She landed heavily on one shoulder but was up again and coming for me almost immediately, so mad that she was practically foaming at the mouth.

As I had thrown her, she had dropped the stick with which she had intended to beat me to death. I stooped and recovered it; and before she could reach me, I swung a terrific blow that landed squarely on top of her cranium. Down she went-down and out.

The other women-warriors looked on in amazement for a moment; then one of them came for me, and several others closed in. I didn't need the evidence of the Stone Age invectives they were hurling at me, to know that they were pretty sore; and I realized that my chances were mighty slim; in fact they were nil against such odds. I had to do some very quick thinking right then.

"Wait," I said, backing away from them, "you have just seen what Gluck does to women who abuse her men. If you know what's good for you, you'll wait until she comes to."

Well, that sort of made them hesitate; and presently they turned their attention from me to Gluck. She was laid out so cold that I didn't know but that I had killed her; but presently she commenced to move, and after awhile she sat up. She looked around in a daze for a moment or two, and then her eyes alighted on me. The sight of me seemed to recall to her mind what had just transpired. She came slowly to her feet and faced me. I stood ready and waiting, still grasping the stick. All eyes were upon us; but no one moved or said anything; and then at last Gluck spoke.

"You should have been a woman," she said; and then, turning, she started back toward the village.

"Aren't you going to kill him?" demanded Fooge.

"I have just killed one good warrior; I am not going to kill a better one," snapped Gluck. "When there is fighting, he will fight with the women."

When they had all left, Zor and I resumed our work in the garden. Presently Gung's men came and dragged her corpse down to the river, where they rolled it in. Burial is a simple matter in Oog, and the funeral rites are without ostentation. Morticians and florists would starve to death in Oog.

It was all quite practical. There was no hysteria. The fathers of her children simply dragged her along by her hairy legs, laughing and gossiping and making ribald jests.

"That," I said to Zor, "must be the lowest and the saddest to which a human being can sink, that he go to his grave unmourned."

"You will be going down to the river yourself pretty soon," said Zor; "but I promise you that you'll have one mourner."

"What makes you think that I'll be going down to the river so soon?"

"Gluck will get you yet," he replied.

"I don't think so. I think Gluck's a pretty good sport, the way she took her beating."

"'Good sport' nothing," he scoffed. "She'd have killed you the moment she came to, if she hadn't been afraid of you. She's a bully; and, like all bullies, she's a coward. Sometime when you're asleep, she'll sneak up on you and bash your brains out."

"You tell the nicest bedtime stories, Zor," I said.

Chapter IV

OF COURSE the principal topic of conversation between Zor and me was for some time concerned with my set-to with Gluck, and prophesies on Zor's part that I was already as good as dead-just an animated corpse, in fact. But after I had slept twice, and nothing had happened to me, we drifted on to other topics and Zor told me how he happened to be so far from Zoram and what had led to his capture by the warrior-women of Oog.

Zor, it seemed, had been very much in love with a girl of Zoram, who one day wandered too far from the village and was picked up by a party of raiders from another country.

Zor immediately set out upon the trail of the abductors, which carried him through many strange lands for what he estimated to have been a hundred sleeps.

Of course it was impossible to know how far he had travelled; but he must have covered an enormous distance-perhaps two or three thousand miles; but he never overtook the girl's abductors; and finally he was captured by a tribe living in a palisaded village in the heart of a great forest.

"I was there for many sleeps," he said, "my life constantly in danger, for they were instantly threatening to kill me to appease someone they called, 'Ogar.' Without any apparent reason at all, I quite suddenly became an honored guest instead of a prisoner. No explanation whatever was made to me. I was allowed to go and come as I pleased; and, naturally, at the first opportunity, I escaped. Inasmuch as there are several villages of these Jukans in the forest, I hesitated to go on in that direction for fear of being captured by some of the other villagers; and so I climbed out of the valley with the intention of making a wide detour; but after I came down out of the mountains into this valley, I was captured."

"Where does the Valley of the Jukans lie?" I asked.

"There," he said, pointing in the direction of the snowcapped mountains that bordered one side of the valley.

"That, I think, is the direction I shall have to go to reach Sari," I said.

"You think?" he demanded. "Don't you know?"

I shook my head. "I haven't that peculiar instinct that the Pellucidarians have, which inevitably guides them toward their homes."

"That is strange," he said. "I can't imagine anyone not being able to go directly toward his home, no matter where he may be."

"Well, I am not a Pellucidarian, you see," I explained; "and so I have not that instinct."

"Not a Pellucidarian?" he demanded. "But there is nobody in the world who is not a Pellucidarian."

"There are other worlds than Pellucidar, Zor, even though you may never have heard of them; and I am from one of those other worlds.