She no longer displayed the slightest reticence at exposing her nude body in my company. To have done so would have carried modesty to an unnatural degree, since I was unable to see her. This being the case, she could not comprehend my harsh insistence on bathing alone and retaining my few scraps of clothing upon every occasion we were together. I have no doubt that my behavior seemed inexplicable to her; that my rudeness in snatching my hand away from even the most innocent or friendly touch caused pain to the puzzled, bewildered girl.
She could not have realized the agony of soul it cost me to deny myself the exquisite pleasure of the most fleeting, casual touch. Gradually, an estrangement grew, erecting a barrier of silence between us. She bitterly resented my callousness, or what she deemed callousness, not realizing the effort such self-denial cost me. We became remote, Shann withdrawing into hurt and offended silence; I became gruff, irritable and uncommunicative.
One night, as I lay sleepless, tossing in a torment of mingled frustrated desire and horrid self-loathing, I heard her sobbing on the other side of the flimsy partition which divided us.
The next morning she was gone.
It is folly and madness for a blind man to attempt to go searching for a lost comrade in a trackless, tropic jungle.
Very well, then; I was mad and foolish! But I went, nonetheless; I took with me the long pole, pointed at one end and hardened in a bed of coals, which was the principal weapon I had devised for myself early during our time together on the isle. Blundering and crashing, stumbling and tripping, I went into the jungle, hoarsely calling her name.
I found her a little while later. She was bathing in the jungle pool and I fear I surprised her, by my ridiculous display of alarm and fear for her safety. She had heard me crashing and yelling in the depths of the jungle. So had another set of ears, those belonging to a varphax. We had found our jungle isle scantly populated by predators, the varphax being the principal beast of prey; and one previously unknown to me—a shaggy, bison-like boar with curved, wicked tusks and burly, huge shoulders.
It came hurtling out of the undergrowth, attracted by my voice. Shann shrieked and sprang from the pool to assist me. Her own weapons lay on the grass with her rags of clothing.
By hearing alone I ascertained the direction from which the shaggy bull-boar was charging. Dropping to one knee, I braced the butt of my crude spear on the ground while the point was leveled at the brute which thundered down upon me.
In the next instant a massive weight impaled itself upon the point of my weapon, the shaft of which bent almost double and snapped in two before the irresistible fury of the varphax charge. In the next split second something like an express train crashed into me, knocking me head over heels.
Blackness closed about me for a time; I recovered to find my head pillowed on the bare thighs of Shann, who wept and caressed my brow with gentle fingers.
“Don’t die, oh, don’t die!” the girl sobbed, covering my face with frantic kisses. As one in a dream, I lifted my lips to hers and drew her slender, sobbing form into the strong circle of my arms. And we kissed… a long, passionate caress that left me shaken and speechless, but somehow at peace.
The naked girl lay in my arms, unresisting.
“How long have you known?” she murmured dreamily.
“From the beginning,” I said. “I have loved you from the beginning. And you?”
“I don’t know,” the girl whispered. “It happened so slowly… I didn’t want this to happen, so I told you I was a—a boy. Why are you crying?”
“Am I crying? I didn’t know blind men could cry… because I didn’t want this to happen either, I fought against it so long, with so much pain. Shann—I love another, back in the world of trees and cities… she may be dead by now, for aught I know; but I feel as if I have betrayed her…”
The girl drew my lips to her and kissed me, sweetly and lingeringly. “I, too, love another… although in my case I know that the man to whom my heart is given has gone down to death; I saw him die with my own eyes long ago. And I feel as you do, my beloved; that I have betrayed one who is not here to defend himself… and that his ghost stands between us… forever.”
In our misery, in our ecstacy, we clung together near the corpse of the dead monster. I loved her, and hated myself for my weakness in giving way to that love.
However could I face Niamh the Fair again?
Chapter 14.
VISITOR FROM THE SKIES
The pirates were as unprepared for the revolt of their galley-slaves as they were for the furious storm which broke about them. Fully armed, well fed, they should have been more than a match for the scrawny starvelings who fell upon them with bare hands. But no warrior born fights with such furious, desperate abandon as a slave striving for freedom. The Barbarians were terrified and disorganized by the tempest, the mighty waves which sluiced the deck; the almost continual blinding flicker of lightning, and the bellowing of wind and thunder.
A milling, frightened throng, they surged about the deck getting in each other’s way; bellowing confused and conflicting orders, they staggered under the buffets of wind and rain which lashed at them. When the freed slaves came roaring up out of the hold, it took them completely by surprise. They fought as best they could; but a swaying deck swept by a howling gale and slick with running water makes a poor battlefield for warriors long accustomed to pitched battles on dry land. And the slaves, all of them, were seasoned mariners. Hence, the outcome of the revolt was not long in question; and when I, Karn, slew their leader, what little heart they had for the conflict went out of them. Marshalling his men intelligently, seizing every slight advantage, Prince Andar got the upper hand and held it until the eventual victory.
Some of his lords were all for pitching those Barbarians who had survived the battle over the side and into the sea, but at this Andar demurred. It was not so much that he was squeamish; for to his way of thinking, the only good Barbarian was a dead Barbarian. Instead, his reason for sparing the lives of his former masters was one of grim necessity; many hands were needed to operate the Xothun, and the former slaves alone were not number enough. Starved, abused and beaten, none of them were in the best condition; many had suffered injuries during the battle. Besides, it pleased his appetite for vengeance to see their former masters chained to the slimy benches where they had long endured insult and degradation.
Under the command of experienced mariners, the Xothun safely rode out the storm with her rigging only slightly impaired. The squall, despite its violence, proved one of brief duration; within the space of an hour or so, the skies cleared and the waves grew calm. My disappearance had long since been discovered, of course; for many eyes had been upon me while I struggled with Hoggur. They had seen me swept over the side by a breaking wave. My former shipmates were helpless to search for me until the tempest had subsided; once the storm was over, however, they wasted no time in dispatching longboats to search the waters for my body, although there seemed little hope that I could possibly have survived. In the darkness of night, the search was finally abandoned and my demise was assumed.
Poor old Klygon was despondent; together, we had survived a host of perils and it seemed unbelievable to my stouthearted comrade that I was no more. Andar and his lordlings, who had known me for only a brief time, regretted my death and praised me for my share in the victory. With dawn the repairs to the ship were completed; the vessel was cleaned, neatened and put to rights by the very hands of those whose slovenly, careless ways had soiled and cluttered her.