It took us the better part of an hour, but we did it.
Ylana slid through the opening our efforts had made, with all the agility of an eel. The effort cost her a square inch or two of skin, but the girl managed it.
Then, at my urging, she climbed about on the outside of our cage until she reached the cage door, which was fastened with a huge, clumsy, old-fashioned lock.
I told her to pick the lock.
I had noticed earlier that she wore a bracelet of coppery wire wound about her upper arm. Reaching through the bars from our side we held her securely, thus freeing her hands for the task. I doubt if the jungle girl had ever found an occasion to try to pick a lock before, but I patiently instructed her in the craft―which I had perforce mastered during my student days at Yale, in order to get back in my dormitory after hours, on the nights when a date kept me out later than the management allowed.
The lock was full of rust; the wire tended to bend under the slightest pressure. And standing with your feet braced against a slippery bar while swinging two hundred feet in the air is not exactly conducive to one’s peace of mind. However, the plucky girl ignored the fearful height and the other distractions and worked away with grim determination to unfasten the lock. At length she succeeded and the lock sprung open.
Forcing the door open on squeaking hinges, we helped her inside, where she expelled a long-pent breath and huddled on the floor of the cage, indulging in a fit of the shakes for which I did not in the least blame her.
“Now what?” demanded Tomar, curiously.
“Now we get down to that ledge,” I said, gesturing. He followed my gesture with a perceptible shudder, and made some remark, with not unreasonable trepidation, that the ledge was every bit of thirty feet away.
I nodded.
“That’s what makes me glad we were captured fully dressed,” I grinned, and set about the astounding process of taking off my clothes. Tomar gave me one astounded look and got the idea: we would tear our cloaks into strips, augment this length of cloth with strips torn from our tunics as necessary, thus fashioning as long a “rope” as possible. Then, tying our boots to one end for a weight, I hoped to be able to snag a spur of rock which thrust up from the edge of the nearby ledge, thus effecting a crude rope bridge over which we might be able to climb.
I had already pulled off my boots and was getting out of my sleeveless tunic by this time. Luckily for the modesty of the girl (who had by now recovered from her attack of the shakes and was viewing the striptease with considerable amusement, heightened, it must be admitted, by the scarlet-faced embarrassment of the boy who had perhaps never had occasion before to strip down to the buff in the presence of a young female) the traditional Callistan warrior’s garb includes a skimpy sort of loin-cloth by way of underwear.
I should have stripped to the skin, underwear or no underwear, ignoring the presence of the jungle maid, had it been necessary, but luckily it was not. We had sufficient length of cloth and supple leather to reach the ledge without sacrificing our loin-cloths, which greatly relieved Tomar’s sense of the proprieties.
I did not bother to point out to the scandalized youngster that Ylana was of a primitive level of society which probably could not afford the nudity taboo of higher civilizations such as our own. The girl was probably quite accustomed to seeing males of all ages in varying stages of undress, and would probably not have turned a hair had it proved necessary for Tomar or I, or both of us, to have given up even our loincloths for the purposes of escape.
Anything was better than becoming a Zarkoon breakfast!
Eventually the strip-tease was finished―although not without considerable embarrassment on Tomar’s part. The girl delighted in bedeviling my young companion―she said she loved the shade of crimson he turned when blushing―and mischief sparkled in her enormous purple eyes as she gave voice to tart comments on Tomar’s musculature (which she considered remarkably attenuated) and fleshly integument (to put it bluntly, she thought him scrawny in the legs and exceedingly bony in the ribs). This was said purely for the pleasures of mischief, of course, for Tomar was very husky and well put-together for his years, and Ylana later admitted in my hearing that the boy was remarkably handsome. The poor lad suffered through it in grim misery … anything to avoid becoming someone’s breakfast!
There is no telling how long it took us to snag that trebly-damned spur of rock with the weighted end of our makeshift rope-ladder. The booted end of the rope was thrown out―fell short―or overshot its mark―or failed to loop about the sharp jut of stone―and had to be dragged back in, hand over hand, so many times that I lost count somewhere past forty.
Eventually, just as the ache in my arms and shoulders was beginning to assume king-sized proportions, the boots whipped about the spur, tightening a turn or two around the thrust of rock, and became securely wedged so that no tug, however strong, could dislodge them. Then came the question of who would be the lucky one who would be first to attempt to swing hand over hand the length of our flimsy rope and try to scramble up on the rocky ledge before one of the knots gave way under his weight, precipitating him into the abyss.
In the light of cold logic, the task should have gone to Ylana. She was the lightest of the three of us and was the one most likely to reach the ledge in safety. But, of course, I was hardly going to permit a mere girl to risk the dangerous crossing of the abyss first. I was about to take the responsibility upon myself, when Tomar spoke up demanding to be the one to try it.
At first I refused; but the boy would not listen to me. While we were still arguing the question he solved it by suddenly climbing out of the cage, seizing the rope, and swinging out over the abyss before there was anything I could do to stop him.
I crouched there on the floor of the cage with my heart in my mouth, watching the boy, naked save for a brief cloth wound about his loins, swinging along hand over hand the length of the wobbling rope. One slip of the fingers and he would plummet into the chasm beneath. And what if his weight should prove too heavy for the knots to bear, and the rope should come apart in mid-air―or the weighted end of the rope should jerk free of its place?
It took him the better part of three minutes to traverse the gulf, and I don’t believe I breathed at all during that interminable wait.
The girl crouched beside me, eyes wide and unwaveringly fixed on the swinging figure of the nearly-naked boy as he swung slowly down the taut line. Her mouth was open and from time to time she wet dry lips with the tip of her tongue. One hand was clutched about my arm, and as Tomar reached the half-way point, the agony of tension and fear she was suffering was reflected in the way her nails sank into my bare flesh. At the time, so fully was my attention concentrated on the brave boy who dangled by his fingertips above the abyss, that I was hardly conscious of the pressure of those fingers on my arms. Later, however, they left bruises that took days to go away.
After an interminable time, Tomar at last reached the other side of the abyss. We watched as he swung himself up over the lip of stone and onto the ledge. A moment later the boy climbed to his feet, gave us a cheerful grin and a wave, and bent to fasten more securely the weighted end of the line.
And we relaxed and began to breathe again, the girl and I.
Such was my feeling of light-headed relief, that I essayed a joke at her expense.
“Scrawny as a half-starved thaptor he may be,” I joked, repeating one of the pointed remarks she had made about the boy’s appearance during the undressing incident, “but the boy is certainly brave enough, wouldn’t you say?”
Stung, Ylana turned a gaze of violet scorn upon me, elevating her pert little nose in a disdainful sniff.