"I have fled and fled and
fled. I have remained hungry and thirsty in tree tops for days
at a time. I have fashioned weapons--clubs and spears--and I have
learned to use them. I have slain a lion with my club. So even will
a cornered rat fight. And we are no better than rats in this land
of stupendous dangers, you and I. But tell me about yourself. If it
is surprising that I live, how much more so that you still survive."
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.
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