Balal leaped across the cook fire and struck the lad heavily with his open palm across the face, sending him spinning up against the cliff wall. “Shut up, Dhung,” he cried, “or I’ll pitch you over the edge.”
The remaining member of the family party, a girl, just ripening into womanhood, remained silent where she was seated, leaning against the face of the cliff, her large, dark eyes taking in the scene being enacted before her. Suddenly the woman, turned upon her. “Why don’t you do something, Gura?” she demanded. “You sit there and let them attack me and never raise a hand in my defense.”
“But no one has attacked you, mother,” said the girl, with a sigh.
“But I will,” yelled Scurv, seizing a short club that lay beside him. “I’ll knock her head off if she doesn’t keep a still tongue in it and hurry with that food.” At this instant a loud scream attracted the attention of all toward another family group before a cave, a little further along the ledge. Here, a man, grasping a woman by her hair, was beating her with a stick, while several children were throwing pieces of rock, first at their parents and then at one another.
“Hit her again!” yelled Scurv.
“Scratch out his eyes!” screamed Sloo, and for the moment the family of the chief forgot their own differences in the enjoyable spectacle of another family row.
Tanar looked on in consternation and surprise. Never had he witnessed such tumult and turmoil in the villages of the Sarians, and coming, as he just had, from Amiocap, the island of love, the contrast was even more appalling.
“Don’t mind them,” said Balal, who was watching the Sarian and had noticed the expression of surprise and disgust upon his face. “If you stay with us long you will get used to it, for it is always like this. Come on, let’s eat, the food is ready,” and drawing his stone knife he fished into the pot and speared a piece of meat.
Tanar, having no knife, had recourse to one of his arrows, which answered the purpose quite as well, and then, one by one, the family gathered around as though nothing unusual had happened, and fell, too, upon the steaming stew with avidity.
During the meal they did not speak other than to call one another vile names, if two chanced to reach into the caldron simultaneously and one interfered with another.