Here she took to the trees, hoping thereby to elude him even though she
knew that her speed would be reduced. She heard the sound of his advance
as he crashed through the underbrush and she knew that he was gaining
rapidly upon her, but this did not unnerve her since she was confident
that he could have no suspicion that she was in the branches of the
trees and just so long as she kept among thick foliage he might pass
directly beneath her without being aware of her close presence, and that
is precisely what he did, cursing and puffing as he made his bull-like
way up the steep slope of the hillside.
Stellara heard him pass and go crashing on in pursuit, and then she
resumed her flight, turning to the right away from the direction of
Bohar’s advance until presently the noise of his passing was lost in the
distance; then she turned upward again toward the height she must cross
on her journey to Paraht.
Bohar sweated upward until finally almost utter exhaustion forced him to
rest. He found himself in a little glade and here he lay down beneath a
shrub that not only protected him from the rays of the sun, but hid him
from sight as well, for in savage Pellucidar it is always well to seek
rest in concealment.
Bohar’s mind was filled with angry thoughts. He cursed himself for
leaving the girl alone in camp and he cursed the girl for escaping, and
he cursed the fate that had forced him to clamber up this steep hillside
upon his futile mission, and most of all he cursed his absent followers
whom he now realized had failed to accompany him. He knew that he had
lost the girl and that it would be like looking for a particular minnow
in the ocean to continue his search for her, and so, having rested, he
was determined to hasten back to his camp when his attention was
suddenly attracted by a noise at the lower end of the glade.
Instinctively he reached for one of his pistols and to his dismay he
found that both were gone, evidently having slipped from his sash or
been scraped from it as he wallowed upward through the underbrush.
Bohar, despite his bluster and braggadocio, was far from courageous.
Without his weapons he was an arrant coward and so now he cringed in his
concealment as he strained his eyes to discover the author of the noise
he had heard, and as he watched a cunning leer of triumph curled his
hideous mouth, for before him, at the far end of the glade, he saw
Stellara drop from the lower branches of a tree and come upward across
the glade toward him.
As the girl came abreast of his hiding place, Bohar the Bloody leaped to
his feet and confronted her. With a stifled exclamation of dismay
Stellara turned and sought to escape, but the Korsar was too close and
too quick and reaching forth he seized her roughly by the hair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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