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Had Nalasu not been struck down by the ultimate nothingness, Jerry would have remained. This is true, and this, perhaps, to the one who considers his action, might have been the way he reasoned. But he did not reason it, did not reason at all; he acted on impulse.
Not until the end of five minutes of mad struggling, in which he behaved for all the world like a beheaded chicken, did he find life tolerable again. The maximum of stifling and of agony passed, and, although he was still weak and giddy, he tottered in the direction of the house and of Nalasu. And there was no house and no Nalasu only a debris intermingled of both.
Each repeated his actions with each fresh shell, for, while they screamed no more loudly, they burst in the jungle more closely. And Nalasu, who had lived a long life most bravely in the midst of perils he had known, was destined to die a coward out of his fear of the thing unknown, the chemically propelled missile of the white masters.
For Jerry, as well as Nalasu, knew that death rustled and lurked in the encircling dark. Again came a softness of movement, nearer than before; but the sped arrow missed. They heard its impact against a tree trunk beyond and a confusion of small sounds caused by the target's hasty retreat. Next, after a time of silence, Nalasu told Jerry silently to retrieve the arrow.
They are of a size, but the pig has more meat on it for the eating. Take the pig and I shall take the dog." "Nay," said Agno. "The white master's dog has broken the taboo. It must be eaten. Take any other dog and leave the pig. Take a big dog." "I will have the white master's dog," Nalasu persisted. "Only the white master's dog and no other."
The last slow trailers in the rear of the exodus were just passing, and Nalasu, his bow and his eighty arrows clutched to him, Jerry at his heels, made his first step to follow, when the air above him was rent by a prodigiousness of sound. Nalasu sat down abruptly. It was his first shell, and it was a thousand times more terrible than he had imagined.
And Jerry, alert to his toes to listen, by an alteration in the quantity or quality of his whuff, would tell Nalasu that he did not hear; next, that he did hear; and, perhaps finally, that it was a strange dog, or a wood-rat, or a man, or a boy all in the softest of sounds that were scarcely more than breath-exhalations, all monosyllables, a veritable shorthand of speech.
And, since the Somo code was a life for a life, and since Nalasu alone remained alive of his family, it was well known throughout the tribe that the Annos would never be content until they had taken the blind man's life. But Nalasu had been famous as a great fighter, as well as having been the progenitor of three such warlike sons.
When he had drunk till for the moment he could drink no more, he thanked Nalasu with his tongue not warmly nor ecstatically as had it been Skipper's hand, but with due gratefulness for the life-giving draught.
I have a wife for you nay, two wives, for your days are short and I shall surely live to see you hang with my fathers from the canoe-house ridgepole." "I will not pay for a wife," Nalasu protested. "I will not pay for any wife. I would not pay a stick of tobacco or a cracked coconut for the best woman in Somo." "Worry not," Bashti went on placidly.
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