We could look out east, west, and south. To the southeastward stretched the open country, lying bright and fair in the morning light, but on either side, and evidently behind, rose great mountains.
“This thing is a regular fortress—and no women built it, I can tell you that,” said Terry. We nodded agreeingly. “It’s right up among the hills—they must have brought us a long way.”
“And pretty fast, too,” I added.
“We saw some kind of swift-moving vehicles the first day,” Jeff reminded us. “If they’ve got motors, they are civilized.”
“Civilized or not, we’ve got our work cut out for us to get away from here. I don’t propose to make a rope of bedclothes and try those walls till I’m sure there is no better way.”
We all concurred on this point, and returned to our discussion as to the women.
Jeff continued thoughtful. “All the same, there’s something funny about it,” he urged. “It isn’t just that we don’t see any men—but we don’t see any signs of them. The—the—reaction of these women is different from any that I’ve ever met.”
“There is something in what you say, Jeff,” I agreed. “There is a different—atmosphere.”
“They don’t seem to notice our being men,” he went on. “They treat us—well—just as they do one another. It’s as if our being men was a minor incident.”
I nodded. I’d noticed it myself. But Terry broke in rudely.
“Fiddlesticks!” he said. “It’s because of their advanced age. They’re all grandmas, I tell you—or ought to be. Great aunts, anyhow. Those girls were girls all right, weren’t they?”
“Yes—” Jeff agreed, still slowly. “But they weren’t afraid—they flew up that tree and hid, like schoolboys caught out of bounds—not like shy girls.”
“And they ran like marathon winners—you’ll admit that, Terry,” he added.
Terry was moody as the days passed. He seemed to mind our confinement more than Jeff or I did; and he harped on Alima, and how near he’d come to catching her. “If I had—” he would say, rather savagely, “we’d have had a hostage and could have made terms.”
But Jeff was getting on excellent terms with his tutor, and even his guards, and so was I. It interested me profoundly to note and study the subtle difference between these women and other women, and try to account for them. In the matter of personal appearance, there was a great difference. They all wore short hair, some few inches at most; some curly, some not; all light and clean and fresh-looking.
“If their hair was only long,” Jeff would complain, “they would look so much more feminine.”
I rather liked it myself, after I got used to it. Why we should so admire “a woman’s crown of hair” and not admire a Chinaman’s queue is hard to explain, except that we are so convinced that the long hair “belongs” to a woman. Whereas the “mane” in horses is on both, and in lions, buffalos, and such creatures only on the male. But I did miss it—at first.
Our time was quite pleasantly filled. We were free of the garden below our windows, quite long in its irregular rambling shape, bordering the cliff. The walls were perfectly smooth and high, ending in the masonry of the building; and as I studied the great stones I became convinced that the whole structure was extremely old. It was built like the pre-Incan architecture in Peru, of enormous monoliths, fitted as closely as mosaics.
“These folks have a history, that’s sure,” I told the others. “And some time they were fighters—else why a fortress?”
I said we were free of the garden, but not wholly alone in it. There was always a string of those uncomfortably strong women sitting about, always one of them watching us even if the others were reading, playing games, or busy at some kind of handiwork.
“When I see them knit,” Terry said, “I can almost call them feminine.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Jeff promptly replied. “Scotch shepherds knit—always knitting.”
“When we get out—” Terry stretched himself and looked at the far peaks, “when we get out of this and get to where the real women are—the mothers, and the girls—”
“Well, what’ll we do then?” I asked, rather gloomily. “How do you know we’ll ever get out?”
This was an unpleasant idea, which we unanimously considered, returning with earnestness to our studies.
“If we are good boys and learn our lessons well,” I suggested. “If we are quiet and respectful and polite and they are not afraid of us—then perhaps they will let us out. And anyway—when we do escape, it is of immense importance that we know the language.”
Personally, I was tremendously interested in that language, and seeing they had books, was eager to get at them, to dig into their history, if they had one.
It was not hard to speak, smooth and pleasant to the ear, and so easy to read and write that I marveled at it. They had an absolutely phonetic system, the whole thing was as scientific as Esperanto yet bore all the marks of an old and rich civilization.
We were free to study as much as we wished, and were not left merely to wander in the garden for recreation but introduced to a great gymnasium, partly on the roof and partly in the story below. Here we learned real respect for our tall guards. No change of costume was needed for this work, save to lay off outer clothing. The first one was as perfect a garment for exercise as need be devised, absolutely free to move in, and, I had to admit, much better-looking than our usual one.
“Forty—over forty—some of ’em fifty, I bet—and look at ’em!” grumbled Terry in reluctant admiration.
There were no spectacular acrobatics, such as only the young can perform,
