United States or Saint Pierre and Miquelon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I had become a disciple of Lys' fleeting philosophy of the valuelessness of human life. I realized that she was quite right that we were but comic figures hopping from the cradle to the grave, of interest to practically no other created thing than ourselves and our few intimates. Behind To-jo stood So-ta.
The comely woman of whom I spoke was called So-ta, and she took such a lively interest in me that To-jo finally objected to her attentions, emphasizing his displeasure by knocking her down and kicking her into a corner of the cavern. I leaped between them while he was still kicking her, and obtaining a quick hold upon him, dragged him screaming with pain from the cave.
For example, among the Band-lu were such types as So-ta, who seemed to me to be the highest in the scale of evolution, and To-jo, who was just a shade nearer the ape, while there were others who had flatter noses, more prognathous faces and hairier bodies. The question puzzled me. Possibly in the outer world the answer to it is locked in the bosom of the Sphinx. Who knows? I do not.
He will kill So-ta if he knows that So-ta aided you. We will go together." "I will go with you to the Kro-lu," I replied, "but then I must return to my own people `toward the beginning." "You cannot go back," she said. "It is forbidden. They would kill you. Thus far have you come there is no returning." "But I must return," I insisted. "My people are there.
So-ta had given me a suggestion; but the resulting idea was so weird that I could scarce even entertain it; yet it coincided with Ahm's expressed hope, with the various steps in evolution I had noted in the several tribes I had encountered and with the range of type represented in each tribe.
I must have lain there bound and uncomfortable for two or three hours when at last So-ta entered the cave. She carried a sharp knife mine, in fact, and with it she cut my bonds. "Come!" she said. "So-ta will go with you back to the Galus. It is time that So-ta left the Band-lu. Together we will go to the Kro-lu, and after that the Galus. To-jo will kill you tonight.
Then I made him promise not to hurt the she again, upon pain of worse punishment. So-ta gave me a grateful look; but To-jo and the balance of his women were sullen and ominous. Later in the evening So-ta confided to me that she was soon to leave the tribe. "So-ta soon to be Kro-lu," she confided in a low whisper.
He would give me a day to think it over; then he left, and the women left the men for the hunt, and the women, as I later learned from So-ta, for the warm pool where they immersed their bodies as did the shes of the Sto-lu. "Ata," explained So-ta, when I questioned her as to the purpose of this matutinal rite; but that was later.
So-ta said that she would enter alone; I must not be seen if I did not intend to remain, as it was forbidden that one should return and live after having advanced this far. So she left me. She was a dear girl and a stanch and true comrade more like a man than a woman. In her simple barbaric way she was both refined and chaste. She had been the wife of To-jo.
Word Of The Day