CHAPTER VI. HOW PHOTOGEN GREW.
The hollow in which the castle of Watho lay, was a cleft in a plainrather than a valley among hills, for at the top of its steep sides,both north and south, was a table-land, large and wide. It was coveredwith rich grass and flowers, with here and there a wood, the outlyingcolony of a great forest. These grassy plains were the finest huntinggrounds in the world. Great herds of small, but fierce cattle, withhumps and shaggy manes, roved about them, also antelopes and gnus, andthe tiny roedeer, while the woods were swarming with wild creatures.The tables of the castle were mainly supplied from them. The chief ofWatho's huntsmen was a fine fellow, and when Photogen began to outgrowthe training she could give him, she handed him over to Fargu. He witha will set about teaching him all he knew. He got him pony after pony,larger and larger as he grew, every one less manageable than thatwhich had preceded it, and advanced him from pony to horse, and fromhorse to horse, until he was equal to anything in that kind which thecountry produced. In similar fashion he trained him to the use of bowand arrow, substituting every three months a stronger bow and longerarrows; and soon he became, even on horseback, a wonderful archer. Hewas but fourteen when he killed his first bull, causing jubilationamong the huntsmen, and, indeed, through all the castle, for there toohe was the favourite. Every day, almost as soon as the sun was up, hewent out hunting, and would in general be out nearly the whole of theday. But Watho had laid upon Fargu just one commandment, namely, thatPhotogen should on no account, whatever the plea, be out untilsundown, or so near it as to wake in him the desire of seeing what wasgoing to happen; and this commandment Fargu was anxiously careful notto break; for, although he would not have trembled had a whole herd ofbulls come down upon him, charging at full speed across the level, andnot an arrow left in his quiver, he was more than afraid of hismistress. When she looked at him in a certain way, he felt, he said,as if his heart turned to ashes in his breast, and what ran in hisveins was no longer blood, but milk and water. So that, ere long, asPhotogen grew older, Fargu began to tremble, for he found it steadilygrowing harder to restrain him. So full of life was he, as Fargu saidto his mistress, much to her content, that he was more like a livethunderbolt than a human being. He did not know what fear was, andthat not because he did not know danger; for he had had a severelaceration from the razor-like tusk of a boar--whose spine, however,he had severed with one blow of his hunting-knife, before Fargu couldreach him with defence. When he would spur his horse into the midst ofa herd of bulls, carrying only his bow and his short sword, or shootan arrow into a herd, and go after it as if to reclaim it for arunaway shaft, arriving in time to follow it with a spear-thrustbefore the wounded animal knew which way to charge, Fargu thought withterror how it would be when he came to know the temptation of thehuddle-spot leopards, and the knife-clawed lynxes, with which theforest was haunted. For the boy had been so steeped in the sun, fromchildhood so saturated with his influence, that he looked upon everydanger from a sovereign height of courage. When, therefore, he wasapproaching his sixteenth year, Fargu ventured to beg of Watho thatshe would lay her commands upon the youth himself, and release himfrom responsibility for him. One might as soon hold a tawny-maned lionas Photogen, he said. Watho called the youth, and in the presence ofFargu laid her command upon him never to be out when the rim of thesun should touch the horizon, accompanying the prohibition with hintsof consequences, none the less awful that they were obscure. Photogenlistened respectfully, but, knowing neither the taste of fear nor thetemptation of the night, her words were but sounds to him.