As we went Dian told me that her captors had informed her how close I
had come in search of her—even to the Land of Awful Shadow—and how one
of Hooja’s men who knew me had discovered me asleep and robbed me of
all my possessions. And then how Hooja had sent four others to find me
and take me prisoner. But these men, she said, had not yet returned, or
at least she had not heard of their return.
“Nor will you ever,” I responded, “for they have gone to that place
whence none ever returns.” I then related my adventure with these four.
We had come almost to the cliff-edge where Juag should be awaiting us
when we saw two men walking rapidly toward the same spot from another
direction. They did not see us, nor did they see Juag, whom I now
discovered hiding behind a low bush close to the verge of the precipice
which drops into the sea at this point. As quickly as possible, without
exposing ourselves too much to the enemy, we hastened forward that we
might reach Juag as quickly as they.
But they noticed him first and immediately charged him, for one of them
had been his guard, and they had both been sent to search for him, his
escape having been discovered between the time he left the cave and the
time when I reached it. Evidently they had wasted precious moments
looking for him in other portions of the mesa.
When I saw that the two of them were rushing him, I called out to
attract their attention to the fact that they had more than a single
man to cope with. They paused at the sound of my voice and looked
about.
When they discovered Dian and me they exchanged a few words, and one of
them continued toward Juag while the other turned upon us. As he came
nearer I saw that he carried in his hand one of my six-shooters, but he
was holding it by the barrel, evidently mistaking it for some sort of
warclub or tomahawk.
I could scarce refrain a grin when I thought of the wasted
possibilities of that deadly revolver in the hands of an untutored
warrior of the stone age. Had he but reversed it and pulled the trigger
he might still be alive; maybe he is for all I know, since I did not
kill him then. When he was about twenty feet from me I flung my javelin
with a quick movement that I had learned from Ghak. He ducked to avoid
it, and instead of receiving it in his heart, for which it was
intended, he got it on the side of the head.
Down he went all in a heap. Then I glanced toward Juag. He was having a
most exciting time. The fellow pitted against Juag was a veritable
giant; he was hacking and hewing away at the poor slave with a
villainous-looking knife that might have been designed for butchering
mastodons. Step by step, he was forcing Juag back toward the edge of
the cliff with a fiendish cunning that permitted his adversary no
chance to side-step the terrible consequences of retreat in this
direction. I saw quickly that in another moment Juag must deliberately
hurl himself to death over the precipice or be pushed over by his
foeman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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