Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
As she sat upon the bole of a fallen tree seeking some solution of the
problem of existence that confronted her, there broke upon her ears
from up the gorge the voices of shouting men--a sound that she
recognized all too well. It was the war cry of the Kor-ul-lul. Closer
and closer it approached her hiding place. Then, through the veil of
foliage she caught glimpses of three figures fleeing along the trail,
and behind them the shouting of the pursuers rose louder and louder as
they neared her. Again she caught sight of the fugitives crossing the
river below the cataract and again they were lost to sight. And now the
pursuers came into view--shouting Kor-ul-lul warriors, fierce and
implacable. Forty, perhaps fifty of them. She waited breathless; but
they did not swerve from the trail and passed her, unguessing that an
enemy she lay hid within a few yards of them.
Once again she caught sight of the pursued--three Waz-don warriors
clambering the cliff face at a point where portions of the summit had
fallen away presenting a steep slope that might be ascended by such as
these. Suddenly her attention was riveted upon the three. Could it be?
O Jad-ben-Otho! had she but known a moment before. When they passed she
might have joined them, for they were her father and two brothers. Now
it was too late. With bated breath and tense muscles she watched the
race. Would they reach the summit? Would the Kor-ul-lul overhaul them?
They climbed well, but, oh, so slowly. Now one lost his footing in the
loose shale and slipped back! The Kor-ul-lul were ascending--one hurled
his club at the nearest fugitive. The Great God was pleased with the
brother of Pan-at-lee, for he caused the club to fall short of its
target, and to fall, rolling and bounding, back upon its owner carrying
him from his feet and precipitating him to the bottom of the gorge.
Standing now, her hands pressed tight above her golden breastplates,
Pan-at-lee watched the race for life. Now one, her older brother,
reached the summit and clinging there to something that she could not
see he lowered his body and his long tail to the father beneath him.
The latter, seizing this support, extended his own tail to the son
below--the one who had slipped back--and thus, upon a living ladder of
their own making, the three reached the summit and disappeared from
view before the Kor-ul-lul overtook them. But the latter did not
abandon the chase. On they went until they too had disappeared from
sight and only a faint shouting came down to Pan-at-lee to tell her
that the pursuit continued.
The girl knew that she must move on. At any moment now might come a
hunting party, combing the gorge for the smaller animals that fed or
bedded there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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