“I know. I know,” he sighed.
After the meal we slept huddled about the fire. The night was made hideous by the distant cry of beasts, but we kept the fire piled high with dry wood and nothing dared come near the blaze in the night.
We slept like dead men, the sleep of the utterly exhausted.
And, thank God, there were no dreams.
Dawn woke in the skies, a blaze of pure golden fire. We were stiff and lame from our exertions, but woke refreshed and ready for whatever the new day would bring. Ylana told us that her people camped along the hunting trails to the north of the vast plateau, and that the lake in which we had fallen was situated in the southern part. We debated as to what to do. Ylana was reluctant to rejoin her people, for even though her own father, Jugrid, was chief of the Jungle People, he had been forced by the all-powerful Elders to give her up in marriage to the man whom she detested, a fellow named Xangan, a surly, repulsive, overbearing lout who had often accosted her and attempted to force his attentions upon her. This Xangan, it seemed, was the favorite grandson of one of the Elders, an old man named Quone, and thus enjoyed a favored position among the jungle warriors. The Elders had sided with Xangan against Jugrid in this matter of the disposal of his daughter’s hand in marriage. Ylana did not say so in so many words, but I got the distinct impression that the Elders were happy to seize upon this pretext to diminish the authority of the jungle chieftain, thus enhancing their own position as interpreters of the will of the Unseen Ones.
It was, I reflected, an old and oft-told tale―the struggle for supremacy between the temporal and the spiritual authorities for the dominance of a realm. The covert contest between king and high-priest had repeated itself over and over again in the history of my native world, and it seemed that in this respect, as in so many others, the inhabitants of Thanator proved their essential humanity.
“Then you would, of course, prefer not to return to the country of your father?” I asked.
The jungle maid nodded. “When captured by the Zarkoon, I was trying to reach my mother’s folk, the River People,” she said. “Their country lies east of here, beyond the Stone Hills, in a lush meadowland through which the River of the Groack wanders, on its way to the Great Waterfall …”
“And what might the groack be?” I inquired.
The girl shivered slightly. “Fearsome reptiles which infest the Great Lake and the river, as well.”
“All right, then: how can we help you find the country of the River People?”
Ylana crouched on her knees and sketched a crude map in the sand. It showed that we had come out of the lake on the north shore, and that the River of the Groack emerged from the lake almost exactly one-quarter of the way around it, wove between the Stone Hills, and then traced a curving path through the meadowlands which occupied the extreme eastern portion of the plateau.*
We breakfasted sparsely on nuts, berries, and a large, sweet fruit the Thanatorians call the temorak, a term I might translate crudely as “wine-melon,” since it is from the juice of this melon-like fruit that the vintners of Thanator ferment their vinous beverages. Tomar and Ylana gathered this meager meal while Lukor and I sought to procure something in the nature of weapons wherewith we would be able to defend ourselves against whatever predators or human foes we might chance to encounter on our journey to the River Country. We found a clump of orange, bamboo-like trees which, with a trifle of labor, could be snapped off cleanly at the joints, which were spaced fairly evenly about eighteen inches apart. From these we fashioned rude quarterstaves or poles about six feet long, which would have to serve as our only means of defense. Tomar also rigged a crude sling on directions from Ylana, who was expert in the use of this weapon, while the girl gathered smooth, rounded stones from along the lake-shore. By early morning we were ready to depart.
As we made our way due east along the shoreline, I had leisure to reflect on the curious information Ylana’s map revealed. I refer to the fact that, unlike terrestrial rivers, the River of the Groack towards which we were bound did not feed into the Great Lake, as the body of water was called, but out of it. My knowledge of these matters is admittedly a trifle hazy, and marooned here on Callisto as I am, I am, of course, quite a few million miles away from the nearest reference library, but I am of the opinion that the River of the Groack presents an unique phenomenon.*
All that day we tramped along the shore of the Cor-Az (which is Thanatorian for “Great Lake”), and by early evening we were foot-weary and very hungry. Lukor, wistfully eyeing the lake along which we strode, made some remark about fishing-poles in connection with a speculation as to what manner of plump, delicious denizens the waters might contain.
As I was feeling half-starved by this time, the notion struck me as a highly promising one. We had the fishing-poles already, for our bamboo staves would serve that purpose admirably; and, as for fish-hooks, the coil of copper wire the jungle maid wore about her upper arm could be as easily put to that use as it had been for the purpose of a pick-lock.
We decided to stop for the night and to see what sort of a dinner the Cor-Az could afford us. While Tomar and Ylana searched for dry wood along the edges of the jungle, Lukor and I worked short lengths of the flexible wire into something rudely resembling hooks, affixing these to the end of our staves by means of long threads unraveled from our garments―or from Lukor’s garments, that is, since my raiment still consisted of nothing more than a ragged loincloth and a pair of sky-boots.
Considering the make-shift nature of our fishing gear, it is surprising that either Lukor or I achieved any measure of success in our efforts at providing piscatorial provender for our dinner-table. The lake, however, seemed to be teeming with some Thanatorian variety of fish unfamiliar to me, for in no time Lukor, to his great delight, succeeded in landing two enormous salmonlike fish which Ylana brained with a flat rock. During the next few minutes I landed a remarkable specimen myself, which must have weighed ten pounds, and our prospects of going to sleep that night with full bellies seemed assured.
Matters turned out otherwise, however, as is so often the case on the Jungle Moon. For, in providing for our dinner, it seemed we were robbing another “fisherman” of his own. Our crude fish-hooks, I assume, had landed right in the middle of a school of fish a hungry groack had been engaged in herding together to satisfy his own ravenous gullet. And he did not appreciate our poaching on what he evidently considered his private game-preserve.
Our first inkling of this fact followed shortly after we had succeeded in landing the third fish. Quite suddenly, about twenty yards out from the shore, the placid waters of the Cor-Az exploded into spray and an immense, serpentine neck thrust itself up from the waves. An alligator-like head the size of a barrel swiveled towards our direction, and two lidless eyes, lambent with cold ferocity, fixed us in their gaze. In the next instant we were scrambling up the shore in several directions as a vast, scaly form came slithering through the shallows at something close to the speed of an express-train.
The colossal Plesiosaur on Earth has been extinct, I suppose, since the Jurassic era. But I can assure you, from personal experience, that here on Callisto the giant reptile, or something remarkably like it, is still going strong. This particular specimen, which came slithering out of the lake hot on our heels, must have measured at least thirty-five feet from fanged snout to the tip of his tail … and that’s about thirty-four more feet of reptile than I feel comfortable with!