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Updated: June 14, 2025
I saw that she would not leave me unless she thought that I could make that frightful dive as we had seen Juag make it. I glanced once downward; then with a mental shrug I assured her that I would dive the mo-ment that she reached the boat. Satisfied, she began the descent carefully, yet swiftly.
Of all the venomous, wicked, cruel-hearted beasts on two worlds, I think a female hyaenodon takes the palm. But eventually she tolerated Juag as she had Dian and me, and the five of us set out toward the coast, for Juag had just completed his labors on the thag when we arrived. We ate some of the meat before starting, and gave the hounds some. All that we could we carried upon our backs.
The result was that as we were passing through a clump of bush a score of warriors leaped out upon us, and before we could scarce strike a blow in defense, had disarmed and bound us. For a time thereafter I seemed to be entirely bereft of hope. I could see no ray of promise in the future only immediate death for Juag and me, which didn't concern me much in the face of what lay in store for Dian.
I saw quickly that in another moment Juag must deliberately hurl himself to death over the precipice or be pushed over by his foeman. And as I saw Juag's predicament I saw, too, in the same instant, a way to relieve him. Leaping quickly to the side of the fellow I had just felled, I snatched up my fallen revolver.
Seeing the opening, I swung my left fist fairly to the point of his jaw. Down he went. Before ever he could scramble up again I was on him and had buried my knife in his heart. Then I stood up and there was Dian facing me and peering at me through the dense gloom. "You are not Juag!" she exclaimed. "Who are you?" I took a step toward her, my arms outstretched. "It is I, Dian," I said.
The giant threw his hands above his head, whirled about like a huge top, and lunged forward over the precipice. And Juag? He cast a single affrighted glance in my direction never before, of course, had he heard the report of a firearm and with a howl of dismay he, too, turned and plunged headforemost from sight.
I judged that we must have blown a hun-dred miles before the wind and straight out into an unknown sea! As suddenly as the wind rose it died again, and when it died it veered to blow at right angles to its former course in a gentle breeze. I asked Juag then what our course was, for he had had the compass last. It had been on a leather thong about his neck.
Juag had been terror-stricken when he had learned that I intended crossing the ocean, and when we passed out of sight of land he was in a blue funk. He said that he had never heard of such a thing before in his life, and that always he had understood that those who ventured far from land never returned; for how could they find their way when they could see no land to steer for?
I let her come alongside, and then Juag and I pulled her in, she snapping and snarling at us as we did so; but, strange to relate, she didn't offer to attack us after we had ensconced her safely in the bottom alongside Raja.
I tried to explain the compass to him; and though he never really grasped the scientific explanation of it, yet he did learn to steer by it quite as well as I. We passed several islands on the journey islands which Juag told me were entirely unknown to his own island folk. Indeed, our eyes may have been the first ever to rest upon them.
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