pears--and I have learned to use
them. I have slain a lion with my club. So even will a cornered rat
fight. And we are no better than rats in this land of stupendous
dangers, you and I. But tell me about yourself. If it is surprising
that I live, how much more so that you still survive."

Briefly she told him and all the while she was wondering what she might
do to rid herself of him. She could not conceive of a prolonged
existence with him as her sole companion. Better, a thousand times
better, to be alone. Never had her hatred and contempt for him lessened
through the long weeks and months of their constant companionship, and
now that he could be of no service in returning her to civilization,
she shrank from the thought of seeing him daily. And, too, she feared
him. Never had she trusted him; but now there was a strange light in
his eye that had not been there when last she saw him. She could not
interpret it--all she knew was that it gave her a feeling of
apprehension--a nameless dread.

"You lived long then in the city of A-lur?" he said, speaking in the
language of Pal-ul-don.

"You have learned this tongue?" she asked. "How?"

"I fell in with a band of half-breeds," he replied, "members of a
proscribed race that dwells in the rock-bound gut through which the
principal river of the valley empties into the morass. They are called
Waz-ho-don and their village is partly made up of cave dwellings and
partly of houses carved from the soft rock at the foot of the cliff.
They are very ignorant and superstitious and when they first saw me and
realized that I had no tail and that my hands and feet were not like
theirs they were afraid of me. They thought that I was either god or
demon. Being in a position where I could neither escape them nor defend
myself, I made a bold front and succeeded in impressing them to such an
extent that they conducted me to their city, which they call Bu-lur,
and there they fed me and treated me with kindness. As I learned their
language I sought to impress them more and more with the idea that I
was a god, and I succeeded, too, until an old fellow who was something
of a priest among them, or medicine-man, became jealous of my growing
power. That was the beginning of the end and came near to being the end
in fact. He told them that if I was a god I would not bleed if a knife
was stuck into me--if I did bleed it would prove conclusively that I
was not a god. Without my knowledge he arrange