第78章

Briefly she told him and all the while she was wondering what she might do to rid herself of him.She could not conceive of a prolonged existence with him as her sole companion.Better, a thousand times better, to be alone.Never had her hatred and contempt for him lessened through the long weeks and months of their constant companionship, and now that he could be of no service in returning her to civilization, she shrank from the thought of seeing him daily.And, too, she feared him.Never had she trusted him; but now there was a strange light in his eye that had not been there when last she saw him.She could not interpret it--all she knew was that it gave her a feeling of apprehension--a nameless dread.

"You lived long then in the city of A-lur?" he said, speaking in the language of Pal-ul-don.

"You have learned this tongue?" she asked."How?"

"I fell in with a band of half-breeds," he replied, "members of a proscribed race that dwells in the rock-bound gut through which the principal river of the valley empties into the morass.They are called Waz-ho-don and their village is partly made up of cave dwellings and partly of houses carved from the soft rock at the foot of the cliff.They are very ignorant and superstitious and when they first saw me and realized that I had no tail and that my hands and feet were not like theirs they were afraid of me.

They thought that I was either god or demon.Being in a position where I could neither escape them nor defend myself, I made a bold front and succeeded in impressing them to such an extent that they conducted me to their city, which they call Bu-lur, and there they fed me and treated me with kindness.As I learned their language I sought to impress them more and more with the idea that I was a god, and I succeeded, too, until an old fellow who was something of a priest among them, or medicine-man, became jealous of my growing power.That was the beginning of the end and came near to being the end in fact.He told them that if I

was a god I would not bleed if a knife was stuck into me--if I

did bleed it would prove conclusively that I was not a god.

Without my knowledge he arranged to stage the ordeal before the whole village upon a certain night--it was upon one of those numerous occasions when they eat and drink to Jad-ben-Otho, their pagan deity.Under the influence of their vile liquor they would be ripe for any bloodthirsty scheme the medicine-man might evolve.One of the women told me about the plan--not with any intent to warn me of danger, but prompted merely by feminine curiosity as to whether or not I would bleed if stuck with a dagger.She could not wait, it seemed, for the orderly procedure of the ordeal--she wanted to know at once, and when I caught her trying to slip a knife into my side and questioned her she explained the whole thing with the utmost naivete.

The warriors already had commenced drinking--it would have been futile to make any sort of appeal either to their intellects or their superstitions.There was but one alternative to death and that was flight.I told the woman that I was very much outraged and offended at this reflection upon my godhood and that as a mark of my disfavor I should abandon them to their fate.

"'I shall return to heaven at once!' I exclaimed.

"She wanted to hang around and see me go, but I told her that her eyes would be blasted by the fire surrounding my departure and that she must leave at once and not return to the spot for at least an hour.I also impressed upon her the fact that should any other approach this part of the village within that time not only they, but she as well, would burst into flames and be consumed.

"She was very much impressed and lost no time in leaving, calling back as she departed that if I were indeed gone in an hour she and all the village would know that I was no less than Jad-ben-Otho himself, and so they must thank me, for I can assure you that I was gone in much less than an hour, nor have I

ventured close to the neighborhood of the city of Bu-lur since,"

and he fell to laughing in harsh, cackling notes that sent a shiver through the woman's frame.