Tarl Cabot, the name is supposed to have been shortened in the fifteenth century from the Italian surname Caboto. There is no connection with the Venentian explorer who carried the banner of Henry VII to the New World. Such a connection seems unlikely for a number of reasons, among them the fact that his people were simple tradesmen of Bristol, and uniformly fair-complexioned and topped with a blaze of the most outrageous red hair. Nonetheless, such coincidences, even if they are only geographical, linger in family memory - the small challenge to the ledgers and arithmetic of an existence measured in bolts and cloth sold. Tarl liked to think there may have been a Cabot in Bristol who watched our Italian namesake weigh anchor in the early morning of that second of May, 1497.
His first name gave him quite as much trouble as it might you, particularly during his early school years, when it occassioned almost as many contests of physical skill as his red hair. Let us say simply that it is not a common name, not common on this world. It was given to him by his father, who disappeared when Tarl was quite young. Tarl thought him dead until he received his strange message more than twenty years after he had vanished. Tarl's mother, whom he inquired after, had died when he was about six. Biographical details are tedious, so suffice it to say that he was a bright child, fairly large for his age, and was given a creditable upbringing by an aunt who funished everything that a child might need, with the possible exception of love.
Tarl managed to gain entrance to the University of Oxford. He graduated decently, having failed to astound either himself or his tutors. Like a large number of young men, Tarl found himself passably educated, able to parse a sentence or so in Greek, and familiar enough with the abstractions of philosophy and economics to know that he would not be likely to fit into that world to which they claimed to bear some obscure relation. He was not, however, reconciled to ending up on the shelves of his aunt's shop, along with the cloth and ribbons, and so he embarked upon a wild, but not too wild, adventure, all things considered. He applied to serveral small American colleges for an instructorship in history - English history, of course, and told them that he was somewhat more advanced academically than he was, and they believed him and his tutors, in their letters of recommendation, being good fellows, were kind enough not to disabuse them of this illusion. One of the colleges he applied to, a college for men in New Hampshire, entered into negotiaion, and he had soon received what was to be his first and last appointment in the academic world.
Tarl liked America very much, though was quite busy the first sememster, smashing through numerous texts in an undignified manner, attempting to commit enough English history to memory to keep at least a reign or so ahead of his students.
The Christmas vacation helped greatly. He was especially counting on the time between the semesters to catch up, or better to lengthen his lead on the students. But after the term papers, the tests, and the grading of the first sememster, he was afflicted with a rather irresistible desire to chuck the British Empire and go for a long, long walk - indeed, even a camping trip in the nearby White Mountains.
With a small amount of borrowed camping gear, Tarl headed out for the mountains. He is sometimes curious as to if the party wonders what happened to his gear or to Tarl. Surely the administration of the college was curious, and angry at the inconvenience of having to replace an instructor in the middle of the year, for Tarl Cabot was never heard of again on the campus of that college.
Volume I, Tarnsman of Gor, pages 9 - 12.
Tarl Cabot Receives a Message from his Father