Tanar descended the companionway to the lower deck and approached the forward hatch. A single glance below revealed only what he could have anticipated—floating corpses rolling with the roll of the derelict. All below were dead. With a sigh he turned away and returned to the upper deck.
The girl did not even question him for she could read in his demeanor the story of what his eyes had beheld.
'You and I are the only living creatures that remain aboard,' he said.
She waved a hand in a broad gesture that took in the sea about them. 'Doubtless we alone of the entire ship's company have survived,' she said. 'I see no other ship nor any of the small boats.'
Tanar strained his eyes in all directions. 'Nor I,' said he; 'but perhaps some of them have escaped.'
She shook her head. 'I doubt it.'
'Yours has been a heavy loss,' sympathized the Sarian. 'Besides so many of your people, you have lost your father and your mother.'
Stellara looked up quickly into his eyes. 'They were not my people,' she said.
'What?' exclaimed Tanar. 'They were not your people? But your father, The Cid, was Chief of the Korsars.'
'He was not my father,' replied the girl.
'And the woman was not your mother?'
'May the gods forbid!' she exclaimed.
'But The Cid! He treated you like a daughter.'
'He thought I was his daughter, but I am not.'
'I do not understand,' said Tanar; 'yet I am glad that you are not. I could not understand how you, who are so different from them, could be a Korsar.'
'My mother was a native of the island of Amiocap and there The Cid, raiding for women, seized her. She told me about it many times before she died.
'Her mate was absent upon a great tandor hunt and she never saw him again. When I was born The Cid thought that I was his daughter, but my mother knew better for I bore upon my left shoulder a small, red birthmark identical with one upon the left shoulder of the mate from whom she had been stolen—my father.
'My mother never told The Cid the truth, for fear that he would kill me in accordance with the custom the Korsars follow of destroying the children of their captives if a Korsar is not the father.'
'And the woman who was with you on board was, not your mother?'
'No, she was The Cid's mate, but not my mother, who is dead.'
Tanar felt a distinct sense of relief that Stellara was not a Korsar, but why this should be so he did not know, nor, perhaps, did he attempt to analyze his feelings.
'I am glad,' he said again.
'But why?' she asked.
'Now we do not have to be enemies,' he replied.
'Were we before?'
He hesitated and then he laughed. 'I was not your enemy,' he said, 'but you reminded me that you were mine.'
'It has been the habit of a lifetime to think of myself as a Korsar,' exclaimed Stellara, 'although I knew that I was not. I felt no enmity toward you.'
'Whatever we may have been we must of necessity be friends now,' he told her.
'That will depend upon you,' she replied.
III AMIOCAP
THE blue waters of the great sea known as Korsar Az wash the shores of a green island far from the mainland—a long, narrow island with verdure clad hills and plateaus, its coast line indented by coves and tiny bays—Amiocap, an island of mystery and romance.
At a distance, and when there is a haze upon the waters, it looks like two islands, rather than one, so low and narrow it is at one point, where coves run in on either side and the sea almost meets.
Thus it appeared to the two survivors from the deck of the Korsar derelict drifting helplessly with the sluggish run of an ocean current and at the whim of vagrant winds.
Time is not even a word to the people of Pellucidar, so Tanar had given no thought to that. They had eaten many times, but as there was still an ample supply of provisions, even for a large ship's company, he felt no concern upon that score, but he had been worried by the depletion of their supply of good water, for the contents of many casks that he had broached had been undrinkable.
They had slept much, which is the way of Pellucidarians when there is naught else to do, storing energy for possible future periods of long drawn out exertion.
They had been sleeping thus, for how long who may say in the measureless present of Pellucidar. Stellara was the first to come on deck from the cabin she had occupied next to that of The Cid. She looked about for Tanar, but not seeing him she let her eyes wander out over the upcurving expanse of water that merged in every direction with the blue domed vault of the brilliant sky, in the exact center of which hung the great noonday sun.
But suddenly her gaze was caught and held by something beside the illimitable waters and the ceaseless sun. She voiced a surprised and joyous cry and, turning, ran across the deck toward the cabin in which Tanar slept.
'Tanar! Tanar!' she cried, pounding upon the paneled door. 'Land, Tanar, land!'
The door swung open and the Sarian stepped out upon the deck where Stellara stood pointing across the starboard rail of the drifting derelict.
Close by rose the green hills of a long shore line that stretched away in both directions for many miles, but whether it was the mainland or an island they could not tell.
'Land!' breathed Tanar. 'How good it looks!'
'The pleasant green of the soft foliage often hides terrible beasts and savage men,' Stellara reminded him.
'But they are the dangers that I know—it is the unknown dangers of the sea that I do not like. I am not of the sea.'
'You hate the sea?'
'No,' he replied, 'I do not hate it; I do not understand it—that is all. But there is something that I do understand,' and he pointed toward the land.
There was that in Tanar's tone that caused Stellara to look quickly in the direction that he indicated.
'Men!' she exclaimed.
'Warriors,' said Tanar.
'There must be twenty of them in that canoe,' she said.
'And here comes another canoeful behind them.'
From the mouth of a narrow cove the canoes were paddling out into the open sea.
'Look!' cried Stellara. 'There are many more coming.'
One after another twenty canoes moved in a long column out upon the quiet waters and as they drew steadily toward the ship the survivors saw that each was filled with almost naked warriors. Short, heavy spears, bone-tipped, bristled menacingly; stone knives protruded from every G-string and stone hatchets swung at every hip.
As the flotilla approached, Tanar went to a cabin and returned with two of the heavy pistols left behind by a fleeing Korsar when the ship had been abandoned.
'Do you expect to repulse four hundred warriors with those?' asked the girl.
Tanar shrugged. 'If they have never heard the report of a firearm a few shots may suffice to frighten them away, for a time at least,' he explained, 'and if we do not go on the shore the current will carry us away from them in time.'
'But suppose they do not frighten so easily?' she demanded.
'Then I can do no more than my best with the crude weapons and the inferior powder of the Korsars,' he
