| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| 1 | 20 | 40 | 59 | 79 |
|
www.freeclassicebooks.com
It had been her intention to wait until after midnight, when most of the carnivora
would have made their kills, and then attempt to reach the cave in which I was
imprisoned and rescue me. She explained that with my rifle and pistol--both of
which she assured me she could use, having watched me so many times--she
planned upon frightening the Band-lu and forcing them to give me up. Brave
little girl! She would have risked her life willingly to save me. But some time
after she reached our cave she heard voices from the far recesses within, and
immediately concluded that we had but found another entrance to the caves
which the Band-lu occupied upon the other face of the cliff. Then she had set out
through those winding passages and in total darkness had groped her way,
guided solely by a marvelous sense of direction, to where I lay. She had had to
proceed with utmost caution lest she fall into some abyss in the darkness and in
truth she had thrice come upon sheer drops and had been forced to take the
most frightful risks to pass them. I shudder even now as I contemplate what this
girl passed through for my sake and how she enhanced her peril in loading
herself down with the weight of my arms and ammunition and the awkwardness
of the long rifle which she was unaccustomed to bearing.
I could have knelt and kissed her hand in reverence and gratitude; nor am I
ashamed to say that that is precisely what I did after I had been freed from my
bonds and heard the story of her trials. Brave little Ajor! Wonder-girl out of the
dim, unthinkable past! Never before had she been kissed; but she seemed to
sense something of the meaning of the new caress, for she leaned forward in the
dark and pressed her own lips to my forehead. A sudden urge surged through
me to seize her and strain her to my bosom and cover her hot young lips with the
kisses of a real love, but I did not do so, for I knew that I did not love her; and to
have kissed her thus, with passion, would have been to inflict a great wrong upon
her who had offered her life for mine.
No, Ajor should be as safe with me as with her own mother, if she had one, which
I was inclined to doubt, even though she told me that she had once been a babe
and hidden by her mother. I had come to doubt if there was such a thing as a
mother in Caspak, a mother such as we know. From the Bo-lu to the Kro-lu there
is no word which corresponds with our word mother. They speak of ata and cor
sva jo:, meaning reproduction and from the beginning, and point toward the
south; but no one has a mother.
After considerable difficulty we gained what we thought was our cave, only to find
that it was not, and then we realized that we were lost in the labyrinthine mazes
of the great cavern. We retraced our steps and sought the point from which we
had started, but only succeeded in losing ourselves the more. Ajor was aghast--
not so much from fear of our predicament; but that she should have failed in the
3
3
Page
Quick Jump
|