Suddenly, the sentry posted atop the rock uttered a joyous cry. He pointed into the eastern sky, where a soaring mote of darker hue had been descried against the clear, golden sky.
The keen eyes of Koja soon made out the identity of the flying thing.
“Lukor has followed in the Jalathadar,” he remarked with grave satisfaction. “It is even as I had hoped.”
“One could wish we had happier news to report,” said Kadar. Kaja said nothing.
The observers stationed aboard the flying ship soon recognized them and before long the mighty galleon of the skies paused in its flight to hover directly above them. Erelong one of the gigs came circling down, and aboard were Lukor of Ganatol and the scout Koja had commanded to return to camp with word of their discoveries, Jarak of Tharkol.
The gig came down to ground level, anchored to a rocky spur, and Lukor dismounted with a swift agility which belied his years.
“What further news, friend Koja?” he demanded.
“Little that is good, I fear,” said Koja heavily. “From a great distance we descried the descent of a ghastozar. When we reached the spot, our friends and the Kuurian were no longer there.”
Lukor blinked, aghast.
“Do you mean they have been carried off by a flying lizard?”
“Evidently so,” replied Koja.
Chapter 9
JUGRID OF THE JUNGLE COUNTRY
MIDWAY between the Valley of Kuur and the Mountains of the Zarkoon, positioned almost exactly on the equator of Callisto, there rises a vast plateau many leagues in extent, completely walled about by mountains.
When, during an earlier adventure, I, Jandar, together with Lukor, Koja the Yathoon, Tomar, and Ylana, had been forced down upon this plateau, after making our escape from the hollow mountain where the cannibal bird-men called the Zarkoon nested, this jungle-clad tableland reminded me inescapably of a similar plateau, which was the scene of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous romance, The Lost World.
The plateau is inhabited by all manner of ferocious beasts, including some not found elsewhere upon the known surface of Thanator, such as the dinosaurlike groacks, which infest the waters of Cor-Az, the Great Lake which occupies the southwestern corner of this country. In this respect, of course, the jungle-clad plateau most resembles the “lost world” of Conan Doyle’s fantastic tale.
But the plateau bears, as well, a second item of resemblance to its fictional counterpart in that it is also inhabited by tribes of primitive savages. To the north, in a region of rocky hills that border upon the edges of the central jungles, dwell a tribe of Cave People, whose chief is the mighty Jugrid, Ylana’s father. And to the southeast live the River People, in the hill country that borders upon the Great Waterfall; Ylana’s mother was a daughter of the chief of this tribe. Thus, even in this respect, does the plateau match that in The Lost World, for as I recall hairy, shambling Neanderthals dwelt there, if not as well tribes of CroMagnon men.
Theirs is a harsh, cruel, and unremitting struggle for the means of existence, at any rate, and the human inhabitants of the jungle Country stand low on the scale of civilization upon Callisto. In fact, unless you wish to consider the barbaric war-hordes of the Yathoon insectoids as “human,” or the beaked, winged, cannibalistic Zarkoon, the tribes of the jungle Country are the most primitive of all the nations of Thana. for known to me.
Like many another primitive race in man’s long history, the Cave People are dominated by a religious elite. These are the Elders, a group of men who function as priests or shamans for the savages, and who presume to interpret the will of the so-called “Unseen Ones,” or “Shadowy Ones,” whom the superstitious cavemen venerate as gods.
I do not know whether the other tribe, the River People who share the jungle Country with Jugrid’s clan, adhere to a similar belief.
The principal item of difference between the divinities worshiped by the Cave People of Callisto and their terrene counterparts of prehistoric times, is that the Callistan deities exist, although they are not divine, of course, but the Mind Wizards of Kuur.
JUGRID of the Jungle Country observed the lateness of the day with a measure of grim trepidation not unmixed with that stolid fatalism that is among the more appealing and admirable of the traits of his primitive kind.
The skies of Callisto are evenly illuminated from horizon to horizon,. and from pole to pole, by some electrical excitation of inert vapors suspended high in the planet’s stratosphere, and not by any such radiant orb as the sun. Hence, it is impossible to tell from the direction of light or the inclination of the source of illumination the approximate hour of the day, as it is, for instance, on our own Earth.
But from countless ages of experience the races that dwelt upon the surface of Thanator developed an unconscious sense of time, like a subconscious clock. By pure instinct, the Thanatorian knows the approximate hour, and can predict the interval between any point of time and the coming of darkness.
Thus it was that Jugrid of the Jungle Country knew with grim certitude and fatalistic foreboding how little time there yet remained of his life.
For with the coming of darkness, which at this season of the year coincided precisely with the rising of mighty Gordrimator or Jupiter upon the horizon, he would suffer the penalty of death. The Elders had so decreed when, at the termination of lengthy and interminable councils, and the study of innumerable omens and signs, they had removed him from the chieftainship of the tribe and condemned him to be sacrificed to the Unseen Ones, against whose strictures he had been judged to have sinned beyond all forgiveness.
He stood now at the barred grille which closed the mouth of one cave, making of it a reasonable facsimile of a prison cell, and his bearded and majestic features were inscrutable as he studied the illuminated heavens.
On guard at that hour of his imprisonment was a young warrior of the tribe, by the name of Thadron.
Little speech had passed between Jugrid and his guard, but the reason for this did not lie in any lack of sympathy on the part of Thadron for his former chief, nor from any cruel pleasure the young warrior might have taken in the humbling and degradation of one who had, in better times, ruled with strength, manliness, and a rude sense of justice.
Thadron, in fact, sympathized deeply with the plight of the hapless Jugrid, and regretted the sorry fate to which the mighty warrior chief of the jungle Country had nearly come.
And Thadron had serious misgivings about the member of the tribe whom the vindictive Elders had selected to replace Jugrid in the chieftainship. That individual, a hulking, surly, overbearing lout named Xangan, was the favorite grandson of the most powerful and influential of the Elders, Quone by name. Thus it may be seen that the element of nepotism was not altogether foreign even to the primitive customs of so savage and backward a tribe as the cave-dwellers.
And Thadron had good and sufficient reason to despise the new chief, for on more than one occasion he and Xangan had been at odds, whereas between the young warrior and his former chief there had never existed anything but a manly mutual respect and liking.
Now that the hour of sacrifice was almost come, Xangan came strolling over from the feasting-place, and Thadron, observing the slouching approach of the bully, rightly guessed that Xangan had in mind one final taunting insult to the former chief, before the termination of his mortal existence made any further humiliations impossible.
The differences between such of the tribe as Jugrid and Thadron, and the burly Xangan, were clearly visible. The former chief was a huge man with a stalwart and clean-cut mien and a powerful physique. His thick mane of hair and short, neatly trimmed beard, were black shot through with strands of gray which were premature, for he was in the full prime of his manhood. His gaze was clear and steady, his demeanor dignified and stern. Thadron, although many years his junior, was of a similar nobility of carriage, a handsome young man of smoothly muscular build, with a good face, a strong jaw, and candid, fearless eyes. Both men were rudely clothed in brief loincloths of animal hides and wore primitive ornaments of bone ivory and hammered metal.