Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  “I should like to visit this Camp of the Lions,” I said.

  “Oh, no, you must not!” cried the girl. “That would be terrible. They would eat you.” For a moment, then, she seemed lost in thought, but presently she turned upon me with: “You must go now, for any minute Buckingham may come in search of me. Long since should they have learned that I am gone from the camp — they watch over me very closely — and they will set out after me. Go! I shall wait here until they come in search of me.”

  “No,” I told her. “I’ll not leave you alone in a land infested by lions and other wild beasts. If you won’t let me go as far as your camp with you, then I’ll wait here until they come in search of you.”

  “Please go!” she begged. “You have saved me, and I would save you, but nothing will save you if Buckingham gets his hands on you. He is a bad man. He wishes to have me for his woman so that he may be king. He would kill anyone who befriended me, for fear that I might become another’s.”

  “Didn’t you say that Buckingham is already the king?” I asked.

  “He is. He took my mother for his woman after he had killed Wettin. But my mother will die soon — she is very old — and then the man to whom I belong will become king.”

  Finally, after much questioning, I got the thing through my head. It appears that the line of descent is through the women. A man is merely head of his wife’s family — that is all. If she chances to be the oldest female member of the “royal” house, he is king. Very naively the girl explained that there was seldom any doubt as to whom a child’s mother was.

  This accounted for the girl’s importance in the community and for Buckingham’s anxiety to claim her, though she told me that she did not wish to become his woman, for he was a bad man and would make a bad king. But he was powerful, and there was no other man who dared dispute his wishes.

  “Why not come with me,” I suggested, “if you do not wish to become Buckingham’s?”

  “Where would you take me?” she asked.

  Where, indeed! I had not thought of that. But before I could reply to her question she shook her head and said, “No, I cannot leave my people. I must stay and do my best, even if Buckingham gets me, but you must go at once. Do not wait until it is too late. The lions have had no offering for a long time, and Buckingham would seize upon the first stranger as a gift to them.”

  I did not perfectly understand what she meant, and was about to ask her when a heavy body leaped upon me from behind, and great arms encircled my neck. I struggled to free myself and turn upon my antagonist, but in another instant I was overwhelmed by a half dozen powerful, half-naked men, while a score of others surrounded me, a couple of whom seized the girl.

  I fought as best I could for my liberty and for hers, but the weight of numbers was too great, though I had the satisfaction at least of giving them a good fight.

  When they had overpowered me, and I stood, my hands bound behind me, at the girl’s side, she gazed commiseratingly at me.

  “It is too bad that you did not do as I bid you,” she said, “for now it has happened just as I feared — Buckingham has you.”

  “Which is Buckingham?” I asked.

  “I am Buckingham,” growled a burly, unwashed brute, swaggering truculently before me. “And who are you who would have stolen my woman?”

  The girl spoke up then and tried to explain that I had not stolen her; but on the contrary I had saved her from the men from the “Elephant Country” who were carrying her away.

  Buckingham only sneered at her explanation, and a moment later gave the command that started us all off toward the west. We marched for a matter of an hour or so, coming at last to a collection of rude huts, fashioned from branches of trees covered with skins and grasses and sometimes plastered with mud. All about the camp they had erected a wall of saplings pointed at the tops and fire hardened.

  This palisade was a protection against both man and beasts, and within it dwelt upward of two thousand persons, the shelters being built very close together, and sometimes partially underground, like deep trenches, with the poles and hides above merely as protection from the sun and rain.

  The older part of the camp consisted almost wholly of trenches, as though this had been the original form of dwellings which was slowly giving way to the drier and airier surface domiciles. In these trench habitations I saw a survival of the military trenches which formed so famous a part of the operation of the warring nations during the twentieth century.

  The women wore a single light deerskin about their hips, for it was summer, and quite warm. The men, too, were clothed in a single garment, usually the pelt of some beast of prey. The hair of both men and women was confined by a rawhide thong passing about the forehead and tied behind. In this leathern band were stuck feathers, flowers, or the tails of small mammals. All wore necklaces of the teeth or claws of wild beasts, and there were numerous metal wristlets and anklets among them.

  They wore, in fact, every indication of a most primitive people — a race which had not yet risen to the heights of agriculture or even the possession of domestic animals. They were hunters — the lowest plane in the evolution of the human race of which science takes cognizance.

  And yet as I looked at their well shaped heads, their handsome features, and their intelligent eyes, it was difficult to believe that I was not among my own. It was only when I took into consideration their mode of living, their scant apparel, the lack of every least luxury among them, that I was forced to admit that they were, in truth, but ignorant savages.

  Buckingham had relieved me of my weapons, though he had not the slightest idea of their purpose or uses, and when we reached the camp he exhibited both me and my arms with every indication of pride in this great capture.

  The inhabitants flocked around me, examining my clothing, and exclaiming in wonderment at each new discovery of button, buckle, pocket, and flap. It seemed incredible that such a thing could be, almost within a stone’s throw of the spot where but a brief two centuries before had stood the greatest city of the world.

  They bound me to a small tree that grew in the middle of one of their crooked streets, but the girl they released as soon as we had entered the enclosure. The people greeted her with every mark of respect as she hastened to a large hut near the center of the camp.

  Presently she returned with a fine looking, white-haired woman, who proved to be her mother. The older woman carried herself with a regal dignity that seemed quite remarkable in a place of such primitive squalor.

  The people fell aside as she approached, making a wide way for her and her daughter. When they had come near and stopped before me the older woman addressed me.

  “My daughter has told me,” she said, “of the manner in which you rescued her from the men of the elephant country. If Wettin lived you would be well treated, but Buckingham has taken me now, and is king. You can hope for nothing from such a beast as Buckingham.”

  The fact that Buckingham stood within a pace of us and was an interested listener appeared not to temper her expressions in the slightest.

  “Buckingham is a pig,” she continued. “He is a coward. He came upon Wettin from behind and ran his spear through him. He will not be king for long. Some one will make a face at him, and he will run away and jump into the river.”

  The people began to titter and clap their hands. Buckingham became red in the face. It was evident that he was far from popular.

  “If he dared,” went on the old lady, “he would kill me now, but he does not dare. He is too great a coward. If I could help you I should gladly do so. But I am only queen — the vehicle that has helped carry down, unsullied, the royal blood from the days when Grabritin was a mighty country.”

  The old queen’s words had a noticeable effect upon the mob of curious savages which surrounded me. The moment they discovered that the old queen was friendly to me and that I had rescued her daughter they commenced to accord me a more friendly interest, and I heard many words spoken in my behalf,
and demands were made that I not be harmed.

  But now Buckingham interfered. He had no intention of being robbed of his prey. Blustering and storming, he ordered the people back to their huts, at the same time directing two of his warriors to confine me in a dugout in one of the trenches close to his own shelter.

  Here they threw me upon the ground, binding my ankles together and trussing them up to my wrists behind. There they left me, lying upon my stomach — a most uncomfortable and strained position, to which was added the pain where the cords cut into my flesh.

  Just a few days ago my mind had been filled with the anticipation of the friendly welcome I should find among the cultured Englishmen of London. Today I should be sitting in the place of honor at the banquet board of one of London’s most exclusive clubs, feted and lionized.

  The actuality! Here I lay, bound hand and foot, doubtless almost upon the very site of a part of ancient London, yet all about me was a primeval wilderness, and I was a captive of half-naked wild men.

  I wondered what had become of Delcarte and Taylor and Snider. Would they search for me? They could never find me, I feared, yet if they did, what could they accomplish against this horde of savage warriors?

  Would that I could warn them. I thought of the girl — doubtless she could get word to them, but how was I to communicate with her? Would she come to see me before I was killed? It seemed incredible that she should not make some slight attempt to befriend me; yet, as I recalled, she had made no effort to speak with me after we had reached the village. She had hastened to her mother the moment she had been liberated. Though she had returned with the old queen, she had not spoken to me, even then. I began to have my doubts.

  Finally, I came to the conclusion that I was absolutely friendless except for the old queen. For some unaccountable reason my rage against the girl for her ingratitude rose to colossal proportions.

  For a long time I waited for some one to come to my prison whom I might ask to bear word to the queen, but I seemed to have been forgotten. The strained position in which I lay became unbearable. I wriggled and twisted until I managed to turn myself partially upon my side, where I lay half facing the entrance to the dugout.

  Presently my attention was attracted by the shadow of something moving in the trench without, and a moment later the figure of a child appeared, creeping upon all fours, as, wide-eyed, and prompted by childish curiosity, a little girl crawled to the entrance of my hut and peered cautiously and fearfully in.

  I did not speak at first for fear of frightening the little one away. But when I was satisfied that her eyes had become sufficiently accustomed to the subdued light of the interior, I smiled.

  Instantly the expression of fear faded from her eyes to be replaced with an answering smile.

  “Who are you, little girl?” I asked.

  “My name is Mary,” she replied. “I am Victory’s sister.”

  “And who is Victory?”

  “You do not know who Victory is?” she asked, in astonishment.

  I shook my head in negation.

  “You saved her from the elephant country people, and yet you say you do not know her!” she exclaimed.

  “Oh, so she is Victory, and you are her sister! I have not heard her name before. That is why I did not know whom you meant,” I explained. Here was just the messenger for me. Fate was becoming more kind.

  “Will you do something for me, Mary?” I asked.

  “If I can.”

  “Go to your mother, the queen, and ask her to come to me,” I said. “I have a favor to ask.”

  She said that she would, and with a parting smile she left me.

  For what seemed many hours I awaited her return, chafing with impatience. The afternoon wore on and night came, and yet no one came near me. My captors brought me neither food nor water. I was suffering considerable pain where the rawhide thongs cut into my swollen flesh. I thought that they had either forgotten me, or that it was their intention to leave me here to die of starvation.

  Once I heard a great uproar in the village. Men were shouting — women were screaming and moaning. After a time this subsided, and again there was a long interval of silence.

  Half the night must have been spent when I heard a sound in the trench near the hut. It resembled muffled sobs. Presently a figure appeared, silhouetted against the lesser darkness beyond the doorway. It crept inside the hut.

  “Are you here?” whispered a childlike voice.

  It was Mary! She had returned. The thongs no longer hurt me. The pangs of hunger and thirst disappeared. I realized that it had been loneliness from which I suffered most.

  “Mary!” I exclaimed. “You are a good girl. You have come back, after all. I had commenced to think that you would not. Did you give my message to the queen? Will she come? Where is she?”

  The child’s sobs increased, and she flung herself upon the dirt floor of the hut, apparently overcome by grief.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Why do you cry?”

  “The queen, my mother, will not come to you,” she said, between sobs. “She is dead. Buckingham has killed her. Now he will take Victory, for Victory is queen. He kept us fastened up in our shelter, for fear that Victory would escape him, but I dug a hole beneath the back wall and got out. I came to you, because you saved Victory once before, and I thought that you might save her again, and me, also. Tell me that you will.”

  “I am bound and helpless, Mary,” I replied. “Otherwise I would do what I could to save you and your sister.”

  “I will set you free!” cried the girl, creeping up to my side. “I will set you free, and then you may come and slay Buckingham.”

  “Gladly!” I assented.

  “We must hurry,” she went on, as she fumbled with the hard knots in the stiffened rawhide, “for Buckingham will be after you soon. He must make an offering to the lions at dawn before he can take Victory. The taking of a queen requires a human offering!”

  “And I am to be the offering?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, tugging at a knot. “Buckingham has been wanting a sacrifice ever since he killed Wettin, that he might slay my mother and take Victory.”

  The thought was horrible, not solely because of the hideous fate to which I was condemned, but from the contemplation it engendered of the sad decadence of a once enlightened race. To these depths of ignorance, brutality, and superstition had the vaunted civilization of twentieth century England been plunged, and by what? War! I felt the structure of our time-honored militaristic arguments crumbling about me.

  Mary labored with the thongs that confined me. They proved refractory — defying her tender, childish fingers. She assured me, however, that she would release me, if “they” did not come too soon.

  But, alas, they came. We heard them coming down the trench, and I bade Mary hide in a corner, lest she be discovered and punished. There was naught else she could do, and so she crawled away into the Stygian blackness behind me.

  Presently two warriors entered. The leader exhibited a unique method of discovering my whereabouts in the darkness. He advanced slowly, kicking out viciously before him. Finally he kicked me in the face. Then he knew where I was.

  A moment later I had been jerked roughly to my feet. One of the fellows stopped and severed the bonds that held my ankles. I could scarcely stand alone. The two pulled and hauled me through the low doorway and along the trench. A party of forty or fifty warriors were awaiting us at the brink of the excavation some hundred yards from the hut.

  Hands were lowered to us, and we were dragged to the surface. Then commenced a long march. We stumbled through the underbrush wet with dew, our way lighted by a score of torchbearers who surrounded us. But the torches were not to light the way — that was but incidental. They were carried to keep off the huge Carnivora that moaned and coughed and roared about us.

  The noises were hideous. The whole country seemed alive with lions. Yellow-green eyes blazed wickedly at us from out the surrounding darkness. My escor
t carried long, heavy spears. These they kept ever pointed toward the beast of prey, and I learned from snatches of the conversation I overheard that occasionally there might be a lion who would brave even the terrors of fire to leap in upon human prey. It was for such that the spears were always couched.

  But nothing of the sort occurred during this hideous death march, and with the first pale heralding of dawn we reached our goal — an open place in the midst of a tangled wildwood. Here rose in crumbling grandeur the first evidences I had seen of the ancient civilization which once had graced fair Albion — a single, time-worn arch of masonry.

  “The entrance to the Camp of the Lions!” murmured one of the party in a voice husky with awe.

  Here the party knelt, while Buckingham recited a weird, prayer-like chant. It was rather long, and I recall only a portion of it, which ran, if my memory serves me, somewhat as follows:

  Lord of Grabritin, we

  Fall on our knees to thee,

  This gift to bring.

  Greatest of kings are thou!

  To thee we humbly bow!

  Peace to our camp allow.

  God save thee, king!

  Then the party rose, and dragging me to the crumbling arch, made me fast to a huge, corroded, copper ring which was dangling from an eyebolt imbedded in the masonry.

  None of them, not even Buckingham, seemed to feel any personal animosity toward me. They were naturally rough and brutal, as primitive men are supposed to have been since the dawn of humanity, but they did not go out of their way to maltreat me.

  With the coming of dawn the number of lions about us seemed to have greatly diminished — at least they made less noise — and as Buckingham and his party disappeared into the woods, leaving me alone to my terrible fate, I could hear the grumblings and growlings of the beasts diminishing with the sound of the chant, which the party still continued. It appeared that the lions had failed to note that I had been left for their breakfast, and had followed off after their worshippers instead.

  But I knew the reprieve would be but for a short time, and though I had no wish to die, I must confess that I rather wished the ordeal over and the peace of oblivion upon me.