XIV
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
With no heavenly guide, it is little wonder that I became confused and lost
in the labyrinthine maze of those mighty hills. What, in reality, I did was to
pass entirely through them and come out above the valley upon the farther side.
I know that I wandered for a long time, until tired and hungry I came upon a
small cave in the face of the limestone formation which had taken the place of
the granite farther back.
The cave which took my fancy lay halfway up the precipitous side of a lofty
cliff. The way to it was such that I knew no extremely formidable beast could
frequent it, nor was it large enough to make a comfortable habitat for any but
the smaller mammals or reptiles. Yet it was with the utmost caution that I
crawled within its dark interior.
Here I found a rather large chamber, lighted by a narrow cleft in the rock
above which let the sunlight filter in in sufficient quantities partially to
dispel the utter darkness which I had expected. The cave was entirely empty, nor
were there any signs of its having been recently occupied. The opening was
comparatively small, so that after considerable effort I was able to lug up a
bowlder from the valley below which entirely blocked it.
Then I returned again to the valley for an armful of grasses and on this trip
was fortunate enough to knock over an orthopi, the diminutive horse of
Pellucidar, a little animal about the size of a fox terrier, which abounds in
all parts of the inner world. Thus, with food and bedding I returned to my lair,
where after a meal of raw meat, to which I had now become quite accustomed, I
dragged the bowlder before the entrance and curled myself upon a bed of
grasses--a naked, primeval, cave man, as savagely primitive as my prehistoric
progenitors.
I awoke rested but hungry, and pushing the bowlder aside crawled out upon the
little rocky shelf which was my front porch. Before me spread a small but
beautiful valley, through the center of which a clear and sparkling river wound
its way down to an inland sea, the blue waters of which were just visible
between the two mountain ranges which embraced this little paradise. The sides
of the opposite hills were green with verdure, for a great forest clothed them
to the foot of the red and yellow and copper green of the towering crags which
formed their summit. The valley itself was carpeted with a luxuriant grass,
while here and there patches of wild flowers made great splashes of vivid color
against the prevailing green.
Dotted over the face of the valley were little clusters of palmlike
trees--three or four together as a rule. Beneath these stood antelope, while
others grazed in the open, or wandered gracefully to a near-by ford to drink.
There were several species of this beautiful animal, the most magnificent
somewhat resembling the giant eland of Africa, except that their spiral horns
form a complete curve backward over their ears and then forward again beneath
them, ending in sharp and formidable points some two feet before the face and
above the eyes. In size they remind one of a pure bred Hereford bull, yet they
are very agile and fast. The broad yellow bands that stripe the dark roan of
their coats made me take them for zebra when I first saw them. All in all they
are handsome animals, and added the finishing touch to the strange and lovely
landscape that spread before my new home.
I had determined to make the cave my headquarters, and with it as a base make
a systematic exploration of the surrounding country in search of the land of
Sari. First I devoured the remainder of the carcass of the orthopi I had killed
before my last sleep. Then I hid the Great Secret in a deep niche at the back of
my cave, rolled the bowlder before my front door, and with bow, arrows, sword,
and shield scrambled down into the peaceful valley.
The grazing herds moved to one side as I passed through them, the little
orthopi evincing the greatest wariness and galloping to safest distances. All
the animals stopped feeding as I approached, and after moving to what they
considered a safe distance stood contemplating me with serious eyes and
up-cocked ears. Once one of the old bull antelopes of the striped species
lowered his head and bellowed angrily--even taking a few steps in my direction,
so that I thought he meant to charge; but after I had passed, he resumed feeding
as though nothing had disturbed him.
Near the lower end of the valley I passed a number of tapirs, and across the
river saw a great sadok, the enormous double-horned progenitor of the modern
rhinoceros. At the valley's end the cliffs upon the left ran out into the sea,
so that to pass around them as I desired to do it was necessary to scale them in
search of a ledge along which I might continue my journey. Some fifty feet from
the base I came upon a projection which formed a natural path along the face of
the cliff, and this I followed out over the sea toward the cliff's end.
Here the ledge inclined rapidly upward toward the top of the cliffs--the
stratum which formed it evidently having been forced up at this steep angle when
the mountains behind it were born. As I climbed carefully up the ascent my
attention suddenly was attracted aloft by the sound of strange hissing, and what
resembled the flapping of wings.
And at the first glance there broke upon my horrified vision the most
frightful thing I had seen even within Pellucidar. It was a giant dragon such as
is pictured in the legends and fairy tales of earth folk. Its huge body must
have measured forty feet in length, while the batlike wings that supported it in
midair had a spread of fully thirty. Its gaping jaws were armed with long, sharp
teeth, and its claw equipped with horrible talons.
The hissing noise which had first attracted my attention was issuing from its
throat, and seemed to be directed at something beyond and below me which I could
not see. The ledge upon which I stood terminated abruptly a few paces farther
on, and as I reached the end I saw the cause of the reptile's agitation.
Some time in past ages an earthquake had produced a fault at this point, so
that beyond the spot where I stood the strata had slipped down a matter of
twenty feet. The result was that the continuation of my ledge lay twenty feet
below me, where it ended as abruptly as did the end upon which I stood.
And here, evidently halted in flight by this insurmountable break in the
ledge, stood the object of the creature's attack--a girl cowering upon the
narrow platform, her face buried in her arms, as though to shut out the sight of
the frightful death which hovered just above her.
The dragon was circling lower, and seemed about to dart in upon its prey.
There was no time to be lost, scarce an instant in which to weigh the possible
chances that I had against the awfully armed creature; but the sight of that
frightened girl below me called out to all that was best in me, and the instinct
for protection of the other sex, which nearly must have equaled the instinct of
self-preservation in primeval man, drew me to the girl's side like an
irresistible magnet.
Almost thoughtless of the consequences, I leaped from the end of the ledge
upon which I stood, for the tiny shelf twenty feet below. At the same instant
the dragon darted in toward the girl, but my sudden advent upon the scene must
have startled him for he veered to one side, and then rose above us once more.
The noise I made as I landed beside her convinced the girl that the end had
come, for she thought I was the dragon; but finally when no cruel fangs closed
upon her she raised her eyes in astonishment. As they fell upon me the
expression that came into them would be difficult to describe; but her feelings
could scarcely have been one whit more complicated than my own--for the wide
eyes that looked into mine were those of Dian the Beautiful.
"Dian!" I cried. "Dian! Thank God that I came in time."
"You?" she whispered, and then she hid her face again; nor could I
tell whether she were glad or angry that I had come.
Once more the dragon was sweeping toward us, and so rapidly that I had no
time to unsling my bow. All that I could do was to snatch up a rock, and hurl it
at the thing's hideous face. Again my aim was true, and with a hiss of pain and
rage the reptile wheeled once more and soared away.
Quickly I fitted an arrow now that I might be ready at the next attack, and
as I did so I looked down at the girl, so that I surprised her in a
surreptitious glance which she was stealing at me; but immediately, she again
covered her face with her hands.
"Look at me, Dian," I pleaded. "Are you not glad to see
me?"
She looked straight into my eyes.
"I hate you," she said, and then, as I was about to beg for a fair
hearing she pointed over my shoulder. "The thipdar comes," she said,
and I turned again to meet the reptile.
So this was a thipdar. I might have known it. The cruel bloodhound of the
Mahars. The long-extinct pterodactyl of the outer world. But this time I met it
with a weapon it never had faced before. I had selected my longest arrow, and
with all my strength had bent the bow until the very tip of the shaft rested
upon the thumb of my left hand, and then as the great creature darted toward us
I let drive straight for that tough breast.
Hissing like the escape valve of a steam engine, the mighty creature fell
turning and twisting into the sea below, my arrow buried completely in its
carcass. I turned toward the girl. She was looking past me. It was evident that
she had seen the thipdar die.
"Dian," I said, "won't you tell me that you are not sorry that
I have found you?"
"I hate you," was her only reply; but I imagined that there was
less vehemence in it than before--yet it might have been but my imagination.
"Why do you hate me, Dian?" I asked, but she did not answer me.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, "and what has happened to
you since Hooja freed you from the Sagoths?"
At first I thought that she was going to ignore me entirely, but finally she
thought better of it.
"I was again running away from Jubal the Ugly One," she said.
"After I escaped from the Sagoths I made my way alone back to my own land;
but on account of Jubal I did not dare enter the villages or let any of my
friends know that I had returned for fear that Jubal might find out. By watching
for a long time I found that my brother had not yet returned, and so I continued
to live in a cave beside a valley which my race seldom frequents, awaiting the
time that he should come back and free me from Jubal.
"But at last one of Jubal's hunters saw me as I was creeping toward my
father's cave to see if my brother had yet returned and he gave the alarm and
Jubal set out after me. He has been pursuing me across many lands. He cannot be
far behind me now. When he comes he will kill you and carry me back to his cave.
He is a terrible man. I have gone as far as I can go, and there is no
escape," and she looked hopelessly up at the continuation of the ledge
twenty feet above us.
"But he shall not have me," she suddenly cried, with great
vehemence. "The sea is there"--she pointed over the edge of the
cliff--"and the sea shall have me rather than Jubal."
"But I have you now Dian," I cried; "nor shall Jubal, nor any
other have you, for you are mine," and I seized her hand, nor did I lift it
above her head and let it fall in token of release.
She had risen to her feet, and was looking straight into my eyes with level
gaze.
"I do not believe you," she said, "for if you meant it you
would have done this when the others were present to witness it--then I should
truly have been your mate; now there is no one to see you do it, for you know
that without witnesses your act does not bind you to me," and she withdrew
her hand from mine and turned away.
I tried to convince her that I was sincere, but she simply couldn't forget
the humiliation that I had put upon her on that other occasion.
"If you mean all that you say you will have ample chance to prove
it," she said, "if Jubal does not catch and kill you. I am in your
power, and the treatment you accord me will be the best proof of your intentions
toward me. I am not your mate, and again I tell you that I hate you, and that I
should be glad if I never saw you again."
Dian certainly was candid. There was no gainsaying that. In fact I found
candor and directness to be quite a marked characteristic of the cave men of
Pellucidar. Finally I suggested that we make some attempt to gain my cave, where
we might escape the searching Jubal, for I am free to admit that I had no
considerable desire to meet the formidable and ferocious creature, of whose
mighty prowess Dian had told me when I first met her. He it was who, armed with
a puny knife, had met and killed a cave bear in a hand-to-hand struggle. It was
Jubal who could cast his spear entirely through the armored carcass of the sadok
at fifty paces. It was he who had crushed the skull of a charging dyryth with a
single blow of his war club. No, I was not pining to meet the Ugly One-and it
was quite certain that I should not go out and hunt for him; but the matter was
taken out of my hands very quickly, as is often the way, and I did meet Jubal
the Ugly One face to face.
This is how it happened. I had led Dian back along the ledge the way she had
come, searching for a path that would lead us to the top of the cliff, for I
knew that we could then cross over to the edge of my own little valley, where I
felt certain we should find a means of ingress from the cliff top. As we
proceeded along the ledge I gave Dian minute directions for finding my cave
against the chance of something happening to me. I knew that she would be quite
safely hidden away from pursuit once she gained the shelter of my lair, and the
valley would afford her ample means of sustenance.
Also, I was very much piqued by her treatment of me. My heart was sad and
heavy, and I wanted to make her feel badly by suggesting that something terrible
might happen to me--that I might, in fact, be killed. But it didn't work worth a
cent, at least as far as I could perceive. Dian simply shrugged those
magnificent shoulders of hers, and murmured something to the effect that one was
not rid of trouble so easily as that.
For a while I kept still. I was utterly squelched. And to think that I had
twice protected her from attack--the last time risking my life to save hers. It
was incredible that even a daughter of the Stone Age could be so ungrateful--so
heartless; but maybe her heart partook of the qualities of her epoch.
Presently we found a rift in the cliff which had been widened and extended by
the action of the water draining through it from the plateau above. It gave us a
rather rough climb to the summit, but finally we stood upon the level mesa which
stretched back for several miles to the mountain range. Behind us lay the broad
inland sea, curving upward in the horizonless distance to merge into the blue of
the sky, so that for all the world it looked as though the sea lapped back to
arch completely over us and disappear beyond the distant mountains at our
backs--the weird and uncanny aspect of the seascapes of Pellucidar balk
description.
At our right lay a dense forest, but to the left the country was open and
clear to the plateau's farther verge. It was in this direction that our way led,
and we had turned to resume our journey when Dian touched my arm. I turned to
her, thinking that she was about to make peace overtures; but I was mistaken.
"Jubal," she said, and nodded toward the forest.
I looked, and there, emerging from the dense wood, came a perfect whale of a
man. He must have been seven feet tall, and proportioned accordingly. He still
was too far off to distinguish his features.
"Run," I said to Dian. "I can engage him until you get a good
start. Maybe I can hold him until you have gotten entirely away," and then,
without a backward glance, I advanced to meet the Ugly One. I had hoped that
Dian would have a kind word to say to me before she went, for she must have
known that I was going to my death for her sake; but she never even so much as
bid me good-bye, and it was with a heavy heart that I strode through the
flower-bespangled grass to my doom.
When I had come close enough to Jubal to distinguish his features I
understood how it was that he had earned the sobriquet of Ugly One. Apparently
some fearful beast had ripped away one entire side of his face. The eye was
gone, the nose, and all the flesh, so that his jaws and all his teeth were
exposed and grinning through the horrible scar.
Formerly he may have been as good to look upon as the others of his handsome
race, and it may be that the terrible result of this encounter had tended to
sour an already strong and brutal character. However this may be it is quite
certain that he was not a pretty sight, and now that his features, or what
remained of them, were distorted in rage at the sight of Dian with another male,
he was indeed most terrible to see--and much more terrible to meet.
He had broken into a run now, and as he advanced he raised his mighty spear,
while I halted and fitting an arrow to my bow took as steady aim as I could. I
was somewhat longer than usual, for I must confess that the sight of this awful
man had wrought upon my nerves to such an extent that my knees were anything but
steady. What chance had I against this mighty warrior for whom even the fiercest
cave bear had no terrors! Could I hope to best one who slaughtered the sadok and
dyryth singlehanded! I shuddered; but, in fairness to myself, my fear was more
for Dian than for my own fate.
And then the great brute launched his massive stone-tipped spear, and I
raised my shield to break the force of its terrific velocity. The impact hurled
me to my knees, but the shield had deflected the missile and I was unscathed.
Jubal was rushing upon me now with the only remaining weapon that he carried--a
murderous-looking knife. He was too close for a careful bowshot, but I let drive
at him as he came, without taking aim. My arrow pierced the fleshy part of his
thigh, inflicting a painful but not disabling wound. And then he was upon me.
My agility saved me for the instant. I ducked beneath his raised arm, and
when he wheeled to come at me again he found a sword's point in his face. And a
moment later he felt an inch or two of it in the muscles of his knife arm, so
that thereafter he went more warily.
It was a duel of strategy now--the great, hairy man maneuvering to get inside
my guard where he could bring those giant thews to play, while my wits were
directed to the task of keeping him at arm's length. Thrice he rushed me, and
thrice I caught his knife blow upon my shield. Each time my sword found his
body--once penetrating to his lung. He was covered with blood by this time, and
the internal hemorrhage induced paroxysms of coughing that brought the red
stream through the hideous mouth and nose, covering his face and breast with
bloody froth. He was a most unlovely spectacle, but he was far from dead.
As the duel continued I began to gain confidence, for, to be perfectly
candid, I had not expected to survive the first rush of that monstrous engine of
ungoverned rage and hatred. And I think that Jubal, from utter contempt of me,
began to change to a feeling of respect, and then in his primitive mind there
evidently loomed the thought that perhaps at last he had met his master, and was
facing his end.
At any rate it is only upon this hypothesis that I can account for his next
act, which was in the nature of a last resort--a sort of forlorn hope, which
could only have been born of the belief that if he did not kill me quickly I
should kill him. It happened on the occasion of his fourth charge, when, instead
of striking at me with his knife, he dropped that weapon, and seizing my sword
blade in both his hands wrenched the weapon from my grasp as easily as from a
babe.
Flinging it far to one side he stood motionless for just an instant glaring
into my face with such a horrid leer of malignant triumph as to almost unnerve
me--then he sprang for me with his bare hands. But it was Jubal's day to learn
new methods of warfare. For the first time he had seen a bow and arrows, never
before that duel had he beheld a sword, and now he learned what a man who knows
may do with his bare fists.
As he came for me, like a great bear, I ducked again beneath his outstretched
arm, and as I came up planted as clean a blow upon his jaw as ever you have
seen. Down went that great mountain of flesh sprawling upon the ground. He was
so surprised and dazed that he lay there for several seconds before he made any
attempt to rise, and I stood over him with another dose ready when he should
gain his knees.
Up he came at last, almost roaring in his rage and mortification; but he
didn't stay up--I let him have a left fair on the point of the jaw that sent him
tumbling over on his back. By this time I think Jubal had gone mad with hate,
for no sane man would have come back for more as many times as he did. Time
after time I bowled him over as fast as he could stagger up, until toward the
last he lay longer on the ground between blows, and each time came up weaker
than before.
He was bleeding very profusely now from the wound in his lungs, and presently
a terrific blow over the heart sent him reeling heavily to the ground, where he
lay very still, and somehow I knew at once that Jubal the Ugly One would never
get up again. But even as I looked upon that massive body lying there so grim
and terrible in death, I could not believe that I, single-handed, had bested
this slayer of fearful beasts--this gigantic ogre of the Stone Age.
Picking up my sword I leaned upon it, looking down on the dead body of my
foeman, and as I thought of the battle I had just fought and won a great idea
was born in my brain--the outcome of this and the suggestion that Perry had made
within the city of Phutra. If skill and science could render a comparative pygmy
the master of this mighty brute, what could not the brute's fellows accomplish
with the same skill and science. Why all Pellucidar would be at their feet--and
I would be their king and Dian their queen.
Dian! A little wave of doubt swept over me. It was quite within the
possibilities of Dian to look down upon me even were I king. She was quite the
most superior person I ever had met--with the most convincing way of letting you
know that she was superior. Well, I could go to the cave, and tell her that I
had killed Jubal, and then she might feel more kindly toward me, since I had
freed her of her tormentor. I hoped that she had found the cave easily--it would
be terrible had I lost her again, and I turned to gather up my shield and bow to
hurry after her, when to my astonishment I found her standing not ten paces
behind me.
"Girl!" I cried, "what are you doing here? I thought that you
had gone to the cave, as I told you to do."
Up went her head, and the look that she gave me took all the majesty out of
me, and left me feeling more like the palace janitor--if palaces have janitors.
"As you told me to do!" she cried, stamping her little foot.
"I do as I please. I am the daughter of a king, and furthermore, I hate
you."
I was dumbfounded--this was my thanks for saving her from Jubal! I turned and
looked at the corpse. "May be that I saved you from a worse fate, old
man," I said, but I guess it was lost on Dian, for she never seemed to
notice it at all.
"Let us go to my cave," I said, "I am tired and hungry."
She followed along a pace behind me, neither of us speaking. I was too angry,
and she evidently didn't care to converse with the lower orders. I was mad all
the way through, as I had certainly felt that at least a word of thanks should
have rewarded me, for I knew that even by her own standards, I must have done a
very wonderful thing to have killed the redoubtable Jubal in a hand-to-hand
encounter.
We had no difficulty in finding my lair, and then I went down into the valley
and bowled over a small antelope, which I dragged up the steep ascent to the
ledge before the door. Here we ate in silence. Occasionally I glanced at her,
thinking that the sight of her tearing at raw flesh with her hands and teeth
like some wild animal would cause a revulsion of my sentiments toward her; but
to my surprise I found that she ate quite as daintily as the most civilized
woman of my acquaintance, and finally I found myself gazing in foolish rapture
at the beauties of her strong, white teeth. Such is love.
After our repast we went down to the river together and bathed our hands and
faces, and then after drinking our fill went back to the cave. Without a word I
crawled into the farthest corner and, curling up, was soon asleep.
When I awoke I found Dian sitting in the doorway looking out across the
valley. As I came out she moved to one side to let me pass, but she had no word
for me. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn't. Every time I looked at her
something came up in my throat, so that I nearly choked. I had never been in
love before, but I did not need any aid in diagnosing my case--I certainly had
it and had it bad. God, how I loved that beautiful, disdainful, tantalizing,
prehistoric girl!
After we had eaten again I asked Dian if she intended returning to her tribe
now that Jubal was dead, but she shook her head sadly, and said that she did not
dare, for there was still Jubal's brother to be considered--his oldest brother.
"What has he to do with it?" I asked. "Does he too want you,
or has the option on you become a family heirloom, to be passed on down from
generation to generation?"
She was not quite sure as to what I meant.
"It is probable," she said, "that they all will want revenge
for the death of Jubal--there are seven of them--seven terrible men. Someone may
have to kill them all, if I am to return to my people."
It began to look as though I had assumed a contract much too large for
me--about seven sizes, in fact.
"Had Jubal any cousins?" I asked. It was just as well to know the
worst at once.
"Yes," replied Dian, "but they don't count--they all have
mates. Jubal's brothers have no mates because Jubal could get none for himself.
He was so ugly that women ran away from him--some have even thrown themselves
from the cliffs of Amoz into the Darel Az rather than mate with the Ugly
One."
"But what had that to do with his brothers?" I asked.
"I forget that you are not of Pellucidar," said Dian, with a look
of pity mixed with contempt, and the contempt seemed to be laid on a little
thicker than the circumstance warranted--as though to make quite certain that I
shouldn't overlook it. "You see," she continued, "a younger
brother may not take a mate until all his older brothers have done so, unless
the older brother waives his prerogative, which Jubal would not do, knowing that
as long as he kept them single they would be all the keener in aiding him to
secure a mate."
Noticing that Dian was becoming more communicative I began to entertain hopes
that she might be warming up toward me a bit, although upon what slender thread
I hung my hopes I soon discovered.
"As you dare not return to Amoz," I ventured, "what is to
become of you since you cannot be happy here with me, hating me as you do?"
"I shall have to put up with you," she replied coldly, "until
you see fit to go elsewhere and leave me in peace, then I shall get along very
well alone."
I looked at her in utter amazement. It seemed incredible that even a
prehistoric woman could be so cold and heartless and ungrateful. Then I arose.
"I shall leave you NOW," I said haughtily, "I have had quite
enough of your ingratitude and your insults," and then I turned and strode
majestically down toward the valley. I had taken a hundred steps in absolute
silence, and then Dian spoke.
"I hate you!" she shouted, and her voice broke--in rage, I thought.
I was absolutely miserable, but I hadn't gone too far when I began to realize
that I couldn't leave her alone there without protection, to hunt her own food
amid the dangers of that savage world. She might hate me, and revile me, and
heap indignity after indignity upon me, as she already had, until I should have
hated her; but the pitiful fact remained that I loved her, and I couldn't leave
her there alone.
The more I thought about it the madder I got, so that by the time I reached
the valley I was furious, and the result of it was that I turned right around
and went up that cliff again as fast as I had come down. I saw that Dian had
left the ledge and gone within the cave, but I bolted right in after her. She
was lying upon her face on the pile of grasses I had gathered for her bed. When
she heard me enter she sprang to her feet like a tigress.
"I hate you!" she cried.
Coming from the brilliant light of the noonday sun into the semidarkness of
the cave I could not see her features, and I was rather glad, for I disliked to
think of the hate that I should have read there.
I never said a word to her at first. I just strode across the cave and
grasped her by the wrists, and when she struggled, I put my arm around her so as
to pinion her hands to her sides. She fought like a tigress, but I took my free
hand and pushed her head back--I imagine that I had suddenly turned brute, that
I had gone back a thousand million years, and was again a veritable cave man
taking my mate by force--and then I kissed that beautiful mouth again and again.
"Dian," I cried, shaking her roughly, "I love you. Can't you
understand that I love you? That I love you better than all else in this world
or my own? That I am going to have you? That love like mine cannot be
denied?"
I noticed that she lay very still in my arms now, and as my eyes became
accustomed to the light I saw that she was smiling--a very contented, happy
smile. I was thunderstruck. Then I realized that, very gently, she was trying to
disengage her arms, and I loosened my grip upon them so that she could do so.
Slowly they came up and stole about my neck, and then she drew my lips down to
hers once more and held them there for a long time. At last she spoke.
"Why didn't you do this at first, David? I have been waiting so
long."
"What!" I cried. "You said that you hated me!"
"Did you expect me to run into your arms, and say that I loved you
before I knew that you loved me?" she asked.
"But I have told you right along that I love you," I said.
"Love speaks in acts," she replied. "You could have made your
mouth say what you wished it to say, but just now when you came and took me in
your arms your heart spoke to mine in the language that a woman's heart
understands. What a silly man you are, David?"
"Then you haven't hated me at all, Dian?" I asked.
"I have loved you always," she whispered, "from the first
moment that I saw you, although I did not know it until that time you struck
down Hooja the Sly One, and then spurned me."
"But I didn't spurn you, dear," I cried. "I didn't know your
ways--I doubt if I do now. It seems incredible that you could have reviled me
so, and yet have cared for me all the time."
"You might have known," she said, "when I did not run away
from you that it was not hate which chained me to you. While you were battling
with Jubal, I could have run to the edge of the forest, and when I learned the
outcome of the combat it would have been a simple thing to have eluded you and
returned to my own people."
"But Jubal's brothers--and cousins--" I reminded her, "how
about them?"
She smiled, and hid her face on my shoulder.
"I had to tell you SOMETHING, David," she whispered. "I must
needs have SOME excuse for remaining near you."
"You little sinner!" I exclaimed. "And you have caused me all
this anguish for nothing!"
"I have suffered even more," she answered simply, "for I
thought that you did not love me, and I was helpless. I couldn't come to you and
demand that my love be returned, as you have just come to me. Just now when you
went away hope went with you. I was wretched, terrified, miserable, and my heart
was breaking. I wept, and I have not done that before since my mother
died," and now I saw that there was the moisture of tears about her eyes.
It was near to making me cry myself when I thought of all that poor child had
been through. Motherless and unprotected; hunted across a savage, primeval world
by that hideous brute of a man; exposed to the attacks of the countless fearsome
denizens of its mountains, its plains, and its jungles--it was a miracle that
she had survived it all.
To me it was a revelation of the things my early forebears must have endured
that the human race of the outer crust might survive. It made me very proud to
think that I had won the love of such a woman. Of course she couldn't read or
write; there was nothing cultured or refined about her as you judge culture and
refinement; but she was the essence of all that is best in woman, for she was
good, and brave, and noble, and virtuous. And she was all these things in spite
of the fact that their observance entailed suffering and danger and possible
death.
How much easier it would have been to have gone to Jubal in the first place!
She would have been his lawful mate. She would have been queen in her own
land--and it meant just as much to the cave woman to be a queen in the Stone Age
as it does to the woman of today to be a queen now; it's all comparative glory
any way you look at it, and if there were only half-naked savages on the outer
crust today, you'd find that it would be considerable glory to be the wife a
Dahomey chief.
I couldn't help but compare Dian's action with that of a splendid young woman
I had known in New York--I mean splendid to look at and to talk to. She had been
head over heels in love with a chum of mine--a clean, manly chap--but she had
married a broken-down, disreputable old debauchee because he was a count in some
dinky little European principality that was not even accorded a distinctive
color by Rand McNally.
Yes, I was mighty proud of Dian.
After a time we decided to set out for Sari, as I was anxious to see Perry,
and to know that all was right with him. I had told Dian about our plan of
emancipating the human race of Pellucidar, and she was fairly wild over it. She
said that if Dacor, her brother, would only return he could easily be king of
Amoz, and that then he and Ghak could form an alliance. That would give us a
flying start, for the Sarians and the Amozites were both very powerful tribes.
Once they had been armed with swords, and bows and arrows, and trained in their
use we were confident that they could overcome any tribe that seemed disinclined
to join the great army of federated states with which we were planning to march
upon the Mahars.
I explained the various destructive engines of war which Perry and I could
construct after a little experimentation--gunpowder, rifles, cannon, and the
like, and Dian would clap her hands, and throw her arms about my neck, and tell
me what a wonderful thing I was. She was beginning to think that I was
omnipotent although I really hadn't done anything but talk--but that is the way
with women when they love. Perry used to say that if a fellow was one-tenth as
remarkable as his wife or mother thought him, he would have the world by the
tail with a down-hill drag.
The first time we started for Sari I stepped into a nest of poisonous vipers
before we reached the valley. A little fellow stung me on the ankle, and Dian
made me come back to the cave. She said that I mustn't exercise, or it might
prove fatal--if it had been a full-grown snake that struck me she said, I
wouldn't have moved a single pace from the nest--I'd have died in my tracks, so
virulent is the poison. As it was I must have been laid up for quite a while,
though Dian's poultices of herbs and leaves finally reduced the swelling and
drew out the poison.
The episode proved most fortunate, however, as it gave me an idea which added
a thousand-fold to the value of my arrows as missiles of offense and defense. As
soon as I was able to be about again, I sought out some adult vipers of the
species which had stung me, and having killed them, I extracted their virus,
smearing it upon the tips of several arrows. Later I shot a hyaenodon with one
of these, and though my arrow inflicted but a superficial flesh wound the beast
crumpled in death almost immediately after he was hit.
We now set out once more for the land of the Sarians, and it was with
feelings of sincere regret that we bade good-bye to our beautiful Garden of
Eden, in the comparative peace and harmony of which we had lived the happiest
moments of our lives. How long we had been there I did not know, for as I have
told you, time had ceased to exist for me beneath that eternal noonday sun--it
may have been an hour, or a month of earthly time; I do not know.
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