To relieve the indescribable tedium of my captivity, I begged some writing materials from her. The Jungle People lacked the art of writing, but I had noticed they kept a domesticated breed of thaptor-like four-legged fowl, and it is from the quills of the thaptor that the Shondakorians and other civilized nations fashion writing implements. It was easy enough for her to slip me a handful of feathers through the bars on her next visit, and she also gathered at my request a quantity of gurom-bark from a grove on the borders of the tribal area I had noticed upon first entering the vicinity.
The gurom tree sheds thin shells of flexible, starchy white bark with a very smooth surface on the inside, and it peels into thin sheets and may be used for writing much in the same way the American Indians used to employ birch-bark in my native land. The guards raised objections to her procuring this bark, but the maid faced them down and browbeat them into surly, grumbling silence. I admired the way she invented a plausible lie on the spur of the moment, saying I wished to compute the astrological signs for the most propitious time for her mating with Xangan. Evidently, to the primitive minds of these savages, an astrologer is worthy of much of the veneration that would otherwise be displayed towards priests, if the Jungle People had a priesthood, which, in common with the other nations of Thanator, they do not.
Using the smooth white bark for writing-paper, and trimming the quills into pens, I made a crude kind of ink from drinking water mixed with some black powdered mineral I scraped from an outcropping of ore, and thus had something wherewith to pass the time. We devised a game to while away the hours: I marked the largest sheet off into squares and taught Lukor and the boy the old terrestrial game of checkers, which we played with colored pebbles.
Ylana had brought me such a supply of bark and quills, that I also decided to pass the tedium of our imprisonment by setting down this account of my adventures since the Zarkoon carried off Tomar and me from the pilothouse of the Jalathadar. My “ink” was thin and watery, and my pens were not of the finest quality, but I found that by printing the English characters in capitals rather than by using the ordinary cursive I generally employed in the composition of my journals, I could set down a narrative which was fairly legible. Since I had filled my spare time aboard the airship by recording the more recent events, I decided to pass my enforced leisure in the same manner, and thus brought my narrative up to date, picking up the story where I had left off, and incorporating into my account the tale of Lukor and Koja’s own adventures, which the gallant little Ganatolian had long since recounted to me.
I became so caught up in the relating of this narrative, that I devoted most of the waking hours of my next several days to completing the makeshift journal. Luckily, during this same period, Lukor and Tomar fell in love with the game of checkers and amused themselves while I was engaged in my literary labors. The Thanatorian mind is singularly intrigued with board games, I have noticed, and they have invented any number of games strikingly akin to chess and Parcheesi, and one that is virtually identical to the popular game of scrabble. From the fascination my two comrades displayed in the simple game of checkers I quickly taught them, I perceived an Earthling stranded by chance on Callisto could easily make his fortune by introducing the Thanatorians to a variety of such games, providing he could secure the local equivalent of a copyright to them.
It was in this manner that we passed the tedious period of our imprisonment without the grueling boredom such an interminable waiting-time would otherwise have inflicted upon us. I lost track of the number of days we endured in our Stone Age dungeon-cell, but it must have been a week at least. If not, then it certainly seemed that long.
However the Elders established communication with Kuur, the shadowy country of the Mind Wizards was evidently at some considerable distance from the caves wherein the Jungle People dwelt. And then one afternoon Ylana came by to exchange a few words with us through the bars. The plucky jungle maid seemed even more downcast than usual, and I asked her the reason for her woeful looks.
“It is just that we shall see each other no more, after tomorrow,” she said sadly, “and that this makes me unhappy.”
Her words were directed to me, but I noticed that her eyes strayed in the direction of Tomar, who lay watching her as we conversed. Something had passed between the two youngsters during our adventures together, despite all the tauntings and rivalries, and from Tomar’s moody silences and her lingering, backward glances after one of her infrequent visits I imagined that the two had conceived of an affection―doubtless nothing more serious than the teenage crushes I had suffered through when I had been their age, but none the less painful and hard to endure for all that.
But at the moment I was not thinking of “puppy love,” but of the more serious implications in her sad words.
“Why is that, Ylana?” I asked. She regarded me with a long, pitying look.
“Because that croaking old zell, Quone, has just gone about the village informing the tribe that by dawn tomorrow we will be visited by an emissary of the Unseen Ones,” she said.
Lukor broke off his game with a startled expletive.
“By the Red Moon, girl, d’you mean those uncanny yellow rascals will be here by morning?” he demanded.
Ylana nodded sadly and Lukor exchanged a fierce, meaningful look with me.
“Then we must make our escape tonight or never, lad,” he said to me in tones too low to reach the ears of the guards who squatted on their hunkers to either side of the cave-mouth.
I made no comment on this, nor did Ylana. But something in the intensity of the stare with which she caught my gaze alerted me. When her gaze dropped deliberately and meaningfully to her right foot I followed her look. She stood near the barred gate, negligently resting the tip of one foot on the bottom crossbar, so that her buskin-shod toes thrust through the narrow grill just a bit. And I saw with an inward thrill of excitement that her buskin was bound about the toe with an extra thong
There was something tied to the sole of her footgear which she wanted me to take from her!
I signaled Lukor with a fierce gesture. Sensing my meaning without words, the old fellow came over to the bars and began loudly questioning the maid as to what sort of a dire and grisly execution we might expect, when at the tender mercies of the Unseen Ones.
He stood, blocking the sight of the guards, while I dropped to my knees, swiftly untied the thong, and slid my fingers under the sole of Ylana’s buskin. As the thong loosened, a short, hard, thin object dropped into my palm, which I slid into the top of my own boots. I did not have to look at it to guess what it was, for my fingers had traced its outline.
It was a flint knife.
And at last we had a weapon!
“So farewell, Jandar―old man―Tomar,” the girl said, turning away. “We shall not speak again, I think. Farewell!”
“Farewell to you, Ylana, and … thanks for everything,” I said. She smiled faintly, turned on her heel, and departed.
It would have to be that very night, we decided. But not when we were let out after the evening meal for sanitary purposes, for at such times ten or a dozen of the jungle warriors escorted us. It would have to be later, on some pretext or other.
As soon as Ylana left, we three retreated to the back of the cave and discussed our chances of escape in whispers. Deciding on a plan of action, we returned to the front of the cave, and tried to busy ourselves at our usual occupations. Tomar and Lukor pretended to play checkers, although their hearts were not really in the game, and as for me, I scribbled away writing these pages. Nothing in our behavior could possibly have suggested that we contemplated making a break for freedom that very night, I am sure.