same of French and German, and Spanish, and Chinese and Japanese. The only common denominator in these discussions seemed to be that each of the informants was a native speaker of the language in question. How chauvinistic we are with respect to our languages. This chauvinism can sometimes be so serious as to blind certain individuals to the natural superiority of English, or, perhaps, Gorean. Or perhaps French, or German. or Spanish, or Chinese, or Japanese, or, say, Bassa or Hindi.
'I will try to speak Gorean,' he said.
'Very well,' I said, generously. I breathed more easily.
'I want to escape,' he said. 'I must escape.'
'Very well,' I said. 'Let us do so.'
'But how?' he asked…
'The means,' I said, 'have long lain at our disposal. It is only that I have lacked the cooperation necessary to capitalize on them.'
I turned to Ayari. 'Pass the word down the chain,' I said, 'in both directions, in various languages, that we shall escape tonight.'
'How do you propose to do this?' asked Ayari.
'Discharge your duties, my friendly interpreter,' I said. 'You will see shortly.'
'What if some fear to escape?' asked Ayari.
'They will then be torn alive out of the chain,' I told him.
'I am not sure I am in favor of this,' said Ayari.
'Do you wish to be the first?' I asked him.
'Not me,' said Ayari. 'I am busy. I have things to do. I am passing the word down the chain.'
'How can we escaper asked Kisu.
I reached out and measured the chain at his collar, and slipped my hands down the chain until, about five feet later, it lifted to the collar of the next man. I pushed them closely together, to drop the chain, in a loop, to the log floor of the extended raft. By feeling I dropped the loop between the ends of two logs and drew it back, about two feet in from the end of the log it was now looped beneath. The bottom of the loop was then under water and about one log. I put one end of the chain in the hands of the powerful Kisu and took the other end in my own hands.
'I see,' said Kisu, 'but this is an inefficient tool.'
'You could ask the askaris for a better,' I suggested.
We then began, smoothly and firmly, exerting heavy, even pressures, to draw the chain back and forth under the log. In moments, using this crude saw, or cuffing tool, we had cut through the bark of the log and had begun, rhythmically, to gash and splinter the harder wood beneath. The spacing and twisting of the links, in the motion of the metal, served well in lieu of teeth. There was an occasional squeak of the metal on the wet wood but the work, for the most part, was accomplished silently, the sound being concealed under the surface of the water. It was a mistake on the part of the askaris to have left us in neck chains in a cage mounted on a log platform. We ceased work, once, when a canoe of askaris, on watch, paddled by.
My hands began to bleed on the chain. Doubtless Kisu's hands, too, were bloodied.
One man crept close to us. 'This is madness,' he said. 'I am not with you.'
'You must then be killed,' I told him.
'I have changed my mind,' he said. 'I am now with you, fully.'
'Good,' I said.
'The sound will carry under the water,' said another man. Sound does carry better under water than above it, indeed, some five times as well. The sound, of course, does not well break the surface of the water. Thus the sound, though propagated efficiently either beneath or above the surface, is not well propagated, because of the barrier of the surface, either from beneath the surface to above the surface, or from above the surface to beneath the surface.
'It will attract tharlarion, or fish, and then tharlarion,' he said.
'We will wait for them to investigate and disperse,' I said.
Ayari was near to me. 'It is dark,' he said. 'It is a good night for raiders.'
A bit of wood, moved by the chain, splintered up by my feet.
I slid the loop of chain down toward the end of the log, near the end of the other log, to which it was adjacent.
The chain, thus positioned, might exert more leverage. 'Pull,' I said. Kisu and I, drawing heavily on the chain, splintered the log upward, breaking off some inches of it. With my foot and hands I snapped off some sharp splinters.
'We will now wait for a time,' I said.
We heard a tharlarion, a large one, rub up against the bottom of the raft.
I looped the chain in my bloody hands, to strike at it if it should try to thrust its snout through the hole.
'Cover the log. Seem asleep,' whispered a man.
We sat about the piece of log, our heads down, some of us lying on the floor of the log raft. I saw the light, a small torch, in the bow of another canoe pass us, one containing ten armed askaris.
They did not pay us much attention.
'They fear raiders,' said Ayari.
After a time, when it seemed quiet, I said, 'Bring the first man on the chain forward.'
He, not happy, was thrust toward me. 'I will go first,' I said, 'but I cannot, as I am toward the center of the chain.'
'What about the fellow at the end of the chain?' he inquired.
'An excellent idea,' I said, 'but he, like you, might be reluctant, and it is you, not he, whose neck is now within my reach.'
'What if there are tharlarion?' he asked.
'Are you afraid?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'You should be,' I said. 'There might be tharlarion.'
'I am not going,' he said.
'Take a deep breath,' I told him, 'and keep moving, for others must follow. Make for the mud raft. There are shovels there.'
'I am not going,' he said.
I seized him and thrust him head first downward through the hole. The next man slid feet first through the hole. The next, heavy, squeezed with difficulty through the aperture between the logs. Another man slipped through. The first man's head broke the surface sputtering. He started toward the mud aft. One after another, I and Kisu, and Ayari, toward the center of the chain, the same forty-six prisoners of the cage slipped free.
'Take shovels and bring the raft,' I said.
'Which way shall we go?' asked Ayari.
'Follow me,' I said.
'You are going west!' said Ayari.
'We must free ourselves,' I said. 'In the chain we cannot long escape. If we go west we may deceive inquiring askaris. And west, only a pasang away, lies the smiths' island, where men are added to the chain.'
'There will be tools there,' said Ayari.
'Precisely,' I said.
'Let us go east, or toward the jungles north or south,' said a man.
Kisu struck him on the side of the head, knocking him sideways.
I looked at Kisu. 'Does it not seem wise to you, Mfalme,' I asked him, 'to proceed westward?'
He straightened himself. 'Yes,' he said. 'We will go westward,'
His agreement pleased me. Without his cooperation, and the significance of his prestige and status, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce my will on the chain. Without his aid and influence I do not think it would have been possible to have escaped the cage. I had seen, from his striking the fellow in the chain, that he had been in agreement with me as to the advisability of proceeding westward. I had then, using the title of Mfalme, asked him to make this concurrence explicit. His declaration had helped to reassure the men. In asking him I had
