Chapter XIX: To Be Made Into Fresh Meat

Wing-foot and Sure-dart were meanwhile slipping softly but quickly toward the spring. As it was so near they were speedily there, and without losing a moment began their work. Things immediately around were quiet, and more so than usual; for the night creatures seemed displeased with the new weather, and the most of them were silent, and the breeze had fined down, so that it made little stir among the trees. From the enemies’ camp came now and then some minor noise, such as a small momentary outbreak of talk, or the groaning and fussing of somebody in pain from wounds; but that was at present all.

It was a longer job to put even a moderate amount of the cinders and other stuff back into the water than they had thought. In the first place, it was not heaped up in one spot, but thrown about, and in the darkness they could not always find it; besides, they had no proper tools to work with, and, in fact, had to depend mainly on their hands.

After a little of this kind of work they grew impatient and a bit nervous, and began to claw about energetically, and to handle the stuff, as they lighted on it, with small regard to the noise. It did not make very much, anyway, and they took the chance.

At last they thought they had done enough, and after a whisper between them knocked off. They slipped their knives back into the loops in their girdles, and began to run. They could tell, even in the obscurity, where the hill rose against the sky.

They did not look around, and so did not see four creeping shapes come out of the bushes beyond the hollow, and dart softly but swiftly along in their wake. Yet these shapes, coming down from the camp, had passed within half a spear’s cast of them, and then had wormed unheard into the bushes. These bushes clumped out hard by the spring itself, and from there it would be convenient to make a rush. But just then the two finished and started off, and instead of the rush the hiders waited a moment, and then came sneaking after.

At first, on account of the rough ground, the two runners held back, and did not go much faster than a dog-trot; now, on the more even space above, they let out a notch.

Now they were near the rock, and its great face loomed black, and cut off what light there was. There was a small noise behind them, and they both slackened, and turned their heads. It was suspiciously like the slapping of bare feet on the hard ground. And it was that, for while their heads were still screwed around, the noise sharpened, and four black human shapes took outline against the darkness.

There was no lack of plain-enough noises now. The four yelled, and other men creeping down the slopes answered them, and at the camp broke out a clatter of spears and axes on shields. From the rock above came down shouts and encouraging cries.

Wing-foot and Sure-dart were not looking over their shoulders now, but were running as only two of the fleetest human beings then on the earth could run. The looming figures behind began to grow dim again.

Wing-foot, pelting to it wonderfully, and going almost as fast as a hunting dog, was now in the lead. Sure-dart, however, was not many paces behind.

The rock was nigh. Wing-foot stopped, and began pawing and plucking at the rope. He had it now, and was off the ground.

Sure-dart stopped, breathing hard. It was not so much lack of breath as something else, for the rope would hold but one at a time. Death, in the shape of the looming-up figures, seemed at hand.

He had not lost his knife. He drew it, and turned. Nothing else came into his mind to do, for here could be no surrender. That would be merely a shorter road to a smashed skull, and an unknown number of hungry stomachs. Better to fight it out, then, and go down in hot blood, perhaps hardly knowing when the ending blow came. Besides, that was the way a Rock-man and a warrior was expected to do.

Out of the “tail of his eye” he saw Wing-foot hoisting and hitching his way to safety. That was right in him, for he could do nothing by staying, and it was properly a case of “first come, first served.”

He stood up straight, but a little sidewise, his knife drawn back.

Now the gang was upon him. There were yells, and--something or other was wrong. He could not exactly see, and he thought his knees were sagging under him. The yells seemed farther off--he did not hear them at all.

It was merely that a stone had struck him on the side of the head. It did no more than stun him. One man bent over him, knife drawn back, but the warrior who had thrown the stone, a tall, strong fellow, pushed him aside.

“No! he is mine. We will take him to the camp and eat him.”

It was a short speech, but very much to the point. Besides, the speaker was Long-spear, and the man, like all the others who had come up, was a Fisher. He mumbled something, but stood back, and obeyed his chief. One of the late comers had a spear, and the chief took it, and lashed the boy to it with belts. Then two men took up the load, and with a little care, on account of the darkness, the whole gang swarmed off across the flat.

Wing-foot was safe. He had pulled and hitched so fast that he was two spears’ lengths clear of the ground when Sure-dart went down. Some of the gang had thrown stones at him, but in the obscurity they had missed, and a few who seized the rope and shook it did not break his desperate grip. Probably they would soon have thought of taking hold together and snapping the rope, risking a heavy thump from the falling climber, or else they might have whipped him, so to speak, against the rock; but before they were ready to do either they found that they had lost their chance to do anything. The shrewd and cool fellow had stopped, and, with a turn of his leg around the rope to sustain him, had jerked up the end of it, and made it fast. Then he went on steadily and uninterruptedly to the top. There were no spears or darts seasonably on hand to throw at him.

Sure-dart, lashed, like a captured bear, to the spear-shaft, was meanwhile carried to the camping ground and dumped down. By this time he had come to himself. He got a sharp thump on his wounded head, as he brought up, but it did not stun him, and he did not mind it. He had more serious things to think of.

Long-spear and the others seemed decidedly pleased at their capture, and Sure-dart could not blame them for it, as it was really the first successful piece of work that they had so far carried out. Even one prisoner, and a boy at that, was something, especially as he was an uncommonly smart boy, and as the ranks of the defenders were now so thin. But Sure-dart was not only almost sick with horror at what lay before him, but he was mortified as well. But for the haste and carelessness with which he and his companion had worked, he would probably have escaped trouble, as it was undoubtedly the noise, slight as it was, that had attracted the attention of some of the keen-eared rascals.

It was only a few minutes after he had been dumped down that a Fisher came along, and with some pieces of lizard-skin lashed first his wrists together, and then his ankles. He did this without untying the belts that still held him to the spear. They seemed to be determined to lose nothing by any carelessness on their part. When this fellow was through with him, the man previously on guard came a little nearer and sat down by him.

But wild creatures, whether men or animals, early pick up various shrewd and cunning ways of getting out of scrapes, and perhaps are helped besides by what we call instinct (though it is hard to say how far this term properly applies); and so Sure-dart, a superior little animal, had already started to do something toward getting out of his scrape. When they tied his wrists together he thought of an old trick that Big-axe had told him about, and swelled out the muscles of his wrists as much as he could, and slightly pushed his wrists apart. He managed this slyly, so that it was not noticed. Though there seemed to be a very poor chance to get away, even if he could get rid of his bonds, yet that offered the only chance that there seemed to be at all, and he quickly caught at it. He now began to test his bit of work.

His joints and muscles were supple, and he had gained a little space by his swelling-out trick, and he soon found that he could get rid of the wrist fastenings. This he did, and then started at the leg bonds. Here he would, of course, have had an easy time, since he had the use of his fingers, but that he would have to change his position a bit in order to work, and this might attract the notice of his guard. In fact, he now had to wait several minutes, till the guard was looking another way, and then, very cautiously, made a little crawl. The guard looked back, but did not seem to notice anything new, and Sure-dart once more lay still.

But even if he should get rid of the thongs about his wrists and ankles, there would still be left the bands about his body, which lashed him to the spear-shaft. They were secured in such a way that it would be very difficult to get rid of them undetected, and yet he could not stir a foot with them on. As the spear projected both above his head and below his feet, he could not rise, and even if he managed to shove the spear up, so that his feet projected, he would still be unable to go faster than a walk. Besides, any movement so pronounced as thus altering the position of the spear must quickly be noticed.

Yet all this, though it must be thought of, could not be allowed to weigh anything against the need of doing something; and something, accordingly, he soon tried to do. Reaching down as far as he could, and at the same time trying not to change noticeably the position of his body, he finally got the leg thongs off. He did not, of course, throw them aside, but kept them across his legs, so that a casual glance, in the poor light, would make them appear still in place. In this way, also, he had managed the wrist fastenings.

All this took a number of minutes, perhaps a half-hour. Meanwhile, he was left to himself, except for the guard, though the nearest of the others were hardly more than a spear’s length off. He found that there was a talk of some moment going on, and that seemed considerably to excite the talkers, especially the leaders and older warriors, and this was helping him greatly by taking their attention from him. From what he could understand of the talk (both dialects were considerably like the speech of the Rock-men, seeming to indicate that the three peoples came from the same original stock) he found that the leading men among the Fishers, including Long-spear, were for continuing the siege, while the Islanders seemed to be for making one more assault, and if that failed, to give up and go home. There was only one thing on which they seemed fully to agree, and that was that Sure-dart should be kept till morning, and then taken out, and in full view of his friends should be tortured, killed, and eaten.

The whole matter interested Sure-dart greatly, especially the last part, and though this was only what he was looking for, yet, when he came to hear it put so fully into words, it gave him a new and most unpleasant thrill, and nerved him afresh to go on with what he was doing.

By this time he had made one discovery, which was that several warriors of both of the tribes were sore and rather stiff from wounds, and that two had died of poison from the defenders’ darts. Not only that, but several had been made sick by the change of food and water, and by the fumes of the terrible shower from the thrown-up mountain. In this connection it is to be thought of that savages, though they may be strong and hardy, are often unable to stand a small change of food and climate, and that many kinds of powerful wild animals cannot stand them at all. The Rock-people had already felt some ill effects from the change, especially the older and weaker ones; and yet, high up on the rock and away from the ground damps and the settling fumes of the bad vapors they were better off than the besiegers. Sure-dart was therefore the more encouraged, as far as the result for his people was concerned, than he had been at any time before, though for himself personally he had only a kind of desperate hope.

After a while the Islander chief (Sure-dart had found that his name was Strong-back) came along and looked at Sure-dart, and pleasantly gave him a few light jabs with his spear.

Sure-dart could hardly help wincing, but he had time to think that it would not be the thing for a warrior of the Rock-people to do, and managed to hold himself steady. He had the satisfaction of thinking that the long weapons of the Islanders, like those of the Fishers and of his own people, were not usually poisoned. These pricks were not very deep, either, and not at all crippling.

Strong-back grunted, but whether with satisfaction at the pleasure he got from the pricking, or out of respect for the boy’s pluck, it was hard to say. He turned away, and went about his business again, to Sure-dart’s great relief.

Then the desperate little fellow went at the thongs that bound him to the spear, and by dogged perseverance found and untied the knots.

The next thing was to wait for the right moment. It really began to look like a possible chance, and Sure-dart felt some of his old confidence and steadiness coming back. He got everything ready for a fling and a jump, and even rubbed his somewhat numbed legs, that they might not work too slowly.

And then came, almost as if it had been a stunning blow, something new and totally unexpected. The most of the warriors lay down to sleep, and when the guards were posted another Fisher came along, and sat down beside him. The fellow had a hound-like air of alertness and watchfulness, and even put his spear down in a handy position beside him. Sure-dart could not help a little sigh, but was able to hide his disappointment otherwise. Inwardly he felt, as he might have expressed it, as if somebody had hit him in the stomach. His very fingers turned cold.

Soon it came to him what this extra watchfulness probably meant. His captors thought that the lion-hearted Big-axe might lead out a desperate rescue party, it being perhaps in his mind, too, to do what damage generally he could, and in that case the guard would see to it that they got no boy, unless it was a dead one.

It is merely painful to dwell further on the poor fellow’s disappointment. He was watched so closely all night that he could hardly stir without the notice of his guards. Once, when he was tired of lying in one position, and turned a little, the second guard punched him with the butt of his spear, and told him to lie still. After that, till sunrise, he moved as little as possible.

As soon as it was fairly light the camp began to stir, and first all hands had breakfast. This, light as was their supply of provisions, did not take long. Then they got together and started to settle the great question of their future policy. Now, as Sure-dart saw, a number of the Fishers sided with the Islanders, and wanted to make one more assault, and if that failed, to give up the whole affair. Here there was some friction between Long-spear and Strong-back, and the Islander who had, it seemed, a little irritating wound, and was not well besides, growled out some rather sharp things; among them he hinted that Long-spear was pretty careful of his own safety, as had been proved by his conduct in the former assaults. It was a fact that Long-spear had not appeared to be very eager in the hottest part of the fighting, and had not been wounded, and that Strong-back had been nearer the barricade, and had got a long-distance jab from a spear. Long-spear, though he was more crafty than eager in battle, and had a good command of his temper, fired up at this, and for a moment it looked as if there would be a lively little war in the camp itself. However, after some sharp jabbering and gesticulating and the interference of some of the older warriors, the trouble was patched up, and the original talk was resumed.

It was wound up pretty soon this time, and ended with rather a queer compromise. There would neither be an assault nor a prolonged siege, but they would first torture Sure-dart, making believe, as they did it, to be off their guard, and hoping thus to draw out a relief party, and if this failed they would give up the whole affair.

This settled, they picked up poor Sure-dart, and carried him farther out in the open, where he would be plainly in sight from the fort, and in a leisurely way, meaning to give the garrison time to plan and attempt a dash, made ready to begin the torture.