Shivering with terror the antelope gazed into the distance. Life was there, the life of the vegetable world through which its agile body leaped so joyously. Two successful bounds and it would be saved. It tried to pass between the bank and the serpent, then in despair it leapt the obstacle. It was struck by a giant blow, the tail of the python was lashed around its panting body, and the little creature, feeling the approach of death, bleated dismally… In another instant the graceful form was struggling in the grasp of the long ice cold muscles; then its moans were changed to the death rattle, and hanging its head, vanquished, with mouth open and tongue lolling out, it drew its last breath.
This scene awoke a strange hate in Aoun. A leopard, wolves or a hippopotamus might have killed the antelope without his feeling any emotion, but the victory of this cold-blooded creature seemed to menace even human beings. Twice the warrior stooped down to leave the refuge, but Zouhr held him back.
“The son of Urus has abundance of meat, what will be-come of us if he gets wounded?”
Aoun yielded, he did not understand his own anger; it seemed to him like the fever of a wound. And what did he know of the great serpent’s strength? One blow of its tail had felled the antelope and would certainly overthrow a man.
He remained moody, however, and the creeper hut be-came unbearable to him.
“Aoun and Zouhr cannot live here,” he cried, when the python had carried off its prey beyond the rushes. “The Oulhamrs need a cavern…”
“Zouhr will soon be able to get up,” his companion replied.
VI. The Giant Feline
Two more days passed. Zouhr was weak, but he could stand up; his young blood rapidly healed his wounds. Aoun could leave the hut for longer periods and explore down the river. Although he had traveled 15,000 ells, he had found no place to shelter them. Between their present habitation and the furthest point he had explored, rocks rose near the bank, but their fissures were too narrow to shelter men or even Dholes. Zouhr thought of digging a ditch, as was the custom of the Men-without-Shoulders, but it was slow work, and the Oulhamrs inhabited such lairs with reluctance. He contented himself with strengthening the creeper enclosure. More clever than Aoun in the art of construction, he made it impenetrable for wild beasts; but the elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami or a herd of cattle would have been able to trample it down; and it had the disadvantage of attracting the prowling beasts of the brushwood.
More days passed. The end of spring was near, fierce heat beat down upon the river, fever-breeding vapors rose up under the starlight and shrouded the landscape long after day had dawned. One morning Zouhr realized that he had regained sufficient strength to continue the journey. He said to his companion, who was impatiently looking at the vegetable growth which luxuriated around their refuge with invincible strength, “The son of Earth can follow Aoun.”
The Oulhamr stood up joyfully; the wounded man was like a creeper twined around his shoulders, hindering his every movement.
Mist still hung about the river; young hippopotami grunted as they played near the inlet; birds were pursuing their active lives. Aoun and Zouhr went downstream. As the Sun rose higher they searched for shade; they were obliged to be careful not to stumble against the snakes that awoke with the heat and to detect the smell of carnivorous animals asleep in the dusk of the thickets. In the middle of the day they rested under some turpentine-trees. They had dried meat, roots and mushrooms, which they roasted over a fire made of sticks. The mere smell of the hot meat made Aoun laugh; he devoured it with the joyful haste of a young wolf, while Zouhr lingered over his meal and savored every morsel. A great numbness came over all the creatures. Only the distant voice of the waters and the humming of insects was to be heard; war was suspended; the two men gave themselves up to the sweetness of life, the strength of their youth and the intoxicating effect of the pictures which rose up before their minds, like the water chestnuts on the river.
Zouhr who was still weak became drowsy, while the son of Urus watched; his watch resembled sleep, moved only by the echoes of instinct, but his senses were awake to every variation of his surroundings.
They resumed their journey when the shadows began to grow long on the plain, and did not halt till twilight was upon them. The next day and the day after they continued in the same manner. They had to pass through a jungle, skirt the marshes, swim a river, and push their way through brushwood. Zouhr’s feebleness had disappeared: he patiently followed his broad-chested companion. There was never any question of a quarrel or rancor between them; each one found in the other the resources which were lacking in himself. Aoun’s strength reassured Zouhr and astonished him; Aoun valued Zouhr’s cunning and the secrets which he held from the Men-without-Shoulders.
On the morning of the ninth day, rocks appeared almost on the bank of the river. They formed a chain which extended for more than 1000 steps, broken by two fissures; the highest ones rose to more than 300 ells, and extended backward to the border of the jungle; the crevices sheltered eagles and falcons.
The son of Urus gave a cry of joy at the sight, for he inherited from his ancestors the love of rocks, especially when they were near to a stream. Zouhr examined the site more calmly. They discovered several overhanging masses of rock, like those under which the horde were accustomed to shelter themselves in default of caves. But the shelter which was adequate for a band strong in numbers was insufficient for two warriors alone. They stopped frequently and carefully examined the walls of basalt, knowing that a small opening may lead to a spacious cavern.
At last Aoun’s sharp eyes discerned a fissure as high as a man; it was only two handbreadths wide at the base, but it grew larger higher up. In order to reach it they had to lift themselves onto a horizontal projection, then to climb to a ledge where three men could stand upright.
The warriors easily reached the projection, but in order to get to the ledge of rock Aoun had to climb on Zouhr’s shoulders. Then the Oulhamr penetrated into the fissure, but not straight: he had to crawl along sideways for a distance of five ells… The passage then grew larger, and the wanderer found himself in a low but spacious cavern. He went slowly along it, until he was stopped by a depression, a rapid declivity which ended in gloom. Before pursuing his exploration Aoun preferred to hoist Zouhr onto the ledge. He crawled out again sideways as he had gone in.
“The cave is big, perhaps it has two entrances,” he said, “Aoun has not seen the end of it yet.”
Stooping down he stretched out a spear. Zouhr managed to seize the end of it and pulled himself up along the face of the rock, his feet clinging to the unevenness of the surface, thus facilitating his efforts and those of his companion. As Zouhr climbed up, Aoun gradually straightened himself and backed towards the fissure.
When Zouhr had reached the ledge the Oulhamr conducted him to the cavern and led him down the declivity. The increasing darkness made them go more slowly, an odor of wild beasts made them anxious, and they were thinking of going back when a light broke through.
“There is another way out,” murmured Zouhr.
Aoun shook his head deprecatingly, but without stopping. The slope became more gradual, the light, though still faint, grew stronger. It came from a very long zigzag crack, which was too narrow to admit the passage of the two men… Bats flew out with shrill cries.
“Aoun and Zouhr are the masters of the cave,” murmured the son of Urus.
Zouhr put his head through the crevice; a roar resounded, a giant beast rose up from a spacious lair. It was impossible to say whether it most resembled a tiger or a lion. It had a black mane and its chest was as broad as that of a gaur; its body was long and sinuous though thickset; it was of taller stature and its muscles were thicker than those of all the other carnivores. Its immense eyes seemed to shoot out yellow or green fire according to the play of the shadows.
“It is the lion of the rocks!” whispered Zouhr.
The beast, taking its stand against the crevice, lashed its sides with its shaggy tail.
Aoun gazed at it in his turn and said, “It is the tiger from the country of the Kzamms.”
He had seized his spear and prepared to fling it through the fissure; he opened his mouth to shout his war-cry. Zouhr stayed his uplifted arm:
“Aoun cannot strike hard enough through the fissure to kill the lion of the rocks, and it would be difficult for him to reach it at all.”
He pointed out projections which would turn aside or arrest the course of the weapon. The Oulhamr understood the danger there would be in uselessly irritating the beast. It might leave its lair and seek its aggressors. Besides it was already becoming passive again, and it was unlikely it would hunt the next night, for abundant remains of a wild ass were bleeding on the ground, which was covered with the skeletons of previous kills.
“Perhaps Aoun and Zouhr will be able to make a trap for him,” murmured the Wah.
For a moment longer they could hear the hard breathing of the wild beast, then he stretched himself carelessly among the dry bones. He knew no fear, so his fury gradually subsided. No beast was audacious enough to attack him, unless it were the purblind rhinoceros. The elephant did not fear him, but also did not attack him; the leaders of the gayals, the gaurs and the buffaloes, who defend their herds from the tiger and the lion, quailed before him; his strength exceeded that of all other carnivores.
The animals whom he now smelt on the other side of the wall of basalt reminded him of the odor of the gibbons, the rhesus and the entellus monkeys, all weakly creatures that he could crush with a single blow of his claws.
Aoun and Zouhr returned towards the top of the cavern. Here was no immediate danger and they did not look far ahead, but the mere neighborhood of the feline animal was alarming to them. Although its home was on the other side of the rocks, and no doubt it hardly ever hunted in the daytime, some chance might put it on their track. Therefore this refuge, which had seemed so secure, accessible as it was only to men, vampires and birds, was rendered unsafe.
They resolved, however, not to leave it until they should have discovered another.
The son of Urus said, “Aoun and Zouhr will not go out until the Kzamms tiger is asleep in its lair.”
“The lion of the rocks is too heavy to climb trees,” Zouhr added. “There are branches everywhere in which we can hide ourselves.”
They were not afraid of being surprised while they were hunting. Aoun’s sense of smell was as keen as that of the jackals, and Zouhr’s cunning was ever on the alert.
For several days their life remained tranquil. Zouhr, guided by the instinct of his race, brought in provisions of mushrooms and roots; Aoun provided meat and collected wood for the fire. They lit it on the ledge and in the evening it glowed with a red light, surprising alike the prowlers on the plain and the vampires, owls and eagles of the chain of rocks.
There was abundance of food. The men ate joyfully, safe from the beasts who watched them from below, and not deigning to notice the rapacious birds that hovered over their heads. Zouhr went down several times each day to spy out the den. The wild beast no longer displayed anger, or even impatience. The smell of the young warrior had become familiar to it and did not even disturb its sleep. If it was not sleeping it would sometimes stand up against the crevice and its fiery eyes would vaguely scan the height and face of the human being.
After some time the son of Earth said to him, “Aoun and Zouhr are not enemies of the rock lion.”
The brute, surprised by the sound of an articulate voice growled and tore at the rock with its claws.
“The lion of the rocks is stronger than Zouhr,” continued the warrior, “but Zouhr is cunning… If the lion of the rocks, the son of Earth and the son of Urus made an alliance, no prey could escape them.”
He spoke in this way without any real hope, and only because of old memories which stirred in him. Often the Men-without-Shoulders had lived side by side with the wild beasts, taking part in their hunting, and Naoh, son of the Leopard, of the Oulhamr tribe, had made an alliance with the mammoths. Descended from a race which had been declining for generations, Zouhr often lost himself in dreams. He had many more recollections than his companions, and these recollections, fired by his youth, took on strange shapes on days when he was safe from peril and want.
It was the first time that he had found himself in the constant vicinity of a dangerous animal. On the steppes and in the forest animals were inaccessible or menacing. Besides, when Zouhr thought of imitating Naoh or any of his ancestors, Aoun and his other companions came and dissipated his dream. Naoh himself had not continued the experiment of living with the mammoths. When he became chief of the horde he forgot his journey with Nam and Gaw, and only thought of leading the Oulhamrs to lands favorable for them. The Horde was too numerous and too keen on the chase to give the animals confidence; they kept their distance and could only be approached by cunning or taken in ambushes.
Here Zouhr could have touched the lion’s nose by merely reaching his outstretched arm down the fissure. Although he would perhaps have preferred a less formidable wild beast, his imagination was working slowly. Moreover the habit which links beings together was growing. Everything that repeats itself harmlessly ceases to seem terrible. That large chest, that head like a block of basalt, those fiery eyes, no longer made Zouhr tremble. His subtle, youthful senses became aware that he himself had grown familiar to the carnivore. He was no longer considered as possible prey; he would no doubt cease completely to be regarded as such when his smell became gradually more intermixed with the odors of the den.
Summer was approaching. Scorching heat had settled down upon the earth. It burnt up the waterless steppes, it intensified the terrible energy of vegetation in the forest, jungles and savannahs, and the monstrous green life that enveloped the banks of the river. The teeming animal life became intolerable. Worms, spiders, insects, crustaceans, swarmed on all the folds of the leaves, the stalks and the flowers; the viscous flesh of the worms, reptiles and mollusks, frogs and toads accumulated in the bays; herds of herb-cropping animals came up from the arid plains, and despite the presence of the great feline, the tiger and the lion hunted in proximity to the chain of rocks. Aoun and Zouhr only went out in the early morning, and never dallied till the evening twilight. They knew that a black lion with two lionesses occupied the northern jungle, and from the top of their post of observation they saw that a tiger and tigress had invaded the confluence of the great river and the stream. It would be necessary to walk the third part of a summer’s day to reach their lair and rather less to arrive at the jungle. Sometimes, as night fell, the sound of the lion’s roars came nearer, or the strident voice of the tiger; the great feline of the cavern would then give vent to his thunderous voice.
At times Aoun and Zouhr thought of leaving their refuge. But when morning dawned they forgot that hungry clamor, prey became ever more and more abundant, rendering their hunting invariably successful; and the nocturnal carnivores slept before the dawn broke, drunk with meat and blood.
Zouhr said, “Further on there are more tigers, lions and other tawny beasts. Would Aoun and Zouhr find such a good cave elsewhere?”
The son of Urus did not reply. His soul was more nomadic than Zouhr’s: he was curious about new countries. This desire was only occasionally a clearly conscious one, it appeared and disappeared like an appetite. Some mornings he would go alone to the confluence of the river, and observe the rocks where the lions slept. A sudden desire to fight would possess him, or a great longing would fill him to know what savannahs and hunting grounds and animals were hidden from his view in the distance. Sometimes he would follow the up-ward course of the river, putting 2000 or 3000 ells between him and the lions. Again he would manage to cross the river, partly by swimming and partly by jumping from one erratic block to another. Then his chest would swell with the lust of travel, and he would gaze longingly at the blue depths of a forest barring the horizon. On his return a deep feeling of unrest would make his flesh creep.
During these a
bsences, Zouhr would dry slices of meat in the Sun, or else lay in a fresh store of roots. He was desirous to keep a good reserve of provisions, so that they might be masters of their movements and hours of repose. At intervals he would go down to the fissure, and if he found the feline awake, he accustomed it to the sound of the human voice.
One afternoon, when the shadows of the rocks had passed to the other bank of the river, he was surprised because Aoun did not return; and as he was tired of inaction, he climbed down with the help of leather thongs, which enabled him to reach places otherwise inaccessible to all but birds and vampires.
First he went towards the confluence, but a long string of buffaloes barred his way. Zouhr knew that their tempers were uncertain, and that at the least alarm the males became dangerous. He made a great circuit towards the west, and was about to turn southwards when a rhinoceros appeared among the high grasses. The son of Earth tried to efface himself under the vaults of a banyan-tree: the heavy beast followed him. Then he climbed up a hillock, turned along the edge of a pool, lost his way in the brushwood, and found himself once more in sight of the chain of rocks, but on the side which was inhabited by the giant feline.
The rhinoceros had disappeared. Zouhr studied this place, where neither of the companions had ever ventured before. The chain of rocks was more rugged and had deeper hollows than near the river. Two falcons rose in spirals, with hardly a stroke of their wings, towards a froth-like cloud. Despite the approach of sunset the light beat fiercely down upon the rocky desolation and the luxuriant verdure. Lying flat on his face in the shade, the Wah tried to discover the great beast’s lair. He thought it must be down there among the great black hollows, where the shadows were indistinguishable from masses of rock. To the left, the pool was hidden behind a jungle of rushes; to the right there was a series of ravines, with archipelagoes of hillocks, and towards the chain of rocks there were lines of basalt, forming low ridges, ruinous walls and prisms… Doubtless the brute was sleeping until the hour when carnivorous voices were wont to make themselves heard.
Helgvor of the Blue River Page 17