19
Diana of the Jungle
Jane had made her first kill and she was very proud of it. It was
not a very formidable animal--only a hare; but it marked an epoch
in her existence. Just as in the dim past the first hunter had
shaped the destinies of mankind so it seemed that this event might
shape hers in some new mold. No longer was she dependent upon the
wild fruits and vegetables for sustenance. Now she might command
meat, the giver of the strength and endurance she would require
successfully to cope with the necessities of her primitive existence.
The next step was fire. She might learn to eat raw flesh as had
her lord and master; but she shrank from that. The thought even
was repulsive. She had, however, a plan for fire. She had given
the matter thought, but had been too busy to put it into execution
so long as fire could be of no immediate use to her. Now it was
different--she had something to cook and her mouth watered for the
flesh of her kill. She would grill it above glowing embers. Jane
hastened to her tree. Among the treasures she had gathered in the
bed of the stream were several pieces of volcanic glass, clear as
crystal. She sought until she had found the one in mind, which was
convex. Then she hurried to the ground and gathered a little pile
of powdered bark that was very dry, and some dead leaves and grasses
that had lain long in the hot sun. Near at hand she arranged a
supply of dead twigs and branches--small and large.
Vibrant with suppressed excitement she held the bit of glass above
the tinder, moving it slowly until she had focused the sun's rays
upon a tiny spot. She waited breathlessly. How slow it was! Were
her high hopes to be dashed in spite of all her clever planning?
No! A thin thread of smoke rose gracefully into the quiet air.
Presently the tinder glowed and broke suddenly into flame. Jane
clasped her hands beneath her chin with a little gurgling exclamation
of delight. She had achieved fire!
She piled on twigs and then larger branches and at last dragged a
small log to the flames and pushed an end of it into the fire which
was crackling merrily. It was the sweetest sound that she had heard
for many a month. But she could not wait for the mass of embers
that would be required to cook her hare. As quickly as might be she
skinned and cleaned her kill, burying the hide and entrails. That
she had learned from Tarzan. It served two purposes. One was the
necessity for keeping a sanitary camp and the other the obliteration
of the scent that most quickly attracts the man-eaters.
Then she ran a stick through the carcass and held it above the
flames. By turning it often she prevented burning and at the same
time permitted the meat to cook thoroughly all the way through.
When it was done she scampered high into the safety of her tree to
enjoy her meal in quiet and peace. Never, thought Lady Greystoke,
had aught more delicious passed her lips. She patted her spear
affectionately. It had brought her this toothsome dainty and with
it a feeling of greater confidence and safety than she had enjoyed
since that frightful day that she and Obergatz had spent their
last cartridge. She would never forget that day--it had seemed one
hideous succession of frightful beast after frightful beast. They
had not been long in this strange country, yet they thought that
they were hardened to dangers, for daily they had had encounters
with ferocious creatures; but this day--she shuddered when she
thought of it. And with her last cartridge she had killed a black
and yellow striped lion-thing with great saber teeth just as it was
about to spring upon Obergatz who had futilely emptied his rifle
into it--the last shot--his final cartridge. For another day they
had carried the now useless rifles; but at last they had discarded
them and thrown away the cumbersome bandoleers, as well. How they
had managed to survive during the ensuing week she could never quite
understand, and then the Ho-don had come upon them and captured her.
Obergatz had escaped--she was living it all over again. Doubtless
he was dead unless he had been able to reach this side of the valley
which was quite evidently less overrun with savage beasts.
Jane's days were very full ones now, and the daylight hours seemed
all too short in which to accomplish the many things she had
determined upon, since she had concluded that this spot presented
as ideal a place as she could find to live until she could fashion
the weapons she considered necessary for the obtaining of meat and
for self-defense.
She felt that she must have, in addition to a good spear, a knife,
and bow and arrows. Possibly when these had been achieved she
might seriously consider an attempt to fight her way to one of
civilization's nearest outposts. In the meantime it was necessary
to construct some sort of protective shelter in which she might
feel a greater sense of security by night, for she knew that there
was a possibility that any night she might receive a visit from a
prowling panther, although she had as yet seen none upon this side
of the valley. Aside from this danger she felt comparatively safe
in her aerial retreat.
The cutting of the long poles for her home occupied all of the
daylight hours that were not engaged in the search for food. These
poles she carried high into her tree and with them constructed a
flooring across two stout branches binding the poles together and
also to the branches with fibers from the tough arboraceous grasses
that grew in profusion near the stream. Similarly she built walls
and a roof, the latter thatched with many layers of great leaves.
The fashioning of the barred windows and the door were matters of
great importance and consuming interest. The windows, there were
two of them, were large and the bars permanently fixed; but the
door was small, the opening just large enough to permit her to
pass through easily on hands and knees, which made it easier to
barricade. She lost count of the days that the house cost her; but
time was a cheap commodity--she had more of it than of anything
else. It meant so little to her that she had not even any desire to
keep account of it. How long since she and Obergatz had fled from
the wrath of the Negro villagers she did not know and she could
only roughly guess at the seasons. She worked hard for two reasons;
one was to hasten the completion of her little place of refuge, and
the other a desire for such physical exhaustion at night that she
would sleep through those dreaded hours to a new day. As a matter
of fact the house was finished in less than a week--that is, it
was made as safe as it ever would be, though regardless of how long
she might occupy it she would keep on adding touches and refinements
here and there.
Her daily life was filled with her house building and her hunting,
to which was added an occasional spice of excitement contributed
by roving lions. To the woodcraft that she had learned from Tarzan,
that master of the art, was added a considerable store of practical
experience derived from her own past adventures in the jungle and
the long months with Obergatz, nor was any day now lacking in some
added store of useful knowledge. To these facts was attributable
her apparent immunity from harm, since they told her when ja was
approaching before he crept close enough for a successful charge
and, too, they kept her close to those never-failing havens of
retreat--the trees.
The nights, filled with their weird noises, were lonely and depressing.
Only her ability to sleep quickly and soundly made them endurable.
The first night that she spent in her completed house behind barred
windows and barricaded door was one of almost undiluted peace and
happiness. The night noises seemed far removed and impersonal and
the soughing of the wind in the trees was gently soothing. Before,
it had carried a mournful note and was sinister in that it might
hide the approach of some real danger. That night she slept indeed.
She went further afield now in search of food. So far nothing but
rodents had fallen to her spear--her ambition was an antelope,
since beside the flesh it would give her, and the gut for her bow,
the hide would prove invaluable during the colder weather that she
knew would accompany the rainy season. She had caught glimpses of
these wary animals and was sure that they always crossed the stream
at a certain spot above her camp. It was to this place that she
went to hunt them. With the stealth and cunning of a panther she
crept through the forest, circling about to get up wind from the
ford, pausing often to look and listen for aught that might menace
her--herself the personification of a hunted deer. Now she moved
silently down upon the chosen spot. What luck! A beautiful buck
stood drinking in the stream. The woman wormed her way closer. Now
she lay upon her belly behind a small bush within throwing distance
of the quarry. She must rise to her full height and throw her spear
almost in the same instant and she must throw it with great force
and perfect accuracy. She thrilled with the excitement of the
minute, yet cool and steady were her swift muscles as she rose and
cast her missile. Scarce by the width of a finger did the point
strike from the spot at which it had been directed. The buck leaped
high, landed upon the bank of the stream, and fell dead. Jane
Clayton sprang quickly forward toward her kill.
"Bravo!" A man's voice spoke in English from the shrubbery
upon the opposite side of the stream. Jane Clayton halted in her
tracks--stunned, almost, by surprise. And then a strange, unkempt
figure of a man stepped into view. At first she did not recognize
him, but when she did, instinctively she stepped back.
"Lieutenant Obergatz!" she cried. "Can it be you?"
"It can. It is," replied the German. "I am a strange sight, no doubt;
but still it is I, Erich Obergatz. And you? You have changed too,
is it not?"
He was looking at her naked limbs and her golden breastplates, the
loin cloth of jato-hide, the harness and ornaments that constitute
the apparel of a Ho-don woman--the things that Lu-don had dressed
her in as his passion for her grew. Not Ko-tan's daughter, even,
had finer trappings.
"But why are you here?" Jane insisted. "I had thought you safely
among civilized men by this time, if you still lived."
"Gott!" he exclaimed. "I do not know why I continue to live. I
have prayed to die and yet I cling to life. There is no hope. We
are doomed to remain in this horrible land until we die. The bog!
The frightful bog! I have searched its shores for a place to cross
until I have entirely circled the hideous country. Easily enough
we entered; but the rains have come since and now no living man
could pass that slough of slimy mud and hungry reptiles. Have I not
tried it! And the beasts that roam this accursed land. They hunt
me by day and by night."
"But how have you escaped them?" she asked.
"I do not know," he replied gloomily. "I have fled and fled and
fled. I have remained hungry and thirsty in tree tops for days
at a time. I have fashioned weapons--clubs and spears--and I have
learned to use them. I have slain a lion with my club. So even will
a cornered rat fight. And we are no better than rats in this land
of stupendous dangers, you and I. But tell me about yourself. If it
is surprising that I live, how much more so that you still survive."
Briefly she told him and all the while she was wondering what she
might do to rid herself of him. She could not conceive of a prolonged
existence with him as her sole companion. Better, a thousand
times better, to be alone. Never had her hatred and contempt for
him lessened through the long weeks and months of their constant
companionship, and now that he could be of no service in returning
her to civilization, she shrank from the thought of seeing him
daily. And, too, she feared him. Never had she trusted him; but now
there was a strange light in his eye that had not been there when
last she saw him. She could not interpret it--all she knew was that
it gave her a feeling of apprehension--a nameless dread.
"You lived long then in the city of A-lur?" he said, speaking in
the language of Pal-ul-don.
"You have learned this tongue?" she asked. "How?"
"I fell in with a band of half-breeds," he replied, "members of
a proscribed race that dwells in the rock-bound gut through which
the principal river of the valley empties into the morass. They
are called Waz-ho-don and their village is partly made up of cave
dwellings and partly of houses carved from the soft rock at the
foot of the cliff. They are very ignorant and superstitious and
when they first saw me and realized that I had no tail and that my
hands and feet were not like theirs they were afraid of me. They
thought that I was either god or demon. Being in a position where
I could neither escape them nor defend myself, I made a bold
front and succeeded in impressing them to such an extent that they
conducted me to their city, which they call Bu-lur, and there they
fed me and treated me with kindness. As I learned their language
I sought to impress them more and more with the idea that I was a
god, and I succeeded, too, until an old fellow who was something of
a priest among them, or medicine-man, became jealous of my growing
power. That was the beginning of the end and came near to being the
end in fact. He told them that if I was a god I would not bleed if
a knife was stuck into me--if I did bleed it would prove conclusively
that I was not a god. Without my knowledge he arranged to stage
the ordeal before the whole village upon a certain night--it was
upon one of those numerous occasions when they eat and drink to
Jad-ben-Otho, their pagan deity. Under the influence of their vile
liquor they would be ripe for any bloodthirsty scheme the medicine-man
might evolve. One of the women told me about the plan--not with
any intent to warn me of danger, but prompted merely by feminine
curiosity as to whether or not I would bleed if stuck with a dagger.
She could not wait, it seemed, for the orderly procedure of the
ordeal--she wanted to know at once, and when I caught her trying
to slip a knife into my side and questioned her she explained the
whole thing with the utmost naivete. The warriors already had
commenced drinking--it would have been futile to make any sort of
appeal either to their intellects or their superstitions. There
was but one alternative to death and that was flight. I told the
woman that I was very much outraged and offended at this reflection
upon my godhood and that as a mark of my disfavor I should abandon
them to their fate.
"'I shall return to heaven at once!' I exclaimed.
"She wanted to hang around and see me go, but I told her that her
eyes would be blasted by the fire surrounding my departure and
that she must leave at once and not return to the spot for at least
an hour. I also impressed upon her the fact that should any other
approach this part of the village within that time not only they,
but she as well, would burst into flames and be consumed.
"She was very much impressed and lost no time in leaving, calling
back as she departed that if I were indeed gone in an hour she and
all the village would know that I was no less than Jad-ben-Otho
himself, and so they must thank me, for I can assure you that I was
gone in much less than an hour, nor have I ventured close to the
neighborhood of the city of Bu-lur since," and he fell to laughing
in harsh, cackling notes that sent a shiver through the woman's
frame.
As Obergatz talked Jane had recovered her spear from the carcass of
the antelope and commenced busying herself with the removal of the
hide. The man made no attempt to assist her, but stood by talking
and watching her, the while he continually ran his filthy fingers
through his matted hair and beard. His face and body were caked
with dirt and he was naked except for a torn greasy hide about his
loins. His weapons consisted of a club and knife of Waz-don pattern,
that he had stolen from the city of Bu-lur; but what more greatly
concerned the woman than his filth or his armament were his cackling
laughter and the strange expression in his eyes.
She went on with her work, however, removing those parts of the buck
she wanted, taking only as much meat as she might consume before
it spoiled, as she was not sufficiently a true jungle creature to
relish it beyond that stage, and then she straightened up and faced
the man.
"Lieutenant Obergatz," she said, "by a chance of accident we have
met again. Certainly you would not have sought the meeting any
more than I. We have nothing in common other than those sentiments
which may have been engendered by my natural dislike and suspicion
of you, one of the authors of all the misery and sorrow that I
have endured for endless months. This little corner of the world
is mine by right of discovery and occupation. Go away and leave me
to enjoy here what peace I may. It is the least that you can do to
amend the wrong that you have done me and mine."
The man stared at her through his fishy eyes for a moment in silence,
then there broke from his lips a peal of mirthless, uncanny laughter.
"Go away! Leave you alone!" he cried. "I have found you. We are
going to be good friends. There is no one else in the world but
us. No one will ever know what we do or what becomes of us and now
you ask me to go away and live alone in this hellish solitude."
Again he laughed, though neither the muscles of his eyes or his
mouth reflected any mirth--it was just a hollow sound that imitated
laughter.
"Remember your promise," she said.
"Promise! Promise! What are promises? They are made to be broken--we
taught the world that at Liege and Louvain. No, no! I will not go
away. I shall stay and protect you."
"I do not need your protection," she insisted. "You have already
seen that I can use a spear."
"Yes," he said; "but it would not be right to leave you here
alone--you are but a woman. No, no; I am an officer of the Kaiser
and I cannot abandon you."
Once more he laughed. "We could be very happy here together," he
added.
The woman could not repress a shudder, nor, in fact, did she attempt
to hide her aversion.
"You do not like me?" he asked. "Ah, well; it is too sad. But some
day you will love me," and again the hideous laughter.
The woman had wrapped the pieces of the buck in the hide and this
she now raised and threw across her shoulder. In her other hand
she held her spear and faced the German.
"Go!" she commanded. "We have wasted enough words. This is my country
and I shall defend it. If I see you about again I shall kill you.
Do you understand?"
An expression of rage contorted Obergatz' features. He raised his
club and started toward her.
"Stop!" she commanded, throwing her spear-hand backward for a cast.
"You saw me kill this buck and you have said truthfully that no
one will ever know what we do here. Put these two facts together,
German, and draw your own conclusions before you take another step
in my direction."
The man halted and his club-hand dropped to his side. "Come," he
begged in what he intended as a conciliatory tone. "Let us be friends,
Lady Greystoke. We can be of great assistance to each other and I
promise not to harm you."
"Remember Liege and Louvain," she reminded him with a sneer. "I
am going now--be sure that you do not follow me. As far as you can
walk in a day from this spot in any direction you may consider the
limits of my domain. If ever again I see you within these limits
I shall kill you."
There could be no question that she meant what she said and the
man seemed convinced for he but stood sullenly eyeing her as she
backed from sight beyond a turn in the game trail that crossed the
ford where they had met, and disappeared in the forest.
