Pages 12-13

Esau Cairn, immediately upon being transported to the planet Almuric, encountered his first inhabitant.

“…The sight, awesome and menacing as it was, yet drove the ice from my veins and brought back some of my dwindling courage. The tangible and material can never be as grizzly as the unknown, however perilous.

At my first startled glance, I thought it was a gorilla which stood before me. Even with the thought, I realized that it was a man, but such a man as neither I nor any other Earthman had ever looked upon.”

In this story and others, Howard, who has been regarded as a racist by mainstream literary critics, has an expansive definition of humanity, which actually includes creatures such as Thak from the apeman from the story, Rogues in the House. In the same blow Howard describes a man-like figure that is taller and broader than the protagonist, Esau Cairn, whose back story includes the fact that he’s the strongest man on earth. This man he meets is far more muscular than he is, spicing this fantasy with a bit of irony for the armchair masculine writer who would imagine himself in a primitive setting. Before we label Howard a racist, we might want to consider the description quoted below in light of the fact that the person being described rated on his scale as fully human.

“Such a countenance is difficult to imagine or describe. The head was set squarely between the massive shoulders, the neck so squat as to be scarcely apparent. The jaw was square and powerful, and as the wide thin lips lifted in a snarl, I glimpsed brutal tusk-like teeth. A short bristly beard masked the beard, set off by fierce, up-curving moustaches. The nose was almost rudimentary, with wide, flaring nostrils. The eyes were small, blood-shot, and an icy grey in color. From the thick, black brows, the forehead, low and receding, sloped back into a tangle of coarse, bushy hair. The ears were very small and close-set.

"The mane and beard were very blue-black, and the creature’s limbs and body were almost covered with hair of the same hue. He was not, indeed, as hairy as an ape, but he was hairier than any human being I had ever seen.”

Having established the fact that the protagonist, formerly the strongest man on a sissy planet, was now standing before an ape-like man who was yet human despite his simian characteristics, Howard puts his hero through a gut check. He has to measure himself against this beastly man who emanates hostility. To his surprise, Esau Cairn, who had just been doubting his ability to deal naked with this savage environment, looks into the bloodshot eyes of this savage and experiences anger. Rather than overwhelm him as he expected, the savage habitat of Almuric has awakened his hyper-masculine nature.