'I did not!' shrieked Durg. 'I killed three of them with a cleaver and stabbed the other with a dagger.'
'In the back?' asked Torp.
'No, not in the back, you woman killer.'
As von Horst was pushed from the large cavern into the darkness of the small one that adjoined it, the two Gorbuses were still quarrelling; and as the European meditated upon what he had heard, he was struck not so much by the gruesomeness of their words as by Durg's use of two English words—cleaver and dagger.
This was sufficiently remarkable in itself, and even more so coming from the lips of a member of a tribe that was apparently so low in the scale of evolution that they had no weapons of any description. How could Durg know what a dagger was? How could he ever have heard of a cleaver? And where did he learn the English words for them? Von Horst could discover no explanation of the mystery.
The Gorbuses left them in the smaller cave without bothering to secure their ankles again, though they left their hands tied behind them. There were leaves and grasses on the floor, and the two prisoners made themselves as comfortable as they could. The torch-light from the larger cave relieved the gloom of their prison cell, permitting them to see one another dimly as they sat on the musty bedding that littered the floor.
'What are we going to do now?' demanded La-ja.
'I don't know of anything that we can do right now,' replied the man, 'but it appears that later on we are going to be eaten—when we are fatter. If they feed us well we should do our best to get fat. We must certainly leave a good impression behind us when we go.'
'That is stupid,' snapped the girl. 'Your head must be very sick indeed to think of anything so stupid.'
'Perhaps 'thick' would be a better word,' laughed von Horst. 'Do you know, La-ja, it is just too bad.'
'What is too bad?'
'That you have no sense of humor,' he replied. 'We could have a much better time if you had.'
'I never know when you are serious and when you are laughing with words,' she said. 'If you will tell me when the things you say are supposed to be funny, perhaps I can laugh at them.'
'You win, La-ja,' the man assured her.
'Win what?' she demanded.
'My apology and my esteem—you have a sense of humor, even though you don't know it.'
'You said a moment ago,' said La-ja, 'that you didn't know of anything that we could do right now. Don't you wish to escape, or would you rather stay here and get eaten?'
'Of course I'd prefer escaping,' replied von Horst, 'but I don't see any possibility of it at present while all those creatures are in the big cave.'
'What have you got that thing you call peestol for?' demanded La-ja, not without a note of derision. 'You killed a zarith with it. You could much more easily kill these Gorbuses; then we could escape easily.'
'There are too many of them, La-ja,' he replied. 'If I fired away all my ammunition, I could not possibly kill enough of them to make escape certain; furthermore my hands are tied behind me. But even were they free, I'd wait to the very last moment before attempting it.
'You have no way of knowing it, La-ja; but when I have used up all these shiny little things tucked in my belt, the pistol will be of no more use to me; for I can never get any more of them. Therefore, I must be very careful not to waste them.
'However, you may rest assured that before I'll let 'em eat either one of us, I'll do a little shooting. My hope is that they will be so surprised and frightened by the reports that they'll fall over one another in their efforts to escape.'
As he ceased speaking, a Gorbus entered their little cave. It was Durg. He carried a small torch which illuminated the interior, revealing the rough walls, the litter of leaves and grasses, the two figures lying uncomfortably with bound hands.
Durg looked them over in silence for a moment; then he squatted on the floor near them. 'Torp is a stubborn fool,' he said in his hollow voice. 'He ought to set you free, but he won't. He's made up his mind that we're going to eat you, and I guess we shall.
'It's too bad though. No one ever saved a Gorbus's life before; it was unheard of. If I had been chief, I would have let you go.'
'Maybe you can help us anyway,' suggested von Horst.
'How?' asked Durg.
'Show us how we can escape.'
'You can't escape,' Durg assured him emphatically.
'Those people don't stay in that other cave all the time, do they?' demanded the European.
'If they go away, Torp will leave a guard here to see that you don't get away.'
Von Horst mused for a moment. Finally he looked up at their grotesque visitor. 'You'd like to be chief, wouldn't you?' he demanded.
'S-s-sh!' cautioned Durg. 'Don't let anyone hear you say that. But how did you know?'
'I know many things,' replied von Horst in a whisper, mysteriously.
Durg eyed him half fearfully. 'I knew that you were not as other gilaks,' he said. 'You are different. Perhaps you are from that other life, that other world, of which Gorbuses get fleeting glimpses out of the dim background of almost forgotten memories. Yes, they are forgotten; and yet there are always reminders of them constantly tormenting us. Tell me—who are you? From whence came you?'
'I am called Von; and I come from the outer world—from a world very different from this one.'
'I knew it!' exclaimed Durg. 'It must be that there is another world. Once we Gorbuses lived in it. It was a happy world; but because of what we did we were sent away from it to live here in this dark forest, miserable and unhappy.'
'I do not understand,' said von Horst. 'You didn't come from my world; there is no one like you there.'
'We were different there,' said Durg. 'We all feel that we were different. To some the memories are more distinct than to others, but they are never wholly clear. We get fleeting glimpses that are blurred and dim and that fade quickly before we can decipher them or fix them definitely in our memories. It is only those that we murdered that we see clearly—we see them and the way that we murdered them; but we do not see ourselves as we were then, except rarely; and then the visions are only hazy suggestions. But we know that we were not as we are here. It is tantalizing; it drives us almost to madness—never quite to see, never quite to recall.
'I can see the three that I killed with the cleaver—my father and two older brothers—I did it that I might get something they had; I do not know what. They stood in my way. I murdered them. Now I am a naked Gorbus feeding on human bodies. Some of us think that thus we are punished.'
'What do you know about cleavers?' asked von Horst, now much interested in the weird recital and its various implications.
'I know nothing of cleavers except that it was with a cleaver I killed my father and my two brothers. With a dagger, I stabbed a man. I do not know why. I can see him—his pain-distorted features clearly, the rest of him very vaguely. He had on blue clothes with shiny buttons. Ah, now he has faded away—all but his face. He is glaring at me. I almost had something then—clothes, buttons! What are they? I almost knew—now they are gone. What were the words? What words did I just say? They have gone, too. It is ever thus. We are plagued by half pictures that are snatched away from us immediately.'
'You all suffer thus?' asked von Horst.
'Yes,' said Durg. 'We all see those we have murdered; those are the only memories that we retain permanently.'
'You are all murderers?'
'Yes. I am one of the best. Torp's seven women are nothing. Some he killed while they were embracing him with love—he smothered them or choked them. One he strangled with her own hair. He is always bragging about that one.'
'Why did he kill them?' demanded La-ja.
'He wished something that they had. It was thus with all of us. I can't imagine what it was I wished when I killed my father and brothers, nor what any of the others wished. Whatever it was, we didn't get it; for we have nothing here. The only thing we ever crave is food, and we have plenty of that. Anyway, no one would kill for food. It gives no satisfaction. It is nauseating. We eat because if we didn't we believe that we would die and go to a worse place than this. We are afraid of that.'
