'No; I never saw such creatures before.'
At the edge of the water, awaiting us, were half a dozen manlike creatures, while others like them were coming from the forest, dropping from the trees to shuffle awkwardly toward the ford. They were about three feet tall and entirely covered with long hair. At first I thought that they were monkeys, although they bore a startling resemblance to human beings, but when they saw that we had discovered them one of them spoke, and the simian theory was exploded.
'I am Ul,' said the speaker. 'Go away from the land of Ul . I am Ul; I kill!'
'We will not harm you,' I replied. 'We only want to pass through your country.'
'Go away!' growled Ul, baring sharp fighting fangs.
By now, fifty of the fierce little men were gathered at the water's edge, growling, menacing. They were without clothing or ornaments and carried no weapons, but their sharp fangs and the bulging muscles of their shoulders and arms bespoke their ability to carry out Ul's threats.
'What are we going to do?' demanded Nalte. 'They will tear us to pieces the moment we step out of the water.'
'Perhaps I can persuade them to let us pass,' I said, but after five minutes of fruitless effort I had to admit defeat. Ul's only reply to my arguments was, 'Go away! I kill! I kill!'
I hated to turn back, for I knew that we must cross the river eventually and we might not find such another crossing, but at last, reluctantly, I retraced my steps to the right bank hand in hand with Nalte.
All the remainder of the day I searched for traces of Duare as we followed the course of the river downward, but my efforts were without success. I was disheartened. I felt that I should never see her again. Nalte tried to cheer me up, but inasmuch as she believed that Duare was dead she was not very successful.
Late in the afternoon I succeeded in killing a small animal. As we had eaten nothing all that day we were both famished, so we soon had a fire going and were grilling cuts of the tender meat.
After we had eaten I built a rude platform among the branches of a large tree and gathered a number of huge leaves to serve as mattress and covering, and as darkness fell Nalte and I settled ourselves, not uncomfortably, in our lofty sanctuary.
* * * * *
For a while we were silent, wrapped in our own thoughts. I do not know about Nalte's, but mine were gloomy enough. I cursed the day that I had conceived the idea to build the huge torpedo that had carried me from Earth to Venus, and in the next thought I blessed it because it had made it possible for me to know and to love Duare.
It was Nalte who broke the silence. As though she had read my thoughts, she said, 'You loved Duare very much?'
'Yes,' I replied.
Nalte sighed. 'It must be sad to lose one's mate.'
'She was not my mate.'
'Not your mate!' Nalte's tone expressed her surprise. 'But you loved one another?'
'Duare did not love me,' I replied. 'At least she said she didn't. You see, she was the daughter of a jong and she couldn't love any one until after she was twenty.'
Nalte laughed. 'Love does not come or go in accordance with any laws or customs,' she said.
'But even if Duare had loved me, which she didn't, she couldn't have said so; she couldn't even talk of love because she was the daughter of a jong and too young. I don't understand it, of course, but that is because I am from another world and know nothing of your customs.'
'I am nineteen,' said Nalte, 'and the daughter of a jong, but if I loved a man I should say so.'
'Perhaps the customs of your country and those of Duare's are not the same,' I suggested.
'They must be very different,' agreed Nalte, 'for in my country a man does not speak to a girl of love until she has told him that she loves him; and the daughter of the jong chooses her own mate whenever she pleases.'
'That custom may have its advantages,' I admitted, 'but if I loved a girl I should want the right to tell her so.'
'Oh, the men find ways of letting a girl know without putting it into words. I could tell if a man loved me, but if I loved him very much I wouldn't wait for that.'
'And what if he didn't love you?' I asked.
Nalte tossed her head. 'I'd make him.'
I could readily understand that Nalte might be a very difficult young person not to love. She was slender and dark, with an olive skin and a mass of black hair in lovely disorder. Her eyes sparkled with health and intelligence. Her features were regular and almost boyish, and over all was the suggestion of a veil of dignity that bespoke her blood. I could not doubt but that she was the daughter of a jong.
It seemed to be my fate to encounter daughters of jongs. I said as much to Nalte.
'How many have you met?' she asked.
'Two,' I replied, 'you and Duare.'
'That is not very many when you consider how many jongs there must be in Amtor and how many daughters they must have. My father has seven.'
'Are they all as lovely as you?' I asked.
'Do you think me lovely?'
'You know you are.'
'But I like to hear people say so. I like to hear you say it,' she added softly.
The roars of hunting beasts came up to us from the dim forest aisles, the screams of stricken prey; then the silence of the night broken only by the murmuring of the river rolling down to some unknown sea.
I was considering a tactful reply to Nalte's ingenuous observation when I dozed and fell asleep.
* * * * *
I felt some one shaking me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes to look up into Nalte's. 'Are you going to sleep all day?' she demanded.
It was broad daylight. I sat up and looked around. 'We have survived another night,' I said.
I gathered some fruit, and we cooked some more of the meat left from my kill of the previous day. We had a splendid breakfast, and then we set off again down stream in our quest for—what?
'If we do not find Duare to-day,' I said, 'I shall have to admit that she is irrevocably lost to me.'
'And then what?' asked Nalte.
'You would like to return to your own country?'
'Of course.'
'Then we shall start up the big river toward your home.'
'We shall never reach it,' said Nalte, 'but—'
'But what?' I demanded.
'I was thinking that we might be very happy while we were trying to reach Andoo,' she said.
'Andoo?' I queried.
'That is my country,' she explained. 'The mountains of Andoo are very beautiful.'
There was a note of wistfulness in her voice; her eyes were contemplating a scene that mine could not see. Suddenly I realized how brave the girl had been, how cheerful she had remained through the hardships and menacing dangers of our flight, all despite the probably hopelessness of her situation. I touched her hand gently.
'We shall do our best to return you to the beautiful mountains of Andoo,' I assured her.
Nalte shook her head. 'I shall never see them again, Carson . A great company of warriors might not survive the dangers that lie between here and Andoo—a thousand kobs of fierce and hostile country.'
'A thousand kobs is a long way,' I agreed. 'It does seem hopeless, but we'll not give up.'
The Amtorians divide the circumference of a circle into a thousand parts to arrive at their hita, or degree; and the kob is one tenth of a degree of longitude at the equator (or what the Amtorians call The Small Circle), roughly about two and a half earth miles; therefore a thousand kobs would be about two thousand five hundred miles.
A little mental arithmetic convinced me that Nalte could not have drifted down the big river two thousand five hundred miles without food, and I asked her if she was sure that Andoo was that far away.
'No,' she admitted, 'but it seems that far. We wandered a long time before we reached the river, and then I drifted for so long that I lost track of time.'
