第20章

Standing now, her hands pressed tight above her golden breastplates, Pan-at-lee watched the race for life.Now one, her older brother, reached the summit and clinging there to something that she could not see he lowered his body and his long tail to the father beneath him.The latter, seizing this support, extended his own tail to the son below--the one who had slipped back--and thus, upon a living ladder of their own making, the three reached the summit and disappeared from view before the Kor-ul-lul overtook them.But the latter did not abandon the chase.On they went until they too had disappeared from sight and only a faint shouting came down to Pan-at-lee to tell her that the pursuit continued.

The girl knew that she must move on.At any moment now might come a hunting party, combing the gorge for the smaller animals that fed or bedded there.

Behind her were Es-sat and the returning party of Kor-ul-lul that had pursued her kin; before her, across the next ridge, was the Kor-ul-gryf, the lair of the terrifying monsters that brought the chill of fear to every inhabitant of Pal-ul-don; below her, in the valley, was the country of the Ho-don, where she could look for only slavery, or death; here were the Kor-ul-lul, the ancient enemies of her people and everywhere were the wild beasts that eat the flesh of man.

For but a moment she debated and then turning her face toward the southeast she set out across the gorge of water toward the Kor-ul-gryf--at least there were no men there.As it is now, so it was in the beginning, back to the primitive progenitor of man which is typified by Pan-at-lee and her kind today, of all the hunters that woman fears, man is the most relentless, the most terrible.To the dangers of man she preferred the dangers of the gryf.

Moving cautiously she reached the foot of the cliff at the far side of Kor-ul-lul and here, toward noon, she found a comparatively easy ascent.Crossing the ridge she stood at last upon the brink of Kor-ul-gryf--the horror place of the folklore of her race.Dank and mysterious grew the vegetation below; giant trees waved their plumed tops almost level with the summit of the cliff; and over all brooded an ominous silence.

Pan-at-lee lay upon her belly and stretching over the edge scanned the cliff face below her.She could see caves there and the stone pegs which the ancients had fashioned so laboriously by hand.She had heard of these in the firelight tales of her childhood and of how the gryfs had come from the morasses across the mountains and of how at last the people had fled after many had been seized and devoured by the hideous creatures, leaving their caves untenanted for no man living knew how long.Some said that Jad-ben-Otho, who has lived forever, was still a little boy.

Pan-at-lee shuddered; but there were caves and in them she would be safe even from the gryfs.

She found a place where the stone pegs reached to the very summit of the cliff, left there no doubt in the final exodus of the tribe when there was no longer need of safeguarding the deserted caves against invasion.Pan-at-lee clambered slowly down toward the uppermost cave.She found the recess in front of the doorway almost identical with those of her own tribe.The floor of it, though, was littered with twigs and old nests and the droppings of birds, until it was half choked.She moved along to another recess and still another, but all were alike in the accumulated filth.Evidently there was no need in looking further.This one seemed large and commodious.With her knife she fell to work cleaning away the debris by the simple expedient of pushing it over the edge, and always her eyes turned constantly toward the silent gorge where lurked the fearsome creatures of Pal-ul-don.And other eyes there were, eyes she did not see, but that saw her and watched her every move--fierce eyes, greedy eyes, cunning and cruel.They watched her, and a red tongue licked flabby, pendulous lips.They watched her, and a half-human brain laboriously evolved a brutish design.

As in her own Kor-ul-ja, the natural springs in the cliff had been developed by the long-dead builders of the caves so that fresh, pure water trickled now, as it had for ages, within easy access to the cave entrances.Her only difficulty would be in procuring food and for that she must take the risk at least once in two days, for she was sure that she could find fruits and tubers and perhaps small animals, birds, and eggs near the foot of the cliff, the last two, possibly, in the caves themselves.

Thus might she live on here indefinitely.She felt now a certain sense of security imparted doubtless by the impregnability of her high-flung sanctuary that she knew to be safe from all the more dangerous beasts, and this one from men, too, since it lay in the abjured Kor-ul-gryf.

Now she determined to inspect the interior of her new home.The sun still in the south, lighted the interior of the first apartment.It was similar to those of her experience--the same beasts and men were depicted in the same crude fashion in the carvings on the walls--evidently there had been little progress in the race of Waz-don during the generations that had come and departed since Kor-ul-gryf had been abandoned by men.Of course Pan-at-lee thought no such thoughts, for evolution and progress existed not for her, or her kind.Things were as they had always been and would always be as they were.

That these strange creatures have existed thus for incalculable ages it can scarce be doubted, so marked are the indications of antiquity about their dwellings--deep furrows worn by naked feet in living rock; the hollow in the jamb of a stone doorway where many arms have touched in passing; the endless carvings that cover, ofttimes, the entire face of a great cliff and all the walls and ceilings of every cave and each carving wrought by a different hand, for each is the coat of arms, one might say, of the adult male who traced it.

And so Pan-at-lee found this ancient cave homelike and familiar.