I tried again. I touched the bigger of the two canines and said, "Dogwolf."
He mastered that more or less, and in return gave me his name for the brute, which was poort or spoort, I could not tell which. His sibilants were tongued so lightly that they were difficult to hear.
I indicated myself and said, "Man." I prodded him and repeated it. Then I realized consciously for the first time that I was now regarding him as a species of human. He had taken me for kin before, as his former use of my name as a generic term plainly proved.
"Ahmusk," said I once more, beating my bosom.
"Ahmusk," said he, pointing; and then, laying a shining-haired paw on his own breast, "Dy-lee!"
"Dy-lee," I said, charming him no end, for he capered grotesquely and nodded his head till the lank thatch flew.
Well, now we were acquainted. My pleasure at finding this strange brute-man was out of all proportion to its apparent importance. I suppose it was reaction to my hours-long suspicion that I had played the complete fool in coming into this country, in following the terrible Halfspoor, in ignoring the age-old forbiddance against crossing into the land of The Nameless.... Now all seemed to have come out well. Halfspoor, who had been proving more than a match for me, had been harried off, evidently on orders from this Dy-lee creature, by a pack of dogwolves. The Nameless were nowhere in evidence. Food and possibly a tree for the night were in the offing. And I had made a wonderful discovery, a brain-shaking find; for if I was right, I had chanced upon a new branch of the family of men.
Through the ruins we went, the dogwolves at our heels; and we were as delighted with one another as two boys who have been given their father's old bone hatchet to play with.