Part 12 (2/2)
Nu was almost level with her. Gron raised her knife above her head. Nu sprang upward to strike the weapon to one side before it was buried in his breast; but Gron was too quick for him. The blade fell, but not upon Nu. Deep into her own broken heart Gron plunged the sharp point, and at the same instant she leaped far beyond Nu and Nat-ul to crash, mangled and broken at the foot of the lofty cliff.
Death, sudden and horrible, was no stranger to these primeval lovers. They saw that Gron was dead, and Tur, likewise. Nu appropriated the latter's weapons, and side by side the two set out to find the beach. They found it with only such delays and dangers as were daily incidents in their savage lives. They found the boat, too, and reached the mainland and, later, the cliffs and their tribe, in safety. Here they found a wild welcome awaiting them, for both had been given up as dead.
That night they walked hand in hand beneath the great equatorial moon, beside the Restless Sea.
”Soon,” said Nu, ”Nat-ul shall become the mate of Nu, the son of Nu. Nu, my father, hath said it, and so, too, has spoken Tha, the father of Nat-ul. At the birth of the next moon we are to mate.”
Nat-ul nestled closer to him.
”My Nu is a great warrior,” she said, ”and a great hunter, but he has not brought back the head of Oo, the killer of men and mammoths, that he promised to lay before the cave of Tha, my father.”
”Nu sets out at the breaking of the next light to bunt Oo,” he answered quietly, ”nor will he return to claim his mate until he has taken the head of the killer of men and mammoths.”
Nat-ul laughed up into Nu's face.
”Nat-ul but joked,” she said. ”My man has proved himself greater than a hunter of Oo. I do not want the great toothed head, Nu. I only want you. You must not go forth to hunt the beast-it is enough that you could slay him were he to attack us, and none there is who dares say it be beyond you.”
”Nevertheless I hunt Oo on the morrow,” insisted Nu. ”I have never forgotten my promise.”
Nat-ul tried to dissuade him, but he was obdurate, and the next morning Nu, the son of Nu, set forth from the cliffs beside the Restless Sea to hunt the lair of Oo.
All day Nat-ul sat waiting his return though she knew that it might be days before he came back, or that he might not come at all. Grave premonitions of impending danger haunted her. She wandered in and out of her cave, looking for the thousandth time along the way that Nu might come.
Suddenly a rumbling rose from far inland. The earth shook and trembled. Nat-ul, wide eyed with terror, saw her people fleeing upward toward their caves. The heavens became overcast, the loud rumbling rose to a hideous and deafening roar. The violence of the earth's motion increased until the very cliffs in which the people hid rocked and shook like a leaf before a hurricane.
Nat-ul ran to the innermost recess of her father's cave. There she huddled upon the floor burying her face in a pile of bear and lion skins. About her cl.u.s.tered other members of her father's family -- all were terror stricken.
It was five minutes before the end came. It came in one awful hideous convulsion that lifted the mighty cliff a hundred feet aloft, cracking and shattering it to fragments as its face toppled forward into the forest at its foot. Then there was silence-silence awful and ominous. For five minutes the quiet of death reigned upon the face of the earth, until presently from far out at sea came a rus.h.i.+ng, swirling sound -- a sound that only a few wild beasts were left to hear -- and the ocean, mountain high, rushed in upon what had been the village of Nu, the chief.
WHAT THE CAVE REVEALED.
WHEN Victoria Custer opened her eyes the first face that she saw was that of her brother, Barney, bent above her. She looked at him in puzzled bewilderment for a moment. Presently she reached her hands toward him.
”Where am I?” she asked. ”What has happened?”
”You're all right, Vic,” replied the young man. ”You're safe and sound in Lord Greystoke's bungalow.”
For another moment the girl knit her brows in perplexity.
”But the earthquake,” she asked, ”wasn't there an earthquake?”
”A little one, Vic, but it didn't amount to anything -- there wasn't any damage done.”
”How long have I been -- er -- this way?” she continued.
”You swooned about three minutes ago,” replied her brother. ”I just put you down here and sent Esmeralda for some brandy when you opened your eyes.”
”Three minutes,” murmured the girl -- ”three minutes!”
That night after the others had retired Barney Custer sat beside his sister's bed, and long into the early morning she told him in simple words and without sign of hysteria the story that I have told here, of Nat-ul and Nu, the son of Nu.
”I think,” she said, when she had finished the strange tale, ”that I shall be happier for this vision, or whatever one may call it. I have met my dream man and lived again the life that he and I lived countless ages ago. Even if he comes to me in my dreams again it will not disturb me. I am glad that it was but a dream, and that Mr. Curtiss was not killed by Terkoz, and that all those other terrible things were not real.”
”Now,” said Barney, with a smile, ”you may be able to listen to what Curtiss has been trying to tell you.”
It was a half question.
Victoria Custer shook her head.
”No,” she said, ”I could never love him now. I cannot tell you why, but it may be that what I have lived through in those three minutes revealed more than the dim and distant past. Terkoz has never liked him, you know.”
Barney did not pursue the subject. He kissed the girl good night and as the east commenced to lighten to the coming dawn he sought his own room and a few hours' sleep.
The next day it was decided that Victoria and Barney should start for the coast as soon as porters could be procured, which would require but a few days at the most. Lieutenant Butzow, Curtiss and I decided to accompany them.
It was the last day of their stay at the Greystoke ranch. The others were hunting. Barney and Victoria had remained to put the finis.h.i.+ng touches upon their packing, but that was done now and the girl begged for a last ride over the broad, game dotted valley of Uziri.
Before they had covered a mile Barney saw that his sister had some particular objective in mind, for she rode straight as an arrow and rapidly, with scarce a word, straight south toward the foot of the rugged mountains that bound the Waziri's country upon that side -- in the very direction that she had previously shunned. After a couple of hours of stiff riding they came to the foot of the lofty cliff that had formerly so filled Victoria with terror and misgivings.
”What's the idea, Vic,” asked the man, ”I thought you were through with all this.”
”I am, Barney,” she replied, ”or will be after today, but I just couldn't go away without satisfying my curiosity. I want to know that there is no cave here in which a man might be buried.”
She dismounted and started to climb the rugged escarpment. Barney was amazed at the agility and strength of the slender girl. It kept him puffing to remain near her in her rapid ascent.
At last she stopped suddenly upon a narrow ledge. When Barney reached her side he saw that she was very white, and he paled himself when he saw what her eyes rested upon. The earthquake had dislodged a great boulder that for ages evidently had formed a part of the face of the cliff. Now it had tilted outward a half dozen feet, revealing behind it the mouth of a gloomy cavern.
Barney took Victoria's hand. It was very cold and trembled a little.
”Come,” he said, ”this has gone far enough, Vic. You'll be sick again if you keep it up. Come back to the horses -- we've seen all we want to see.”
She shook her head.
”Not until I have searched that cave,” she said, almost defiantly, and Barney knew that she would have her way.
Together they entered the forbidding grotto, Barney in advance, striking matches with one hand while he clung to his c.o.c.ked rifle with the other; but there was nothing there that longer had the power to injure.
In a far corner the feeble rays of the match lighted something that brought Barney to a sudden halt. He tried to turn the girl back as though there was nothing more to be seen, but she had seen too and pressed forward. She made her brother light another match, and there before them lay the crumbling skeleton of a large man. By its side rested a broken, stone-tipped spear, and there was a stone knife and a stone ax as well.
”Look!” whispered the girl, pointing to something that lay just beyond the skeleton.
Barney raised the match he held until its feeble flame carried to that other object -- the grinning skull of a great cat, its upper jaw armed with two mighty, eighteen-inch, curved fangs.
”Oo, the killer of men and of mammals,” whispered Victoria Custer, in an awed voice, ”and Nu, the son of Nu, who killed him for his Nat-ul -- for me!”
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