Often after fruitless
attempts to make me understand she would hold her palm toward me,
saying, "Galu!" and then touch my breast or arm and cry, "Alu, alu!"
I knew what she meant, for I had learned from Bowen's narrative the
negative gesture and the two words which she repeated. She meant
that I was no Galu, as I claimed, but an Alu, or speechless one.
Yet every time she said this she laughed again, and so infectious
were her tones that I could only join her. It was only natural,
too, that she should be mystified by my inability to comprehend
her or to make her comprehend me, for from the club-men, the lowest
human type in Caspak to have speech, to the golden race of Galus,
the tongues of the various tribes are identical--except for
amplifications in the rising scale of evolution. She, who is a
Galu, can understand one of the Bo-lu and make herself understood
to him, or to a hatchet-man, a spear-man or an archer. The Ho-lus,
or apes, the Alus and myself were the only creatures of human
semblance with which she could hold no converse; yet it was evident
that her intelligence told her that I was neither Ho-lu nor Alu,
neither anthropoid ape nor speechless man.
Yet she did not despair, but set out to teach me her language; and
had it not been that I worried so greatly over the fate of Bowen
and my companions of the Toreador, I could have wished the period
of instruction prolonged.
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