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The sky was turning whitish through the trees when I woke up. Novaya was still sound asleep. I watched her in silence and sighed as I remembered her cruelty to our poor chimp. She had likely also been the reason behind our misadventure by pointing us out to her companions. But how could one hold this against her when faced with the perfection of her body.
Just then she stirred and raised her head. A gleam of fear came into her eyes, and I felt her muscles contract. Since I did not move, however, her face slowly relaxed. She remembered, by Jove! She managed for the first time to endure my gaze for a moment. I regarded this as a personal victory and went so far as to smile at her again, forgetting her previous reaction to this earthly manifestation.
But it was less intense this time. She shivered, stiffened again as if about to take flight, but stayed where she was. Encouraged, I smiled more broadly. She trembled again, but eventually calmed down, her face soon expressing nothing but profound shock. Had I succeeded in taming her? I became bold enough to put my hand on her shoulder. A shiver ran down her spine, but she still remained motionless. I was intoxicated by this success and was even more so when I thought she was trying to imitate me.
Yes, it was so! She was trying to smile. I could sense her painful efforts to contract the muscles of her delicate face. She made several attempts, managing, I am sorry to say, only to produce a kind of painful grimace. There was something tremendously moving about this excessive labor on the part of one human being to achieve an everyday expression, and with such a pathetic result. Suddenly, I felt extremely touched, filled with compassion as if for a crippled child. I increased the pressure of my hand on her shoulder. I brought my face closer to hers. She replied to this gesture, by rubbing her nose against mine, and then passing her tongue over my cheek.
I was bewildered and hesitant. To stay on the safe side, I imitated her in my trademark clumsy fashion. After all, I was an alien visitor, and it was my responsibility to adopt the customs of the great Chang-Er system. She seemed satisfied. We had gone thus far in our attempts at communication, myself none too sure how to continue, scared of committing some blunder with my Earthly ways, when a horrifying hootenanny made us start up in alarm.
I found myself with my two companions, whom I had so selfishly forgotten, standing bolt upright in the gathering dawn. Novaya had sprung to her feet even more quickly and showed signs of the deepest terror. I understood immediately that this din was a nasty surprise not just for us but for all the forest-dwellers, as all of them, abandoning their lairs, had started running helter-skelter in panic. This was not a game, as on the previous day; their cries expressed sheer horror.
This din, at once destroying the peace of the forest, was enough to make your blood run cold, but I felt besides that the men of the jungle knew what was in the offing and that their fear was caused by the approach of a specific danger. It was an odd cacophony, a mixture of rattling sounds like a drum-roll, other more discordant noises resembling a clashing of pots and pans, and also shouts. It was the shouts that made the most impression on us, although they were in a language unlike anything we'd ever heard before, they were incontestably human.
The early morning light revealed a strange scene in the forest: men, women and children running in all directions, passing and bumping into one another, some of them even climbing into trees as if seeking refuge there. Soon, however, some of the older ones stopped to prick up their ears and listen. The noise was approaching rather slowly. It came from the region where the forest was thick and seemed to emanate from a fairly long unbroken line. I compared it to the noise made by beaters in one of our big Siberian bear shoots.
The tribal elders, it seemed, made a decision. They uttered a series of yelps, which were no doubt signals or orders, and then rushed off in the opposite direction from the noise. The rest of their people followed, and we saw them galloping all around us like a driven deer herd. Novaya, too, was about to take to her heels, but she paused suddenly and turned around towards us---above all towards me, I felt. She uttered a plaintive whimper, which I assumed to be an invitation to follow her, then took one leap and vanished.
The din grew louder, and I thought I heard the undergrowth snapping as if beneath some footsteps. Well, I do admit that I lost my composure. But caution prompted me to stay where I was and to face the newcomers, who, it became clearer every second, were uttering these human cries. But after my ordeal of yesterday, this terrible noise unnerved me. I was infected by the terror of Novaya and the others. I did not pause to think; I did not even stop to consult my companions; I plunged into the undergrowth and took to my heels in the young girl's footsteps.
I ran as fast as I could for several hundred years without being able to catch up to her, and then I noticed that Petrov alone had followed me, Professor Kaminski's age making rapid flight impossible. Petrov was panting beside me. We looked at each other, ashamed of our behavior, and I was about to suggest going back or at least waiting for our leader, when some other noises made us jump in alarm.
As to these, I could not have been mistaken. Gunshots, and they were echoing through the rainforest: one, two, three, then several more at regular intervals, sometimes one at a time, at other times two consecutive shots, strangely reminiscent of a double-barreled shotgun. They were firing in front of us on the path taken by the fugitives. As we paused, the line from which the first din had come, the line of beaters, drew closer, very close to us, sowing panic in us once more. I do not know why the shooting seemed less scary, more familiar than this hellish din. Instinctively I resumed my headlong flight, taking care nevertheless to keep under cover of the undergrowth and to make as little noise as possible. My companion followed after me.147Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQlqmQUy5Lj
We reached the region in which the shots had been heard. I slowed down and crept forward, almost on all fours. Still followed by Petrov, I clambered up some kind of hillock and came to a stop on its summit, panting for breath. There was nothing in front of me but a few trees and a curtain of scrub. I lay there for a moment or two as if floored by a blow, overpowered by a spectacle completely beyond my poor human understanding.
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