-lul, but why you were not killed is beyond
me."
"Is there anything beyond you?" exclaimed Pan-at-lee. "How could
you know that a lion pursued me and that I leaped from the cliff
and not know that it was the pool of deep water below that saved
me?"
"I would have known that, too, had not the Kor-ul-lul come then
and prevented me continuing upon your trail. But now I would ask
you a question--by what name do you call the thing with which I
just fought?"
"It was a Tor-o-don," she replied. "I have seen but one before. They
are terrible creatures with the cunning of man and the ferocity of
a beast. Great indeed must be the warrior who slays one single-handed."
She gazed at him in open admiration.
"And now," said Tarzan, "you must sleep, for tomorrow we shall
return to Kor-ul-ja and Om-at, and I doubt that you have had much
rest these two nights."
Pan-at-lee, lulled by a feeling of security, slept peacefully into
the morning while Tarzan stretched himself upon the hard floor of
the recess just outside her cave.
The sun was high in the heavens when he awoke; for two hours it
had looked down upon another heroic figure miles away--the figure
of a godlike man fighting his way through the hideous morass that
lies like a filthy moat defending Pal-ul-don from the creatures of
the outer world. Now waist deep in the sucking ooze, now menaced
by loathsome reptiles, the man advanced only by virtue of Herculean
efforts gaining laboriously by inches along the devious way that
he was forced to choose in selecting the least precarious footing.
Near the center of the morass was open water--slimy, green-hued
water. He reached it at last after more than two hours of such
effort as would have left an ordinary man spent and dying in the
sticky mud, yet he was less than halfway across the marsh. Greasy
with slime and mud was his smooth, brown hide, and greasy with slime
and mud was his beloved Enfield that had shone so brightly in the
first rays of the rising sun.
He paused a moment upon the edge of the open water and then throwing
himself forward struck out to swim across. He swam with long, easy,
powerful strokes calculated less for speed than for endurance, for
his was, primarily, a test of the latter, since beyond the open
water was another two hours or more of gruelling effort between it
and solid ground. He was, perhaps, halfway across and congratulating
himself upon the ease of the achievement of this portion of his task
when there arose from the depths directly in his path a hideous
reptile, which, with wide-distended jaws, bore down upon him,
hissing shrilly.
Tarzan arose and stretched, expanded his great chest and drank in
deep draughts of the fresh morning air. His clear eyes scanned the
wondrous beauties of the landscape spread out before them. Directly
below lay Kor-ul-gryf, a dense, somber green of gently moving tree
tops. To Tarzan it was neither grim, nor forbidding--it was jungle,
beloved jungle. To his right there spread a panorama of the lower
reaches of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho, with its winding streams and
its blue lakes. Gleaming whitely in the sunlight were scattered
groups of dwellings--the feudal strongholds of the lesser chiefs
of the Ho-don. A-lur, the City of Light, he could not see as it was
hidden by the shoulder of the cliff in which the deserted village
lay.
For a moment Tarzan gave himself over to that spiritual enjoyment
of beauty that only the man-mind may attain and then Nature asserted
herself and the belly of the beast called aloud that it was hungry.
Again Tarzan looked down at Kor-ul-gryf. There was the jungle! Grew
there a jungle that would not feed Tarzan? The ape-man smiled and
commenced the descent to the gorge. Was there danger there? Of
course. Who knew it better than Tarzan? In all jungles lies death,
for life and death go hand in hand and where life teems death reaps
his fullest harvest. Never had Tarzan met a creature of the jungle
with which he could not cope--sometimes by virtue of brute strength
alone, again by a combination of brute strength and the cunning of
the man-mind; but Tarzan had never met a gryf.
He had heard the bellowings in the gorge the night before after
he had lain down to sleep and he had meant to ask Pan-at-lee this
morning what manner of beast so disturbed the slumbers of its
betters. He reached the foot of the cliff and strode into the jungle
and here he halted, his keen eyes and ears watchful and alert,
his sensitive nostrils searching each shifting air current for the
scent spoor of game. Again he advanced deeper into the wood, his
light step giving forth no sound, his bow and arrows in readiness.
A light morning breeze was blowing from up the gorge and in this
direction he bent his steps. Many odors impinged upon his organs
of scent. Some of these he classified without effort, but others
were strange--the odors of beasts and of birds, of trees and shrubs
and flowers with which he was unfamiliar. He sensed faintly the
reptilian odor that he had learned to connect with the strange,
nocturnal forms that had loomed dim and bulky on several occasions
since his introduction to Pal-ul-don.
And then, suddenly he caught plainly the strong, sweet odor of Bara,
the deer. Were the belly vocal, Tarzan's would have given a little
cry of joy, for it loved the flesh of Bara. The ape-man moved
rapidly, but cautiously forward. The prey was not far distant and
as the hunter approached it, he took silently to the trees and
still in his nostrils was the faint reptilian odor that spoke of
a great creature which he had never yet seen except as a denser
shadow among the dense shadows of the night; but the odor was of
such a faintness as suggests to the jungle bred the distance of
absolute safety.
And now, moving noiselessly, Tarzan came within sight of Bara
drinking at a pool where the stream that waters Kor-ul-gryf crosses
an open place in the jungle. The deer was too far from the nearest
tree to risk a charge, so the ape-man must depend upon the accuracy
and force of his first arrow, which must drop the deer in its tracks
or forfeit both deer and shaft. Far back came the right hand and
the bow, that you or I might not move, bent easily beneath the
muscles of the forest god. There was a singing twang and Bara,
leaping high in air, collapsed upon the ground, an arrow through
his heart. Tarzan dropped to earth and ran to his kill, lest the
animal might even yet rise and escape; but Bara was safely dead.
As Tarzan stooped to lift it to his shoulder there fell upon his
ears a thunderous bellow that seemed almost at his right elbow,
and as his eyes shot in the direction of the sound, there broke
upon his vision such a creature as paleontologists have dreamed as
having possibly existed in the dimmest vistas of Earth's infancy--a
gigantic creature, vibrant with mad rage, that charged, bellowing,
upon him.
When Pan-at-lee awoke she looked out upon the niche in search of
Tarzan. He was not there. She sprang to her feet and rushed out,
looking down into Kor-ul-gryf guessing that he had gone down in
search of food and there she caught a glimpse of him disappearing
into the forest. For an instant she was panic-stricken. She knew
that he was a stranger in Pal-ul-don and that, so, he might not
realize the dangers that lay in that gorge of terror. Why did she
not call to him to return? You or I might have done so, but no
Pal-ul-don, for they know the ways of the gryf--they know the weak
eyes and the keen ears, and that at the sound of a human voice
they come. To have called to Tarzan, then, would but have been to
invite disaster and so she did not call. Instead, afraid though she
was, she descended into the gorge for the purpose of overhauling
Tarzan and warning him in whispers of his danger. It was a brave act,
since it was performed in the face of countless ages of inherited
fear of the creatures that she might be called upon to face. Men
have been decorated for less.
Pan-at-lee, descended from a long line of hunters, assumed that
Tarzan would move up wind and in this direction she sought his
tracks, which she soon found well marked, since he had made no effort
to conceal them. She moved rapidly until she reached the point at
which Tarzan had taken to the trees. Of course she knew what had
happened; since her own people were semi-arboreal; but she could
not track him through the trees, having no such well-developed
sense of scent as he.
She could but hope that he had continued on up wind and in this
direction she moved, her heart pounding in terror against her ribs,
her eyes glancing first in one direction and then another. She
had reached the edge of a clearing when two things happened--she
caught sight of Tarzan bending over a dead deer and at the same
instant a deafening roar sounded almost beside her. It terrified
her beyond description, but it brought no paralysis of fear.
Instead it galvanized her into instant action with the result that
Pan-at-lee swarmed up the nearest tree to the very loftiest branch
that would sustain her weight. Then she looked down.
The thing that Tarzan saw charging him when the warning bellow
attracted his surprised eyes loomed terrifically monstrous before
him--monstrous and awe-inspiring; but it did not terrify Tarzan,
it only angered him, for he saw that it was beyond even his powers
to combat and that meant that it might cause him to lose his
kill, and Tarzan was hungry. There was but a single alternative to
remaining for annihilation and that was flight--swift and immediate.
And Tarzan fled, but he carried the carcass of Bara, the deer, with
him. He had not more than a dozen paces start, but on the other hand
the nearest tree was almost as close. His greatest danger lay, he
imagined, in the great, towering height of the creature pursuing
him, for even though he reached the tree he would have to climb high
in an incredibly short time as, unless appearances were deceiving,
the thing could reach up and pluck him down from any branch under
thirty feet above the ground, and possibly from those up to fifty
feet, if it reared up on its hind legs.
But Tarzan was no sluggard and though the gryf was incredibly
fast despite its great bulk, it was no match for Tarzan, and when
it comes to climbing, the little monkeys gaze with envy upon the
feats of the ape-man. And so it was that the bellowing gryf came
to a baffled stop at the foot of the tree and even though he reared
up and sought to seize his prey among the branches, as Tarzan
had guessed he might, he failed in this also. And then, well out
of reach, Tarzan came to a stop and there, just above him, he saw
Pan-at-lee sitting, wide-eyed and trembling.
"How came you here?" he asked.
She told him. "You came to warn me!" he said. "It was very brave
and unselfish of you. I am chagrined that I should have been thus
surprised. The creature was up wind from me and yet I did not sense
its near presence until it charged. I cannot understand it."
"It is not strange," said Pan-at-lee. "That is one of the peculiarities
of the gryf--it is said that man never knows of its presence until
it is upon him--so silently does it move despite its great size."
"But I should have smelled it," cried Tarzan, disgustedly.
"Smelled it!" ejaculated Pan-at-lee. "Smelled it?"
"Certainly. How do you suppose I found this deer so quickly? And I
sensed the gryf, too, but faintly as at a great distance." Tarzan
suddenly ceased speaking and looked down at the bellowing creature
below them--his nostrils quivered as though searching for a scent.
"Ah!" he exclaimed. "I have it!"
"What?" asked Pan-at-lee.
"I was deceived because the creature gives off practically no
odor," explained the ape-man. "What I smelled was the faint aroma
that doubtless permeates the entire jungle because of the long
presence of many of the creatures--it is the sort of odor that
would remain for a long time, faint as it is.
"Pan-at-lee, did you ever hear of a triceratops? No? Well this thing
that you call a gryf is a triceratops and it has been extinct for
hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen its skeleton in the
museum in London and a figure of one restored. I always thought
that the scientists who did such work depended principally upon an
overwrought imagination, but I see that I was wrong. This living
thing is not an exact counterpart of the restoration that I saw;
but it is so similar as to be easily recognizable, and then, too,
we must remember that during the ages that have elapsed since the
paleontologist's specimen lived many changes might have been wrought
by evolution in the living line that has quite evidently persisted
in Pal-ul-don."
"Triceratops, London, paleo--I don't know what you are talking
about," cried Pan-at-lee.
Tarzan smiled and threw a piece of dead wood at the face of the
angry creature below them. Instantly the great bony hood over the
neck was erected and a mad bellow rolled upward from the gigantic
body. Full twenty feet at the shoulder the thing stood, a dirty
slate-blue in color except for its yellow face with the blue bands
encircling the eyes, the red hood with the yellow lining and the
yellow belly. The three parallel lines of bony protuberances down
the back gave a further touch of color to the body, those following
the line of the spine being red, while those on either side
are yellow. The five- and three-toed hoofs of the ancient horned
dinosaurs had become talons in the gryf, but the three horns, two
large ones above the eyes and a median horn on the nose, had persisted
through all the ages. Weird and terrible as was its appearance
Tarzan could not but admire the mighty creature looming big below
him, its seventy-five feet of length majestically typifying those
things which all his life the ape-man had admired--courage and
strength. In that massive tail alone was the strength of an elephant.
The wicked little eyes looked up at him and the horny beak opened
to disclose a full set of powerful teeth.
"Herbivorous!" murmured the ape-man. "Your ancestors may have been,
but not you," and then to Pan-at-lee: "Let us go now. At the cave
we will have deer meat and then--back to Kor-ul-ja and Om-at."
The girl shuddered. "Go?" she repeated. "We will never go from
here."
"Why not?" asked Tarzan.
For answer she but pointed to the gryf.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the man. "It cannot climb. We can reach the
cliff through the trees and be back in the cave before it knows
what has become of us."
"You do not know the gryf," replied Pan-at-lee gloomily.
"Wherever we go it will follow and always it will be ready at the
foot of each tree when we would descend. It will never give us up."
"We can live in the trees for a long time if necessary," replied
Tarzan, "and sometime the thing will leave."
The girl shook her head. "Never," she said, "and then there are the
Tor-o-don. They will come and kill us and after eating a little will
throw the balance to the gryf--the gryf and Tor-o-don are friends,
because the Tor-o-don shares his food with the gryf."
"You may be right," said Tarzan; "but even so I don't intend waiting
here for someone to come along and eat part of me and then feed
the balance to that beast below. If I don't get out of this place
whole it won't be my fault. Come along now and we'll make a try at
it," and so saying he moved off through the tree tops with Pan-at-lee
close behind. Below them, on the ground, moved the horned dinosaur
and when they reached the edge of the forest where there lay fifty
yards of open ground to cross to the foot of the cliff he was there
with them, at the bottom of the tree, waiting.
Tarzan looked ruefully down and scratched his head.
