Finally Nature herself came to my assistance. The
night voices slowly ceased, stillness settled over desert
and jungle, and for a long time nothing happened. And
during this armistice my watchfulness gradually relaxed.
Presently my head was nodding in spite of my efforts;
and at last, I suppose, I must have fallen asleep in my
lonely shelter. For I remember nothing more .
Chapter 3
I w a s awakened by the warm rays of the morning sun
striking into my shelter and shining brightly on my face.
How long I had slept I had no means of knowing, but
I was still stiff and sore in every joint as I rose and
stretched, made sure there were no hostile creatures in
sight outside, and then went out into the open, trading
my invaluable pole after me. A moment later I had
reached the summit of my stone hillock and could look
in every direction; and never shall I forget the picture
that lay spread out before me.
I stood overlooking the immediate scene of my ghastly
adventures; a harmless-enough-appearing rock mesa that
extended some three or four hundred feet from jungle
to precipice. But it was not the precipice that held my
fascinated gaze. It was the valley.
This was some three hundred feet below me; I could
see it from above to its fullest extent, and for at least a
A T T A
21
mile it was one vast rectangle of huge colored plants.
They were purple, yellow, russet, violet, pink and blue
and reddish gold; the whole interspersed like a Persian
rug with great light-veined greenish jungle trees whose
branches sometimes offered huge leaves bigger than
beach umbrellas. All this was directly below me. At the
far end of the valley, where the ground began to rise,
great splotches of dark red and brown stood out, and
here it appeared that I was gazing at fields of gorse on
rising hills. Behind these splashes of color still other
green meadows rose, such as one sees in mountain uplands, and at the distant top, dim on the horizon like the great towers of a city many miles away, was the line
of unbelievable cuplike trees that I had seen in the
lightning’s glare. In the daylight they could not be mistaken. They looked like gargantuan apple trees a good thousand feet high.
With a gasp of unbelief I turned to view the country
behind the stone hillocks, the country whence the squat
monster had come; and here I had another surprise. It
was as level as a green Dakota prairie, without any sign
of last night’s rain beneath its heavy green jungle trees.
As far as the eye could reach it stretched, an undulating
plain of grotesque green woods covering coarse yellow
boulders. These woods covered everything, growing
thicker and more tangled in places until they resembled
a kind of tropical jungle, yet never rising over thirty feet
high.
Standing on a hillock as I was, I could see for miles, and
the only break in the monotony was an occasional graceful palmlike tree that rose above the forest, bent its, smooth green trunk toward the sun, and held out a circlet
of bright yellow.
For a moment the whole character of the landscape reminded me irresistibly of pictures of central Africa as depicted in my schoolbooks. Even the occasional high graceful trees with yellow blooms bore a startling resemblance to some kind of gigantic African dandelion palm. They
22
A T T A
, held no kinship whatever with the natural trees of our
own West.
Then my eye fell on the shining hogshead in which I
had spent the night, and my thoughts jumped rapidly to
the inhabitants of this country. Surely that cone of
polished metal, remarkably like a huge thimble, spoke
of human civilization, as did the sharp well-made lance
at my side. No squat monster with vague eyes had ever
cast such things. There must be people in this land,
though whether hostile or friendly no one could predict.
At the thought I realized for the first time that I was
hungry, almost ravenous. I had not eaten for an unknown length of time, more than twenty-four hours possibly, and regular meals have always been a necessary consideration with me. Now, before deciding on any
course of action, I obviously needed food. Even so, the
sight of the jungle intimidated me, and I hesitated to
shoulder my lance and plunge into it again. Without
much doubt the darkness of the night before had aided as
much as hindered me in my escape from my enemy. Another time I might not be so fortunate.
The jungle valley was the only other possibility. I
turned and gazed down into the beautiful country below
me. Should I not be likely to find fruit or possibly an
outlying farmhouse down in its trees?
With this hope in mind I scanned the landscape for
some time for traces of orchards or smoke; but in vain.
The valley appeared as forsaken as the desert above. Indeed, not only did I not find any evidence of life, but the strange conviction that I was suffering from a hallucination took possession of me again as I gazed. Had I not seen such a valley somewhere before, like this one and
yet not like it, clear in its every detail and yet surely as
unfamiliar as another world could be?
I finally shook myself and turned away. Lack of food
must be addling my wits, I concluded.
As I came to this dismal conclusion my foot caught
against some substance lying half hidden in a long gully;
A T T A
23
and here I saw to my surprise that a long, thick black
rope some four inches in diameter lay stretched in a
crevice perhaps forty feet long. With strangely mixed
emotions I walked down to where it ended, stooped to
pick up its frazzled end, and examined it. It had been
snapped asunder by some terrific force, and the strands
of which it was composed were torn into unequal lengths.
I pulled out several and examined them: they were like
the remnants of some old ship’s mooring line along the
docks, still wound around the snubbing pile after the
cable itself had parted. This resemblance, combined with
blackness and the odd texture, suddenly struck me as
very peculiar. What engine or circumstance, here in a
desolate valley, could have snapped this thick rope off
short like a piece of thread?
The whole piece was nearly fifty feet in length, I
judged as I dragged it out of its crevice. It was of a remarkable lightness for its thickness. Indeed, when one unraveled its ends and untwisted the strands that composed it one had something approaching a good resilient twine. It suddenly struck me as valuable, and for some
moments, like any good farmer, I devoted myself to unraveling the snapped end of the big cable and putting the best lengths thus obtained into my pocket against
future emergency.
But I could not eat them, and I was beginning now to
be aware of actual pangs—a further reminder that the
problem of mere sustenance bade fair to overshadow all
else in my present predicament.
Resolutely, I turned my back on my latest discovery
and, lance on my should
er, plunged into the desert jungle, first taking good care to observe the position of sun and shadows so that if necessary I could find my way
back without retracing my outward trail.
For some time, then, I journeyed thus, going forward
slowly over the boulders and among the green trees, my
eyes on the alert for signs of hostile beasts and all my
senses on watch against possible dangers. It grew very
24
A T T A
hot after a while, and the going itself bothered me excessively, For the ground was much rougher than I had imagined, the wild confusion of rocks and great hard
clods of sandstone alternating with thickets of brown
dead trees to produce an extremely treacherous footing
in which an ankle could be turned or wrenched very
easily.
In addition, my lance impeded me by catching in the
thickets, and its great weight soon became an almost unbearable burden, I dared not put it aside, however, for I should then be completely unarmed and helpless. I
made my way slowly onward as best I could.
I had gone some quarter mile, I think, when ahead of
me through the jungle I saw a sort of sandstone clearing
and with renewed hope and energy made for it. I had
been dimly conscious from the beginning of a tremendous life force inhabiting these rustling green woods through which I had been forcing my way. In fact, without having caught sight of a single creature of any kind or description, I had several times imagined that something more than the breeze had set the tough green branches to quivering as I approached them; and once
or twice I could have sworn to the swift disappearance
of some beast or other along the ground or in the air
above, its only trace a sound of scuttling legs or whirring
wings—a sound lost or caught up in the continual rustle
of the jungle trees.
So far, however, I had not laid eyes on any creature.
And there seemed to be an entire lack of fruit or nuts of
all kinds; in fact, of anything edible. It was therefore
with a decided rise of spirits that I now descried the
open space ahead of me. If not human habitation, here
at least was a change in the character of the country.
As I came to the edge of the jungle and looked out, I
saw that I was doomed again to disappointment. A small
clearing, perhaps two acres in extent, lay baking in the
sunlight, with no sign of life or habitation on it and only
the same large sandstone pebbles glittering in the heat. I
A T T A
25
was turning away in bitter disappointment when my eye
was caught by something that moved on the far side of
the open space beside a large boulder. With a quickening
of the breath I crouched down behind a green thicket and
peered through the branches. Something brownish had
raised itself from the pebbles for a moment and then
fallen back. It was more than half behind the boulder
but something in the pose, the gesture, sent a sudden
thrill through my heart. It indefinably suggested a person’s last hopeless attempt to free himself from a trap of some sort. Without stopping to think of the possible
foolhardiness of my action I rose from behind the
thicket and hurried across the clearing. As I rounded
the boulder I stopped short with a cry of dismay and
alarm, and then I fell back a step, grasping my steel
lance tightly.
One of the most grotesque creatures I expect ever to
encounter in my life lay stretched on the ground, almost
beneath a rock that had evidently fallen upon him, pinioning one of his legs. He lay nearly on his back, his other legs, of which there seemed to be three, lying
limply outstretched beside him, mute evidence of his exhaustion. He had apparently given up the struggle to free himself at the exact moment when I caught sight of
him. Now both his arms lay lifeless at his side, and his
head had fallen back upon the pebbles, his two large,
extremely wide-set eyes staring faintly at the sky. He was
clad in a sort of dull brownish leather-like material, burnished in places until it looked like natural armor. And two delicate feelers projected from his enormous head,
weakly tapping the boulder beside him from time to
time as if he considered some despairing plan of moving
it from his imprisoned leg.
For a moment I was too taken aback to stir. Was I in
the presence of some gigantic ant or of one of the inhabitants of this weird country—the forger of my shelter, perhaps, the maker of that piece of rope that I had so
lately appropriated? Or was this some new bestial enemy
26
A T T A
who, if freed, would vengefully seek my life as the
Pleiocene monster had done?
While I stood thus transfixed with doubt, the creature
turned his head and caught sight of me. A faint shudder
ran through him as he made a new convulsive effort to
free himself, and then he fell back again, his eyes fixed
upon me in dumb despair. For the life of me I could not
associate the look he fastened upon me with that of a
wild beast. Strange as his appearance might be, the light
possession of me and would not be thrown off.
He, on his part, evidently took it for granted that
his last hour had come; and this pitiful resignation was, I
suppose, what decided me. Almost before I knew it I
was working feverishly to free him from the weight of
the boulder, air fear of him forgotten.
At first I could not even budge the heavy stone; much
to his disappointment and even surprise, I thought, as
he pulled himself up on his arms and tried vainly to
withdraw his imprisoned leg. Then I bethought myself
of using my lance as a lever; and after a while, by dint
of making a fulcrum with several stones and digging out
a small hole under the boulder with the end of my lance,
I succeeded at last in getting a sufficiently good purchase
to pry the huge rock slowly up and off the unfortunate
creature’s leg, which he withdrew in a badly crushed
condition and gazed at hopelessly.
This done, I sank down, panting from my exertions,
and eyed the strange creature whom I had rescued.
From his acquiescence in my endeavors to help him
and from his eloquent attitude of despair I had already
concluded that I was in no danger of being attacked.
Now it occurred to me that he was kindly disposed toward me and even grateful for what I had done; and when he rose painfully and came limping toward me,
holding up the injured leg for my inspection, I did not
draw back.
A T T A
27
“Hold it out here,” I said, “and hold it still, and we will
see what can be done.”
He seemed to understand, for he remained motionless,
watching my every move with his enormous eyes, while
I cautiously felt the broken bone, straightened it, made
a rough splint from the fiber of a dead tree, and bound it
to the broken limb with a strand of the rope that I had
put in my pocket.
“There,” I said, “that will keep it in place.”
Again the creature seemed to unders
tand, for he passed
one of his feelers slowly over the splint, then raised it
and tapped me lightly on the shoulder several times. I
had lost all fear of him by this time, and there was something so comical about the gratitude of this grotesque being-something so human in spite of the preposterous absence of all human features—that I remember smiling as I rose and went to extricate my lance.
My companion watched me in silence for a few moments as I cleaned the dirt from it; then suddenly he sat up and began gesticulating rapidly with forearms and
feelers, and from his throat came high-pitched sounds.
That he was trying to tell me something was quite evident; it was quite certain, too, that I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. I merely shook my head at him slowly.
“I f s no use,” said I, though of course my words conveyed no meaning to him; “I can’t understand you. The best thing for you to do is to come back with me to my
shelter. You’ll have to be careful for several weeks.” To
amplify this speech I pointed and made the usual absurd gestures that one makes to foreigners and idiots, and I still flatter myself that, in part at least, he understood what I meant. For after a while he ceased his twitterings and began making similar gestures himself, pointing in a direction in which he wished to go and bowing and holding up his injured leg. So ridiculous was the
performance, we resembled so closely those cartoon characters of my boyhood, Alphonse and Gaston, that I had much ado not to laugh. Nevertheless his persistence
28
A T T A
brought its reward. For it suddenly occurred to me that
an injured lodger in my shelter would be no better off
than I was, whereas it was possible that he was offering
me food as well as some better refuge of his own.
“All right,” I said aloud. “I’ll go with you. Maybe you
can find us something to eat.”
And a few minutes later, lance on shoulder and considerable uncertainty in my heart, I was following my new companion as he limped to the north end of the
sandstone clearing and there without ceremony plunged
into the jungle.
I don’t mind confessing that, once in it, injured though
he was, he set me such a swift pace that I had all I could