Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
She found a place where the stone pegs reached to the very summit of
the cliff, left there no doubt in the final exodus of the tribe when
there was no longer need of safeguarding the deserted caves against
invasion. Pan-at-lee clambered slowly down toward the uppermost cave.
She found the recess in front of the doorway almost identical with
those of her own tribe. The floor of it, though, was littered with
twigs and old nests and the droppings of birds, until it was half
choked. She moved along to another recess and still another, but all
were alike in the accumulated filth. Evidently there was no need in
looking further. This one seemed large and commodious. With her knife
she fell to work cleaning away the debris by the simple expedient of
pushing it over the edge, and always her eyes turned constantly toward
the silent gorge where lurked the fearsome creatures of Pal-ul-don. And
other eyes there were, eyes she did not see, but that saw her and
watched her every move--fierce eyes, greedy eyes, cunning and cruel.
They watched her, and a red tongue licked flabby, pendulous lips. They
watched her, and a half-human brain laboriously evolved a brutish
design.
As in her own Kor-ul-JA, the natural springs in the cliff had been
developed by the long-dead builders of the caves so that fresh, pure
water trickled now, as it had for ages, within easy access to the cave
entrances. Her only difficulty would be in procuring food and for that
she must take the risk at least once in two days, for she was sure that
she could find fruits and tubers and perhaps small animals, birds, and
eggs near the foot of the cliff, the last two, possibly, in the caves
themselves. Thus might she live on here indefinitely. She felt now a
certain sense of security imparted doubtless by the impregnability of
her high-flung sanctuary that she knew to be safe from all the more
dangerous beasts, and this one from men, too, since it lay in the
abjured Kor-ul-GRYF.
Now she determined to inspect the interior of her new home. The sun
still in the south, lighted the interior of the first apartment. It was
similar to those of her experience--the same beasts and men were
depicted in the same crude fashion in the carvings on the
walls--evidently there had been little progress in the race of Waz-don
during the generations that had come and departed since Kor-ul-GRYF had
been abandoned by men. Of course Pan-at-lee thought no such thoughts,
for evolution and progress existed not for her, or her kind. Things
were as they had always been and would always be as they were.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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