“What are they like?” asked King.
“They are horrible Ogres who live upon human flesh,” replied Che.
“Have you ever seen them?” asked King.
“Of course not,” replied the native. “Only he who is about to be devoured sees them.”
Gordon King listened with polite attention to the folk tales of Che and Kangrey, but he knew that they were only legends of a kind with the fabulous city of Lodidhapura and its Leper King, Lodivarman. He was somewhat at a loss to account for Vay Thon, the high priest, but he decided finally that the old man was an eccentric hermit who had come into the jungle to live and that to him might be attributed many of the fabulous tales that Che and Kangrey narrated so glibly. That his two friends were runaway slaves from the fabulous city of Lodidhapura, King doubted, attributing their story to the desire of primitive minds to inject a strain of romance into their otherwise monotonous lives.
As King’s strength returned rapidly, he insisted more and more upon getting out into the open. He was anxious to accompany Che upon his hunting trips, but the native insisted that he was not yet sufficiently strong. So the American had to content himself with remaining with Kangrey and Uda at home, where he practised using the weapons that Che had made for him, which consisted of a bow and arrow and a short, heavy javelin-like spear. Thanks to the training of his college days, King was proficient in the use of the latter; and he practised assiduously with his bow and arrows until his marksmanship aroused the admiring applause of even Kangrey, who considered Che the best bowman in the world, to whose expert proficiency no other mortal might hope to attain.
The dwelling of Che and Kangrey and Uda was in an ancient Khmer ruin and consisted of a small room which had withstood the march of the centuries — a room that was peculiarly suited to the requirements of the little jungle family since it had but a single entrance, a small aperture that could be effectually blocked at night with a flat slab of stone against the depredations of marauding cats.
Their existence was as simple and primitive as might have been that of the first man; yet there was inherent in it an undeniable charm that King felt in spite of the monotony and his anxiety to escape from the jungle.
Che knew nothing but the jungle and the fabulous city of Lodidhapura. It is difficult for us to conceive of an endless infinity of space, but Che could imagine an endless jungle. The question of limitation did not enter his mind and, therefore, did not confuse him. To him, the world was a jungle. When King realized this, he knew, too, that it was hopeless to expect Che to attempt to lead him out of a jungle that he believed had no end.
For some time King had been making short excursions into the jungle in search of game while he repeatedly sought to impress upon Che that he was strong enough to accompany the native upon his hunts; but he was met with so many excuses that he at last awoke to the fact that Che did not want him along; and so the American determined to set out by himself upon a prolonged and determined effort to prove his efficiency. He left one morning after Che had departed, turning his steps in a different direction from that taken by the native. He was determined to bring back something to demonstrate his prowess to Che, but though he moved silently through the jungle, keeping the sharpest look out, he saw no sign of game of any description; and having had past experience of the ease with which one might become lost in the jungle, he turned back at last empty-handed.
During his long convalescence King had had an opportunity to consider many things, and one of them had been his humiliating lack of jungle craft. He knew, therefore, that he must mark the trail in some way if he were to hope to return to the dwelling of Che and Kangrey. He could not blaze the trees with his knife on a hunting excursion since the noise would unquestionably frighten away the game, and so he invented several other ways of marking the trail — sticking twigs in the rough bark of trees that he passed, scraping the ground with the sharp point of his javelin, and placing three twigs in the form of an arrow, pointing backward along the trail over which he had come. Accordingly, he had little difficulty today in back-tracking along the way to the home of Che.
Practising jungle craft necessitated moving as noiselessly as possible, and so it was that he came as silently as might a hunting cat to the edge of the ruin where lay the dwelling of his friend. As King came within sight of the familiar entrance, a scene met his eyes that froze his blood and brought his heart into his throat. In the small clearing that Che had made, little Uda was at play. He was digging with a sharp stick in the leafy mould of the ground, while watching him at the edge of the clearing crouched a great panther.
King saw the beast gradually drawing its hind feet well beneath its body as it prepared to charge.
4. FOU-TAN
Returning early from a successful hunt, Che approached the clearing. He, too, moved silently, for thus he always moved through the jungle. Along a forest aisle he could see the clearing before he reached it. He saw Uda digging among the dry leaves, which made a rustling sound that would have drowned the noise of the approach of even a less careful jungle animal than Che. The father smiled as his eyes rested upon his first-born, but in the same instant the smile froze to an expression of horror as he saw a panther leap into the clearing.
Kangrey, emerging at that moment from their gloomy dwelling, saw it too, and screamed as she rushed forward barehanded, impelled by the mother instinct to protect its young. And then, all in the same brief instant, Che saw a heavy javelin streak lightning-like from the jungle. He saw the panther crumple in its charge, and as he ran forward he saw the pale one leap into the clearing and snatch Uda into his arms.
Che, realizing, as had King, the fury of a wounded panther, rushed upon the scene with ready spear as the pale one tossed Uda to Kangrey and turned again to face the great cat. But there was no necessity for the vicious thrust with which Che drove his spear into the carcass of the beast, for the panther was already dead.
For a moment they stood in silence, looking down upon the kill — four primitive jungle people, naked but for sampots. It was King’s first experience of a thrill of the primitive hunter. He trembled a little, but that was reaction to the fear that he had felt for the life of little Uda.
“It is a large panther,” said Che simply.
“Only a strong man could have slain it thus,” said Kangrey. “Only Che could thus have slain with a single cast so great a panther.”
“It was not the spear of Che. It was the spear of the pale one that laid low the prince of darkness,” said Che.
Kangrey looked her astonishment and would not be convinced until she had examined the spear that protruded from beneath the left shoulder of the great cat. “This, then, is the reward that Vay Thon said would be ours if we befriended the pale one,” she declared.
Uda said nothing, but, squirming from his mother’s arms, he ran to the side of the dead panther and belabored it with his little stick.
The next day Che invited King to accompany him upon his hunt. When after a hard day they returned empty-handed, King was convinced that in the search for small game a lone hunter would have greater chances for success. In the morning, therefore, he announced that he would hunt alone in another part of the jungle, and Che agreed with him that this plan would be better.
Marking his trail as he had before, King hunted an unfamiliar territory. The forest appeared more open. There was less underbrush; and he had discovered what appeared to be a broad elephant trail, along which he moved with far greater speed than he had ever been able to attain before in his wanderings through this empire of trees and underbrush.
He had no luck in his hunting; and when he had about determined that it was time to turn back, his ears caught an unfamiliar sound. What it was he did not know. There was a peculiar metallic ring and other sounds that might have been human voices at a distance.
“Perhaps,” soliloquized King, “I am about to see the Nagas or the Yeacks.”
The sound was steadily approaching; and as he had learned enough from his
intercourse with Che and Kangrey to know that no friendly creatures might be encountered in the jungle, he drew to one side of the elephant trail and concealed himself behind some shrubbery.
He had not waited long when he saw the authors of the sounds approaching. Suddenly he felt his head. It did not seem over-hot. As he had upon other similar occasions, he closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again, but still the vision persisted — a vision of brown-skinned soldiers in burnished brass cuirasses over leather jerkins that fell midway between their hips and their knees, with heavy sandals on their feet, strange helmets on their heads, and armed with swords and spears and bows and arrows.
They came on talking among themselves, and as they passed close to King he discovered that they spoke the same language that he had learned from Che and Kangrey. Evidently the men were arguing with their leader, who wanted to go on, while the majority of his followers seemed in favor of turning back.
“We shall have to spend the night in the jungle as it is,” said one. “If we go on much farther, we shall have to spend two nights in the jungle. Only a fool would choose to lair with My Lord the Tiger.”
They had stopped now almost opposite King, so that he could clearly overhear all that passed between them. The man in charge appeared to be a petty officer with little real authority, for instead of issuing orders he argued and pleaded.
“It is well enough for you to insist upon turning back,” he said, “since if we return to the city without the apsaras you expect that I alone shall be punished; but let me tell you that, if you force me to turn back, the entire truth will be made known and you will share in any punishment that may be inflicted upon me.”
“If we cannot find her, we cannot find her,” grumbled one of the men. “Are we to remain in the jungle the rest of our lives searching for a runaway apsaras?”
“I would as lief face My Lord the Tiger in the jungle for the rest of my life,” replied the petty officer, “as face Lodivarman if we return without the girl.”
“What Vama says is true,” said another. “Lodivarman, the King, will not be interested in our reason for returning empty-handed. Should we return to the city tomorrow without the girl and Vama charged that we had forced him to turn back, Lodivarman, if he were in ill-humor, as he usually is, would have us all put to death; but if we remain away for many days and then return with a story of many hardships and dangers he will know that we did all that might be expected of brave warriors, and thus the anger of Lodivarman might be assuaged.”
“At last,” commented Vama, “you are commencing to talk like intelligent and civilized men. Come, now, and let us resume the search.”
As they moved away King heard one of the men suggest that they find a safe and comfortable camp site where they might remain for a sufficient length of time to impress upon the King the verity of the story that they would relate to him. He waited only until they were out of sight before he arose from his place of concealment, for he was much concerned with the fact that they were proceeding in the general direction of the dwelling of Che and Kangrey. King was much mystified by what he had seen. He knew that these soldiers were no children of a fevered brain. They were flesh and blood warriors and for that reason a far greater mystery than any of the creatures he had seen in his delirium, since they could not be accounted for by any process of intelligent reasoning. His judgment told him that there were no warriors in this uninhabited jungle and certainly none with the archaic accoutrements and weapons that he had seen. It might be reasonable to expect to meet such types in an extravaganza of the stage or screen; and, doubtless, centuries ago warriors such as these patrolled this very spot which the jungle and the tiger and the elephant had long since reclaimed.
He recalled the stories that his guide had told him of the ghosts of the ancient Khmers, which roamed through the somber aisles of the forest. He remembered the other soldiers that he had seen and the girl with the frightened eyes that rode upon the great elephant, and the final result was a questioning of his own sanity. Since he knew that a fever, such as the one through which he had passed, might easily affect one’s brain either temporarily or permanently, he was troubled and not a little frightened as he made his way in the direction of the dwelling of Che and Kangrey. But the fact that he took a circuitous route that he might avoid the warriors indicated that either he was quite crazy or, at least, that he was temporizing with his madness.
“‘Weeping queens on misty elephants!’” he soliloquized. “‘Warriors in brass!’ ‘A mystery of the Orient.’ Perhaps after all there are ghosts. There has been enough evidence accumulated during historic times to prove that the materialization of disembodied spirits may have occurred upon countless occasions. That I never saw a ghost is not necessarily conclusive evidence that they do not exist. There are many strange things in the Orient that the western mind cannot grasp. Perhaps, after all, I have seen ghosts; but if so, they certainly were thoroughly materialized, even to the dirt on their legs and the sweat on their faces. I suppose I shall have to admit that they are ghosts, since I know that no soldiers like them exist in the flesh anywhere in the world.”
As King moved silently through the jungle, he presented an even more anachronistic figure than had the soldiers in brass; for they, at least, personified an era of civilization and advancement, while King, to all outward appearances, was almost at the dawn of human evolution — a primitive hunter, naked but for a sampot of leopard skin and rude sandals fashioned by Kangrey because the soles of his feet, innocent of the callouses that shod hers and Che’s, had rendered him almost helpless in the jungle without this protection. His skin was brown from exposure to the sun, and his hair had grown thick and shaggy. That he was smooth-shaven was the result of chance. He had always made it a habit, since he had taken up the study of medicine and surgery, to carry a safety razor blade with him, for what possible emergency he could not himself have explained. It was merely an idiosyncrasy, and it had so chanced that among several other things that the monkeys had dropped from his pockets and scattered in the jungle the razor blade had been recovered by little Uda along with a silver pencil and a handful of French francs.
He moved through the jungle with all the assurance of a man who has known no other life, so quickly does humankind adapt itself to environment. Already his ears and his nostrils had become inured to their surroundings to such an extent, at least, as to permit them to identify and classify easily and quickly the more familiar sounds and odors of the jungle. Familiarity had induced increasing self-assurance, which had now reached a point that made him feel he might soon safely set out in search of civilization. However, to-day his mind was not on this thing; it was still engaged in an endeavor to solve the puzzle of the brass-bound warriors. But presently the baffling contemplation of this matter was rudely interrupted by a patch of buff coat and black stripes of which he caught a momentary, fleeting glimpse between the boles of two trees ahead of him.
A species of unreasoning terror that had formerly seized him each time that he had glimpsed the terrifying lord of the jungle had gradually passed away as he had come to recognize the fact that every tiger that he saw was not bent upon his destruction and that nine times out of ten it would try to get out of his way. Of course, it is the tenth tiger that one must always reckon with; but where trees are numerous and a man’s eyes and ears and nose are alert, even the tenth tiger may usually be circumvented.
So now King did not alter his course, though he had seen the tiger directly ahead of him. It would be time enough to think of retreat when he found that the temper and intentions of the tiger warranted it, and, further, it was better to keep the brute in sight than to feel that perhaps he had circled and was creeping up behind one. It was, therefore, because of this that King pushed on a little more rapidly; and soon he was rewarded by another glimpse of the great carnivore and of something else, which presented a tableau that froze his blood.
Beyond the tiger and facing it stood a girl. Her wide eyes were glassy with terro
r. She stood as one in a trance, frozen to the spot, while toward her the great cat crept. She was a slender girl, garbed as fantastically as had been the soldiers that had passed him in the jungle shortly before; but her gorgeous garments were soiled and torn, and even at a distance King could see that her face and arms were scratched and bleeding. In the instant that his eyes alighted upon her he sensed something strangely familiar about her. It was a sudden, wholly unaccountable impression that somewhere he had seen this girl before; but it was only a passing impression, for his whole mind now was occupied with her terrifying predicament.
To save her from the terrible death creeping slowly upon her seemed beyond the realms of possibility, and yet King knew that he must make the attempt. He recognized instantly that his only hope lay in distracting the attention of the tiger. If he could center the interest of the brute upon himself, perhaps the girl might escape.
He shouted, and the tiger wheeled about. “Run!” he cried to the girl. “Quick! Make for a tree!”
As he spoke, King was running forward. His heavy spear was ready in his hand, but yet it was a mad chance to take. Perhaps he forgot himself and his own danger, thinking only of the girl. The tiger glanced back at the girl, who, obeying King’s direction, had run quickly to a nearby tree into which she was trying to scramble, badly hampered by the long skirt that enveloped her.
For only an instant did the tiger hesitate. His short and ugly temper was fully aroused now in the face of this rude interruption of his plan. With a savage snarl and then the short coughing roars with which King was all too familiar, he wheeled and sprang toward the man in long, easy bounds. Twelve to fifteen feet he covered in a single leap. Flight was futile. There was nothing that King could do but stand his ground and pit his puny spear against this awful engine of destruction.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 466