JAN hesitated for a moment when he saw the cruel jaws of the immense anaconda close on the shoulder of Chicma. Then, running lightly out to the end of the limb on which he stood, he dived for a point beside the great, thick coils that were slithering up out of the pool to encircle their victim.
Although it was a much higher dive than he had ever made, Jan struck the water cleanly and came up beside the serpent. Whipping out his machete, he hacked again and again at the writhing coils. The waters of the pool seethed with the struggles of man, ape and serpent.
Presently the anaconda released its hold on Chicma, who was, by this time, near the curtain of water dripping from above. She instantly scrambled through it, and Jan was left alone to fight it out with the huge reptile, which had now turned all its attention to him.
With jaws gaping and neck arched above the foaming water, it struck straight for his face. But although the dart of the serpent was incredibly swift, the counter-stroke of Jan was quicker. His machete flashed in, a shimmering arc, its keen edge half severing the reptile’s enormous head from its body. Feebly, the snake attempted to strike again, but this time the machete completed its task, and the gaping head flew off to sink out of sight, while the scaly body continued to writhe and flounder aimlessly about in the water.
Jan’s first concern was for Chicma, whom he had seen as she crawled through the sheet of falling water. Plunging in after her, he found her huddled against the cliff beneath the falls, whimpering and licking her wounded shoulder.
“Come!” he barked in the chimpanzee language. “Let us go back to the hut.”
“No. Sleepy One will get me.”
“But he has gone to sleep forever.”
“I will not go. He might wake up.”
He coaxed, but to no avail.
Then he thought of the open valley at the other end of the cavern where he had met the hairy men. Perhaps he could persuade her to go that way. And anyhow, he wanted to explore the valley and to avenge himself on the hairy creatures who had attacked him. He would teach them and their kind to let him alone, as he had taught the Indians of the jungle.
He went back to the tree-hut, where he gathered an assortment of weapons: a bow and a quiverful of arrows, a blowgun with a supply of poisoned darts, and a spear. He also exchanged the machete he was carrying for one slightly larger and heavier.
Returning to where Chicma cowered beneath the waterfall, he said:
“Come. We leave this place.”
She followed him obediently as he climbed the notches in the face of the cliff and entered the cave guarded by the hawk-faced and dog-faced statues. She was not afraid to go with him through the dark corridors of the cavern. But she balked when they reached the place where it was necessary to enter the water once more in order to get out into the sunlight. Twice she had been injured by monsters that had come up out of the water—an alligator and an anaconda—and she feared it.
After coaxing and arguing for some time to no avail, Jan decided to take his weapons through first, then come back after her. He made them into a bundle with the curare-tipped blowgun darts on the top, so the poison would not be washed from their points. Supporting the bundle, half in and half out of the water, with one hand he swam out into the sunlight. Making for the shore, he hid his bundle in a clump of reeds, then swam back into the cavern.
Chicma, seeing him return unhurt, finally decided to go back with him.
As solicitous as a mother for her babe, Jan helped Chicma through the underground channel. She had cared for him in his years of helplessness, and now that she grew more dependent day by day, he felt that come what might he must care for her.
Emerging into the sunlight, they swam for the shore and climbed up the bank. Standing on the top, they shook themselves like two dogs.
Jan gathered up his weapons and they started off down the broken, weed-gown avenue. To the ape, the grotesque images which lined the approach to the temple ruins were only so many oddly shaped stones, but to the boy they were a source of wonder and curiosity. He eyed each one suspiciously as he came near it, fearful lest it should suddenly come to life and attack them. He also kept a sharp lookout for his former enemies, the hairy men.
On reaching the portal of the ruined temple, they advanced cautiously, Jan keeping his weapons in readiness in case some unseen enemy should leap out from behind a pillar or fallen rock fragment.
A large part of the roof had caved in, but many sections were still intact. The walls were decorated with brightly colored murals, and much statuary stood about on pedestals and in niches. The floor was of smooth, well-matched tiles laid in geometric designs. All of these things appealed tremendously to Jan’s inherent artistic and aesthetic nature, so that he proceeded slowly in order to gaze his fill at the new wonders constantly appearing before him.
The building consisted of a central auditorium, around which were many corridors and anterooms. At one end of the great hall; on a semicircular platform, stood a colossal image of a man with a thin, sickle-like beard curving outward from the point of his chin. On the head was a tall crown, ornamented on each side with a curling plume and a twisted horn, and in front with a smooth, golden disk. One huge hand held a three-lashed whip, and the other a short-handled crook.
Passing on through the ruins of the building Jan and Chicma emerged in the remains of what had once been a large and magnificent garden, circled by a high stone wall. Despite the fact that it was overgrown with weeds and creepers, there remained many flowers, shrubs and trees. In the center an ornate fountain of marble and carnelian splashed musically.
At the far end of the garden was a small, vine-covered bower. Jan wandered toward this, admiring several small statuettes which stood along the pathway, while Chicma made straight for an orange tree near the wall.
He had passed the fountain only a little way when he saw something that caused him to stiffen in his tracks, then silently dart behind a clump of shrubbery. A thing inside the bower had moved; an immense thing with striped sides and back, and a huge, cat-like head.
Loading his blow-gun with a poisoned dart, Jan waited tensely. The great shaggy head slowly emerged into the pathway, followed by a striped body as large as that of a burro. With tasseled ears laid back and eight-inch tusks gleaming, its appearance was terror-striking.
Jan recognized the creature instantly from a picture he had seen in one of Ramona’s books. It was a saber-toothed tiger, and Ramona had told him it belonged to a past age, that there were no longer any such creatures on earth. Apparently she had been misinformed.
The primeval giant cat had evidently been awakened from its nap by the sound of their entrance into its retreat, and resented it. Noting the direction of its baleful gaze, Jan saw that it was watching Chicma as she sat on one of the lower branches of the orange tree, greedily devouring the fragrant fruit.
Jan put his blow-gun to his lips and sped a tiny dart at the monster. The slender missile embedded itself in the great striped shoulder, and clung. The creature shook itself; dislodging it. Evidently the small projectile had not caused this big cat any more inconvenience or pain than the sting of an insect.
Knowing the usual effect of the curare poison with which he had tipped the dart, Jan waited, expecting to see the creature sink down dead in its tracks. But instead, it charged straight for the tree in which Chicma was feeding, uttering a roar louder and more terrible than any Jan had ever heard.
As the beast charged, Jan sent a second dart into its side. He shot a third into its heaving flank as it leaped for the lower branches of the orange tree.
Chicma had taken one look at the charging carnivore and scampered for the topmost branches of the tree, but when she saw it leaping up toward her she swung over the top of the high wall and dropped out of sight on the other side.
The poison from the first dart had evidently not been enough to paralyze the motor nerves of the huge beast. But the triple dose began to take effect as it caught the lower branches of the tree. It clung to them for a moment, snarling and roaring, then fell to the ground on its back.
Jan knew that no member of the cat tribe would fall on its back from that height unless it was very near death, so he waited. After thrashing about for some time in the undergrowth, the mighty killer finally lay still.
Before approaching it, Jan fired an arrow into the carcass. As no movement followed, he was convinced that the monster was sleeping its last long sleep, and advanced to examine it. For some time he looked the beast over, marveling at its long, sickle-shaped claws, its bulging muscles, and its immense saber-like tusks. What a fearful antagonist it would make! Jan had fought the jaguar and the puma, machete against teeth and claws, and won, but he felt very dubious indeed about the outcome of such a duel with one of these monsters.
However, it had gone to sleep now, never to waken. He must reassure Chicma. He called to her, but there was no reply. He called again at the top of his voice. Still no answer.
Alarmed, he scrambled up the orange tree and onto the top of the wall. He was looking out over a vast, rolling plain—a savanna of tall, waving grass, dotted here and there with clumps of trees. Meeting at the point where the river went underground and traveling as far as he could see to the right and left, until lost in the blue haze, was an unbroken line of tall cliffs, encircling the valley through which the river meandered. Beyond the plain before him was a dense forest, Chicma’s trail of trampled grass led that way; she had set out for the jungles of this great closed valley.
After caching his blow-gun darts and spear in one of the anterooms of the temple in order to lighten his burden, Jan hurried after the chimpanzee, following the plainly marked trail with ease through the tall, rustling grass.
This grass, with its rough cutting edges, reminded Jan of the sawgrass he had encountered in the Everglades. It brought hateful memories of Dr. Bracken, and the life he had lived as a prisoner in the menagerie.
He had thought he would easily catch up with the aged Chicma in a few minutes, but before he had gone far he knew that her great fright at the saber-toothed tiger had caused her to run much faster than usual. At last he caught sight of her, just passing over the brow of a low hill ahead.
Then he saw something that checked the shout on his lips and brought him to an abrupt halt—a row of hideous monsters, with sharp horns on the tips of their noses and just above their eyes, were galloping over the hill. Their shoulders were protected by great bony ruffs, and behind these, mounted on their backs, sat men clad in shiny yellow armor and carrying long lances.
Knights—mounted on triceratops! Jan recognized both from pictures he had seen in Ramona’s books. But she had said that both belonged to the past, that such things were no more.
With a shriek of fear, Chicma turned and attempted to flee, but in a twinkling she was surrounded, and a half dozen of the armored men had alighted and were advancing toward her.
Jan’s first impulse at sight of that formidable host was to run. But when he saw Chicma surrounded, his loyalty held him. Fitting an arrow to his bowstring, he launched it at the man who stood nearest to the cowering chimpanzee. To his surprise, the six-foot shaft rebounded harmlessly from the glistening yellow cuirass. He released a second, and this glanced off the metal helmet, narrowly missing Chicma.
But the first arrow had revealed his presence to the enemy. Wild shouts of the armored men mingled with the hoarse bellows and thundering hoof beats of their fearsome mounts as they charged. In a trice he was surrounded by a circle that bristled with triple-horned heads and glittering lance points.
Jan dropped his bow, whipped out his heavy machete, and stood at bay. Several of his assailants dismounted and came toward him carrying long, two-edged swords in their hands. A moment more and he would have been cut to ribbons, had not there come a sharp command from one of the men who had remained mounted. At this, the advancing warriors sheathed their weapons and leaped in, clutching him with their mailed hands.
Despite his valiant resistance, his machete was soon wrested from him, his wrists were bound together behind his back, and he was flung into a saddle in front of one of the riders.
As the cavalcade moved away, Jan saw with relief that Chicma, too, was a prisoner, and not slain as he had feared.
Although the great beasts which carried the mailed warriors were ponderous and clumsy-looking, they traveled across the grassy plain at a considerable speed. It was not long before they reached the forest which Jan had seen from the wall of the ruins. It was much like his jungle of the outside world, though many of the plants were new and strange to him. Here shrub, tree and vine intermingled in such a thick and impenetrable tangle that the riders were forced to pass, single file, along a narrow tunnel which had evidently been cut for the purpose through the thickly interwoven vegetation.
A moment later there flashed through Jan’s nimble mind a plan for making his escape. They had entered one of the thickest and darkest parts of the jungle when he suddenly pivoted in the saddle, catching the man who rode behind him with his elbow, just below the armpit, and hurled him off his mount to the right. Almost at the same instant, he threw himself into the thicket at his left.
Because his hands were bound behind him, Jan fell on his face in the undergrowth. But he quickly scrambled to his feet and dashed away. The shouts of men, the clank of armor and the crashing of jungle growths apprised him of pursuit, and he hurried breathlessly onward.
Although the swift mounts and heavy armor of the warriors had been to their advantage for capturing Jan in the open, they were a hindrance in the jungle. Soon they fell so far behind that the sounds of pursuit came but faintly to the fugitive’s ears. But he did not slacken his pace.
The jungle came to an end with unexpected abruptness, and Jan found himself on the margin of a small stream thickly dotted with water lilies. Just in front of him a black-robed figure—a white man—stood in the stern of a black boat, built and carved to resemble a huge alligator with head and tail up-curved from the water. The man in the black robe, a thickset, ruddy-faced, bullet-headed fellow with a shaved poll, held a long, stout pole with which he was evidently about to push off from shore. But as soon as he saw Jan, the robed man quickly shifted his hold and swung the pole bludgeon-like for his head. Jan dodged, and turned to reenter the shelter of the jungle.
But at that moment his feet slipped on the muddy bank, and he fell, face downward. The boatman’s long staff, which he had avoided the first time, swung again as he tried to scramble to his feet. This time it struck him squarely on the right temple, and brought oblivion.