Land of Terror p-6

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  I took careful aim at a spot where the fish were thickest. The bow twanged and the arrow sped straight for its mark. A fish jumped into the air and sounded. The rope payed out rapidly. I braced my feet and prepared for the shock; and when it came I was almost jerked into the pool, but I managed to keep my footing.

  I let the fish play for awhile without endeavoring to draw him in, for I was none too sure of the strength of my line, even though it had withstood the first great shock. I wanted to tire him, and every time that there was a little slack in the rope I pulled it in. Finally the struggling ceased, and the fish floated to the surface, belly up. I pulled it ashore and handed it to Ro-Tai, who immediately demanded that I make bows and arrows for every warrior of the tribe. Right there we ran into a snag. There was no growth on Ruva suitable for making bows. The result was that I was kept busy shooting fish.

  Ro-Tai had to admit that I had taught them something, and his attitude toward me relaxed a little; but U-Val was still pretty sore at me. He wanted me as his slave, and he wanted all the credit for what I had done. Ul-Van told me that U-Val was very unpopular and that I was fortunate in not having him for a master.

  The fish that I caught they cleaned and smoked, and when they thought they had a sufficient supply Ro-Tai insisted that I show them how to build a canoe that would travel through the water without paddling.

  Immediately I was faced by an insurmountable obstacle. No trees suitable for canoe building grew upon Ruva or any of the other floating islands. All of their canoes had been built upon the mainland where the proper wood could be found. To build a canoe was a terrific undertaking, necessitating an expedition in which some twenty or thirty men were often absent from Ruva for a hundred sleeps or more.

  The canoes would be roughly hewn on the mainland and then towed to Ruva, where the long and arduous job of finishing was completed.

  These canoes remained in families for generations. Ul-Van told me that his had been in his family for ten generations, at least. They are passed on from the father to the eldest son.

  As the women and children seldom leave the islands, only enough canoes are needed to carry the men. A new canoe is built only when the number of men in the tribe exceeds the carrying capacity of the canoes they have; and this, Ul-Van told me, seldom occurs more than a couple of times during the lifetime of a man, as the casualties among the warriors just about balance the birth-rate of males.

  Chapter XXIV

  I SHALL not bore you with a detailed description of my attempts to convert one of their canoes into a sailboat. I discovered, after considerable experimenting, that I could harden the wood of the native trees over a bed of hot coals; and, with this make-shift material, I constructed a keel and an outrigger. My only tools were some large shells with sharp edges, a stone knife, a stone chisel, and a hammer of stone. Fortunately for me, the wood was very soft and I worked it into shape before hardening it. I made the keel with a broad flange at the top and fastened it to the bottom of the canoe with fire-hardened, wooden pegs which I knew would expand when wet. For my mast, I spliced length of bamboo to the proper height and then bound three of these together with grass cord. The sail was perhaps the most difficult problem; but I solved it by building a primitive loom and teaching a couple of the women how to weave, using a long, tough grass.

  While I was working on the canoe, I became pretty well acquainted with the members of the tribe and their customs. There were about forty families on this island, averaging about four members to the family. There were also twenty-five or thirty slaves-men and women from the white races of the mainland. These slaves attended to practically all of the manual labor; but their life was not a difficult one, and, for the most part, they were well treated.

  The men are monogamous and very proud of their bloodline. Under no circumstances will they mate with a white, as they consider the white race far inferior to theirs. I could never quite accustom myself to this reversal of the status of the two races from what I had always been accustomed to; but it really was not as difficult as it might appear, for I must admit that the blacks treated us with far greater toleration here than our dark-skinned races are accorded on the outer crust. Perhaps I was getting a lesson in true democracy.

  The canoe upon which I had been working had been drawn up on the seashore about half a mile from the village. Usually, there were a number of villagers hanging around watching me; and Ul-Van was always with me, having been detailed by Ro-Tai to keep a watch on me and prevent me from escaping.

  Once, while Ul-Van and I were alone, I saw a canoe approaching in the distance, and called Ul-Van's attention to it. At first he couldn't see it; but when it came closer, and he could recognize it as a canoe, he showed considerable excitement.

  "They are probably Ko-vans," he said. "It is a raiding party."

  "There are three more canoes coming into sight now behind the first one," I told him.

  "That is bad," said Ul-Van. "We must return to the village at once and warn Ro-Tai."

  When Ul-Van had reported to Ro-Tai, the latter sent boys to the fishing pool and to other parts of the island where he knew his warriors to be; and soon all were congregated in the village.

  The women and children were sent into the huts; the men stood about nervously, an unorganized crowd presenting a fine target for the spears of the enemy.

  "You are not going to remain here, are you?" I asked Ro-Tai.

  "This is our village. We shall remain here and defend it," he replied.

  "Why don't you go out and meet them?" I asked. "You could take them by surprise. Send a scout out to see what trail they are taking and then hide your warriors on either side of it; then when the Ko-vans walk into your trap, you can fall upon them in force from both sides. They will be surprised and disorganized, and those whom you do not kill will run back to their canoes as fast as they can go. It is not necessary for you to let them reach your village at all."

  "All my life, I have fought when raiders came," replied Ro-Tai with dignity; "and I, and my father, and his father before him, have always held the warriors in the village to await attack."

  "That doesn't make it right," I said. "As a matter of fact, you have always been doing it in the wrong way. If you'll let me have ten men, I'll stop those Ko-Vans before they come anywhere near your village."

  "I believe him," said one of the principal men of the village. "He has not deceived us yet."

  "His plan is a good one," said Ul-Van.

  "Very well," said Ro-Tai. "Take ten men and go and see if you can stop the Ko-vans. The rest of us will remain here to fight with them, if you fail."

  "I shall not fail," I said; then I selected Ul-Van and nine other men, and together we started back toward the ocean. I sent one man ahead to reconnoiter, with orders to report back to me as soon as he had discovered what trail the Kovans took after they landed.

  "They will take this trail," said Ul-Van. "They always do."

  "Do they raid you often?" I asked.

  "Yes," he replied. "They were here only a few sleeps before you came. They killed several of our warriors and stole some of our slaves. Among them was a woman slave that belonged to me. I did not like to lose her for she was very beautiful, and my mate was very fond of her. She said that she was an Amozite, and I have heard from other slaves that the women of Amoz are considered very beautiful. She told my woman that she and her mate lived in a country called Sari."

  "What was her name?" I asked.

  Before Ul-Van could reply, my scout came racing back, breathless. "The Ko-vans have landed," he said. "They are coming along this trail."

  "How many of them are there?" I asked.

  "About twenty," he replied.

  I posted my men on either side of the trail, well hidden behind trees. Each of the warriors carried two spears and a stone knife. I told them not to move or to make any sound until I gave the signal; then they were to stand up and each hurl one of his spears, immediately charging in to close quarters with his remaining spear.
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br />   I climbed a tree from which I could not only see my own men but watch the trail for a short distance along which the Ko-vans were approaching, quite oblivious of the fate that awaited them.

  I had not long to wait, for presently a hideously painted warrior came into view; and close behind him, in single file, followed the others. They were armed precisely as were the Ruvans-two spears and a stone knife-and they were of the same race of fine-looking blacks. Only in their war-paint did they differ in appearance from the warriors of Ruva.

  Silently I fitted an arrow to my bow and waited until the entire file was well within the ambush. I bent the bow and took careful aim. This was savage warfare, warfare of the Stone Age. Of course, we lacked poison gas, and we couldn't drop bombs on women and children and hospitals; but in our own primitive way we could do fairly well; and so I released my arrow, and as it sunk deep into the body of the last man in the file, I gave the signal for the Ruvan warriors to attack.

  With savage war cries they rose and hurled their spears. The Ko-vans, taken entirely by surprise, were thrown into confusion to which I added by driving half a dozen more arrows into as many of them in rapid succession.

  Eleven of the twenty went down in the first onslaught. The remaining nine turned to flee; but the trail was narrow and blocked by the dead and wounded. The survivors stumbled and fell as they attempted to climb over one another and their dead and dying comrades in their mad effort to escape, with the result that they fell easy prey to the Ruvan warriors who rushed in with fiendish yells and speared them to the last man.

  As I dropped from the tree, they were driving their spears into the hearts of the wounded. Not a Ko-van escaped. Not one of my men received even so much as a scratch.

  Bearing the weapons of the vanquished, we marched back to the village in triumph.

  When the villagers saw us, they looked at us in astonishment. "Was there no fight?" demanded Ro-Tai. "What became of the Ko-vans? Are they following you?"

  "The Ko-vans are all dead," said Ul-Van. "There were twenty of them, and we killed them all."

  "You killed twenty Ko-vans without losing a man?" demanded Ro-Tai. "Such a thing has never happened before."

  "You can thank David," said Ul-Van. "We did only what he told us to do, and we were victorious."

  Ro-Tai made no comment. With the others, he listened to the account of the victorious warriors, which lost nothing of glory in the telling; but I will admit that every last man of them gave me full credit.

  At last, Ro-Tai spoke. "The warriors of Ruva will feast in celebration of the victory over the Ko-vans. Let the slaves prepare food and tu-mal, that the warriors may drink and be happy. Only the warriors of Ruva shall partake of this feast."

  Some of the slaves were detailed to prepare the food and make the tu-mal, an alcoholic drink of some potency. The remaining male slaves were sent to carry the dead Ko-vans to the sea, where they would be thrown to the fierce denizens of the deep.

  As soon as I could get Ul-Van's attention I asked him the name of the slave woman who had been captured by the Kovans.

  "Amar," he said. "That was her name."

  I couldn't tell whether I was disappointed or not. From his description, I had thought that it might be Dian, for she was beautiful, she had been born in Amoz, and she had lived with her mate in Sari; but of course many women have been born in Amoz, and many of them have been taken as mates by the men of Sari, and as nearly all Amozite women are beautiful the description might have fitted many besides Dian; and, anyhow, how could Dian be on one of the floating islands?

  Three sleeps intervened before the feast was ready, for the tu-mal had to ferment, and special foods had to be prepared, many of which cooked for long periods under ground wrapped in pangos leaves and laid upon hot stones.

  I returned to my work upon the canoe, and Ul-Van remained with me. He was still very much elated over our victory, which he said was absolutely unprecedented in the memory of any living Ruvan.

  "We not only killed them all, and have all their weapons, but we have four fine canoes in addition. Never, never has anything like this happened; and you are the one who did it, David."

  Chapter XXV

  EVER SINCE I had come to Ruva, I had noticed that U-Val hung around a girl called O-Ra. There were several other young bucks after her, but she showed no preference for any of them. I think O-Ra was something of a paleolithic golddigger. She wanted a man with a slave; and not one of her suitors owned one. Thus a situation was created which did not tend to increase U-Val's love for me. I think he spent a great deal of time doing nothing but hating me. I used to catch him glaring at me, and I think he was trying to screw up his courage to a pitch where he could denounce me and claim me as his slave. His fear of me was purely psychological-an unreasoning complex-for he had proved in his encounters with the great saurians which had attacked us during our voyage from the mainland to Ruva that he was no coward. I think we have all seen examples of this type of cowardice many times. I have known men who could face death coolly but were in mortal terror of some little woman half their size, and I have known heroes who were afraid of mice.

  Possibly because they didn't like him, the men of the tribe made U-Val the butt of crude jokes because of his profitless attention to O-Ra; and I may say that Stone Age humor is often raw. However, much of it has come down intact for perhaps a million years to the present day on the outer crust. I recognized in many of the paleolithic jokes old friends with which I had been well acquainted back in Hartford, Connecticut.

  Finally the food and tu-mal for the feast were about ready; and Ro-Tai announced that the warriors would retire to their huts and that after the sleep the feast would be served. As Ul-Van had been detailed to keep watch over me, I had to go into his hut with him; and while I was waiting for sleep to come, I overheard a conversation in a nearby hut. A man was speaking, and he was trying to persuade a woman to enter the hut with him, which would have consummated the simple marriage ceremony of the Ruvans; but the woman was adamant in her refusal.

  "No," she said. "I will not mate with a man who has no slave."

  "I have a slave," replied the man; and I recognized the voice of U-Val.

  The woman laughed, scornfully. "You keep your slave well hidden, U-Val," she said. "What is it-a man or a woman? Or did the brave U-Val capture a little girl?"

  "My slave is a great warrior," replied U-Val. "He is the man called David. Did you not see me bring him to the island?"

  "But he said that he was your friend, not your slave; and you did not deny it."

  "I did not deny it because he had threatened to kill me if I claimed him as my slave."

  "When you claim him," said O-Ra, "I will become your mate, for the man would make a valuable slave."

  "Yes," assented U-Val; but there was not much conviction in his tone. He had reason to doubt that I would make a very tractable slave.

  "When you have your slave, you may ask me again," said O-Ra; and then she must have gone away, for I heard no more; and presently I fell asleep.

  A boy came and awakened us, saying that Ro-Tai was awake and was summoning the warriors to the feast.

  I followed Ul-Van out of the hut, and found a place beneath the shade of a tree where I could watch the proceedings. Leaves had been laid on the ground, covering a strip about three feet wide and twenty-five feet long. This was the banquet table, and along the length of it the slaves were piling food and setting great joints of bamboo filled with tu-mal, the warriors arranging themselves along both sides. Ro-Tai, who was standing at the center of one side of the spread was looking about as though searching for someone. Suddenly his eyes alighted upon me and he called to me.

  "Come, David," he said, "and join the other warriors in the feast."

  It was then that U-Val spoke up, finding his courage at last. "Slaves do not eat with the warriors of Ruva, Ro-Tai," he said.

  "What do you mean?" demanded Ro-Tai.

  "I mean that the man, David, is my slave. I captured him
on the mainland, and brought him to Ruva. I have let him play at being a free man long enough. Now I claim him as my slave."

  There was a rumble of disapproval, and then Ro-Tai spoke. "Even if David were your slave, by his act he has won his liberty; and I, Ro-Tai, the chief of Ruva, give him his liberty, which it is my right to do. I give him his liberty and I make him a warrior of Ruva."

  "I shall not feast with a white slave!" exclaimed U-Val; and, turning, he stalked away. He took a few steps and then stopped and wheeled about. "If I cannot have him as my slave, I can at least kill him, for he is an enemy of Ruva, and kill him I shall!"

  "Have you forgotten that you ate grain and honey with me in the hill of the giant ants, U-Val?" I called to him. "You had better come and eat now. You can kill me afterward, and you will need the tu-mal to give you courage; but don't forget, U-Val, that I have promised to kill you."

  "Why have you promised to kill him?" demanded Ro-Tai.

  "Because, while I thought he was my friend, he bound my hands behind me while I slept, and when I awoke he told me that I was his slave; and he kicked me in the ribs while I lay on the ground helpless. It was because of that kick that I promised to kill him."

  "You may kill him in self-defense, but not otherwise," said Ro-Tai. "And see that you don't pick a quarrel with him," he added. "I haven't so many warriors that I can afford to lose even one unnecessarily."

  Now, at a sign from Ro-Tai, the warriors seated themselves cross-legged upon the ground before the feast. There were no knives or forks for each warrior had two good hands, and each made the most of both of them. There was not much conversation for the feasters were too busy eating and drinking.

  The women and children and slaves formed a circle about us, hungrily watching us devour the food. When we were through, they would come and finish what remained.

  It was not long before the feasters began to get pretty high on tu-mal, and correspondingly noisy. I drank no tu-mal, and when I had satisfied my hunger I got up and strolled away; and no sooner had I left than U-Val came and seated himself at the feast. As I watched him I saw that he ate very little, but that he was drinking quantities of tu-mal; and I knew then that I must be on my guard.