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Chapter 5
We were sitting before a little fire inside a safe grotto one night shortly after we
had quit the cliff-dwellings of the Band-lu, when So-al raised a question which it
had never occurred to me to propound to Ajor. She asked her why she had left
her own people and how she had come so far south as the country of the Alus,
where I had found her.
At first Ajor hesitated to explain; but at last she consented, and for the first time I
heard the complete story of her origin and experiences. For my benefit she
entered into greater detail of explanation than would have been necessary had I
been a native Caspakian.
"
I am a cos-ata-lo," commenced Ajor, and then she turned toward me. "A cos-ata-
lo, my Tom, is a woman" (lo) "who did not come from an egg and thus on up from
the beginning." (Cor sva jo.) "I was a babe at my mother's breast. Only among
the Galus are such, and then but infrequently. The Wieroo get most of us; but
my mother hid me until I had attained such size that the Wieroo could not readily
distinguish me from one who had come up from the beginning. I knew both my
mother and my father, as only such as I may. My father is high chief among the
Galus. His name is Jor, and both he and my mother came up from the
beginning; but one of them, probably my mother, had completed the seven cycles"
(approximately seven hundred years), "with the result that their offspring might
be cos-ata-lo, or born as are all the children of your race, my Tom, as you tell me
is the fact. I was therefore apart from my fellows in that my children would
probably be as I, of a higher state of evolution, and so I was sought by the men of
my people; but none of them appealed to me. I cared for none. The most
persistent was Du-seen, a huge warrior of whom my father stood in considerable
fear, since it was quite possible that Du-seen could wrest from him his
chieftainship of the Galus. He has a large following of the newer Galus, those
most recently come up from the Kro-lu, and as this class is usually much more
powerful numerically than the older Galus, and as Du-seen's ambition knows no
bounds, we have for a long time been expecting him to find some excuse for a
break with Jor the High Chief, my father.
"
A further complication lay in the fact that Duseen wanted me, while I would have
none of him, and then came evidence to my father's ears that he was in league
with the Wieroo; a hunter, returning late at night, came trembling to my father,
saying that he had seen Du-seen talking with a Wieroo in a lonely spot far from
the village, and that plainly he had heard the words: 'If you will help me, I will
help you--I will deliver into your hands all cos-ata-lo among the Galus, now and
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