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The Cave Girl saves Waldo's life.


CHAPTER PART I PAGE
I Flotsam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I
II The Wild People...................... I4
III. The Little Eden....................... 24
IV Death's Doorway ..................... 38
V Awakening ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
VI. A Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7o
VII Thandar, the Seeker................... 8o
VIII Nadara Again ........................ 90
IX The Seeker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
X The Trail's End....................... III
XI Capture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I24
PART II
I King Big Fist......................... 147
II King Thandar ........................ 161
III. The Great Nagoola.................... 177
IV The Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
V The Abduction of Nadara.............. 2O2
VI. The Search .......................... 2I2
VII First Mate Stark...................... 226
VIII The Wild Men........................ 246
IX Building the Boat..................... 26o
X the Head-Hunters .................... 275
XI The Rescue .......................... 288
XII Pirates .............................. 3O4
XIII Homeward Bound ..................... 32I
CONTENTS





PART I





THE CAVE GIRL
CHAPTER I
FLOTSAM
HE dim shadow of the thing was but a blur
against the dim shadows of the wood behind
it.
The young man could distinguish no outline
that might mark the presence as either brute or
human.
He could see no eyes, yet he knew that some-
where from out of that noiseless mass stealthy eyes
were fixed upon him.
This was the fourth time that the thing had crept
from out the wood as darkness was settling—the
fourth time during those three horrible weeks since
he had been cast upon that lonely shore that he
had watched, terror-stricken, while night engulfed
the shadowy form that lurked at the forest's edge.
It had never attacked him, but to his distorted
imagination it seemed to slink closer and closer as
night fell—waiting, always waiting for the mo-
ment that it might find him unprepared.
\ I


2 THE CAVE GIRL
Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones was not overly
courageous. He had been reared among surround-
ings of culture plus and ultra-intellectuality in the
exclusive Back Bay home of his ancestors.
He had been taught to look with contempt upon
all that savored of muscular superiority—such
things were gross, brutal, primitive.
It had been a giant intellect only that he had
craved—he and a fond mother—and their wishes
had been fulfilled. At twenty-one Waldo was an
animated encyclopedia—and about as muscular as
a real one.
Now he slunk shivering with fright at the very
edge of the beach, as far from the grim forest as
he could get.
Cold sweat broke from every pore of his long,
lank, six-foot-two body. His skinny arms and legs
trembled as with palsy. Occasionally he coughed
—it had been the cough that had banished him
upon this ill-starred sea voyage.
As he crouched in the sand, staring with wide,
horror-dilated eyes into the black night, great
tears rolled down his thin, white cheeks.
It was with difficulty that he restrained an over-
powering desire to shriek. His mind was filled with
forlorn regrets that he had not remained at home
to meet the wasting death that the doctor had pre-
dicted—a peaceful death at least—not the brutal


FLOTSAM 3
end which faced him now.
The lazy swell of the South Pacific lapped his
legs, stretched upon the sand, for he had retreated
before that menacing shadow as far as the ocean
would permit. As the slow minutes dragged into
age-long hours, the nervous strain told so heavily
upon the weak boy that toward midnight he lapsed
into merciful unconsciousness.
The warm sun awoke him the following morn-
ing, but it brought with it but a faint renewal of
courage. Things could not creep to his side unseen
now, but still they could come, for the sun would
not protect him. Even now some savage beast
might be lurking just within the forest.
The thought unnerved him to such an extent that
he dared not venture to the woods for the fruit
that had formed the major portion of his suste-
nance. Along the beach he picked up a few mouth-
fuls of sea-food, but that was all.
The day passed, as had the other terrible days
which had preceded it, in scanning alternately the
ocean and the forest's edge—the one for a ship
and the other for the cruel death which he momen-
tarily expected to see stalk out of the dreary shades
to claim him.
A more practical and a braver man would have
constructed some manner of shelter in which he
might have spent his nights in comparative safety


4. THE CAVE GIRL
and comfort, but Waldo Emerson's education had
been conducted along lines of undiluted intellectu-
ality—pursuits and knowledge which were prac-
tical were commonplace, and commonplaces were
vulgar. It was preposterous that a Smith-Jones
should ever have need of vulgar knowledge.
For the twenty-second time since the great wave
had washed him from the steamer's deck and hurled
him, choking and sputtering, upon this inhospitable
shore, Waldo Emerson saw the sun sinking rapidly
toward the western horizon.
As it descended the young man's terror increased,
and he kept his eyes glued upon the spot from which
the shadow had emerged the previous evening.
He felt that he could not endure another night of
the torture he had passed through four times be-
fore. That he should go mad he was positive, and
he commenced to tremble and whimper even while
daylight yet remained. For a time he tried turning
his back to the forest, and then he sat huddled up
gazing out upon the ocean; but the tears which
rolled down his cheeks so blurred his eyes that he
saw nothing.
Finally he could endure it no longer, and with a
sudden gasp of horror he wheeled toward the wood.
There was nothing visible, yet he broke down and
sobbed like a child, for loneliness and terror.
When he was able to control his tears for a


FLOTSAM 5
moment he took the opportunity to scan the deepen-
ing shadows once more.
The first glance brought a piercing shriek from
his white lips.
The thing was there!
The young man did not fall groveling to the sand
this time—instead, he stood staring with protrud-
ing eyes at the vague form, while shriek after
shriek broke from his grinning lips.
Reason was tottering.
The thing, whatever it was, halted at the first
blood-curdling cry, and then when the cries con-
tinued it slunk back toward the wood.
With what remained of his ebbing mentality
Waldo Emerson realized that it were better to die
at once than face the awful fears of the black night.
He would rush to meet his fate, and thus end this
awful agony of suspense.
With the thought came action, so that, still
shrieking, he rushed headlong toward the thing at
the wood's rim. As he ran it turned and fled into
the forest, and after it went Waldo Emerson, his
long, skinny legs carrying his emaciated body in
great leaps and bounds through the tearing under-
brush.
He emitted shriek after shriek—ear-piercing
shrieks that ended in long drawn out wails, more
wolfish than human. And the thing that fled


6 THE CAVE GIRL
through the night before him was shrieking, too,
11OW.
Time and again the young man stumbled and
fell. Thorns and brambles tore his clothing and
his soft flesh. Blood smeared him from head to
feet. Yet on and on he rushed through the semi-
darkness of the now moonlit forest.
At first impelled by the mad desire to embrace
death and wrest the peace of oblivion from its
cruel clutch, Waldo Emerson had come to pursue
the screaming shadow before him. from an entirely
different motive. Now it was for companionship.
He screamed now because of a fear that the thing
would elude him and that he should be left alone
in the depth of this weird wood.
Slowly but surely it was drawing away from him,
and as Waldo Emerson realized the fact he re-
doubled his efforts to overtake it. He had stopped
screaming now, for the strain of his physical exer-
tion found his weak lungs barely adequate to the
needs of his gasping respiration.
Suddenly the pursuit emerged from the forest
to cross a little moonlit clearing, at the opposite side
of which towered a high and rocky cliff. Toward
this the fleeing creature sped, and in an instant
more was swallowed, apparently, by the face of the
cliff.
Its disappearance was as mysterious and awesome


FLOTSAM 7
as its identity had been, and left the young man in
blank despair.
With the object of pursuit gone, the reaction
came, and Waldo Emerson sank trembling and ex-
hausted at the foot of the cliff. A paroxysm of
coughing seized him, and thus he lay in an agony
of apprehension, fright, and misery until from very
weakness he sank into a deep sleep.
It was daylight when he awoke—stiff, lame,
sore, hungry, and miserable—but, withal, refreshed
and sane. His first consideration was prompted by
the craving of a starved stomach; yet it was with
the utmost difficulty that he urged his cowardly
brain to direct his steps toward the forest, where
hung fruit in abundance.
At every little noise he halted in tense silence,
poised to flee. His knees trembled so violently that
they knocked together; but at length he entered the
dim shadows, and presently was gorging himself
with ripe fruits.
To reach some of the more luscious viands he
had picked from the ground a piece of fallen limb,
which tapered from a diameter of four inches at
one end to a trifle over an inch at the other. It
was the first practical thing that Waldo Emerson
had done since he had been cast upon the shore of
his new home—in fact, it was, in all likelihood, the
nearest approximation to a practical thing which


8 THE CAVE GIRL
he had ever done in all his life.
Waldo had never been allowed to read fiction,
nor had he ever cared to so waste his time or im-
poverish his brain, and nowhere in the fund of deep
erudition which he had accumulated could he recall
any condition analogous to those which now con-
fronted him.
Waldo, of course, knew that there were such
things as step-ladders, and had he had one he would
have used it as a means to reach the fruit above his
hand's reach; but that he could knock the delicacies
down with a broken branch seemed indeed a mighty
discovery—a valuable addition to the sum total of
human knowledge. Aristotle himself had never
reasoned more logically.
Waldo had taken the first step in his life toward
independent mental action—heretofore his ideas,
his thoughts, his acts, even, had been borrowed from
the musty writing of the ancients, or directed by
the immaculate mind of his superior mother. And
he clung to his discovery as a child clings to a new
toy.
When he emerged from the forest he brought his
stick with him.
He determined to continue the pursuit of the
creature that had eluded him the night before. It
would, indeed, be curious to look upon a thing that
feared him.


IO THE CAVE GIRL
There was nothing visible, but the interior was
dark and forbidding. Waldo felt cold and clammy.
He began to tremble. Then he turned and looked
back toward the forest,
The thought of another night spent within sight
of that dismal place almost overcame him. No!
A thousand times no! Any fate were better than
that, and so after several futile efforts he forced
his unwilling body through the small aperture.
He found himself on a path between two rocky
walls—a path that rose before him at a steep
angle. At intervals the blue sky was visible above
through openings that had not been filled with
debris.
To another it would have been apparent that the
cleft had been kept open by human beings—that it
was a thoroughfare which was used, if not fre-
quently, at least sufficiently often to warrant con-
siderable labor having been expended upon it to
keep it free from the debris which must be con-
stantly falling from above.
Where the path led, or what he expected to find
at the other end, Waldo had not the remotest idea.
He was not an imaginative youth. But he kept on
up the ascent in the hope that at the end he would
find the creature which had escaped him the night
before.
As it had fled for a brief instant across the clear-


FLOTSAM II
P-
ing beneath the moon's soft rays, Waldo had
thought that it bore a remarkable resemblance to a
human figure; but of that he could not be positive.
At last his path broke suddenly into the sunlight.
The walls on either side were but little higher than
his head, and a moment later he emerged from the
cleft onto a broad and beautiful plateau.
Before him stretched a wide, grassy plain, and
beyond towered a range of mighty hills. Between
them and him lay a belt of forest.
A new emotion welled in the breast of Waldo
Emerson Smith-Jones. It was akin to that which
Balboa may have felt when he gazed for the first
time upon the mighty Pacific from the Sierra de
Quarequa. For the moment, as he contemplated
this new and beautiful scene of rolling meadowland,
distant forest, and serrated hilltops, he almost for-
got to be afraid. And on the impulse of the instant
he set out across the tableland to explore the un-
known which lay beyond the forest.
Well it was for Waldo Emerson's peace of mind
that no faint conception of what lay there entered
his unimaginative mind. To him a land without
civilization—without cities and towns peopled by
humans with manners and customs similar to those
which obtain in Boston—was beyond belief.
As he walked he strained his eyes in every direc-
tion for some indication of human habitation—a


I2 THE CAVE GIRL
fence, a chimney—anything that would be man-
built; but his efforts were unrewarded.
At the verge of the forest he halted, fearing to
enter; but at last, when he saw that the wood was
more open than that near the ocean, and that there
was but little underbrush, he mustered sufficient
courage to step timidly within.
On careful tiptoe he threaded his way through
the parklike grove, stopping every few minutes to
listen, and ready at the first note of danger to fly
screaming toward the open plain.
Notwithstanding his fears, he reached the op-
posite boundary of the forest without seeing or
hearing anything to arouse suspicion, and, emerg-
ing from the cool shade, found himself a little dis-
tance from a perpendicular white cliff, the face of
which was honeycombed with the mouths of many
CaVeS. -
There was no living creature in sight, nor did the
very apparent artificiality of the caves suggest to
the impractical Waldo that they might be the habi-
tations of perhaps savage human beings.
With the spell of discovery still upon him, he
crossed the open toward the cliffs; but he had by
no means forgotten his chronic state of abject fear.
Ears and eyes were alert for hidden dangers; every
few steps were punctuated by a timid halt and a
searching survey of his surroundings.


FLOTSAM I3
It was during one of these halts, when he had
crossed half the distance between the forest and the
cliff, that he discerned a slight movement in the
wood behind him.
For an instant he stood staring and frozen, un-
able to determine whether he had been mistaken or
really had seen a creature moving in the forest.
He had about decided that he had but imagined
a presence when a great, hairy brute of a man
stepped suddenly from behind the bole of a tree.


CHAPTER II
THE WILD PEOPLE
HE creature was naked except for a bit of
hide that hung from a leathern waist thong.
If Waldo viewed the newcomer with wonder, it
was no less than the wonder which the sight of him
inspired in the breast of the hairy one, for what
he saw was as truly remarkable to his eyes as was
his appearance to those of the cultured Bostonian.
And Waldo did indeed present a most startling ex-
terior. His six-feet-two was accentuated by his
extreme skinniness; his gray eyes looked weak and
watery within the inflamed circles which rimmed
them, and which had been produced by loss of sleep
and much weeping. -
His yellow hair was tangled and matted, and
streaked with dirt and blood. Blood stained his
soiled and tattered ducks. His shirt was but a mass
of frayed ribbons held to him at all only by the
neck-band.
As he stood helplessly staring with bulging eyes
at the awful figure glowering at him from the forest
his jaw dropped, his knees trembled, and he seemed
about to collapse from sheer terror.
14


THE WILD PEOPLE I5
Then the hideous man crouched and came creep-
ing warily toward him.
With an agonized scream Waldo turned and fled
toward the cliff. A quick glance over his shoulder
brought another series of shrieks from the fright-
ened fugitive, for it revealed not alone the fact
that the awful man was pursuing him, but that
behind him raced at least a dozen more equally
frightful.
Waldo ran toward the cliffs only because that
direction lay straight away from his pursuers. He
had no idea what he should do when he reached
the rocky barrier—he was far too frightened to
think.
His pursuers were gaining upon him, their sav- '
age yells mingling with his piercing cries and spur-
ring him on to undreamed-of pinnacles of speed.
As he ran, his knees came nearly to his shoul-
ders at each frantic bound; his left hand was ex-
tended far ahead, clutching wildly at the air as
though he were endeavoring to pull himself ahead,
while his right hand, still grasping the cudgel, de-
scribed a rapid circle, like the arm of a windmill
gone mad. In action Waldo was an inspiring spec-
tacle.
At the foot of the cliff he came to a momentary
halt, while he glanced hurriedly about for a means
of escape; but now he saw that the enemy had


I6 THE CAVE GIRL
spread out toward the right and left, leaving no
means of escape except up the precipitous side of
the cliff. Up this narrow trails led steeply from
ledge to ledge.
In places crude ladders scaled perpendicular
heights from one tier of caves to the next above;
but to Waldo the thing which confronted him
seemed absolutely unscalable, and then another
backward glance showed him the rapidly nearing
enemy; and he launched himself at the face of that
seemingly impregnable barrier, clutching desper-
ately with fingers and toes.
His progress was impeded by the cudgel to which
he still clung, but he did not drop it; though why it
would have been difficult to tell, unless it was that
his acts were now purely mechanical, there being
no room in his mind for aught else than terror.
Close behind him came the foremost cave man;
yet, though he had acquired the agility of a monkey
through a lifetime of practice, he was amazed at
the uncanny speed with which Waldo Emerson
clawed his shrieking way aloft.
Half-way up the ascent, however, a great hairy
hand came almost to his ankle.
It was during the perilous negotiation of one of
the loose and wabbly ladders—little more than
small trees leaning precariously against the per-
pendicular rocky surface—that the nearest foe-


THE WILD PEOPLE 17
man came so close to the fugitive; but at the top
chance intervened to save Waldo, for a time at least.
It was at the moment that he scrambled frantically
to a tiny ledge from the frightfully slipping sapling.
In his haste he did by accident what a resourceful
man would have done by intent—in pushing him-
self onto the ledge he kicked the ladder outward—
for a second it hung toppling in the balance, and
then with a lunge crashed down the cliff's face with
its human burden, in its fall scraping others of the
pursuing horde with it.
A chorus of rage came up from below him, but
Waldo had not even turned his head to learn of his
temporary good fortune. Up, ever up he sped,
until at length he stood upon the topmost ledge,
facing an overhanging wall of blank rock that tow-
ered another twenty-five feet above him to the
summit of the bluff. Time and again he leaped
futilely against the smooth surface, tearing at it
with his nails in a mad endeavor to climb still
higher.
At his right was the low opening to a black cave,
but he did not see it—his mind could cope with
but the single idea: to clamber from the horrible
creatures which pursued him. But finally it was
borne in on his half-mad brain that this was the
end—he could fly no farther—here, in a moment
more, death would overtake him.


18 THE CAVE GIRL
He turned to meet it, and below saw a number
of the cave men placing another ladder in lieu of
that which had fallen. In a moment they were re-
suming the ascent after him.
On the narrow ledge above them the young man
stood, chattering and grinning like a madman. His
pitiful cries were now punctuated with the hollow
coughing which his violent exercise had induced.
Tears rolled down his begrimed face, leaving
crooked, muddy streaks in their wake. His knees
smote together so violently that he could barely
stand, and it was into the face of this apparition of
cowardice that the first of the cave men looked as
he scrambled above the ledge on which Waldo
stood.
And then, of a sudden, there rose within the
breast of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones a spark that
generations of overrefinement and emasculating cul-
ture had all but extinguished—the instinct of self-
preservation by force. Heretofore it had been
purely by flight.
With the frenzy of the fear of death upon him,
he raised his cudgel, and, swinging it high above
his head, brought it down full upon the unprotected
skull of his enemy.
Another took the fallen man's place—he, too,
went down with a broken head. Waldo was fight-
ing now like a cornered rat, and through it all he


THE WILD PEOPLE 19
chattered and gibbered; but he no longer wept.
At first he was horrified at the bloody havoc he
wrought with his crude weapon. His nature re-
volted at the sight of blood, and when he saw it
mixed with matted hair along the side of his cudgel,
and realized that it was human hair and human
blood, and that he, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones,
had struck the blows that had plastered it there so
thickly in all its hideousness, a wave of nausea
swept over him, so that he almost toppled from his
dizzy perch.
For a few minutes there was a lull in hostilities
while the cave men congregated below, shaking
their fists at Waldo and crying out threats and chal-
lenges. The young man stood looking down upon
them, scarcely able to realize that alone he had met
savage men in physical encounter and defeated
them.
He was shocked and horrified; not, odd to say,
because of the thing he had done, but rather be-
cause of a strange and unaccountable glow of pride
in his brutal supremacy over brutes. What would
his mother have thought could she have seen her
precious boy now?
Suddenly Waldo became conscious from the
corner of his eye that something was creeping upon
him from behind out of the dark cave before which
he had fought. Simultaneously with the realization


2O THE CAVE GIRL
of it he swung his cudgel in a wicked blow at this
new enemy as he turned to meet it.
The creature dodged back, and the blow that
would have crushed its skull grazed a hairbreadth
from its face.
Waldo struck no second blow, and the cold sweat
sprang to his forehead when he realized how nearly
he had come to murdering a young girl. She
crouched now in the mouth of the cave, eying him
fearfully. Waldo removed his tattered cap, bowing
low.
“I crave your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea
that there was a lady here. I am very glad that I
did not injure you.”
There must have been something either in his
tone or manner that reassured her, for she smiled
and came out upon the ledge beside him.
As she did so a scarlet flush mantled Waldo's
face and neck and ears—he could feel them burn-
ing. With a nervous cough he turned and became
intently occupied with the distant scenery.
Presently he cast a surreptitious glance behind
him. Shocking! She was still there. Again he
coughed nervously.
“Excuse me,” he said. “But—er—ah—you
—I am a total stranger, you know; hadn't you
better go back in, and—er—get your clothes?”
She made no reply, and so he forced himself to


THE WILD PEOPLE 2I
turn toward her once more. She was smiling at him.
Waldo had never been so horribly embarrassed
in all his life before—it was a distinct shock to him
to realize that the girl was not embarrassed at all.
He spoke to her a second time, and at last she
answered; but in a tongue which he did not under-
stand. It bore not the slightest resemblance to any
language, modern or dead, with which he was
familiar, and Waldo was more or less master of
them all—especially the dead ones.
He tried not to look at her after that, for he
realized that he must appear very ridiculous.
But now his attention was required by more
pressing affairs—the cave men were returning to
the attack. They carried stones this time, and,
while some of them threw the missiles at Waldo,
the others attempted to rush his position. It was
then that the girl hurried back into the cave, only
to reappear a moment later carrying some stone
utensils in her arms.
There was a huge mortar in which she had col-
lected a pestle and several smaller pieces of stone.
She pushed them along the ledge to Waldo.
At first he did not grasp the meaning of her act;
but presently she pretended to pick up an imagi-
nary missile and hurl it down upon the creatures
below—then she pointed to the things she had
brought and to Waldo.


22 THE CAVE GIRL
He understood. So she was upon his side. He
did not understand why, but he was glad.
Following her suggestion, he gathered up a
couple of the smaller objects and hurled them down
upon the men beneath.
But on and on they came—Waldo was not a
very good shot. The girl was busy now gathering
such of the cave men's missiles as fell upon the
ledge. These she placed in a pile beside Waldo.
Occasionally the young man would strike an
enemy by accident, and then she would give a little
scream of pleasure—clapping her hands and jump-
ing up and down.
It was not long before Waldo was surprised to
find that this applause fell sweetly upon his ears.
It was then that he began to take better aim.
In the midst of it all there flashed suddenly upon
him a picture of his devoted mother and the select
coterie of intellectual young people with which she
had always surrounded him.
Waldo felt a new pang of horror as he tried to
realize with what emotions they would look upon
him now as he stood upon the face of a towering
cliff beside an almost naked girl hurling rocks down
upon the heads of hairy men who hopped about,
screaming with rage, below him.
It was awful! A great billow of mortification
rolled over him. -


THE WILD PEOPLE 23
He turned to cast a look of disapprobation at
the shameless young woman behind him—she
should not think that he countenanced such coarse
and vulgar proceedings. Their eyes met—in hers
he saw the sparkle of excitement and the joy of
life and such a look of comradeship as he never be-
fore had seen in the eyes of another mortal.
Then she pointed excitedly over the edge of the
ledge.
Waldo looked.
A great brute of a cave man had crawled, unseen,
almost to their refuge.
He was but five feet below them, and at the
moment that he looked up Waldo dropped a fifty-
pound stone mortar full upon his upturned face.
The young woman emitted a little shriek of joy,
and Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, his face bisected
by a broad grin, turned toward her.


CHAPTER III
THE LITTLE EDEN
HE mortar ended hostilities—temporarily, at
least; but the cave men loitered about the
base of the cliff during the balance of the after-
noon, occasionally shouting taunts at the two above
them.
These the girl answered, evidently in kind
Sometimes she would point to Waldo and make
ferocious signs, doubtless indicative of the horrible
slaughter which awaited them at his hands if they
did not go away and leave their betters alone. When
the young man realized the significance of her
pantomime he felt his heart swell with an emotion
which he feared was pride in brutal, primitive, vul-
gar physical prowess.
As the long day wore on Waldo became both
very hungry and very thirsty. In the valley below
he could see a tiny brooklet purling, clear and
beautiful, toward the south. The sight of it drove
him nearly mad, as did also that of the fruit which
he glimpsed hanging ripe for eating at the edge of
the forest.
By means of signs he asked the girl if she, too,
were hungry, for he had come to a point now where
24


THE LITTLE EDEN 25
he could look at her almost without visible signs of
mortification. She nodded her head and, pointing
toward the descending sun, made it plain to him
that after dark they would descend and eat.
The cave men had not left when darkness came,
and it seemed to Waldo a very foolhardy thing to
venture down while they might be about; but the
girl made it so evident that she considered him an
invincible warrior that he was torn with the con-
flicting emotions of cowardice and an unaccount-
able desire to appear well in her eyes, that he might
by his acts justify her belief in him.
It seemed very wonderful to Waldo that any one
should look upon him in the light of a tower of
strength and a haven of refuge; he was not quite
certain in his own mind but that the reputation
might lead him into most uncomfortable and em-
barrassing situations. Incidentally, he wondered
if the girl was a good runner; he hoped so.
It must have been quite near midnight when his
companion intimated that the time had arrived
when they should fare forth and dine. Waldo
wanted her to go first, but she shrank close to him,
timidly, and held back.
There was nothing else for it, then, than to take
the plunge, though had the sun been shining it
would have revealed a very pale and wide-eyed
champion, who slipped gingerly over the side of the


26 THE CAVE GIRL
ledge to grope with his feet for a foothold beneath.
Half-way down the moon rose above the forest
—a great, full, tropic moon, that lighted the face
of the cliff almost as brilliantly as might the sun
itself. It shone into the mouth of a cave upon the
ledge that Waldo had just reached in his descent,
revealing to the horrified eyes of the young man
a great, hairy form stretched in slumber not a yard
from him.
As he looked, the wicked little eyes opened and
looked straight into his.
With difficulty Waldo suppressed a shriek of dis-
may as he turned to plunge madly down the pre-
cipitous trail. The girl had not yet descended from
the ledge above.
She must have sensed what had happened, for as
Waldo turned to fly she gave a little cry of terror.
At the same instant the cave man leaped to his feet.
But the girl's voice had touched something in the
breast of Waldo Emerson which generations of
disuse had almost atrophied, and for the first time
in his life he did a brave and courageous thing.
He could easily have escaped the cave man and
reached the valley—alone; but at the first note of
the young girl's cry he wheeled and scrambled back
to the ledge to face the burly, primitive man, who
could have crushed him with a single blow.
Waldo Emerson no longer trembled. His nerves


THE LITTLE EDEN 27
and muscles were very steady as he swung his
cudgel in an arc that brought it crashing down upon
the upraised guarding arm of the cave man.
There was a snapping of bone beneath the blow,
a scream of pain—the man staggered back, the
girl sprang to Waldo's side from the ledge above,
and hand in hand they turned and fled down the
face of the cliff.
From a dozen cave-mouths above issued a score
of cave men, but the fleeing pair were half-way
across the clearing before the slow-witted brutes
were fully aware of what had happened. By the
time they had taken up the pursuit Waldo and the
girl had entered the forest.
For a few yards the latter led Waldo straight into
the shadows of the wood, then she turned abruptly
toward the north, at right angles to the course
they had been pursuing.
She still clung to the young man's hand, nor
did she slacken her speed the least after they had
entered the darkness beneath the trees. She ran
as surely and confidently through the impenetrable
night of the forest as though the way had been
lighted by flaming arcs; but Waldo was continu-
ally stumbling and falling.
The sound of pursuit presently became fainter;
it was apparent that the cave men had continued
on straight into the wood; but the girl raced on


28 THE CAVE GIRL
*
with the panting Waldo for what seemed to the
winded young man an eternity. Presently, how-
ever, they came to the banks of the little stream
that had been visible from the caves. Here the
girl fell into a walk, and a moment later dragged
the Bostonian down a shelving bank into water
that came above his knees.
Up the bed of the stream she led him, sometimes
floundering through holes so deep that they were
entirely submerged.
Waldo had never learned the vulgar art of swim-
ming, so it was that he would have drowned but
for the strong, brown hand of his companion, which
dragged him, spluttering and coughing, through
one awful hole after another, until, half-strangled
and entirely panic-stricken, she hauled him safely
upon a low, grassy bank at the foot of a rocky wall
which formed one side of a gorge, through which
the river boiled.
It must not be assumed that when Waldo Emer-
son returned to face the hairy brute who threatened
to separate him from his new-found companion
that by a miracle he had been transformed from a
hare into a lion—far from it.
Now that he had a moment in which to lie quite
still and speculate upon the adventures of the past
hour, the reaction came, and Waldo Emerson
thanked the kindly night that obscured from the


THE LITTLE EDEN 29
eyes of the girl the pitiable spectacle of his palsied
limbs and trembling lip.
Once again he was in a blue funk, with shattered
nerves that begged to cry aloud in the extremity of
their terror.
It was not warm in the damp cañon, through
which the wind swept over the cold water, so that
to Waldo's mental anguish was added the physical
discomfort of cold and wet. He was indeed a
miserable figure as he lay huddled upon the sward,
praying for the rising of the sun, yet dreading the
daylight that might reveal him to his enemies.
But at last dawn came, and after a fitful sleep
Waldo awoke to find himself in a snug and beauti-
ful little paradise hemmed in by the high cliffs that
flanked the river, upon a sloping grassy shore that
was all but invisible except from a short stretch of
cliff-top upon the farther side of the stream.
A few feet from him lay the girl.
She was still asleep. Her head was pillowed
upon one firm, brown arm. Her soft black hair
fell in disorder across one cheek and over the other
arm, to spread gracefully upon the green grass
about her.
As Waldo looked he saw that she was very
comely. Never before had he seen a girl just like
her. His young women friends had been rather
prim and plain, with long, white faces and thin


30 THE CAVE GIRL
lips that scarcely ever dared to smile and scorned
to unbend in plebeian laughter.
This girl's lips seemed to have been made for
laughing—and for something else, though at the
time it is only fair to Waldo to say that he did not
realize the full possibilities that they presented.
As his eyes wandered along the lines of her
young body his Puritanical training brought a hot
flush of embarrassment to his face, and he deliber-
ately turned his back upon her.
It was indeed awful to Waldo Emerson to con-
template, to say the least, the unconventional posi-
tion into which fate had forced him. The longer
he pondered it the redder he became. It was fright-
ful—what would his mother say when she heard
of it?
What would this girl’s mother say? But, more
to the point, and—horrible thought—what would
her father or her brothers do to Waldo if they
found them thus together—and she with only a
scanty garment of skin about her waist—a gar-
ment which reached scarcely below her knees at any
point, and at others terminated far above?
Waldo was chagrined. He could not understand
what the girl could be thinking of, for in other re-
spects she seemed quite nice, and he was sure that
the great eyes of her reflected only goodness and
innocence.


THE LITTLE EDEN 3I
While he sat thus, thinking, the girl awoke and
with a merry laugh addressed him.
“Good morning,” said Waldo quite severely.
He wished that he could speak her language, so
that he could convey to her a suggestion of the dis-
approbation which he felt for her attire.
He was on the point of attempting it by signs,
when she rose, lithe and graceful as a tigress, and
walked to the river's brim. With a deft movement
of her fingers she loosed the thong that held her
single garment, and as it fell to the ground Waldo,
with a horrified gasp, turned upon his face, burying
his tightly closed eyes in his hands.
Then the girl dived into the cool waters for her
matutinal bath.
She called to him several times to join her, but
Waldo could not look at the spectacle presented;
his soul was scandalized.
It was some time after she emerged from the
river before he dared risk a hesitating glance. With
a sigh of relief he saw that she had donned her
single garment, and thereafter he could look at her
unashamed when she was thus clothed. He felt
that by comparison it constituted a most modest
gown.
Together they strolled along the river's edge,
gathering such fruits and roots as the girl knew to
be edible. Waldo Emerson gathered those she in-


32 THE CAVE GIRL
dicated—with all his learning he found it neces-
sary to depend upon the untutored mind of this
little primitive maiden for guidance.
Then she taught him how to catch fish with a
bent twig and a lightninglike movement of her
brown hands—or, rather, tried to teach him, for
he was far too slow and awkward to succeed.
Afterward they sat upon the soft grass beneath
the shade of a wild fig-tree to eat the fish she had
caught. Waldo wondered how in the world the girl
could make fire without matches, for he was quite
sure that she had none; and even should she be able
to make fire it would be quite useless, since she had
neither cooking utensils nor stove.
He was not left long in wonderment.
She arranged the fish in a little pile between
them, and with a sweet smile motioned to the man
to partake; then she selected one for herself, and
while Waldo Emerson looked on in horror, sunk
her firm, white teeth into the raw fish.
Waldo turned away in sickening disgust.
The girl seemed surprised and worried that he
did not eat. Time and again she tried to coax him
by signs to join her; but he could not even look at
her. He had tried, after the first wave of revolt
had subsided, but when he discovered that she ate
the entire fish, without bothering to clean it or re-
move the scales, he became too ill to think of food.


THE LITTLE EDEN 33
Several times during the following week they
ventured from their hiding-place, and at these times
it was evident from the girl's actions that she was
endeavoring to elude their enemies and reach a
place of safety other than that in which they were
concealed. But at each venture her quick ears or
sensitive nostrils warned her of the proximity of
danger, so that they had been compelled to hurry
back into their little Eden.
During this period she taught Waldo many words
of her native tongue, so that by means of signs to
bridge the gaps between, they were able to com-
municate with a fair degree of satisfaction. Waldo's
mastery of the language was rapid.
On the tenth day the girl was able to make him
understand that she wished to escape with him to
her own people; that these men among whom he
had found her were enemies of her tribe, and that
she had been hiding from them when Waldo
stumbled upon her cave.
“I fled,” she said. “My mother was killed. My
father took another mate, always cruel to me. But
when I had wandered into the land of these ene-
mies I was afraid, and would have returned to my
father's cave. But I had gone too far.
“I would have to run very fast to escape them.
Once I ran down a narrow path to the ocean. It
was dark.


THE LITTLE EDEN 35
It was well that the girl did not see his pallid
face and popping eyes as he looked into the evil
mask of the great black panther that crouched
watching them from the river's further bank.
Into Waldo's breast came great panic. It was
only because his fear-prostrated muscles refused to
respond to his will that he did not scurry, scream-
ing, from the sight of that ferocious countenance.
Then, through the fog of his cowardly terror, he
heard again the girl's sweet voice: “I knew that
you must be very brave to live all alone by the edge
of that wicked forest.”
For the first time in his life a wave of shame
swept over Waldo Emerson.
The girl called in a taunting voice to the panther,
and then turned, smiling, toward Waldo.
“How brave I am now,” she laughed. “I am no
longer afraid of Nagoola. You are with me.”
“No,” said Waldo Emerson, in a very weak
voice, “you need not fear while I am with you.”
“Oh!” she cried. “Slay him. How proud I
should be to return to my people with one who van-
quished Nagoola, and wore his hide about his loins
as proof of his prowess.”
“Y-yes,” acquiesced Waldo faintly.
“But,” continued the girl, “you have slain many
of Nagoola's brothers and sisters. It is no longer
sport to kill one of his kind.”


36 THE CAVE GIRL
“Yes—yes,” cried Waldo. “Yes, that is it—
panthers bore me now.”
“Oh!” The girl clasped her hands in ecstasy.
“How many have you slain?”
“Er—why, let me see,” the young man
blundered. “As a matter of fact, I never kept
any record of the panthers I killed.”
Waldo was becoming frantic. He had never lied
before in all his life. He hated a lie and loathed a
liar. He wondered why he had lied now.
Surely it were nothing to boast of to have
butchered one of God's creatures—and as for
claiming to have killed so many that he could not
recall the number, it was little short of horrible.
Yet he became conscious of a poignant regret that
he had not killed a thousand panthers, and pre-
served all the pelts as evidence of his valor.
The panther still regarded them from the safety
of the farther shore. The girl drew quite close to
Waldo in the instinctive plea for protection that
belongs to her sex. She laid a timid hand upon his
skinny arm and raised her great, trusting eyes to
his face in reverent adoration.
“How do you kill them?” she whispered. “Tell
me.”
Then it was that Waldo determined to make a
clean breast of it, and admit that he never before
had seen a live panther. But as he opened his


THE LITTLE EDEN 37
mouth to make the humiliating confession he re-
alized, quite suddenly, why it was that he had lied
—he wished to appear well in the eyes of this
savage, half-clothed girl.
He, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, craved the ap-
plause of a barbarian, and to win it had simulated
that physical prowess which generations of Smith-
Joneses had viewed from afar—disgusted, dis-
approving.
The girl repeated her question.
“Oh,” said Waldo, “it is really quite simple.
After I catch them I beat them severely with a
stick.”
The girl sighed.
“How wonderful!” she said.
Waldo became the victim of a number of unpleas-
ant emotions—mortification for this suddenly de-
veloped moral turpitude; apprehension for the
future, when the girl might discover him in his true
colors; fear, consuming, terrible fear, that she
might insist upon his going forth at once to slay
Nagoola.
But she did nothing of the kind, and presently
the panther tired of watching them and turned back
into the tangle of bushes behind him.
It was with a sigh of relief that Waldo saw him
depart.


CHAPTER IV
DEATH'S DOORWAY
ATE in the afternoon the girl suggested that
they start that night upon the journey toward
her village.
“The bad men will not be abroad after dark,”
she said. “With you at my side, I shall not fear
Nagoola.” -
“How far is it to your village?” asked Waldo.
“It will take us three nights,” she replied. “By
day we must hide, for even you could not vanquish
a great number of bad men should they attack you
at once.”
“No,” said Waldo; “I presume not.”
“It was very wonderful to watch you, though,”
she went on, “when you battled upon the cliff-side,
beating them down as they came upon you. How
brave you were ! How terrible! You trembled
from rage.”
“Yes,” admitted Waldo, “I was quite angry. I
always tremble like that when my ire is excited.
Sometimes I get so bad that my knees knock to-
gether. If you ever see them do that you will
realize how exceedingly angry I am.”
“Yes,” murmured the girl.
38


DEATHPS DOORWAY 39
Presently Waldo saw that she was laughing
quietly to herself.
A great fear rose in his breast. Could it be that
she was less gullible than she had appeared? Did
she, after all, penetrate the bombast with which he
had sought to cloak his cowardice?
He finally mustered sufficient courage to ask:
“Why do you laugh?”
“I think of the surprise that awaits old Flatfoot
and Korth and the others when I lead you to them.”
“Why will they be surprised?” asked Waldo.
“At the way you will crack their heads.”
Waldo shuddered.
“Why should I crack their heads?” he asked.
“Why should you crack their heads!” It was
apparently incredible to the girl that he should not
understand. -
“How little you know,” she said. “You cannot
swim, you do not know the language which men
may understand, you would be lost in the woods
were I to leave you, and now you say that you do
not know that when you come to a strange tribe
they will try to kill you, and only take you as one
of them when you have proven your worth by
killing at least one of their strongest men.”
“At least one!” said Waldo, half to himself.
He was dazed by this information. He had ex-
pected to be welcomed with open arms into the best


40 THE CAVE GIRL
society that the girl's community afforded. He had
thought of it in just this way, for he had not even
yet learned that there might be a whole people liv-
ing under entirely different conditions than those
which existed in Boston, Massachusetts.
Her reference to his ignorance also came as a
distinct shock to him. He had always considered
himself a man of considerable learning. It had
been his secret boast and his mother's open pride.
And now to be pitied for his ignorance by one
who probably thought the earth flat, if she ever
thought about such matters at all—by one who
could neither read nor write. And the worst of it
all was that her indictment was correct—only she
had not gone far enough.
There was little of practical value that he did
know. . With the realization of his limitations
Waldo Emerson took, unknown to himself, a great
stride toward a broader wisdom than his narrow
soul had ever conceived.
That night, after the sun had set and the stars
and moon come out, the two set forth from their
retreat toward the northwest, where the girl said
that the village of her people lay.
They walked hand in hand through the dark
wood, the girl directing their steps, the young man
grasping his long cudgel in his right hand and
searching into the shadows for the terrible creatures


DEATHPS DOORWAY 4I
conjured by his cowardly brain, but mostly for the
two awesome spots of fire which he had gathered
from the girl's talk would mark the presence of
Nagoola.
Strange noises assailed his ears, and once the
girl crouched close to him as her quick ears caught
the sound of the movement of a great body through
the underbrush at their left.
Waldo Emerson was almost paralyzed by terror;
but at length the creature, whatever it may have
been, turned off into the forest without molesting
them. For several hours thereafter they suffered
no alarm, but the constant tension of apprehension
on the man's already over-wrought nerves had re-
duced him to a state of such abject nervous terror
that he was no longer master of himself.
So it was that when the girl suddenly halted him
with an affrighted little gasp and, pointing straight
ahead, whispered, “Nagoola,” he went momentarily
mad with fear.
For a bare instant he paused in his tracks, and
then breaking away from her, he raised his club
above his head, and with an awful shriek dashed—
straight toward the panther.
In the minds of some there may be a doubt as to
which of the two—the sleek, silent, black cat or
the grinning, screaming Waldo—was the most
awe-inspiring.


42 THE CAVE GIRL
Be that as it may, it was quite evident that no
doubt assailed the mind of the cat, for with a single
answering scream, he turned and faded into the
blackness of the black night.
But Waldo did not see him go. Still shrieking,
he raced on through the forest until he tripped over
a creeper and fell exhausted to the earth. There
he lay panting, twitching, and trembling until the
girl found him, an hour after sunrise.
At the sound of her voice he would have strug-
gled to his feet and dashed on into the woods, for
he felt that he could never face her again after the
spectacle of cowardice with which he had treated
her a few hours before.
But even as he gained his feet her first words
reassured him, and dissipated every vestige of his
intention to elude her.
“Did you catch him?” she cried.
“No,” panted Waldo Emerson quite truthfully.
“He got away.”
They rested a little while, and then Waldo in-
sisted that they resume their journey by day instead
of by night. He had positively determined that he
never should or could endure another such a night
of mental torture. He would much rather take the
chance of meeting with the bad men than suffer the
constant feeling that unseen enemies were peering
out of the darkness at him every moment.


DEATH'S DOORWAY 43
In the day they would at least have the advan-
tage of seeing their foes before they were struck.
He did not give these reasons to the girl, however.
Under the circumstances he felt that another expla-
nation would be better adapted to her ears.
“You see,” he said, “if it hadn’t been so dark
Nagoola might not have escaped me. It is too bad
—too bad.”
“Yes,” agreed the girl, “it is too bad. We shall
travel by day. It will be safe now. We have left
the country of the bad men, and there are few men
living between us and my people.”
That night they spent in a cave they found in the
steep bank of a small river.
It was damp and muddy and cold, but they were
both very tired, and so they fell asleep and slept
as soundly as though the best of mattresses lay
beneath them. The girl probably slept better, since
she had never been accustomed to anything much
superior to this in all her life.
The journey required five days, instead of three,
and during all the time Waldo was learning more
and more woodcraft from the girl. At first his atti-
tude had been such that he could profit but little
from her greater practical knowledge, for he had
been inclined to look down upon her as an untutored
Savage.
Now, however, he was a willing student, and


44 THE CAVE GIRL
when Waldo Emerson elected to study there was
nothing that he could not master and retain in a
remarkable manner. He had a well-trained mind—
the principal trouble with it being that it had been
crammed full of useless knowledge. His mother
had always made the error of confusing knowledge
with wisdom.
Waldo was not the only one to learn new things
upon this journey. The girl learned something,
too—something which had been threatening for
days to rise above the threshold of her conscious
mind, and now she realized that it had lain in her
heart almost ever since the first moment that she
had been with this strange young man.
Waldo Emerson had been endowed by nature
with a chivalrous heart, and his training had been
such that he mechanically accorded to all women the
gallant little courtesies and consideration which are
of the fine things that go with breeding. Nor was
he one whit less punctilious in his relations with
this wild cave girl than he would have been with the
daughter of the finest family of his own aristoc-
racy.
He had been kind and thoughtful and sympa-
thetic always, and to the girl, who had never been
accustomed to such treatment from men, nor had
ever seen a man accord it to any woman, it seemed
little short of miraculous that such gentle tender-


DEATH'S DOORWAY 45
ness could belong to a nature so warlike and fero-
cious as that with which she had endowed Waldo
Emerson. But she was quite satisfied that it should
be so.
She would not have cared for him had he been
gentle with her, yet cowardly. Had she dreamed
of the real truth—had she had the slightest sus-
picion that Waldo Emerson was at heart the most
arrant poltroon upon whom the sun had ever shone,
she would have loathed and hated him, for in the
primitive code of ethics which governed the savage
community which was her world there was no place
for the craven or the weakling—and Waldo Emer-
son was both.
As the realization of her growing sentiment
toward the man awakened, it imparted to her ways
with him a sudden coyness and maidenly aloofness
which had been entirely wanting before. Until
then their companionship, in so far as the girl was
concerned, had been rather that of one youth to-
ward another; but now that she found herself
thrilling at his slightest careless touch, she became
aware of a paradoxical impulse to avoid him.
For the first time in her life, too, she realized her
nakedness, and was ashamed. Possibly this was
due to the fact that Waldo appeared so solicitous
in endeavoring to coerce his rags into the impos-
sible feat of entirely covering his body.


46 THE CAVE GIRL
As they neared their journey's end Waldo be-
came more and more perturbed.
During the last night horrible visions of Flatfoot
and Korth haunted his dreams. He saw the great,
hairy beasts rushing upon him in all the ferocity
of their primeval savagery—tearing him limb from
limb in their bestial rage.
With a shriek he awoke.
To the girl's startled inquiry he replied that he
had been but dreaming.
“Did you dream of Flatfoot and Korth?” she
laughed. “Of the things that you will do to them
tomorrow?”
“Yes,” replied Waldo; “I dreamed of Flatfoot
and Korth.” But the girl did not see how he
trembled and hid his head in the hollow of his arm.
The last day's march was the most agonizing
experience of Waldo Emerson’s life. He was posi-
tive that he was going to his death, but to him the
horror of the thing lay more in the manner of his
coming death than in the thought of death itself.
As a matter of fact, he had again reached a point
when he would have welcomed death.
The future held for him nothing but a life of dis-
comfort and misery and constant mental anguish,
superinduced by the condition of awful fear under
which he must drag out his existence in this strange
and terrible land.


48 THE CAVE GIRL
human being, and her society much better than
none at all. While hope had still lingered that he
might live to escape and return to his beloved
Boston, he had often wondered whether he would
dare tell his mother of his unconventional acquaint-
ance with this young woman.
Of course, it would be out of the question for
him to go at all into details. He would not, for
example, dare to attempt a description of her toilet
to his prim parent.
The fact that they had been alone together, day
and night, for weeks was another item which
troubled Waldo considerably. He knew that the
shock of such information might prostrate his
mother, and for a long time he debated the wisdom
of omitting any mention of the girl whatever.
At length he decided that a little, white lie would
be permissible, inasmuch as his mother's health and
the girl's reputation were both at stake. So he had
decided to mention that the girl's aunt had been
with them in the capacity of chaperon; that fixed it
nicely, and on this point Waldo's mind was more at
CaSe.
Late in the afternoon they wound down a nar-
row trail that led from the plateau into a narrow,
beautiful valley. A tree-bordered river meandered
through the center of the level plain that formed
the valley's floor, while beyond rose precipitous


i
DEATHPS DOORWAY 49
!
cliffs, which trailed off in either direction as far
as the eye could reach.
“There live my people,” said the girl, pointing
toward the distant barrier.
Waldo groaned inwardly.
“Let us rest here,” he said, “until tomorrow,
that we may come to your home rested and
refreshed.”
“Oh, no,” cried the girl; “we can reach the caves
before dark. I can scarcely wait until I shall have
seen how you shall slay Flatfoot, and maybe Korth
also. Though I think that after one of them has
felt your might the others will be glad to take you
into the tribe at the price of your friendship.”
“Is there not some way,” ventured the distracted
Waldo, “that I may come into your village without
fighting? I should dislike to kill one of your
friends,” said Waldo solemnly.
The girl laughed.
“Neither Flatfoot nor Korth are friends of
mine,” she replied; “I hate them both. They are
terrible men. It would be better for all the tribe
were they killed. They are so strong and cruel that
we all hate them, since they use their strength to
abuse those who are weaker.
“They make us all work very hard for them.
They take other men's mates, and if the other men
object they kill them. There is scarcely a moon


50 THE CAVE GIRL
*
passes that does not see either Korth or Flatfoot
kill some one.
“Nor is it always men they kill. Often when
they are angry they kill women and little children
just for the pleasure of killing; but when you come
among us there will be no more of that, for you
will kill them both if they be not good.”
Waldo was too horrified by this description of
his soon-to-be antagonists to make any reply—his
tongue clave to the roof of his mouth—all his vocal
organs seemed paralyzed.
But the girl did not notice. She went on joy-
ously, ripping Waldo's nervous system out of him
and tearing it into shreds.
“You see,” she continued, “Flatfoot and Korth
are greater than the other men of my tribe. They
f
can do as they will. They are frightful to look
upon, and I have often thought that the hearts
of others dried up when they saw either of them
coming for them.
“And they are so strong! I have seen Korth
crush the skull of a full-grown man with a single
blow from his open palm; while one of Flatfoot's
amusements is the breaking of men's arms and legs
with his bare hands.
They had entered the valley now, and in silence
they continued on toward the fringe of trees which
grew beside the little river.


DEATH'S DOORWAY 51
Nadara led the way toward a ford, which they
quickly crossed. All the way across the valley
Waldo had been searching for some avenue of
escape.
He dared not enter that awful village and face
those terrible men, and he was almost equally averse
to admitting to the girl that he was afraid.
He would gladly have died to have escaped either
alternative, but he preferred to choose the manner
of his death.
The thought of entering the village and meeting
a horrible end at the hands of the brutes who
awaited him there and of being compelled to dem-
onstrate before the girl's eyes that he was neither a
mighty fighter nor a hero was more than he could
endure.
Occupied with these harrowing speculations,
Waldo and Nadara came to the farther side of the
forest, whence they could see the towering cliffs
rising steeply from the valley's bed, three hundred
yards away.
Along their face and at their feet Waldo descried
a host of half-naked men, women, and children
moving about in the consummation of their various
duties. Involuntarily he halted.
The girl came to his side. Together they looked
out upon the scene, the like of which Waldo Emer-
son never before had seen.


52 THE CAVE GIRL
It was as though he had been suddenly snatched
back through countless ages to a long-dead past and
dropped into the midst of the prehistoric life of his
paleolithic progenitors.
Upon the narrow ledges before their caves,
women, with long, flowing hair, ground food in
rude stone mortars. -
Naked children played about them, perilously
close to the precipitous cliff edge.
Hairy men squatted, gorillalike, before pieces of
flat stone, upon which green hides were stretched,
while they scraped, scraped, scraped with the sharp
edge of smaller bits of stone.
There was no laughter and no song.
Occasionally Waldo saw one of the fierce crea-
tures address another, and sometimes one would
raise his thick lips in a nasty snarl that exposed his
fighting fangs; but they were too far away for their
words to reach the young man.


CHAPTER V
AWAKENING
de OME,” said the girl, “let us make haste. I
cannot wait to be home again! How good
it looks!”
Waldo gazed at her in horror. It did not seem
credible that this beautiful young creature could be
of such clay as that he looked upon. It was revolt-
ing to believe that she had sprung from the loins
of one of those half-brutes, or that a woman as
fierce, repulsive, such as those he saw before him,
could have borne her. It made him sick with
disgust.
He turned from her.
“Go to your people, Nadara,” he said, for an
idea had come to him.
He had evolved a scheme for escaping a meet-
ing with Flatfoot and Korth, and the sudden dis-
gust which he felt for the girl made it easier for
him to carry out his design.
“Are you not coming with me?” she cried.
“Not at once,” replied Waldo, quite truthfully.
“I wish you to go first. Were we to go together
they might harm you when they rushed out to
attack me.”
53


54 THE CAVE GIRL
The girl had no fear of this, but she felt that
it was very thoughtful of the man to consider her
welfare so tenderly. To humor him, she acceded
to his request.
“As you wish, Thandar,” she answered, smiling.
Thandar was a name of her own choosing, after
Waldo had informed her in answer to a request
for his name, that she might call him Mr. Waldo
Emerson Smith-Jones. “I shall call you Thandar,”
she had replied; “it is shorter, more easily remem-
bered, and describes you. It means the Brave One.”
And so Thandar he had become.
The girl had scarcely emerged from the forest
on her way toward the cliffs when Thandar the
Brave One, turned and ran at top speed in the
opposite direction. When he came to the river he
gave immediate evidence of the strides he had taken
in woodcraft during the brief weeks that he had
been under the girl's tutorage, for he plunged imme-
diately into the water, setting out up-stream upon
the gravelly bottom where he would leave no spoor
to be tracked down by the eagle eyes of these primi-
tive men.
He supposed that the girl would search for him;
but he felt no compunction at having deserted her
so scurvily. Of course, he had no suspicion of her
real sentiments toward him—it would have
shocked him to have imagined that a low-born per-


56 THE CAVE GIRL
such pity. But Waldo had not as yet learned
enough to realize how very little he knew.
In the morning he continued his flight, gather-
ing his breakfast from tree and shrub as he fled.
Here again was he wholly indebted to Nadara, for
without her training he would have been restricted
to a couple of fruits, whereas now he had a great
variety of fruits, roots, berries, and nuts to choose
from in safety.
The stream that he had been following had now
become a narrow, rushing, mountain torrent. It
leaped suddenly over little precipices in wild and
picturesque waterfalls; it rioted in foaming cas-
cades; and ever it led Waldo farther into high and
rugged country. -
The climbing was difficult and oftentimes danger-
ous. Waldo was surprised at the steeps he nego-
tiated—perilous ascents from which he would have
snrunk in palsied fear a few weeks earlier. Waldo
was coming on. " -
Another fact which struck him with amazement
at the same time that it filled him with rejoicing,
was that he no longer coughed. It was quite be-
yond belief, too, since never in his life had he been
so exposed to cold and wet and discomfort.
At home, he realized, he would long since have
curled up and died had he been subjected to one-
tenth the exposure that he had undergone since the


AWAKENING 57
great wave had lifted him bodily from the deck of
the steamer to land him unceremoniously in the
midst of this new life of hardships and terrors.
Toward noon Waldo began to travel with less
haste. He had seen or heard no evidence of pur-
suit. At times he stopped to look back along the
trail he had passed, but though he could see the little
valley below him for a considerable distance he
discovered nothing to arouse alarm.
Presently he realized that he was very lonely. A
dozen times in as many minutes he thought of ob-
servations he would have been glad to make had
there been some one with him to hear. There were
queries, too, relative to this new country that he
should have liked very much to propound, and it
flashed upon him that in all the world there was
only one whom he knew who could give him cor-
rect answers to these queries.
He wondered what the girl had thought when he
did not follow her into the village, and set upon
Flatfoot and Korth. At the thought he found him-
self flushing in a most unaccountable manner.
What would the girl think! Would she guess
the truth? Well, what difference if she did? What
was her opinion to a cultured gentleman such as
Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones? But yet he found
his mind constantly reverting to this unhappy specu-
lation; it was most annoying.


58 THE CAVE GIRL
As he thought of her he discovered with what
distinctness he recalled every feature of her piquant
little face, her olive skin tinged beautifully by the
ruddy glow of health; her fine, straight nose and
delicate nostrils, her perfect eyes, soft, yet filled
with the fire of courage and intelligence. Waldo
wondered why it was that he recalled these things
now, and dwelt upon them; he had been with her
for weeks without realizing that he had particularly
noticed them.
But most vividly he conjured again the memory
of her soft, liquid speech, her ready retorts, her
bright, interesting observations on the little hap-
penings of their daily life; her thoughtful kindli-
ness to him, a stranger within her gates, and—
again he flushed hotly—her sincere, though re-
markable, belief in his prowess.
It took Waldo a long time to admit to himself
that he missed the girl; it must have been weeks
before he finally did so unreservedly. Simultane-
ously he determined to return to her village and
find her. He had even gone so far as to start the
return journey when the memory of her descrip-
tion of Flatfoot and Korth brought him to a sud-
den halt—a most humiliating halt.
The blood surged to his face—he could feel it
burning there. And then Waldo did two things
which he had never done before: he looked at his


AWAKENING 59
soul and saw himself as he was, and—he swore.
“Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones,” he said aloud,
“you're a darned coward! Worse than that, you're
an unthinkable cad. That girl was kind to you.
She treated you with the tender solicitude of a
mother. And how have you returned her kind-
ness? By looking down upon her with arrogant
condescension. By pitying her.
“Pitying her! You—you miserable weakling
—ingrate, pitying that fine, intelligent, generous
girl. You, with your pitiful little store of second-
hand knowledge, pitying that girl's ignorance.
Why, she's forgotten more real things than you
ever heard of, you—you—” Words utterly failed
him.
Waldo's awakening was thorough—painfully
thorough. It left no tiny hidden recess of his con-
temptible little soul unrevealed from his searching
self-analysis. Looking back over the twenty-one
years of his uneventful life, he failed to resurrect
but a single act of which he might now be proud,
and that, strange to say, in the light of his past
training, had to do neither with culture, intellect,
birth, breeding, nor knowledge.
It was a purely gross, physical act. It was hide-
ously, violently, repulsively animal—it was no
other than the instant of heroism in which he had
turned back upon the cliff's face to battle with the


60 THE CAVE GIRL
horrible, hairy man who had threatened to prevent
Nadara's escape.
Even now Waldo could not realize that it had
been he who ventured so foolhardy an act; but none
the less his breast swelled with pride as he recalled
it. It put into the heart of the man a new hope
and into his head a new purpose—a purpose that
would have caused his Back Bay mother to seek an
early grave could she have known of it.
Nor did Waldo Emerson lose any time in initiat-
ing the new regime which was eventually to fit
him for the consummation of his splendid purpose.
He thought of it as splendid now, though a few
weeks before the vulgar atrocity of it would have
nauseated him.
Far up in the hills, near the source of the little
river, Waldo had found a rocky cave. This he had
chosen as his new home. He cleaned it out with
scrupulous care, littering the floor with leaves and
grasses.
Before the entrance he piled a dozen large boul-
ders, so arranged that three of them could be re-
moved or replaced either from within or without,
thus forming a means of egress and ingress which
could be effectually closed against intruders.
From the top of a high promontory, a half mile
beyond his cave, Waldo could obtain a view of the
ocean, some eight or ten miles distant. It was al-


AWAKENING 61
ways in his mind that some day a ship would come,
and Waldo longed to return to the haunts of civili-
zation, but he did not expect the ship before his
plans had properly matured and been put into
execution. He argued that he could not sail away
from this shore forever without first seeing Nadara,
and restoring the confidence in him which he felt
his recent desertion had unquestionably shaken to
its foundations.
As a part of his new regime, Waldo required
exercise, and to this end he set about making a trip
to the ocean at least once each week. The way was
rough and hazardous, and the first few times Waldo
found it almost beyond his strength to make even
one leg of the journey between sunrise and dark.
This necessitated sleeping out over night; but
this, too, accorded with the details of the task he
had set himself, and so he did it quite cheerfully
and with a sense of martyrdom that he found ef-
fectually stilled his most poignant fits of cowardice.
As time went on he was able to cover the whole
distance to the ocean and return in a single day.
He never coughed now, nor did he glance fearfully
from side to side as he strode through the woods
and open places of his wild domain.
His eyes were bright and clear, his head and
shoulders were thrown well back, and the mountain
climbing had expanded his chest to a degree that


62 THE CAVE GIRL
appalled him—the while it gave him much secret
satisfaction. It was a very different Waldo from
the miserable creature which had been vomited up
by the ocean upon the sand of that distant beach.
The days that Waldo did not make a trip to the
ocean he spent in rambling about the hills in the
vicinity of his cave. He knew every rock and tree
within five miles of his lair.
He knew where Nagoola hid by day, and the
path that he took down to the valley by night. Nor
did he longer tremble at sight of the great, black
Cat.
True, Waldo avoided him, but it was through
cool and deliberate caution, which is quite another
thing from the senseless panic of fear. Waldo was
biding his time.
He would not always avoid Nagoola. Nagoola
was a part of Waldo's great plan, but Waldo was
not ready for him yet.
The young man still bore his cudgel, and in addi-
tion he had practised throwing rocks until he could
almost have hit a near-by bird upon the wing. Be-
sides these weapons Waldo was working upon a
spear. It had occurred to him that a spear would
be a mighty handy weapon against either man or
beast, and so he had set to work to fashion one.
He found a very straight young sapling, a little
over an inch in diameter and ten feet long. By


AWAKENING 63
means of a piece of edged flint he succeeded in
tapering it to a sharp point. A rawhide thong,
plaited from many pieces of small bits of hide taken
from the little animals that had fallen before his
missiles, served to sling the crude weapon across
his shoulders when he walked.
With his spear he practised hour upon hour each
day, until he could transfix a fruit the size of an
apple three times out of five, at a distance of fifty
feet, and at a hundred hit a target the size of a man
almost without a miss.
Six months had passed since he had fled from
an encounter with Flatfoot and Korth.
Then Waldo had been a skinny, cowardly weak-
ling; now his great frame had filled out with healthy
flesh, while beneath his skin hard muscles rolled as
he bent to one of the many Herculean tasks he had
set for himself.
For six months he had worked with a single pur-
pose in view, but still he felt that the day was not
yet come when he might safely venture to put his
newfound manhood to the test.
Down, far down, in the depth of his soul he
feared that he was yet a coward at heart—and he
dared not take the risk. It was too much to ex-
pect, he told himself, that a man should be entirely
metamorphosed in a brief half year. He would
wait a little longer.


64 THE CAVE GIRL
It was about this time that Waldo first saw a
human being after his last sight of Nadara.
It was while he was on his way to the ocean, on
one of the trips that had by this time become
thrice weekly affairs, that he suddenly came face to
face with a skulking, hairy brute.
Waldo halted to see what would happen.
The man eyed him with those small, cunning,
red-rimmed eyes that reminded Waldo of the eyes
of a pig. -
Finally Waldo spoke in the language of Nadara.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Sag the Killer,” replied the man. “Who are
you?”
“Thandar,” answered Waldo.
“I do not know you,” said Sag; “but I can kill
you.”
He lowered his bull head and came for Waldo
like a battering ram.
The young man dropped the point of his ready
spear, bracing his feet. The point entered Sag's
breast below the collar-bone, stopping only after it
had passed entirely through the savage heart.
Waldo had not moved; the momentum of the man's
body had been sufficient to impale him.
As the body rolled over, stiffening after a few
convulsive kicks, Waldo withdrew his spear from
it. Blood smeared its point for a distance of a foot,


AWAKENING 65
but Waldo showed no sign of loathing or disgust.
Instead he smiled. It had been so much easier
than he had anticipated.
Leaving Sag where he had fallen he continued
toward the ocean. An hour later he heard unusual
noises behind him.
He stopped to listen. He was being pursued.
From the sounds he estimated that there must be
several in the party, and a moment later, as he was
crossing a clearing, he got his first view of them
as they emerged from the forest he had just quitted.
There were at least twenty powerfully muscled
brutes. In skin bags thrown across their shoulders
each carried a supply of stones, and these they
began to hurl at Waldo as they raced toward him.
For a moment the man held his ground, but he
quickly realized the futility of pitting himself
against such odds.
Turning, he ran toward the forest upon the other
side of the clearing while a shower of rocks whizzed
about him.
Once within the shelter of the trees there was
less likelihood of his being hit by one of the mis-
siles, but occasionally a well-aimed rock would
strike him a glancing blow. Waldo hoped that they
would tire of the chase before the beach was
reached, for he knew that there could be but one ,
outcome of a battle in which one man faced twenty.


66 THE CAVE GIRL
As the pursued and the pursuers raced on through
the forest one of the latter, fleeter than his com-
panions, commenced to close up the gap which had
existed between Waldo and the twenty. On and on
he came, until a backward glance showed Waldo
that in another moment this swift foeman would
be upon him. He was younger than his fellows
and more active, and, having thrown all his stones,
was free from any burden of weight other than
the single garment about his hips.
Waldo still clung to his tattered ducks, which
from lack of support and more or less rapid disin-
tegration were continually slipping down from his
hips, so that they tended to hinder his movements
and reduce his speed.
Had he been as naked as his pursuer he would
doubtless have distanced him; but he was not, and
it was evident that because of this fact he must
take a chance in a hand-to-hand encounter that
might delay him sufficiently to permit the balance
of the horde to reach him—that would be the end
of everything.
But Waldo Emerson neither screamed in terror
nor trembled. When he wheeled to meet the now
close savage there was a smile upon his lips, for
Waldo Emerson had “killed his man,” and there
was no longer the haunting fear within his soul
that at heart he was a coward.


AWAKENING 67
As he turned with couched spear the cave man
came to a sudden stop.
This was not what Waldo had anticipated. The
other savages were running rapidly toward him, but
the fellow who had first overhauled him remained
at a safe twenty feet from the point of his weapon.
Waldo was being cleverly held until the remain-
der of the enemy could arrive and overwhelm him.
He knew that if he turned to run the fellow who
danced and yelled just beyond his reach would
plunge forward and be upon his back in an instant.
He tried rushing the man, but the other retreated
nimbly, drawing Waldo still closer to those who
were coming on.
There was no time to be lost. A moment more
and the entire twenty would be upon him; but there
were possibilities in a spear that the cave man in
his ignorance dreamed not of. There was a light-
ninglike movement of Waldo's arm, and the abori-
gine saw the spear darting swiftly through space
toward his breast. He tried to dodge, but was too
late. Down he went, clutching madly at the slender
thing which protruded from his heart.
Although one of the dead man's companions was
now quite close, Waldo could not relinquish his
weapon without an effort—it had cost him consid-
erable time to make, and twice today it had saved
his life. Forgetful that he had ever been a coward


68 THE CAVE GIRL
he leaped toward the fallen man, reaching his side
at the same instant as his foremost pursuer.
The two came together like mad bulls—the
savage reaching for Waldo's throat, Waldo wield-
ing his light cudgel. For a moment they struggled
backward and forward, turning and twisting, the
cave man in an effort to close upon Waldo's wind,
Waldo to hold the other at arm's length for the
brief instant that would be necessary for one sud-
den, effective blow from the cudgel.
The other savages were almost upon them when
the young man found his antagonist's throat.
Throwing all his weight and strength into the effort,
Waldo forced the cave man back until there was
room between them for the play of the stick. A
single blow was sufficient.
As the limp body of his foeman slipped from his
grasp, Waldo snatched his precious spear from the
heart of its victim, and with the hands of the in-
furiated pack almost upon him, turned once more
into his flight toward the ocean.
The howling band was close upon his heels now,
nor could he greatly increase the distance that sep-
arated him from them. He wondered what the
outcome of the matter was to be; he did not wish
to die. His thoughts kept reverting to his boyhood
home, to his indulgent mother, to the friends that
had been his. He felt that at the last moment he


AWAKENING 69
was about to lose his nerve—that, after all, his
hard earned manliness was counterfeit.
Then there came to him a vision of an oval, olive
face framed by a mass of soft, black hair; and be-
fore it the fear of death dissolved into a grim
smile. He did not pause to analyze the reason for
it—nor could he have done so then had he tried.
He only knew that with those eyes upon him he
could not be aught else than courageous.
A moment later he burst through the last fringe
of underbrush to emerge upon the clearing that
faced the sea.
There by a tiny rivulet he saw a sight that filled
him with thanksgiving, and farther out upon the
ocean that which he had been waiting and hoping
for for all these long, hard months—a ship.


CHAPTER VI
A CHOICE
EAMEN upon the beach were filling water-
casks.
There were a dozen of them, and as Waldo
plunged from the forest they looked with startled
apprehension at the strange apparition. A great,
brown giant they saw, clad in a few ragged strings
of white duck, for Waldo had kept his apparel as
immaculately clean as hard rubbing in cold water
would permit.
In one hand the strange creature carried a long,
bloody spear, in the other a light cudgel. Long, yel-
low hair streamed back over his broad shoulders.
Several of the men—those who were armed—
leveled guns and revolvers at him; but when, as he
drew closer, they saw a broad grin upon his face,
and heard in perfectly good English, “Don’t shoot;
I'm a white man,” they lowered their weapons and
awaited him. -
He had scarcely reached them when they saw a
swarm of naked men dash from the forest in his
wake. Waldo saw their eyes directed past him
and knew that his pursuers had come into view.
“You’ll have to shoot at them, I imagine,” he
70


A CHOICE 71
said. “They're not exactly domesticated. Try fir-
ing over their heads at first; maybe you can scare
them away without hurting any of them.”
He disliked the idea of seeing the poor savages
slaughtered. It didn't seem just like fair play to
mow them down with bullets. -
The sailors followed his suggestion. At the first
reports the cave men halted in surprise and con-
sternation.
“Let’s rush 'em,” suggested one of the men, and
this was all that was needed to send them scurrying
back into the woods.
Waldo found that the ship was English, and that
all the men spoke his mother tongue in more or
less understandable fashion. The second mate, who
was in charge of the landing party, proved to have
originated in Boston. It was much like being at
home again.
Waldo was so excited and wanted to ask so many
questions all at once that he became almost unin-
telligible. It seemed scarcely possible that a ship
had really come.
He realized now that he had never actually enter-
tained any very definite belief that a ship ever
would come to this out-of-the-way corner of the
world. He had hoped and dreamed, but down in
the bottom of his heart he must have felt that years
might elapse before he would be rescued.


72 THE CAVE GIRL
Even now it was difficult to believe that these
were really civilized beings like himself.
They were on their way to a civilized world; they
would soon be surrounded by their families and
friends, and he, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, was
going with them!
In a few months he would see his mother and his
father and all his friends—he would be among his
books once more.
Even as the last thought flashed through his
mind it was succeeded by mild wonderment that
this outlook failed to raise his temperature as he
might have expected that it would. His books had
been his real life in the past—could it be that they
had lost something of their glamour? Had his
brief experience with the realities of life dulled the
edge of his appetite for second-hand hopes, aspira-
tions, deeds, and emotions?
It had.
Waldo yet craved his books, but they alone would
no longer suffice. He wanted something bigger,
something more real and tangible—he wanted to
read and study, but even more he wanted to do.
And back there in his own world there would be
plenty awaiting the doing.
His heart thrilled at the possibilities that lay be-
fore the new Waldo Emerson—possibilities of
which he never would have dreamed but for the
*


– f A CHOICE 73
range chance which had snatched him bodily from
one life to throw him into this new one, which had
forced upon him the development of attributes of
self-reliance, courage, initiative, and resourceful-
ness that would have lain dormant within him al-
ways but for the necessity which had given birth to
them.
Yes, Waldo realized that he owed a great deal
to this experience—a great deal to — And then
a sudden realization of the truth rushed in upon
—he owed everything to Nadara.
== I was never shipwrecked on a desert island,”
said the second mate, breaking in upon Waldo's
reveries, “but I can imagine just about how good
you feel at the thought that you are at last rescued
and that in an hour or so you will see the shore-
line of your prison growing smaller and smaller
upon the southern horizon.”
“Yes,” acquiesced Waldo in a far away voice:
“it’s awfully good of you, but I am not going
with you.”
Two hours later Waldo Emerson stood alone
upon the beach, watching the diminishing hull of a
great ship as it dropped over the rim of the world
far to the north.
A vague hint of tears dimmed his vision; then he
threw back his shoulders, swallowed the thing that


74 THE CAVE GIRL
had risen into his throat, and with high held head
turned back into the forest.
In one hand he carried a razor and a plug of to-
bacco–the sole mementos of his recent brief con-
tact with the world of civilization. The kindly
sailors had urged him to reconsider his decision, but
when he remained obdurate they had insisted that
they be permitted to leave some of the comforts of
life with him.
The only thing that he could think of that he
wanted very badly was a razor—firearms he would
not accept, for he had worked out a rather fine
chivalry of his own here in this savage world—a
chivalry which would not permit him to take any
advantage over the primeval inhabitants he had
found here other than what his own hands and
head might give him.
At the last moment one of the seamen, prompted
by a generous heart and a keen realization of what
life must be without even bare necessities, had
thrust upon Waldo the plug of tobacco. As he
looked at it now the young man smiled.
“That would indeed be the last step, according
to mother's ideas,” he soliloquized. “No lower
could I sink.”
The ship that bore away Waldo's chance of
escape carried also a long letter to Waldo's mother.
In portions it was rather vague and rambling. It


A CHOICE 75
mentioned, among other things, that he had an ob-
ligation to fulfil before he could leave his present
habitat; but that the moment he was free he should
“take the first steamer for Boston.”
The skipper of the ship which had just sailed
away had told Waldo that in so far as he knew
there might never be another ship touch his island,
which was so far out of the beaten course that only
the shore-line of it had ever been explored, and
scarce a score of vessels had reported it since Cap-
tain Cook discovered it in 1773.
Yet it was in the face of this that Waldo had
refused to leave. As he walked slowly through
the wood on his way back toward his cave he tried
to convince himself that he had acted purely from
motives of gratitude and fairness—that as a gen-
tleman he could do no less than see Nadara and
thank her for the friendly services she had rendered
him; but for some reason this seemed a very futile
and childish excuse for relinquishing what might
easily be his only opportunity to return to civiliza-
tion.
His final decision was that he had acted the part
of a fool; yet as he walked he hummed a joyous
tune, and his heart was full of happiness and
pleasant expectations of what he could not have
told.
To one thing he had made up his mind, and that


76 THE CAVE GIRL
was that the next sun would see him on his way
to the village of Nadara. His experience with the
savages that day had convinced him that he might
with reasonable safety face Flatfoot and Korth.
The more he dwelt upon this idea the more light-
hearted he became—he could not understand it.
He should be plunged into the blackest despair, for
had he not but just relinquished a chance to return
home, and was he not within a day or two to enter
the village of the ferocious Flatfoot and the mighty
Korth? Even so, his heart sang.
Waldo saw nothing of his enemies of the earlier
part of the day as he moved cautiously through the
forest or crossed the little plains and meadows
which lay along the route between the ocean and
his lair; but his thoughts often reverted to them
and to his adventures of the morning, and the re-
sult was that he became aware of a deficiency in
his equipment—a deficiency which his recent bat-
tle made glaringly apparent.
In fact, there were two points that might be
easily remedied. One was the lack of a shield.
Had he had protection of this nature he would have
been in comparatively little danger from the shower
of missiles that the savages had flung at him.
The other was a sword. With a sword and
shield he could have let his enemies come to very
close quarters with perfect impunity to himself and
-!


A CHOICE 77
then have run them through with infinite ease.
This new idea would necessitate a delay in his
plans; he must finish both shield and sword before
he departed for the village of Flatfoot. What with
his meditation and his planning, Waldo had made
poor time on the return journey from the coast, so
that it was after sunset when he entered the last
deep ravine beyond the farther summit of which lay
his rocky home. In the depths of the ravine it was
already quite dark, though a dim twilight still hung
upon the surrounding hill-tops.
He had about completed the arduous ascent of
the last steep trail, at the crest of which was his
journey's end, when above him, silhouetted against
the darkening sky, loomed a great black, crouch-
ing mass, from the center of which blazed two balls
of fire.
It was Nagoola, and he occupied the center of
the only trail that led over the edge of the ridge
from the ravine below.
“I had almost forgotten you, Nagoola,” mur-
mured Waldo Emerson. “I could never have gone
upon my journey without first interviewing you,
but I could have wished a different time and place
than this. Let us postpone the matter for a day or
so,” he concluded aloud; but the only response from
Nagoola was an ominous growl. Waldo felt rather
uncomfortable.


78 THE CAVE GIRL
He could not have come upon the great, black
panther at a more inopportune time or place. It was
too dark for Waldo's human eyes, and the cat was
above him and Waldo upon a steep hillside that
under the best of conditions offered but a precari-
ous foothold. He tried to shoo the formidable
beast away by shouts and menacing gesticulations,
but Nagoola would not shoo.
Instead he crept slowly forward, edging his sinu-
ous body inch by inch along the rocky trail until it
hung poised above the waiting man a dozen feet
below him.
Six months before Waldo would long since have
been shrieking in meteorlike flight down the bed of
the ravine behind him. That a wonderful transfor-
mation had been wrought within him was evident
from the fact that no cry of fright escaped him,
and that, far from fleeing, he edged inch by inch
upward toward the menacing creature hanging
there above him. He carried his spear with the
point leveled a trifle below those baleful eyes.
He had advanced but a foot or two, however,
when, with an awful shriek, the terrible beast
launched itself full upon him.
As the heavy body struck him Waldo went over
backward down the cliff, and with him went
Nagoola.
Clawing, tearing, and scratching, the two rolled


A CHOICE 79
and bounded down the rocky hillside until, near the
bottom, they came to a sudden stop against a large
tree.
The growling and screeching ceased, the claw-
ing paws and hands were still. Presently the tropic
moon rose over the hill-top to look down upon a
little tangled mound of man and beast that lay very
quiet against the bole of a great tree near the bot-
tom of a dark ravine.


CHAPTER VII
THANDAR, THE SEEKER
OR a long time there was no sign of life in
that strange pile of flesh and bone and brawn
and glossy black fur and long, yellow hair and
blood. But toward dawn it moved a little, down
near the bottom of the heap, and a little later there
was a groan, and then all was still again for many
minutes.
Presently it moved again, this time more ener-
getically, and after several efforts a yellow head
streaked and matted with blood emerged from be-
neath. It required the better part of an hour for
the stunned and lacerated Waldo to extricate him-
self from the entangling embrace of Nagoola.
When, finally, he staggered to his feet he saw
that the great cat lay dead before him, the broken
shaft of the spear protruding from the sleek, black
breast.
It was quite evident that the beast had lived but
the barest fraction of an instant after it had
launched itself upon the man; but during that brief
interval of time it had wrought sore havoc with
its mighty talons, though fortunately for Waldo the
great jaws had not found him.
80


THANDAR, THE SEEKER 8I
From breast to knees ghastly wounds were fur-
rowed in the man's brown skin where the powerful
hind feet of the beast had raked him.
That he owed his life to the chance that had
brought about the encounter upon a steep hillside
rather than on the level seemed quite apparent, for
during their tumble down the declivity Nagoola
had been unable to score with any degree of ac-
curacy.
As Waldo looked down upon himself he was at
first horrified by the frightful appearance of his
wounds; but when a closer examination showed
them to be superficial he realized that the only
danger lay in infection. Every bone and muscle in
his body ached from the man-handling and the
fall, and the wounds themselves were painful, al-
most excruciatingly so when a movement of his
body stretched or tore them; but notwithstanding
his suffering he found himself smiling as he con-
templated the remnants of his long-suffering ducks.
There remained of their once stylish glory not a
shred—the panther's sharp claws had finished what
time and brambles had so well commenced. And
of their linen partner—the white outing shirt—
only the neckband remained, with a single frag-
ment as large as one's hand depending behind.
“Nature is a wonderful leveler,” thought Waldo.
“It is evident that she hates artificiality as she does


82 THE CAVE GIRL
a vacuum. I shall really need you now,” he con-
cluded, looking at the beautiful, black coat of Na-
goola.
Despite his suffering, Waldo crawled to his lair,
where he selected a couple of sharp-edged stones
from his collection and returned to the side of
Nagoola.
Leaving his tools there he went on down to the
bottom of the ravine, where in a little crystal stream
he bathed his wounds. Then he returned once more
to his kill.
After half a day of the most arduous labor
Waldo succeeded in removing the panther's hide,
which he dragged laboriously to his lair, where he
fell exhausted, unable even to crawl within.
The next day Waldo worked upon the inner sur-
face of the hide, removing every particle of flesh
by scraping it with a sharp stone, so that there
might be no danger of decomposition.
He was still very weak and sore, but he could
not bear the thought of losing the pelt that had
cost him so much to obtain.
When the last vestige of flesh had been scraped
away he crawled into his lair, where he remained
for a week, only emerging for food and water. At
the end of that time his wounds were almost
healed, and he had entirely recovered from his
lameness and the shock of the adventure, so that it


THANDAR, THE SEEKER 83
was with real pleasure and exultation that he
gloated over his beautiful trophy. -
Always as he thought of the time that he should
have it made ready for girting about his loins he
saw himself, not through his own eyes, but as he
imagined that another would see him, and that other
was Nadara.
For many days Waldo scraped and pounded the
great skin as he had seen the cave men scrape and
pound in the brief instant he had watched them with
Nadara from the edge of the forest before the vil-
lage of Flatfoot. At last he was rewarded with a
pelt sufficiently pliable for the purpose of the rude
apparel he contemplated.
A strip an inch wide he trimmed off to form a
supporting belt. With this he tied the black skin
about his waist, passed one arm through a hole
he had made for that purpose near the upper edge;
bringing the fore paws forward about his chest, he
crossed and fastened them to secure the garment
from falling from the upper part of his body.
It was a very proud Waldo that strutted forth
in the finery of his new apparel; but the pride was
in the prowess that had won the thing for him—
vulgar, gross, brutal physical prowess—the very
attribute upon which he had looked with super-
cilious contempt six months before.
Next Waldo turned his attention toward the


84 THE CAVE GIRL
fashioning of a sword, a new spear, and a shield.
The first two were comparatively easy of accom-
plishment—he had them both completed in half a
day, and from a two-inch strip of panther hide he
made also a sword belt to pass over his right
shoulder and support his sword at his left side; but
the shield almost defied his small skill and newborn
ingenuity.
With small twigs and grasses he succeeded, after
nearly a week of painstaking endeavor, in weav-
ing a rude, oval buckler some three feet long by
two wide, which he covered with the skins of sev-
eral small animals that had fallen before his death-
dealing stones. A strip of hide fastened upon the
back of the shield held it to his left arm.
With it Waldo felt more secure against the swift-
ly thrown missiles of the savages he knew he should
encounter on his forthcoming expedition.
At last came the morning for departure. Ris-
ing with the sun, Waldo took his morning “tub”
in the cold spring that rose a few yards from his
cave, then he got out the razor that the sailor had
given him, and after scraping off his scanty, yellow
beard, hacked his tawny hair until it no longer fell
about his shoulders and in his eyes.
Then he gathered up his weapons, rolled the
boulders before the entrance to his cave, and turn-
ing his back upon his rough home set off down the


THANDAR, THE SEEKER 85
little stream toward the distant valley where it
wound through the forest along the face of the
cliffs to Flatfoot and Korth.
As he stepped lightly along the hazardous trail,
leaping from ledge to ledge in the descent of the
many sheer drops over which the stream fell, he
might have been a reincarnation of some primeval
hunter from whose savage loins had sprung the
warriors and the strong men of a world.
The tall, well-muscled, brown body; the clear,
bright eyes; the high-held head; the sword, the
spear, the shield were all a far cry from the weak
and futile thing that had lain groveling in the sand
upon the beach, sweating and shrieking in terror six
short months before. And yet it was the same.
What one good but mistaken woman had
smothered another had brought out, and the result
of the influence of both was a much finer specimen
of manhood than either might have evolved alone.
In the afternoon of the third day Waldo came
to the forest opposite the cliffs where lay the home
of Nadara. Cautiously he stole from tree to tree
until he could look out unseen upon the honey-
combed face of the lofty escarpment.
All was lifeless and deserted. The cave mouths
looked out upon the valley, sad and lonely. There
was no sign of life in any direction as far as Waldo
could see.


86 THE CAVE GIRL
Coming from the forest he crossed the clearing
and approached the cliffs. His eye, now become
alert in woodcraft, detected the young grass grow-
ing in what had once been well-beaten trails. He
needed no further evidence to assure him that the
caves were deserted, and had been for some time.
One by one he entered and explored several of
the cliff dwellings. All gave the same mute corro-
boration of what was everywhere apparent—the
village had been evacuated without haste in an or-
derly manner. Everything of value had been re-
moved—only a few broken utensils remaining as
indication that it had ever constituted human habi,
tation.
Waldo was utterly confounded. He had not the
remotest idea in which direction to search. Dur-
ing the balance of the afternoon he wandered along
the various ledges, entering first one cave and then
another.
He wondered which had been Nadara's. He
tried to imagine her life among these crude, primi-
tive surroundings; among the beastlike men and
women who were her people. She did not seem to
harmonize with either. He was convinced that she
was more out of place here than Flatfoot would
have been in a Back Bay drawing-room.
The more his mind dwelt upon her the sadder he
became. He tried to convince himself that it was


THANDAR, THE SEEKER 87
purely disappointment in being thwarted in his de-
sire to thank her for her kindness to him, and
demonstrate that her confidence in his prowess had
not been misplaced; but always he discovered that
his thoughts returned to Nadara rather than to the
ostensible object of his adventure.
In short he began to realize, rather vaguely it is
true, that he had come because he wanted to see
the girl again; but why he wanted to see her he did
not know.
That night he slept in one of the deserted caves,
and the next morning set forth upon his quest for
Nadara. For three days he searched the little val-
ley, but without results. There was no sign of any
other village within it.
Then he passed over into another valley to the
north. For weeks he wandered hither and thither
without being rewarded by even a sight of a human
being.
Early one afternoon as he was topping a barrier
in search of other valleys he came suddenly face to
face with a great, hairy man. Both stopped—the
hairy one glaring with his nasty little eyes.
“I can kill you,” growled the savage.
Waldo had no desire to fight—it was informa-
tion he was searching. But he almost smiled at the
ready greeting of the man. It was the same that
Sag the Killer had accorded him that day he had


88 THE CA17E GIRL
gone down to the sea for the last time.
It came as readily and as glibly from these primi-
tive men as “good morning” falls from the lips of
the civilized races, yet among the latter he realized
that it had its counterpart in the stony stares which
Anglo Saxon strangers vouchsafe one another.
“I have no quarrel with you,” replied Waldo.
“Let us be friends.”
“You are afraid,” taunted the hairy one.
Waldo pointed to his sable garment.
“Ask Nagoola,” he said.
The man looked at the trophy. There could be
no mightier argument for a man's valor than that.
He came a step closer that he might scrutinize it
more carefully.
“Full-grown and in perfect health,” he grunted
to himself. “This is no worn and mangy hide
peeled from the rotting carcass of one dead of sick-
11eSS.
“How did you slay Nagoola?” he asked sud-
denly.
Waldo indicated his spear, then he drew his gar-
ment aside and pointed to the vivid, new-healed
scars that striped his body.
“We met at dusk at a cliff-top. He was above,
I below. When we reached the bottom of the
ravine Nagoola was dead. But it was nothing for
Thandar. I am Thandar.”


THANDAR, THE SEEKER 89
Waldo rightly suspected that a little bravado
would make a good impression on the intellect
primeval, nor was he mistaken.
“What do you here in my country?” asked the
man, but his tone was less truculent than before.
“I am searching for Flatfoot and Korth—and
Nadara,” said Waldo.
The other's eyes narrowed.
“What would you of them?” he asked.
“Nadara was good to me—I would repay her.”
“But Flatfoot and Korth—what of them?” in-
sisted the man.
“My business is with them. When I see them I
shall transact it,” Waldo parried, for he had seen
the cunning look in the man's eyes and he did not
like it. “Can you lead me to them?”
“I can tell you where they are, but I am not
bound thither,” replied the man. “Three days to-
ward the setting sun will bring you to the village of
Flatfoot. There you will find Korth also-and
Nadara,” and without further parley the savage
turned and trotted toward the east.


CHAPTER VIII
NADARA AGAIN
ALDO watched him out of sight, half
minded to follow, for he was far from
satisfied that the fellow had been entirely honest
with him. Why he should have been otherwise
Waldo could not imagine, but nevertheless there
had been an indefinable suggestion of duplicity in
the man's behavior that had puzzled him.
However, Waldo took up his search toward the
west, passing down from the hills into a deep val-
ley, the bottom of which was overgrown by a
thick tangle of tropical jungle.
He had forced his way through this for nearly
half a mile when he came to the bank of a wide,
slow-moving river. Its water was thick with sedi-
ment—not clean, sparkling, and inviting, as were
the little mountain streams of the hills and valleys
farther south.
Waldo traveled along the edge of the river in a
northwesterly direction, searching for a ford. The
steep, muddy banks offered no foothold, so he dared
not venture a crossing until he could be sure of a
safe landing upon the opposite shore.
A couple of hundred yards from the point at
90


NADARA AGAIN 9I
which he had come upon the stream he found a
broad trail leading down into the water, and on the
other side saw a similar track cutting up through
the bank.
This, evidently, was the ford he sought, but as
he started toward the river he noticed the imprints-
of the feet of many animals—human and brute.
Waldo stooped to examine them minutely. There
were the broad pads of Nagoola, the smaller im-
prints of countless rodents, but back and forth
among them all were old and new signs of man.
There were the great, flat-foot prints of huge
adult males, the smaller but equally flat-footed im-
presses of the women and children; but one there
was that caught his eye particularly.
It was the fine and dainty outline of a perfect
foot, with the arch well defined. It was new, as
were many of the others, and, like the other newer
ones, it led down to the river and then back again,
as though she who made it had come for water and
then returned from whence she had come. Waldo
knew that the tracks leading away from the river
were the newer, because where the two trails over-
lapped those coming up from the ford were always
over those which led downward.
The multiplicity of signs indicated a considerable
community, and their newness the proximity of the
makers.


92 THE CAVE GIRL
Waldo hesitated but a moment before he reached
a decision, and then he turned up the trail away
from the river, and at a rapid trot followed the
spoor along its winding course through the jungle
to where it emerged at the base of the foothills, to
wind upward toward their crest.
He found that the trail he was following crossed
the hills but a few yards from the spot at which he
had met the cave man a short time before. Evi-
dently the man had been returning from the river
when he had espied Waldo.
The young man could see where the fellow's
tracks had left the main trail, and he followed them
to the point where the man had stood during his
conversation with Waldo; from there they led to-
ward the east for a short distance, and then turned
suddenly north to reenter the main trail.
Waldo could see that as soon as the man had
reached a point from which he would be safe from
the stranger's observation he had broken into a
rapid trot, and as he already had two hours’ start
Waldo felt that he would have to hurry were he to
overtake him.
Just why he wished to do so he did not consider,
but, intuitively possibly, he felt that the surly brute
could give him much more and accurate informa-
tion than he had. Nor could Waldo eliminate the
memory of those dainty feminine footprints.


NADARA AGAIN 93
It was foolish, of course, and he fully realized
the fact; but his silly mind would insist upon at-
tributing them to the cave girl—Nadara.
For two hours he trotted doggedly along the trail,
which for the most part was well defined. There
were places, of course, which taxed his trailing
ability, but by circling widely from these points he
always was able to pick up the tracks again.
He had come down from the hills and entered an
open forest, where the trail was entirely lost in the
mossy carpet that lay beneath the trees, when he
was startled by a scream—a woman's scream—
and the hoarse gutturals of two men, deep and
angry.
Hastening toward the sound, Waldo came upon
the authors of the commotion in a little glade half
hidden by surrounding bushes.
There were three actors in the hideous tragedy—
a hairy brute dragging a protesting girl by her
long, black hair and an old man, who followed, pro-
testing futilely against the outrage that threatened
the young woman.
None of them saw Waldo as he ran toward them
until he was almost upon them, and then the beast
who grasped the girl looked up, and Waldo recog-
nized him as the same who had sent him toward
the west earlier in the day.
At the same instant he saw the girl was Nadara.


94 THE CAVE GIRL
In the brief interval that the recognition required
there sloughed from the heart and mind and soul
of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones every particle of
the civilization and culture and refinement that had
required countless ages in the building, stripping
him naked, age on age, down to the primordial beast
that had begot his first human progenitor.
He saw red through blood as he leaped for the
throat of the man-beast whose ruthless hands were
upon Nadara.
His lip curled in the fighting snarl that exposed
his long-unused canine fangs.
He forgot sword and shield and spear.
He was no longer a man, but a terrible beast;
and the hairy brute that witnessed the metamor-
phosis blanched and shrank back in fear.
But he could not escape the fury of that mad
charge or the raging creature that sought his throat.
For a moment they struggled in a surging, sway-
ing embrace, and then toppled to the ground—the
hairy one beneath.
Rolling, tearing, and biting, they battled—each
seeking a death hold upon the other.
Time and again the gleaming teeth of the once-
fastidious Bostonian sank into the breast and shoul-
der of his antagonist, but it was the jugular his
primal instinct sought.
The girl and the old man had drawn away where


NADARA AGAIN 95
they could watch the battle in safety. Nadara's
eyes were wide in fascination.
Her slim, brown hands were tight pressed against
her rapidly rising and falling breasts as she leaned
a little forward with parted lips, drinking in every
detail of the conflict between the two beasts.
Ah, but was the yellow-haired giant really fight-
ing for possession of her, or merely in protection,
because she was a woman?
She could readily conceive from her knowledge
of him that he might be acting now solely from
some peculiar sense of duty which she realized that
he might entertain, although she could not herself
understand it.
Yes, that was it, and when he had conquered his
rival he would run away again, as he had months
before. At the thought Nadara felt herself flush
with mortification. No, he should never have an-
other opportunity to repeat that terrible affront.
As she allowed her mind to dwell on the humili-
ating moment that had witnessed the discovery that
Thandar had fled from her at the very threshold
of her home Nadara found herself hating him
again as fiercely as she had all these long months—
a hatred that had almost dissolved at sight of him
as he rushed out of the underbrush a moment be-
fore to wrest her from the clutches of her hideous
tormentor.


96 THE CAVE GIRL
Waldo and his antagonist were still tearing
futilely at one another in mad efforts to maim or
kill. The giant muscles of the cave man gave him
but little if any advantage over his agile, though
slightly less-powerful, adversary.
The hairy one used his teeth to better advantage,
with the result that Waldo was badly torn and
bleeding from a dozen wounds.
Both were weakening now, and it seemed to the
girl who watched that the younger man would be
the first to succumb to the terrific strain under
which both had been. She took a step forward
and, stooping, picked up a stone.
Her small strength would be ample to turn the
scales as she might choose—a sharp blow upon
the head of either would give his adversary the
trifling advantage that would spell death for the
one she struck.
The two men had struggled to their feet again
as she approached with raised weapon. -
At the very moment that it left her hand they
swung completely round, so that Waldo faced her,
and in the instant before the missile struck his fore-
head he saw Nadara in the very act of throwing—
upon her face an expression of hatred and loathing.
Then he lost consciousness and went down, drag-
ging with him the cave man, upon whose throat his
fingers had just found their hold.


CHAPTER IX
THE SEEKER
HEN the old man saw what had happened
he ran forward and grasped Nadara by the
wrist.
“Quick!” he cried—“quick, my daughter! You
have killed him who would have saved you, and now
nothing but flight may keep Korth from having his
way with you.”
As in a trance the girl turned and departed with
him.
They had scarcely disappeared within the under-
brush when Waldo returned to consciousness, so
slight had been the effect of the blow upon his head.
To his surprise he found the cave man lying
very still beside him, but an instant later he read the
reason for it in the little projecting ridge of rock
upon which lay his foe's forehead—in falling the
savage man had struck thus and lost consciousness.
Almost immediately the hairy one opened his
eyes, but before he could gather his scattered senses
sinewy fingers found his throat, and he lapsed once
more into oblivion—from which there was no
awakening.
As Waldo staggered to his feet he saw that the
97


98 THE CAVE GIRL
girl had vanished, and there swept back into his
mind the memory of the hate that had been in her
face as she struck him down.
It seemed incredible that she should have turned
against him so, and at the very moment, too, when
he had risked his life in her service; but that she had
there could be no doubt, for he had seen her cast
the stone—with his own eyes he had seen her, and,
too, he had seen the hatred and loathing in her face
as she looked straight into his. But what he had
not seen was the look of horror that followed as the
missile struck him instead of Korth, sending him
crumpling to earth.
Slowly Waldo turned away from the scene of
battle, and without even a second look at his van-
quished enemy limped painfully into the brush. His
heart was very heavy and he was weak from ex-
haustion and loss of blood, but he staggered on,
back toward his mountain lair, as he thought, until
unable to go further he sank down upon a little
grassy knoll and slept.
When Nadara recovered from the shock of the
thing she had done sufficiently to reason for herself
she realized that after all Thandar might not be
dead, and though the old man protested long and
loudly against it, she insisted upon retracing her
steps toward the spot where they had left the yel-
low giant in the clutches of Korth.


THE SEEKER 99
Very cautiously the girl threaded her way
through the maze of shrubbery and creepers that
filled the intervening space between the forest trees,
until she came silently to the edge of the clearing
in which the two had fought.
As she peered anxiously through the last curtain
2f foliage she saw a single body lying quiet and still
upon the sward, and an instant later recognized it
as Korth's. For several minutes she watched it be-
fore she became convinced that the man who had so
terrorized her whole childish life could never again
Affer her harm.
She looked about for Thandar, but he was no-
where to be seen. Nadara could scarcely believe
that her eyes were not deceiving her.
It was incredible that the yellow one could have
gone down to unconsciousness before her uninten-
tional blow and yet have mastered the mighty
Korth; but how else could Korth have met his death
and Thandar be gone?
She approached quite close to the dead man, turn-
ing the body over with her foot until the throat was
visible. There she saw the finger-marks that had
done the work, and with a little thrill of pride she
turned back into the forest, calling Thandar's name
aloud. -
But Thandar did not hear. Half a mile away he
lay weak and unconscious from loss of blood.


IOO THE CAVE GIRL
Morning found Nadara sleeping in a sturdy tree
upon the trail along which Waldo had followed
Korth. She had discovered the footprints of the
two men the evening before while she had been
searching unsuccessfully for the trail which Waldo
had followed after the battle. She hoped now that
the spoor might lead her to Thandar's cave, to
which she felt it quite possible he might have re-
turned by another way.
When the girl awoke she again took up her jour-
ney, following the tracks as unerringly as a hound
up through the hilly country, across the divide and
down into the jungle to the very watering place at
which her tribe had drank a few days earlier. Here
she made a brief stay.
Then on again down the river, back through the
jungle and onto the divide once more. She was
much mystified by the windings of the trail, but
for days she followed the fading spoor until, be-
coming fainter and fainter as it grew older, she
lost it entirely at last. -
She was quite sure by now, however, that it led
from her tribe's former territory, and so she kept
on, hoping against hope, that soon she would come
across the fresh track of Thandar where he had
passed her on his return journey to his home.
Nadara had eluded the old man when she started
upon her search for Thandar, so it was that the old


THE SEEKER IOI
fellow returned to the dwellings of his people alone
the following day.
Flatfoot was the first to greet him.
“Where is the girl?” he growled. “And where
is Korth? Has he taken her? Answer me the
truth or I will break every bone in your carcass.”
“I do not know where the girl is,” answered the
old man truthfully enough, “but Korth lies dead in
the little glade beyond the three great trees. A
mighty man killed him as he was dragging Nadara
off into the thicket—”
“And the man has taken the girl for himself?”
yelled Flatfoot. “You old thief you. This is some
of your work. Always have you tried to cheat me
of this girl since first you knew that I desired her.
Whither went they? Quick! before I kill you.”
“I do not know,” replied the old man. “For
hours I searched, until darkness came, but neither
of them could I find, and my old eyes are no longer
keen for trailing, so I was forced to abandon my
hunt and return here when morning came.”
“By the three trees the trail starts, you say?”
cried Flatfoot. “That is enough—I shall find
them. And when I return with the girl it will be
time enough to kill you; now it would delay me
too much,” and with that the cave man hurried
away into the forest.
It took him half a day to find Nadara's trail, but


IO2 THE CAVE GIRL
at last his search was rewarded, and as she had
made no effort to hide it he moved rapidly along
in the wake of the unsuspecting girl; but he was
not as swift as she, and the chase bid fair to be a
long one.
When Waldo woke he found the sun beating
down upon his face, and though he was lame and
sore he felt quite strong enough to continue his
journey; but whither he should go he did not know.
Now that Nadara had turned against him the
island held nothing for him, and he was on the
point of starting back toward his far distant lair
from where he might visit the ocean often to watch
for a passing ship, when the sudden decision came
to him to see the girl again, regardless of her evi-
dent hostility, and learn from her own lips the exact
reason of her hatred for him.
He had had no idea that the loss of her friend-
ship would prove such a blow to him, so that his
pride suffered as well as his heart as he contem-
plated his harrowed emotions.
Of course he was reasonably sure that Nadara's
attitude was due to his ungallant desertion, for
which act he had long suffered the most acute pangs
of remorse and contrition. Yet he felt that her ap-
parent vindictiveness was not warranted by even
the grave offense against chivalry and gratitude of
which he had been guilty.


IO6 THE CAVE GIRL
Smith-Jones as though he had been born and reared
in the most rocky and barren cave of this savage
island, nor did they sound strange or unusual to
him. It seemed that he had said the most natural
and proper thing under the circumstances that there
was to say.
“Flatfoot is not here,” said the old man, “nor
is Nadara. She-” but here Waldo interrupted
him. -
“Korth, then,” he demanded. “Where is
Korth? I can kill him first and Flatfoot when he
returns.”
The old man looked at the speaker in unfeigned
surprise.
“Korth !” he exclaimed. “Korth is dead. Can
it be that you do not know that he, whom you killed
yesterday, was Korth?”
Waldo's eyes opened as wide in surprise as had
the old man's.
Korth ! He had killed the redoubtable Korth
with his bare hands—Korth, who could crush the
skull of a full-grown man with a single blow from
his open palm.
Clearly he recollected the very words in which
Nadara had described this horrible brute that time
she had harrowed his poor, coward nerves, as they
approached the village of Flatfoot. And now he,
Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, had met and killed
«


THE SEEKER Io/
the creature from whom he had so fearfully fled a
few months ago!
And, wonder of wonders, he had not even
thought to use the weapons upon which he had spent
so many hours of handicraft and months of prac-
tise in preparation for just this occasion. Of a sud-
den he recalled the old man's statement that Na-
dara was not there.
“Where is she—Nadara?” he cried, turning so
suddenly upon the ancient one that the old fellow
drew back in alarm.
“I have done nothing to harm her,” he cried.
“I followed and would have brought her back, but
I am old and could not find her. Once, when I was
young, there was no better trailer or mighty war-
rior among my people than I, but 22
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Waldo impatiently; “but
Nadara! Where is she?”
“I do not know,” replied the old man. “She
has gone, and I could not find her. Well do I re-
member how, years ago, when the trail of an enemy
was faint or the signs of game hard to find, men
would come to ask me to help them, but now 29
“Of course,” interrupted Waldo; “but Nadara.
Do you not even know in what direction she has
gone?”
“No; but since Flatfoot has set forth upon her
trail it should be easy to track the two of them.”


Io& THE CAVE GIRL
“Flatfoot set out after Nadara!” cried Waldo.
“Why?”
“For many moons he has craved her for his
mate, as has Korth,” explained Nadara's father;
“but I think that each feared the other, and be-
cause of that fact Nadara was saved from both;
but at last Korth came upon us alone and away
from the village, and then he grasped Nadara and
would have taken her away, for Flatfoot was not
about to prevent.
“You came then, and the rest you know. If I
had been younger neither Flatfoot nor Korth would
have dared menace Nadara, for when I was a young
man I was very terrible and the record of my kills
33
Was a
“How long since did Flatfoot set out after Na-
dara?” Waldo broke in.
“But a few hours since,” replied the old man.
“It would be an easy thing for me to overtake him
by night had I the speed of my youth, for I well
remember »y
“From where did Flatfoot start upon the trail?”
cried the young man. “Lead me to the place.”
“This way then, Thandar,” said the other, start-
ing off toward the forest. “I will show you if you
will save Nadara from Flatfoot. I love her. She
has been very kind and good to me. She is unlike
the rest of our people.


THE SEEKER Io9
“I should die happy if I knew that you have
saved her from Flatfoot, but I am an old man and
may not live until Nadara returns. Ah, that re-
minds me; there is that in my cave which belongs
to Nadara, and were I to die there would be none
to protect it for her.
“Will you wait for the moment that it will take
me to run and fetch it, that you may carry it to her,
for I am sure that you will find her; though I am
not as sure that you will overcome Flatfoot if you
meet him. He is a very terrible man.”
Waldo hated to waste a minute of the precious
time that was allowing Flatfoot to win nearer and
nearer Nadara; but if it were in a service for the
girl who had been so kind to him and for the hap-
piness of her old father he could not refuse, so he
waited impatiently while the old fellow tottered off
toward the caves.
Those who had come half-way to meet Waldo
had hovered at a safe distance while he had been
speaking to Nadara's father, and when the two
turned toward the forest all had returned to their
work in evident relief; for the old man had told
them that the stranger was the mighty warrior who
had killed the terrible Korth with his bare hands,
nor had the story lost anything in the telling.
After what seemed hours to the waiting Waldo
the old man returned with a little package care-


IIO THE CAVE GIRL
fully wrapped in the skin of a small rodent, the
seams laboriously sewed in a manner of lacing with
pieces of gut.
“This is Nadara's,” he said as they continued
their way toward the forest. “It contains many
strange things of which I know not the meaning or
purpose. They all were taken from the body of her
mother when the woman died. You will give them
to her?”
“Yes,” said Waldo. “I will give them to Na-
dara, or die in the trying of it.”


CHAPTER X
THE TRAIL’S END
OON they came upon the trail of Flatfoot in
the glade by the three great trees; they had
not searched for it sooner, for the old man knew
that it would start from that point upon its quest
for the girl.
The tracks circled the glade a dozen times in
widening laps until at last, at the point where Flat-
foot must have picked up the spoor of Nadara, they
broke suddenly away into the underbrush. Once
the way was plain Waldo bid the old man be of
good heart, for he would surely bring his daughter
back to him unharmed if the thing lay in the power
of man.
Then he hurried off upon the new-made trail
that lay as plain and readable before him as had the
printed page of his former life; but never had he
bent with such keen interest to the reading of his
favorite author as he did to this absorbing drama
written in the turned leaves, the scattered twigs,
and the soft mud of a primeval forest by the feet
of a savage man and a savage maid.
Toward mid-afternoon Waldo became aware that
he was much weaker from the effects of his battle
111


II2 THE CAVE GIRL
with Korth than he had supposed. He had lost
much blood from his wounds, and the exertion of
following the trail at a swift pace had reopened
some of the worse ones, so that now, as he ran, he
was leaving a little trail of blood behind him.
The discovery made him almost frantic, for it
seemed to presage failure. His condition would
handicap him in the race after the two along whose
track he pursued so that it would be a miracle were
he to reach Flatfoot before the brute overtook Na-
dara.
And if he did overtake him in time—what then?
Would he be physically able to cope with the
brawny monster? He feared that he would not,
but that he kept doggedly to the grueling chase
augured well for the new manhood that had been so
recently born within him.
On and on he stumbled, until at dusk he slipped
and fell exhausted to the earth. Twice he struggled
to his feet in an attempt to go on, but he was forced
to give in, lying where he was until morning.
Slightly refreshed, he ate of the roots and fruit
which abounded in the forest, taking up the chase
again, but this time more slowly.
He was now convinced that the way led back
along the same trail which he had followed into the
country, and when he reached the point at which he
had first met Korth on the previous day he cut


THE TRAIL’S END II3
*
across the little space which intervened between the
cave man's tracks and the point at which he had
stood before he went down over the divide into
the jungle toward the river and the ford.
A moment later he was rewarded by the sight of
Nadara's dainty footprints as well as those of
Flatfoot leading away along his old trail. The act
had saved him several miles of needless tracking.
All that day he followed as rapidly as his weak-
ened condition would permit, but his best efforts
seemed dismally snail-like.
Along the way he bowled over a couple of large
rodents, which he ate raw, for he had long since
learned the desirability of a meat diet for one un-
dergoing severe physical exertion, and had con-
quered his natural aversion for the uncooked flesh.
He even had come to relish it, though often as he
dined thus upon meat a broad grin illumined his
countenance at the thought of the horror with which
his mother and his Boston friends would view such
a hideous performance.
As he continued trailing the two be was at first
surprised to discover the fidelity with which Nadara
had clung to his old trail, and because of this fact
he often was able to save miles at a time by taking
cross-cuts where, on his way in, he had made wide
detours.
But at last, on the third day, when he attempted


II4 THE CAVE GIRL
this at a place which would have saved him fully
ten miles, he was dismayed by the discovery that he
could not again pick up either Nadara's trail or that
of the cave man. Even his own old trail was en-
tirely obliterated.
It was this fact which caused him the greatest
concern, for it meant that if Nadara really had
been following it she must now be wandering rather
aimlessly, possibly in an attempt to again locate it.
In which event her speed would be materially re-
duced, and the probability of her capture by Flat-
foot much enhanced.
It was possible, too, that the beast already had
overtaken her—this, in fact, might be the true
cause of the cessation of the pursuit along the way
which it had proceeded up to this point.
The thought sent Waldo back along his former
route, which he was able to follow by recollection,
though the spoor was seldom visible.
He came upon no sign of those he sought that
day, but the next morning he found the point at
which Nadara had lost his old trail upon a rocky
ridge. The girl evidently assumed that it would
lead into the valley below where.she might pick it
up again in the soft earth, and so her footprints led
down a shelving bluff, while plain above them
showed the huge imprints of Flatfoot.
Up to this point at least he had not caught up


THE TRAIL’S END II5
with her. Waldo breathed a sigh of relief at the
discovery. The trail was at least two days old, for
Nadara and Flatfoot had traveled much more rap-
idly than the wounded man who haunted their foot-
steps like a grim shadow.
About noon Waldo came to a little stream at
which both those who preceded him had evidently
stopped to drink—he could see where they had
knelt in the soft grass at the water's edge.
As Waldo stopped to quench his own thirst his
eyes rested for an instant upon the farther bank,
which at that point was little more than ten feet
from him. He saw that the opposite shore was
less grassy, and that it sloped down to the water,
forming a muddy beach partially submerged.
But what riveted his attention were several deep
imprints in the mud.
He could not be certain, of course, at that dis-
tance, but he was sure enough that he had recog-
nized them to cause him to leap to his feet, forget-
ful of his thirst, and plunge through the stream for
a closer inspection.
As he bent to examine the spoor at close range
he could scarce repress a cry of exultation—they
had been made by the hands and knees of Nadara
as she had stooped to drink at the very spot not
twenty-four hours before.
She must have circled back toward the brook for


II6 THE CAVE GIRL
some reason; but by far the greatest cause for re-
joicing was the fact that Nadara's trail alone was
there. Flatfoot had not yet come upon her, and
Waldo now was between them.
The knowledge that he might yet be in time, and
that he was gaining sufficiently in strength to make
it reasonably certain that he could overhaul the
girl eventually, filled Waldo with renewed vigor.
He hastened along Nadara's trail now with some-
thing of the energy that had been his directly be-
fore his battle with Korth.
His wounds had ceased bleeding, and for several
days he had eaten well, and by night slept soundly,
for he had reasoned that only by conserving his
energy and fortifying himself in every way possible
could he succor the girl.
That night he slept in a little thicket which had
evidently harbored Nadara the night before.
The following day the way lay across a rolling
country, cut by numerous deep ravines and lofty
divides. That the pace was telling on the girl
Waldo could read in the telltale spoor that revealed
her lagging footsteps. Upon each eminence the
man halted to strain his eyes ahead for a sight of
her.
About noon he discerned far ahead a shimmering
line which he knew must be the sea. Surely his
long pursuit must end there.
*
*


THE TRAIL’S END 117
As he was about to plunge on again along Na-
dara's trail something drew his eyes toward the
rear, and there upon another hilltop a mile or two.
behind he saw the stocky figure of a half-naked
man—it was Flatfoot.
The cave man must have seen Waldo at the same
instant, for, with a menacing wave of his huge fist,
he increased his gait to a run, an instant later dis-
appearing into the ravine which lay at the bottom
of the hill upon which he had come into view.
Waldo was undecided whether to wait for the
encounter where he was or hasten on in an effort
to overtake Nadara, that she might not escape him
entirely. He knew that he stood a good chance of
being killed in the conflict, and he also knew that
were he victorious it might easily be at such a
terrible price that he would be physically incapable
of continuing his search for the girl for many days.
As he meditated his eyes wandered back and
forth across the landscape before him searching for
Nadara.
To his right lay, at a little distance, a level plain
which stretched to the foot of low-lying cliffs at
the valley's southern rim, some three or four miles
distant. In this direction his view was almost un-
obstructed, but it was not in the direction of the
girl's flight, so that it was but by accident that
Waldo's eyes swept casually across the peaceful


II8 THE CAVE GIRL
scene which would, at another time, have chained
his attention with its quiet and alluring beauty.
It was as he swept a backward glance in the di-
rection of Flatfoot that his eye was arrested by the
hint of something far out across the valley, a little
behind his own position.
To the Waldo of a few months previous it would
not have been visible, but the new woodcraft of the
man scented the abnormal in the vague suggestion
of movement out among the long-waving grasses of
the plain. -
And now, with every sense alert and riveted upon
the spot, he was quick to perceive that it was an
animal moving slowly toward the cliffs at the up-
per end of the valley. Presently a little rise of
ground, less thickly grassed, brought the creature
into full view for an instant; but in that instant
Waldo saw that the thing he watched was a woman.
As he turned to hurry after her he saw Flatfoot
top another hill a half mile nearer than he had be-
fore been, and as the cave man came into view he
turned his eyes in the direction that Waldo had been
looking. A second later and he had abandoned the
pursuit of Waldo and was running rapidly toward
the woman.
Nadara had apparently circled back once more,
this time from the sea, and coming up the valley
had passed Waldo and come opposite Flatfoot be-


THE TRAIL’S END II9
fore either of them had discovered her. The young
man gave a little cry of alarm as he realized that
the cave man was nearer to the girl than he—by a
good half mile, he judged, and so he put every
ounce of his speed into the wild dash he made down
the hill into a gully which led out upon the valley.
On and on he raced unable to see either Flat-
foot or Nadara; hoping, ever hoping, that he would
be the first to win to her side; for Nadara had told
him of the atrocities that such a creature as Flat-
foot might perpetrate upon a woman rather than
permit her to escape him or fall into the hands of
another.
Nadara, being up wind, caught neither the scent
nor noise of the two who were racing madly to-
ward her. The first knowledge she had that she
was not alone in the valley was the sight of Flat-
foot as he broke suddenly through a clump of tail
grass not fifty paces from her.
She gave a little scream and started to run; but
she was very tired from the days of unremitting
flight which had so sorely taxed her endurance, and
thus it was no wonder that she slipped and fell be-
fore she had taken a dozen steps.
Scarcely had she gained her feet when Flatfoot
was upon her, one hand grasping her by the arm.
“Come with me in peace or I will kill you!” he
cried.


120 THE CAVE GIRL
“Kill me, then,” retorted the despairing girl,
“for I shall never come with you; first will I kill
myself.”
Flatfoot did not wish to kill her, nor did he wish
her to escape, as she would be very likely to do
should he be interrupted by the fellow who must
even now be quite close to them.
Possibly if he could keep the girl quiet they might
hide in the grass until their pursuer had gone by,
and so Flatfoot, acting upon the idea, clapped a
rough hand over Nadara's mouth and dragged her
back along the trail he had just made.
The girl struggled—striking and clawing at the
hairy brute that pulled her along at his side—but
she was as helpless in his clutches as if she had
been a day-old babe.
She did not know that help was so close at hand,
or she would have found the means to free her
mouth and cry out once at least. As it was, she
wondered that Flatfoot should attempt to silence
her in this way if there were none to hear her
SCTea111S.
For days she had known that the cave man was
on her trail, for once in doubling back upon herself
she had passed but a short distance from a ridge
she had traversed the preceding day, and had seen
the man's squat figure and recognized his awkward,
shuffling trot.


I22 THE CAVE GIRL
and hopeless as the brutal Flatfoot dragged her far
into the tall jungle-grass. Presently she noticed
that the cave man repeatedly cast glances toward
the rear.
What could he expect from that direction, or
from any direction whatever, so far as that was
concerned? Were they not days and days from
their own people, in a land where there seemed no
men at all?
Flatfoot heard no sign of pursuit. He was grow-
ing more confident. The stranger had lost their
trail. The cave man moved less rapidly, and as
he went he looked now for a burrow into which he
might crawl with the maiden. Then there would
be no further danger whatever.
Tomorrow Flatfoot would come out and find the
fellow and kill him, but now he had pleasanter
work in view, nor did he wish to be disturbed.
And at that very moment he caught a stealthy
movement in the grasses a few yards to his right.
Waldo had come upon the spot at which Flatfoot
had overtaken Nadara but a few moments after the
brute had dragged her away, and on the instant had
sought a higher piece of ground from which he
could overlook the tall grass.
Nor had he been long in finding a spot that,
coupled with his six feet two, brought his eyes
above the level of the surrounding jungle.


THE TRAIL’S END I23
There he watched for a little until he discerned
a movement of the grasstops at a little distance
from him. After that it was but a matter of trail-
ing.
When Flatfoot saw what he took to be his enemy
he threw Nadara across his shoulder and started
on a run in the opposite direction—at right angles
to the way he had been going.
The ruse proved good, for when Waldo came to
the point at which he had figured his path would
cross the cave man's he found no sign of the latter,
and in searching about to locate the trail lost many
minutes of valuable time. But at last he came upon
that which he sought, and with redoubled speed set
out at a rapid run through the tall grasses.
He had proceeded but a short distance when the
trail broke suddenly into the open, close by the base
of the cliffs that he had seen from the hill that had
given him his fleeting glimpse of Nadara.
Ahead of him he saw the two he sought—Na-
dara across the burly shoulders of Flatfoot—and
the cave man was making for the caves that dotted
the face of the cliff. Were he to reach these he
might defend one of them against a single antago-
nist indefinitely.


CHAPTER XI
CAPTURE
LMOST at the moment that Waldo emerged
from the jungle Nadara saw him, and with
a lunge threw herself from Flatfoot's shoulder.
The man turned with a fierce growl of rage, and
his eyes fell upon the giant rushing toward them.
The girl was now struggling madly to escape or
delay her captor. There could be but one outcome,
as Flatfoot knew. He must fight now, but the
girl should never escape him.
Raising the huge fist that had killed many a full-
grown man with a single blow he aimed a wicked
one at the side of Nadara's head.
The first one she dodged, and as the arm went
up to strike again, Thandar threw his spear-arm
far back and with a mighty forward surge drove
his light weapon across the hundred feet that sep-
arated him from Flatfoot.
It was an awful risk—there was not a foot to
spare between the hairy breast that was his target
and the beautiful head of the fair captive. Should
either move between the time the spear left his hand
and the instant that it found its mark it might pierce
the one it had been sped to save.
Flatfoot's fist was crashing down toward that
124


CAPTURE 125
lovely face at the instant that the spear found
him; but he had moved—just enough to place his
arm before his breast—so that it was the falling
arm that received the weapon instead of the heart
that it had been intended for.
But it served its purpose. With a howl of pain
and rage, Flatfoot, forgetful of the girl in the mad-
ness of his anger, dropped her and sprang toward
Waldo.
The latter had drawn his sword—naught but a
sharpened stick of hard wood—and stood wait-
ing to receive his foe. It was his first attempt to
put either sword or shield into practical use, and
he was anxious to discover their value.
As Flatfoot came toward his antagonist he
pulled the spear from the muscles of his arm, and,
stooping, gathered up one of the many rocks that
lay scattered about at the base of the cliff.
The cave man was roaring like a mad bull; hate
and murder shot from his close-set eyes; his upper
lip curled back, showing his fighting fangs, and a
light froth flecked his bristling beard.
Waldo was sure there had never existed a more
fearsome creature, and he marveled that he was not
afraid. The very thought of what the effect of
this terrible monster's mad charge would have been
upon him a short while ago brought a smile to his
lips.


I26 THE CAVE GIRL
At sight of that taunting smile Flatfoot hurled
the rock full at the maddening face. With a quick
movement of his left arm Waldo caught the mis-
sile on his buckler, from whence it dropped harm-
lessly to the ground.
Flatfoot did not throw again, and an instant
later he was upon the Bostonian—the pride and
hope of the cultured and aristocratic Back Bay
Smith-Joneses.
When he reached for the agile, blond giant he
found a thin sheet of hide-covered twigs in his way,
and when he tried to tear down this barrier the
point of a sharpened stick was thrust into his ab-
domen.
This was no way to fight!
Flatfoot was scandalized. He jumped back a few
feet and glared at Waldo. Then he lowered his
head and came at him once more with the very evi-
dent intention of rushing him off his feet by the
very weight and impetuosity of his charge.
This time the sharp stick slipped quickly over the
top of the hide-covered atrocity and pierced Flat-
foot's neck just where it joined his thick skull.
Burying a foot of its point beneath the muscles
of the shoulder, it brought a scream of pain and
rage from the hairy beast.
Before Waldo could withdraw his weapon from
the tough sinews, Flatfoot had straightened up with


CAPTURE 127
a sudden jerk that snapped the sword short, leav-
ing but a short stub in his antagonist's hand.
Nadara had been watching the battle breathless-
ly, ready to flee should it turn against her champion,
yet at the same time searching for an opportunity
to aid him.
Like Flatfoot, the girl had never before seen
spear or sword or shield in use, and while she mar-
veled at the advantage which they gave Thandar,
she became dubious as to the result of the encounter
when she saw the sword broken, for the spear had
been snapped into kindling-wood by Flatfoot when
he tore it from his arm.
But Waldo still had his cudgel, fastened by a
thong to his sword-belt, and as the cave man rushed
upon him again he swung a mighty blow to the low,
brutal forehead.
Momentarily stunned, the fellow reeled back-
ward for a step, and again Waldo wielded his new
weapon.
Flatfoot trembled, his knees smote together, he
staggered drunkenly, and then, when Waldo looked
to see him go down, the brute power that was in
him, responding to nature's first law, sent him
hurtling at the Bostonian's throat in the snarling,
blind rage of the death-smitten beast.
Catapulted by all the enormous strength of his
mighty muscles, the squat, bearlike animal bore


I28 THE CAVE GIRL
Waldo to earth, and at the same instant each found
the other's throat with sinewy, viselike fingers.
They lay very still now, choking with firm, re-
lentless clutch. Every ounce of muscle was needed,
every grain of endurance.
Waldo was suffering agonies after a moment of
that awful death-grip. He could feel his gasping,
pain-racked lungs struggling for air. -
He tried to wriggle free from those horrible
fingers, but not once did he loosen his own hold
upon the throat of Flatfoot; instead he tried to
close a little tighter each second that he felt his
own life ebbing. He became weaker and weaker.
The pain was unendurable now.
A haze obscured his vision—everything became
black—his brain was whizzing about at frightful
velocity within the awful darkness of his skull.
The girl was bending close above them now, for
both were struggling less violently. She had been
minded to come to Thandar's rescue when sud-
denly she recalled his desertion of her, and all the
wild hatred of the primitive mind surged through
her.
Let him die, she thought. He had spurned her,
cast her off; he looked down upon her.
Well, let him take care of himself, then, and
she turned deliberately away to leave the two men
to decide the outcome of their own battle, and


130 THE CAVE GIRL
she sought—a little stream, winding slowly
through the valley down toward the ocean.
Dropping to her knees beside it she filled her
mouth with the refreshing water. In an instant she
was up again and off in the direction from which
she had just come.
Throwing herself at Waldo's side, she wet his
face with the water from her mouth. She chafed
his hands, shook him, blew upon his face when the
water was exhausted, and then, tears streaming
from her eyes, she threw herself upon him, cov-
ering his face with kisses, and moaning inartic-
ulate words of love and endearment that were half
stifled by anguished sobs of grief.
Suddenly her lamentations ceased as quickly as
they had begun. She raised her head from where
it had been buried beside the man's and looked in-
tently into his face.
Then she placed her ear upon his breast; with a
delighted cry she resumed chafing his hands, for
she had heard the beating of his heart.
Presently Waldo gasped, and for a moment suf-
fered the agonies of returning respiration. When
he opened his eyes in consciousness he saw Nadara
bending over him—a severely disinterested expres-
sion upon her beautiful face. He turned his head
to one side; there lay Flatfoot quite dead.
It was several moments before he could speak.


CAPTURE I31
Then he rose, very unsteadily, to his feet.
“Nadara,” he said, “Korth lies dead beside the
three great trees in the glade that is near the vil-
lage that was Flatfoot's. Here is the dead body
of Flatfoot, and about my loins hangs the pelt of
Nagoola, taken in fair fight.
“I have done all that you desired of me; I have
tried to repay you for your kindness to me when I
was a stranger in your land. I do not know why
you should have tried to kill me while I battled
with Korth.
“No more do I know why you have allowed me
to live today when it would have been so easy to
have despatched me as I lay unconscious here beside
Flatfoot.
“I read dislike upon your face, and I am sorry,
for I would have parted with you in friendship, so
that when the time comes that I return to my own
land I should be able to carry away with me only
the pleasant memory of it. When we have rested
and are refreshed I shall take you back to your
father.”
All that had been surging to the girl's lips of
love and gratitude from a heart that was filled with
both was congealed by the cold tone which marked
this dispassionate recital of the discharge of a
moral obligation.
Possibly Waldo's tone was colored by the vivid


I32 THE CAVE GIRL
memory of the look of hate that he had seen in the
girl's eyes at the instant that he went down before
her missile as he battled with Korth, for it was not
even tinged with friendliness.
And so the girl's manner was equally distant
when she replied; in fact, it was even colder, for it
was fraught with bitterness.
“Thandar owed nothing to Nadara,” she said,
“and though it matters not at all, it is only fair to
say that the stone that struck you as you battled
in the glade was intended for Korth.”
Waldo's face brightened. A load that he had
not realized lay there was lifted from his heart.
“You did not want to hurt me, then?” he cried.
“Why should I want to hurt you?” returned the
girl.
“I thought” —and here Waldo spoiled the fair
start they had made at a reconciliation—“I
thought,” he said, “that you were angry because I
ran away from you after we had come to your
village that time, months ago.”
Nadara's head went high and she laughed aloud.
“I angry? I was surprised that you did not
come to the village, but after an hour I had for-
gotten the matter—it was with difficulty that I rec-
ognized you when I next saw you, so utterly had the
occurrence departed from my thoughts.”
Waldo wondered why he should feel such


CAPTURE I33
humiliation at this frank avowal. Of what moment
to him was this girl's estimation of him? Why did
he feel a flush suffuse his face at the knowledge
that he was of so little moment to her that she had
entirely forgotten him within a few months?
Waldo was mortified and angry. He changed
the subject brusquely; hereafter he should eschew
personalities.
“Let us find a cave at a distance from the dead
man,” he said, “and there we may rest until you
are ready to attempt the return journey.”
“I am ready now,” replied Nadara; “nor do I
need or desire your company. I can return alone,
as I came.”
“No,” remonstrated Waldo doggedly; “I shall
go with you whether you wish it or not. I shall
see you safely with your father. I promised him.”
Nadara had been delighted with the first clause
of his reply, but when it became evident that his
only desire to return with her was to fulfil a prom-
ise made her father she became furious, though she
was careful not to let him see it.
“Very well,” she replied; “you may come if
you wish, though it is neither necessary nor as I
would have it. I prefer being alone.”
“I shall not force my company upon you,” said
Waldo haughtily. “I can follow a few paces be-
hind you.”


I34 THE CAVE GIRL
There was an injured air in his last words which
did not escape the girl. She wondered if he really
deserved the harsh attitude she had maintained.
They found a cave a half-mile down the valley,
where they took up their quarters against the time
that Waldo should be rested, for the girl insisted
that she was fully able to commence the return
journey at once.
The man knew better, and so he let her have it
that the delay was on his account rather than hers,
for he doubted her ability to cope with the hard-
ships of the long journey without an interval for
recuperation.
The next morning found them both rested and
in better spirits, so that there was no return to
their acrimonious encounter of the previous day.
As they walked out toward the forest that lay
down the valley in the direction of the ocean Waldo
dropped a few paces behind the girl in polite defer-
ence to her expressed wish of the day before.
As he walked he watched the graceful movements
of her lithe figure and the lines of her clear-cut
profile as she turned her head this way and that in
search of food.
How beautiful she was It was incredible that
this wild cave girl should have greater beauty and
a more regal carriage than the queens and beauties
of civilization, and yet Waldo was forced to admit


CAPTURE I35
that he had never even dreamed, much less seen,
such absolute physical perfection.
He wished that he could say as much for her
disposition; that was atrocious. It was unbeliev-
able that such a wondrous exterior could harbor so
much ingratitude and coldness.
Presently they came among the trees where the
ripe fruit hung, and as Waldo climbed nimbly
among the branches and tossed the most luscious
down to her, the girl, in her turn, watched him.
She noted more closely the marvelous change
that a few months had wrought. She had thought
him wonderful before, but now he was a very god.
She did not think just this, for she knew nothing
of gods—other than the demons that were sup-
posed to enter the bodies of the sick; but she
thought of him as some superior creature, and then
she ceased to feel aggrieved that he should care so
little for her.
He was not a man—he was something more
than a man, and she had been very wicked to have
treated him so shamefully. She would make
amends. -
So she tried to be more kind thereafter, though
there still remained a trace of aloofness.
Together they sat upon the turf and ate their
fruit, and as they ate they talked a little, for it is
difficult for two young people to harbor animosity


136 THE CAVE GIRL
for a great time, especially when there is none
other for them to talk to.
“When you have returned with me to my
father, Thandar,” the girl asked, “where shall you
go then?”
“I shall return to the sea where I may watch for
a ship to take me back to my own land,” he replied.
“I have seen but one ship in all my life,” said
Nadara, “and that was years ago. It was when
we lived close by the big water that it stopped a
long way from shore and sent many smaller boats
to land. -
“There were many men in the boats, and when
they landed, my father and mother took me far
into the forest away from the sea, and there we
stayed for many days until the strangers had sailed.
They wandered up and down the coast and came
back into the forests and the jungles for a few
miles. -
“My mother said that they were searching for
me, and that if they found me they would take
me away. I was very much frightened.”
At the mention of her mother Waldo recalled the
little parcel that Nadara's father had given into his
custody for the girl. He unfastened it from the
thong that circled his waist, where it had hung be-
neath his panther-skin garment.
“Here is something your father asked me to


CAPTURE I37
bring you,” he said, handing the package to
Nadara.
The girl took it and examined it as though it
was entirely unfamiliar.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Your father did not say, other than that it con-
tained articles that your mother wore when she
died,” he said tenderly, for a great pity had welled
up in his heart for this poor, motherless girl.
“That my mother wore!” Nadara repeated, her
brows contracted in a puzzled frown. “When my
mother died she wore nothing but a single garment
of many small skins—very old and worn—and
that was buried with her. I do not understand.”
She made no effort to open the package, but sat
gazing far off toward the ocean which was just
visible through the trees, entirely absorbed in the
reverie which Waldo's words had engendered.
“Could the thing that the old woman told me
have been true?” the girl mused half aloud.
“Could it have been because it was true that my
mother fell upon her with tooth and nail until she
had nearly killed her? I wonder if >>
But here she stopped, her eyes riveted in sudden
fear and hopelessness upon a thing that she had
just espied in the distance.
A great lump rose in her throat, tears came to her
eyes, and with them the full measure of realization


138 THE CAVE GIRL
of what that thing beyond the forest meant to her.
She turned her eyes toward the man. He was
sitting with bowed head, playing idly with a large
beetle that he had penned within a tiny palisade of
small twigs.
At length he made an opening in the barrier.
“Go your way, poor thing,” he murmured.
“Heaven knows I realize too well the horrors of
captivity to keep any other creature from its fel-
lows and its home.”
A choking sigh that was almost a sob racked the
girl. At the sound Waldo looked up to see her
pathetic, unhappy eyes upon him. Of a sudden
there enveloped him a great desire to take her in his
arms and comfort her. He knew not why she was
unhappy, but her sorrow cried aloud to him—as
he thought simply to the protective instinct that
was merely an attribute of his sex.
Nadara raised her hand slowly and pointed
through the trees. It was as though she had torn
her heart from her breast, so harrowing she felt
the consequences of her act would be, but it was
for his sake—for the sake of the man she loved.
As Waldo's eyes followed the direction of her
pointing finger he came suddenly to his feet with a
wild cry of joy; through the trees, out upon the
shimmering surface of the placid sea, there lay a
graceful, white yacht.


CAPTURE I39
“Thank God!” cried the man fervently, and
sinking to his knees he raised his hands aloft toward
the author of joy and sorrow.
A moment later he sprang to his feet.
“Home! Nadara. Home!” he cried. “Can't
you realize it? I am going home. I am saved
Oh, Nadara, child, can't you realize what it means
to me? Home! Home! Home!”
He had been looking toward the yacht as he
spoke, but now he turned toward the girl. She was
crouching upon the ground, her face in her hands,
her slender figure shaken by convulsive tears.
He came toward her and, kneeling, laid his hand
upon her shoulder.
“Nadara!” he said gently. “Why do you cry,
child? What is the matter?” But she only shook
her head, moaning.
He raised her to her feet, and as he supported
her his arm circled her shoulders.
“Tell me, Nadara, why you are unhappy?” he
urged.
But still she could not speak for sobbing, and only
buried her face upon his breast.
He was holding her very close now, and with the
pressure of her body against his a fire that, un-
known, had been smoldering in his heart for
months burst into sudden flame, and in the heat of
it there were consumed the mists that had been be-


I40 THE CAVE GIRL
fore the eyes of his heart all that time.
&g Nadara,” he asked in a very low voice, “is it
because I am going that you cry?”
But at that she pulled away from him, and
through her tears her eyes blazed.
“No!” she cried. “I shall be glad when you
have gone. I wish that you had never come. I—I
—hate you!” She turned and fled back up the
valley, forgetful of the little packet Thandar had
brought her, which lay forgotten upon the ground
where she had dropped it.
Without so much as a backward glance toward
the yacht Waldo was off in pursuit of her; but
Nadara was as fleet as a hare, so that it was a
much winded Waldo who finally overhauled her
half-way up the face of a cliff two miles from the
OCearl.
“Go away!” cried the girl. “Go back with your
own kind, to your own home!”
Waldo did not answer.
Waldo was no more.
It was Thandar, the cave man, who took Nadara
in his strong arms and crushed her to him.
“My girl!” he cried. “My girl! I love you!
And because I am a fool I did not learn until it was
almost too late.”
He did not ask if she loved him, for he was
Thandar, the cave man. Nor, a moment later, did


CAPTURE I4I
he need to ask, since her strong, brown arms crept
up about his neck and drew his lips down to hers.
It was quite half an hour later before either
thought of the yacht again. From where they
stood upon the cliff's face they could see the ocean
and the beach.
Several boats were drawn up and a number of
men were coming toward the forest. Presently
they would discover the two upon the cliff.
“We shall go back together now,” said Thandar.
“I am afraid,” replied Nadara.
For a time the man stood gazing at the dainty
yacht, and far beyond it into the civilization which
it represented, and he saw there suave men and
sneering women, and among them was a slender
brown beauty who shrank from the cruel glances
of the women—and Waldo writhed at this and at
the greedy eyes of the suave men as they appraised
the girl—and he, too, was afraid.
“Come,” he said, taking Nadara by the hand,
“let us hurry back into the hills before they dis-
cover us.”
Just as the men from the yacht, which Mr. John
Alden Smith-Jones had despatched to the South
Seas in search of his missing son, emerged from
the forest into a view of the valley and the cliffs a
cave man and his mate clambered over the brow of
the latter and disappeared toward the hills beyond.


I42 THE CAVE GIRL
It was nearly dusk as the searchers from the
yacht were returning toward the beach.
They had found no sign of human habitation in
the little valley, nor anywhere along the coast that
they had so carefully explored.
The commander of the expedition, Captain Cecil
Burlinghame, a retired naval officer, was in
advance.
They had penetrated the woods nearly to the
beach when his foot struck against a package
wrapped in the skin of a small rodent.
He stooped and picked it up.
“Here is the first evidence that another human
being than ourselves has ever set foot upon this
island,” he said as he cut the gut lacing with his
pocket knife.
Within the first wrapping he found a chamois-
bag such as women sometimes use to carry jewels
about their persons.
From this he emptied into his palm a dozen price-
less rings, a few old-fashioned brooches, bracelets,
and lockets.
In one of the latter he discovered the ivory
miniature of a woman—a very beautiful woman.
In the other side of the locket was engraved:
“To Eugénie Marie Céleste de la Valois, Countess
of Crecy, from Henri, her husband. 17th January,
18— 23.


CAPTURE I43
“Gad!” cried the old captain. “Now what do
you make of that?
“The Count and Countess of Crecy were return-
ing to Paris from their honeymoon trip round the
world in the steam yacht Dolphin nearly twenty
years ago, and after they touched at Australia were
never heard of again.
“What tragedy, what mystery, what romance
might not these sparkling gems disclose had they
but tongues!”





THE CAVE GIRL
PART II
, Note: Part II of this book appeared serially
under the title “The Cave Man”





CHAPTER I
KING BIG FIST
ALDO EMERSON SMITH-JONES, scion
of the aristocratic house of the John Alden
Smith-Joneses of Boston, clambered up the rocky
face of the precipitous cliff with the agility of a
monkey.
His right hand clasped the slim brown fingers of
his half-naked mate, assisting her over the more
dangerous or difficult stretches.
At the summit the two turned their faces back
toward the sea. Beyond the gently waving forest
trees stretched the broad expanse of shimmering
ocean. In the foreground, upon the bosom of a
tiny harbor, lay a graceful yacht—a beautiful toy
it looked from the distance of the cliff top.
For the first time the man obtained an unob-
structed view of the craft. Before, when they first
had discovered it, the boles of the forest trees had
revealed it but in part.
Now he saw it fully from stem to stern with all
its well-known, graceful lines standing out distinctly
against the deep blue of the water.
The shock of recognition brought an involun-
tary exclamation from his lips. The girl looked
quickly up into his face.
147


I48 THE CAVE GIRL
“What is it, Thandar?” she asked. “What do
you see?”
“The yacht!” he whispered. “It is the Pris-
cilla—my father's. He is searching for me.”
“And you wish to go?”
For some time he did not speak—only stood
there gazing at the distant yacht. And the young
girl at his side remained quite motionless and silent,
too, looking up at the man's profile, watching the
expression upon his face with a look of dumb
misery upon her own.
Quickly through the man's mind was running
the gamut of his past. He recalled his careful and
tender upbringing—the time, the money, the fond
pride that had been expended upon his education.
He thought of the result—the narrow-minded,
weakling egoist; the pusillanimous coward that
had been washed from the deck of a passing
steamer upon the sandy beach of this savage, for-
gotten shore.
And yet it had been love, solicitous and tender,
that had prompted his parents to their misguided
efforts. He was their only son. They were doubt-
less grieving for him. They were no longer young,
and in their declining years it appeared to him a
pathetic thing that they should be robbed of the
happiness which he might bring them by returning
to the old life.


KING BIG FIST I49
But could he ever return to the bookish existence
that once had seemed so pleasant?
Had not this brief year into which had been
crowded so much of wild, primitive life made im-
possible a return to the narrow, self-centered exist-
ence? Had it not taught him that there was in-
finitely more in life than ever had been written
into the dry and musty pages of books?
It had taught him to want life at first hand—
not through the proxy of the printed page. It and
—Nadara. He glanced toward the girl.
Could he give her up? No! A thousand times,
no!
He read in her face the fear that lurked in her
heart. No, he could not give her up. He owed to
her all that he possessed of which he was most
proud—his mighty physique, his new , found
courage, his woodcraft, his ability to cope, primi-
tively, with the primitive world, her savage world
which he had learned to love.
No, he could not give her up; but—what? His
gaze lingered upon her sweet face. Slowly there
sank into his understanding something of the reason
for his love of this wild, half-savage cave girl other
than the primitive passion of the sexes.
He saw now not only the physical beauty of her
face and figure, but the sweet, pure innocence of
her girlishness, and, most of all, the wondrous


KING BIG FIST 151
Nadara walked very close to Thandar, her hand
snuggled in his and her shoulder pressed tightly
against his side, for she was afraid of the new
life among the strange creatures of civilization.
At the far side of the valley, just before one
enters the forest, there grows a thick jungle of
bamboo – really but a narrow strip, not more than
a hundred feet through at its greatest width; but
so dense as to quite shut out from view any creature
even a few feet within its narrow, gloomy avenues.
Into this the two plunged, Thandar in the lead,
Nadara close behind him, stepping exactly in his
footprints—an involuntary concession to training,
for there was no need here either of deceiving a
pursuer, or taking advantage of easier going. The
trail was well-marked and smooth-beaten by many
a padded paw.
It wound erratically, following the line of least
resistance—it forked, and there were other trails
which entered it from time to time, or crossed it.
The hundred feet it traversed seemed much more
when measured by the trail.
The two had come almost to the forest side of
the jungle when a sharp turn in the path brought
Thandar face to face with a huge, bear-like man.
The fellow wore a g-string of soft hide, and over
one shoulder dangled an old and filthy leopard skin
—otherwise, he was naked. His thick, coarse hair


I52 THE CAVE GIRL
was matted low over his forehead. The balance of
his face was covered by a bushy red beard.
At sight of Thandar his close set, little eyes
burned with sudden rage and cunning. From his
thick lips burst a savage yell—it was the prelimi-
nary challenge.
Ordinarily a certain amount of vituperation and
coarse insults must pass between strangers meet-
ing upon this inhospitable isle before they fly at
one another's throat.
“I am Thurg,” bellowed the brute. “I can kill
you,” and then followed a volley of vulgar allusions
to Thandar's possible origin, and the origin of his
anceStorS.
“The bad men,” whispered Nadara.
With her words there swept into the man's
memory the scene upon the face of the cliff that
night a year before when, even in the throes of
cowardly terror, he had turned to do battle with
a huge cave man that the fellow might not prevent
the escape of Nadara.
He glanced at the right forearm of the creature
who faced him. A smile touched Thandar's lips—
the arm was crooked as from the knitting of a
broken bone, poorly set.
“You would kill Thandar—again?” he asked
tauntingly, pointing toward the deformed member.
Then came recognition to the red-rimmed eyes
*


KING BIG FIST I53
of Thurg, as, with another ferocious bellow, he
launched himself toward the author of his old
hurt.
Thandar met the charge with his short stick of
pointed hard wood—his “sword” he called it. It
entered the fleshy part of Thurg's breast, calling
forth a howl of pain and a trickling stream of
crimson.
Thurg retreated. This was no way to fight. He
was scandalized.
For several minutes he stood glaring at his foe,
screaming hideous threats and insults at him.
Then once more he charged.
Again the painful point entered his body, but
this time he pressed in clutching madly at the goad
and for a hold upon Thandar's body.
The latter held Thurg at arm's length, prodding
him with the fire-hardened point of his wooden
sword.
The cave man's little brain wondered at the skill
and prowess of this stranger who had struck him
a single blow with a cudgel many moons before
and then run like a rabbit to escape his wrath.
Why was it that he did not run now? What
strange change had taken place in him? He had
expected an easy victim when he finally had recog-
nized his foe; but instead he had met with brawn
and ferocity equal to his own and with a strange


I54 THE CAVE GIRL
weapon, the like of which he never before had seen.
Thandar was puncturing him rapidly now, and
Thurg was screaming in rage and suffering. Pres-
ently he could endure it no longer. With a sudden
wrench he tore himself loose and ran, bellowing,
through the jungle.
Thandar did not pursue. It was enough that he
had rid himself of his enemy. He turned toward
Nadara, smiling.
“It will seem very tame in Boston,” he said; but
though she gave him an answering smile, she did
not understand, for to her Boston was but another
land of primeval forests, and dense jungles; of
hairy, battling men, and fierce beasts.
At the edge of the forest they came again upon
Thurg, but this time he was surrounded by a score
of his burly tribesmen. Thandar knew better than
to pit himself against so many.
Thurg came rushing down upon them, his fellows
at his heels. In loud tones he screamed anew his
challenge, and the beasts behind him took it up
until the forest echoed to their hideous bellowing.
He had seen Nadara as he had battled with
Thandar, and recognized her as the girl he had de-
sired a year before—the girl whom this stranger
had robbed him of.
Now he was determined to wreak vengeance on
the man and at the same time recapture the girl.


KING BIG FIST I55
Thandar and Nadara turned back into the jungle
where but a single enemy could attack them at a
time in the narrow trails. Here they managed to
elude pursuit for several hours, coming again into
the forest nearly a mile below the beach where the
Priscilla had lain at anchor.
Thurg and his fellows had apparently given up
the chase — they had neither seen nor heard aught
of them for some time. Now the two hastened
back through the wood to reach a point on the shore
opposite the yacht.
At last they came in sight of the harbor. Than-
dar halted. A look of horror and disappointment
supplanted the expression of pleasurable anticipa-
tion that had lighted his countenance—the yacht
was not there.
A mile out they discerned her, steaming rapidly
north.
Thandar ran to the beach. He tore the black
panther's hide from his shoulders, waving it fran-
tically above his head, the while he shouted in futile
endeavor to attract attention from the dwindling
craft.
Then, quite suddenly, he collapsed upon the beach,
burying his face in his hands.
Presently Nadara crept close to his side. Her
soft arms encircled his shoulders as she drew his
cheek close to hers in an attempt to comfort him.


KING BIG FIST I57
lection of Boston as he had known it—Boston
without Nadara; but now that she was to have
gone back with him Boston seemed the most desir-
able spot in the world.
As he sat pondering the unfortunate happenings
that had so delayed them that the yacht had sailed
before they reached the shore, he also cast about
for some plan to mitigate their disappointment.
To live forever upon this savage island did not
seem such an appalling thing as it had a year be-
fore—but then he had not realized his love for the
wild young creature at his side. Ah, if she could
but be made his wife then his exile here would be
a happy rather than a doleful lot.
What if he had been born here too? With the
thought came a new idea that seemed to offer an
avenue from his dilemma. Had he, too, been na-
tive born how would he have wed Nadara?
Why through the ceremony of their own people,
of course. And if men and women were thus wed
here, living together in faithfulness throughout
their lives, what more sacred a union could civiliza-
tion offer?
He sprang to his feet.
“Come, Nadara!” he cried. “We shall return to
your people, and there you shall become my wife.”
Nadara was puzzled, but she made no comment;
content simply to leave the future to her lord and


158 THE CAVE GIRL
master; to do whatever would bring Thandar the
greatest happiness.
The return to the dwellings of Nadara's people
occupied three never-to-be-forgotten days.
How different this journey by comparison with
that of a year since, when the cave girl had been
leading the terror-stricken Waldo Emerson in flight
from the bad men toward, to him, an equally hor-
rible fate at the hands of Korth and Flatfoot!
Then the forest glades echoed to the pads of
fierce beasts and the stealthy passage of naked,
human horrors. No twig snapped that did not por-
tend instant and terrifying death.
Now Korth and Flatfoot were dead at the hands
of the metamorphosed Waldo. The racking cough
was gone. He had encountered the bad men and
others like them and come away with honors. Even
Nagoola, the sleek, black devil-cat of the hideous
nights, no longer sent the slightest tremor through
the rehabilitated nerves.
Did not Thandar wear Nagoola's pelt about his
shoulder and loins—a pelt that he had taken in
hand to hand encounter with the dread beast?
Slowly they walked beneath the shade of giant
trees, beside pleasant streams, or, again, across open
valleys where the grass grew knee high and count-
less, perfumed wild flowers opened a pathway be-
fore their naked feet.


KING BIG FIST I59
At night they slept where night found them.
Sometimes in the deserted lair of a wild beast, or
again perched among the branches of a spreading
tree where parallel branches permitted the construc-
tion of rude platforms.
And Thandar was always most solicitous to see
that Nadara's couch was of the softest grasses and
that his own lay at a little distance from hers and
in a position where he might best protect her from
prowling beasts.
Again was Nadara puzzled, but still she made
InO COmment.
Finally they came to her village.
Several of the younger men came forth to meet
them; but when they saw that the man was he
who had slain Korth they bridled their truculence,
all but one, Big Fist, who had assumed the role of
king since Flatfoot had left.
“I can kill you,” he announced by way of greet-
ing, “for I am Big Fist, and until Flatfoot returns
I am king—and maybe afterward, for some day I
shall kill Flatfoot.”
“I do not wish to fight you,” replied Thandar.
“Already have I killed Korth, and Flatfoot will
return no more, for Flatfoot I have killed also.
And I can kill Big Fist, but what is the use? Why
should we fight? Let us be friends, for we must
live together, and if we do not kill one another there


CHAPTER II
KING THANDAR
HE first thing that Thandar did after he en-
tered the village was to seek out Nadara's
father.
They found the old man in the poorest and least
protected cave in the cliff side, exposed to the at-
tack of the first prowling carnivore, or skulking
foeman.
He was sick, and there was none to care for him;
but he did not complain. That was the way of his
people. When a man became too old to be of service
to the community it were better that he died, and
so they did nothing to delay the inevitable. When
one became an absolute burden upon his fellows it
was customary to hasten the end—a carefully de-
livered blow with a heavy rock was calculated
quickly to relieve the burdens of the community and
the suffering of the invalid.
Thandar and Nadara came in and sat down be-
side him. The old fellow seemed glad to see them.
“I am Thandar,” said the young man. “I wish
to take your daughter as my mate.”
The old man looked at him questioningly for a
moment.
161


KING THANDAR 163
“In my country we do not take our wives in any
such way, nor shall I take you thus. We must be
married properly, according to the customs and
laws of civilization.”
Nadara made no reply. To her it seemed that
Thandar must care very little for her—that was
about the only explanation she could put upon his
strange behavior. It made her sad. And then the
other women would laugh at her—of that she was
quite certain, and that, too, made her feel very
badly—they would see that Thandar did not want
her.
The old man, lying upon his scant bed of matted,
filthy grasses, had heard the conversation. He was
as much at sea as Nadara. At last he spoke—
very feebly now, for rapidly he was nearing dis-
solution.
“I am a very old man,” he said to Thandar. “I
have not long to live. Before I die I should like to
know that Nadara has a mate who will protect her.
I love her, though—” He hesitated.
“Though what?” asked Thandar.
“I have never told,” whispered the old fellow.
“My mate would not let me, but now that I am
about to die it can do no harm. Nadara is not my
daughter.”
The girl sprang to her feet.
“Not your daughter?” “Then who am I?”


164 THE CAVE GIRL
“I do not know who you are, except that you
are not even of my people. All that I know I
will tell you now before I die. Come close, for
my voice is dying faster than my body.”
The young man and the girl came nearer to his
side, and squatting there leaned close that they
might catch each faintly articulated syllable.
“My mate and I,” commenced the old man,
“were childless, though many moons had passed
since I took her to my cave. She wanted a little
one, for thus only may women have aught upon
which to lavish their love.
“We had been hunting together for several days
alone and far from the village, for I was a great
hunter when I was young—no greater ever lived
among our people.
“And one day we came down to the great water,
and there, a short distance from the shore we saw
a strange thing that floated upon the surface of
the water, and when it was blown closer to us we
saw that it was hollow and that in it were two
people—a man and a woman. Both appeared to
be dead.
“Finally I waded out to meet the thing, drag-
ging it to shore, and there sure enough was a man
and a woman, and the man was dead—quite dead.
He must have been dead for a long time; but the
woman was not dead.


RING THANDAR 165
“She was very fair though her eyes and hair
were black. We carried her ashore, and that night
a little girl was born to her, but the woman died
before morning.
“We put her back into the strange thing that
had brought her—she and the dead man who had
come with her—and shoved them off upon the
great water, where the breeze, which had changed
over night, together with the water which runs
away from the land twice each day carried them
out of sight, nor ever did we see them again.
“But before we sent them off my mate took
from the body of the woman her strange coverings
and a little bag of skin which contained many
sparkling stones of different colors and metals of
yellow and white made into things the purposes of
which we could not guess.
“It was evident that the woman had come from a
strange land, for she and all her belongings were
unlike anything that either of us ever had seen
before. She herself was different as Nadara is dif-
ferent—Nadara looks as her mother looked, for
Nadara is the little babe that was born that night.
“We brought her back to our people after
another moon, saying that she was born to my
mate; but there was one woman who knew better,
for it seemed that she had seen us when we found
the boat, having been running away from a man


I66 THE CAVE GIRL
who wanted her as his mate.
“But my mate did not want anyone to say that
Nadara was not hers, for it is a great disgrace, as
you well know, for a woman to be barren, and so
she several times nearly killed this woman, who
knew the truth, to keep her from telling it to the
whole village.
“But I love Nadara as well as though she had
been my own, and so I should like to see her well
mated before I die.” s
Thandar had gone white during the narration
of the story of Nadara's birth. He could scarce
restrain an impulse to go upon his knees and thank
his God that he had harked to the call of his civi-
lized training rather than have given in to the easier
way, the way these primitive, beast-like people
offered. Providence, he thought, must indeed have
sent him here to rescue her.
The old man, turning upon his rough pallet,
fastened his sunken eyes questioningly upon Than-
dar. Nadara, too, with parted lips waited for him
to speak. The old man gasped for breath—there
was a strange rattling sound in his throat.
Thandar leaned above him, raising his head and
shoulders slightly. The young man never had
heard that sound before, but now that he heard it
he needed no iterpreter.
The locust, rubbing his legs along his wings,


KING THANDAR 167
startles the uninitiated into the belief that a hid-
den rattler lurks in the pathway; but when the great
diamond back breaks forth in warning none mis-
takes him for a locust.
And so is it with the death rattle in the human
throat.
Thandar knew that it was the end. He saw the
old man's mighty effort to push back the grim
reaper that he might speak once more. In the dying
eyes were a question and a plea. Thandar could
not misunderstand.
He reached forward and took Nadara's hand.
“In my own land we shall be mated,” he said.
“None other shall wed with Nadara, and as proof
that she is Thandar's she shall wear this always,”
and from his finger he slipped a splendid solitaire
to the third finger of Nadara's left hand.
The old man saw. A look of relief and content-
ment that was almost a smile settled upon his
features, as, with a gasping sigh, he sank limply
into Thandar's arms, dead.
That afternoon several of the younger men car-
ried the body of Nadara's foster father to the top
of the cliff, depositing it about half a mile from
the caves. There was no ceremony. In it, though,
Waldo Emerson saw what might have been the first
human funeral cortege—simple, sensible and utili-
tarian—from which the human race has retro-


I68 THE CAVE GIRL
graded to the ostentatious, ridiculous, pestilent
burials of present day civilization.
The young men, acting under Big Fist's orders,
carried the worthless husk to a safe distance from
the caves, leaving it there to the rapid disintegration
provided by the beasts and birds of prey.
Nadara wept, silently. An elderly lady with a
single tooth, espying her, moaned in sympathy.
Presently other females, attracted by the moaning,
joined them, and, becoming affected by the strange
hysteria to which womankind is heir, mingled their
moans with those of the toothless one.
Excited by their own noise they soon were shriek-
ing and screaming in hideous chorus. Then came
Big Fist and others of the men. The din annoyed
them. They set upon the mourners with their fists
and teeth scattering them in all directions. Thus
ended the festivities.
Or would have had not Big Fist made the fatal
mistake of launching a blow at Nadara. Thandar
had been standing nearby looking with wonder
upon the strange scene.
He had noted the quiet grief of the young girl
— real grief; and he had witnessed the hysterical
variety of the “mourners”—not sham grief.
Precisely, because they made no pretense to grief
—it was noise to which they aspired. And as the
fiendish din had set his own nerves on edge he


KING THANDAR 169
wondered not at all that Big Fist and the other
men should take steps to quell the tumult.
The female half-brutes were theirs and Waldo
Emerson had reverted sufficiently to the primitive
to feel no incentive to interfere. But Nadara was
not theirs—she was not of them, and even had
she not belonged to him the American would have
felt bound to stand between her and the savage
creatures among whom fate had cast her.
That she did belong to him, however, sent him
hot with the blood lust of the killer as he sprang
to intercept the rush of Big Fist toward her.
Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones had learned noth-
ing of the manly art of self-defense in that other
life that had been so zealously guarded from the
rude and vulgar. This was unfortunate since it
would have given him a great advantage over the
man-brute. A single well-timed swing to that un-
guarded chin would have ended hostilities at once;
but of hooks and jabs and jolts, scientific, Than-
dar knew nothing.
Except for his crude weapons he was as primeval
in battle as his original anthropoid progenitor, and
quite as often as not he forgot all about his sword,
his knife, his bow and arrows and his spear when,
half stooped, he crouched to meet the charge of a
foeman.
Now he sprang for Big Fist's hairy throat.


17o THE CAVE GIRL
There was a sullen thud as the two bodies met, and
then, rolling, biting and tearing, they struggled
hither and thither upon the rocky ground at the
base of the cliff. -
The other men desisted from their attack upon
the women. The women ceased their vocal mourn-
ing. In a little circle they formed about the con-
testants—a circle which moved this way and that
as the fighters moved, keeping them always in the
Center.
Nadara forced her way through them to the
front. She wished to be near Thandar. In her
hand she carried a jagged bit of granite—one
could never tell.
Big Fist was burly—mountainous—but Than-
dar was muscled like Nagoola, the black panther.
His movements were all grace and ease, but oh, so
irresistible. A sudden and unexpected blow upon
the side of Big Fist's head bent that bullet-shaped
thing sidewards with a jerk that almost dislocated
the neck.
Big Fist shrieked with the pain of it. Thandar,
delighted by the result of the accidental blow, re-
peated it. Big Fist bellowed—agonized. He made
a last supreme effort to close with his agile foeman,
and succeeded. His teeth sought Thandar's throat,
but the act brought his own jugular close to Than-
dar's jaws.


KING THANDAR 171
The strong white teeth of Waldo Emerson
Smith-Jones closed upon it as naturally as though
no countless ages had rolled their snail-like way be-
tween himself and the last of his progenitors to
bury bloody fangs in the soft flesh of an antagonist.
Wasted ages! fleeing from the primitive and the
brute toward the neoteric and the human—in a
brief instant your labors are undone, the veneer of
eons crumbles in the heat of some pristine passion
revealing again naked and unashamed, the primi-
tive and the brute.
Big Fist, white now from terror at impending
death, struggled to be free. Thandar buried his
teeth more deeply. There was a sudden rush of
spurting blood that choked him. Big Fist relaxed,
inert.
Thandar, drenched crimson, rose to his feet.
The huge body on the ground before him floun-
dered spasmodically once or twice as the life blood
gushed from the severed jugular. The eyes rolled
up and set, there was a final twitch and Big Fist
was dead.
Thandar turned toward the circle of interested
spectators. He singled out a burly quartet.
“Bear Big Fist to the cliff top,” he commanded.
“When you return we shall choose a king.”
The men did as they were bid. They did not at
all understand what Thandar meant by choosing a


172 THE CAVE GIRL
king. Having slain Big Fist, Thandar was king, un-
less some ambitious one desired to dispute his right
to reign. But all had seen him slay Big Fist, and
all knew that he had killed Korth and Flatfoot, so
who was there would dare question his kingship?
When they had come back to the village Thandar
gathered them beneath a great tree that grew close
to the base of the cliff. Here they squatted upon
their haunches in a rough circle. Behind them
stood the women and children, wide-eyed and
curious.
“Let us choose a king,” said Thandar, when all
had come.
There was a long silence, then one of the older
men spoke.
“I am an old man. I have seen many kings.
They come by killing. They go by killing. Than-
dar has killed two kings. Now he is king. Who
wishes to kill Thandar and become king?”
There was no answer.
The old man arose.
“It was foolish to come here to choose a king,”
he said, “when a king we already have.”
“Wait,” commanded Thandar. “Let us choose
a king properly. Because I have killed Flatfoot
and Big Fist does not prove that I can make a
good king. Was Flatfoot a good king?”
“He was a bad man,” replied the ancient one.


KING THANDAR 173
“Has a good man ever been king?” asked Than-
dar. -
The old fellow puckered his brow in thought.
“Not for a long time,” he said.
“That is because you always permit a bully
and a brute to rule you,” said Thandar. “That
is not the proper way to choose a king. Rather
you should come together as we are come, and
among you talk over the needs of the tribe and
when you are decided as to what measures are best
for the welfare of the members of the tribe then
should you select the man best fitted to carry out
your plans. That is a better way to choose a king.”
The old man laughed.
“And then,” he said, “would come a Big Fist
or a Flatfoot and slay our king that he might be
king in his place.”
“Have you ever seen a man who could slay all
the other men of the tribe at the same time?”
The old man looked puzzled.
“That is my answer to your argument,” said
Thandar. “Those who choose the king can protect
him from his enemies. So long as he is a good
king they should do so, but when he becomes a bad
king they can then select another, and if the bad
king refuses to obey the new it would be an easy
matter for several men to kill him or drive him
away, no matter how mighty a fighter he might be.”


I74 THE CAVE GIRL
Several of the men nodded understandingly.
“We had not thought of that,” they said.
“Thandar is indeed wise.”
“So now,” continued the American, “let us
choose a king whom the majority of us want, and
then so long as he is a good king the majority of
us must fight for him and protect him. Let us
choose a man whom we know to be a good man
regardless of his ability to kill his fellows, for if
he has the majority of the tribe to fight for him
what need will he have to fight for himself? What
we want is a wise man—one who can lead the
tribe to fertile lands and good hunting, and in times
of battle direct the fighting intelligently. Flatfoot
and Big Fist had not brains enough between them
to do aught but steal the mates of other men. Such
should not be the business of kings. Your king
should protect your mates from such as Flatfoot,
and he should punish those who would steal them.”
“But how may he do these things?” asked a
young man, “if he is not the best fighter in the
tribe?”
“Have I not shown you how?” asked Thandar.
“We who make him king shall be his fighters—he
will not need to fight with his own hands.”
Again there was a long silence. Then the old
man spoke again.
“There is wisdom in the talk of Thandar. Let


KING THANDAR 175
us choose a king who will have to be good to us
if he wishes to remain king. It is very bad for us
to have a king whom we fear.”
“I, for one,” said the young man who had pre-
viously spoken, “do not care to be ruled by a king
unless he is able to defeat me in battle. If I can
defeat him then I should be king.”
And so they took sides, but at last they com-
promised by selecting one whom they knew to be
wise and a great fighter as well. Thus they chose
Thandar king.
“Once each week,” said the new king, “we shall
gather here and talk among ourselves of the things
which are for the best good of the tribe, and what
seems best to the majority shall be done. The tribe
will tell the king what to do—the king will carry
out the work. And all must fight when the king
says fight and all must work when the king says
work, for we shall all be fighting or working for the
whole tribe, and I, Thandar, your king, shall fight
and work the hardest of you all.”
It was a new idea to them and placed the king-
ship in a totally different light from any by which
they had previously viewed it. That it would take
a long time for them to really absorb the idea Than-
dar knew, and he was glad that in the meantime
they had a king who could command their respect
according to their former standards.


176 THE CAVE GIRL
And he smiled when he thought of the change
that had taken place in him since first he had sat
trembling, weeping and coughing upon the lonely
shore before the terrifying forest.


.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT NAGOOLA
ALDO EMERSON SMITH-JONES had
gladly embraced the opportunity which
chance had offered him to assume the kingship of
the little tribe of troglodytes. First, because his
position would assure Nadara greater safety, and,
second, because of the opening it would give him
for the exercise of his new-found initiative.
Where before he had shrunk from responsibility
he now found himself anxious to assume it. He
longed to do, where formerly he had been content
to but read of the accomplishments of others.
To his chagrin, however, he soon discovered that
the classical education to which his earlier life had
been devoted under the guidance of a fond and
ultra-cultured mother was to prove a most inade-
quate foundation upon which to build a practical
scheme of life for himself and his people.
He wished to teach his tribe to construct perma-
nent and comfortable houses, but he could not recol-
lect any practical hints on carpentry that he had
obtained from Ovid.
His people lived by hunting small rodents, rob-
bing birds' nests, and gathering wild fruit and vege-
177


178 THE CAVE GIRL
tables. Thandar desired to institute a scheme of
community farming, but the works of the Cyclic
Poets, with which he was quite familiar, seemed to
offer little of value along agricultural lines. He
regretted that he had not matriculated at an agricul-
tural college west of the Alleghanies rather than at
Harvard.
However, he determined to do the best he could
with the meager knowledge he possessed of things
practical—a knowledge so meager that it con-
sisted almost entirely of the bare definition of the
word agriculture.
It was a germ, however, for it presupposed a
knowledge of the results that might be obtained
through agriculture.
So Thandar found himself a step ahead of the
earliest of his progenitors who had thought to
plant purposely the seeds that nature heretofore
had distributed haphazard through the agencies of
wind and bird and beast; but only a step ahead.
He realized that he occupied a very remarkable
position in the march of ages. He had known and
seen and benefited by all the accumulated knowl-
edge of ages of progression from the stone age to
the twentieth century, and now, suddenly, fate had
snatched him back into the stone age, or possibly a
few eons farther back, only to show him that all
that he had from a knowledge of other men's


THE GREAT NAGOOLA I79
knowledge was keen dissatisfaction with the stone
age.
He had lived in houses of wood and brick and
looked through windows of glass. He had read in
the light of gas and electricity, and he even knew of
candles; but he could not fashion the tools to build
a house, he could not have made a brick to have
saved his life, glass had suddenly become one of
the wonders of the world to him, and as for gas and
electricity and candles they had become one with
the mystery of the Sphinx.
He could write verse in excellent Greek, but he
was no longer proud of that fact. He would much
rather that he had been able to tan a hide, or make
fire without matches. Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones
had a year ago been exceedingly proud of his intel-
lect and his learning, but for a year his ego had
been shrinking until now he felt himself the most
pitiful ignoramus on earth. “Criminally igno-
rant,” he said to Nadara, “for I have thrown away
the opportunities of a lifetime devoted to the ac-
cumulation of useless erudition when I might have
been profiting by the practical knowledge which has
dragged the world from the black bit of barbarism
to the light of modern achievement—I might not
only have done this but, myself, added something
to the glory and welfare of mankind. I am no
good, Nadara—worse than useless.”


18O THE CAVE GIRL
The girl touched his strong brown hand caress-
ingly, looking proudly into his eyes.
“To me you are very wonderful, Thandar,” she
said. “With your own hands you slew Nagoola,
the most terrible beast in the world, and Korth, and
Flatfoot, and Big Fist lie dead beneath the vultures
because of your might—single-handed you killed
them all; three awesome men. No, my Thandar is
greater than all other men.”
Nor could Waldo Emerson repress the swelling
tide of pride that surged through him as the girl
he loved recounted his exploits. No longer did he
think of his achievements as “vulgar physical
prowess.” The old Waldo Emerson, whose tem-
perature had risen regularly at three o'clock each
afternoon, whose pitifully skinny body had been
racked by coughing continually, whose eyes had
been terror filled by day and by night at the rus-
tling of dry leaves, was dead.
In his place stood a great, full blooded man,
brown skinned and steel thewed; fearless, self-re-
liant, almost brutal in his pride of power—Than-
dar, the cave man.
The months that passed as Thandar led his people
from one honeycombed cliff to another as he sought
a fitting place for a permanent village were filled
with happiness for Nadara and the king.
The girl's happiness was slightly alloyed by the


THE GREAT NAGOOLA 181
fact that Thandar failed to claim her as his own.
She could not yet quite understand the ethics which
separated them. Thandar tried repeatedly to ex-
plain to her that some day they were to return to
his own world, and that that world would not ac-
cept her unless she had been joined to him accord-
ing to the rites and ceremonies which it had origi-
nated.
“Will this marriage ceremony of which you tell
me make you love me more?” asked Nadara.
Thandar laughed and took her in his arms.
“I could not love you more,” he replied.
“Then of what good is it?”
Thandar shook his head.
“It is difficult to explain,” he said, “especially to
such a lovable little pagan as my Nadara. You
must be satisfied to know—accept my word for
it—that it is because I love you that we must
wait.”
Now it was the girl's turn to shake her head.
“I cannot understand,” she said. “My people
take their mates as they will and they are satisfied
and everybody is satisfied and all is well; but their
king, who may mate as he chooses, waits until a
man whom he does not know and who lives across
the great water where we may never go, gives him
permission to mate with one who loves him—with
one whom he says he loves.”


r&2 THE CAVE GIRL
Thandar noticed the emphasis which Nadara put
upon the word “says.”
“Some day,” he said, “when we have reached my
world you will know that I was right, and you will
thank me. Until then, Nadara, you must trust me,
and,” he added half to himself, “God knows I have
earned your trust even if you do not know it.”
And so Nadara made believe that she was satis-
fied but in her heart of hearts she still feared that
Thandar did not really love her, nor did the half-
veiled comments of the women add at all to her
peace of mind.
During all the time that Thandar was with her
he had been teaching her his language for he had
set his heart upon taking her home, and he wished
her to be as well prepared for her introduction to
Boston and civilization as he could make her.
Thandar's plan was to find a suitable location
within sight of the sea that he might always be
upon the lookout for a ship. At last he found such
a place—a level meadow land upon a low plateau
overlooking the ocean.
He had come upon it while he wandered alone
several miles from the temporary cliff dwellings
the tribe was occupying. The soil, when he dug
into it, he found to be rich and black. There was
timber upon one side and upon the other overhang-
ing cliffs of soft limestone.


THE GREAT NAGOOLA 183
It was Thandar's plan to build a village partly
of logs against the face of the cliff, burrowing in-
ward behind the dwellings for such additional
apartments as each family might require.
The caves alone would have proved sufficient
shelter, but the man hoped by compelling his people
to construct a portion of each dwelling of logs to
engender within each family a certain feeling of
ownership and pride in personal possession as would
make it less easy for them to give up their abodes
than in the past, when it had been necessary but to
move to another cliff to find caves equally as com-
fortable as those which they so easily abandoned.
In other words he hoped to give them a word
which their vocabulary had never held—home.
Whether or not he would have succeeded we may
never know, for fate stepped in at the last moment
to alter with a single stroke his every plan and as-
piration.
As he returned to his people that afternoon filled
with the enthusiasm of his hopes a burly, hairy
figure crept warily after him. As Thandar emerged
from the brush which reaches close to the cliffs
where the temporary encampment had been made
Nadara, watching for him, ran forward to meet
him.
The creature upon Thandar's trail halted at the
edge of the bush. As his close-set eyes fell upon


184 THE CAVE GIRL
the girl his flabby lips vibrated to the quick intaking
of his breath and his red lids half closed in cunning
and desire. -
For a few moments he watched the man and the
maid as they turned and walked slowly toward the
cliffs, the arm of the former about the brown
shoulders of the latter. Then he too turned and
melted into the tangled branches behind him.
That evening Thandar gathered the members of
the tribe about him at the foot of the cliff. They
sat around a great fire while Thandar, their king,
explained to them in minutest detail the future
that he had mapped out for them.
Some of the old men shook their heads, for here
was an unheard of thing—a change from the ac-
customed ordering of their lives—and they were
loath to change regardless of the benefits which
might accrue.
But for the most part the people welcomed the
idea of comfortable and permanent habitations,
though their anticipatory joy, Thandar reasoned,
was due largely to a childish eagerness for some-
thing new and different—whether their enthusi-
asm would survive the additional labors which the
new life was sure to entail was another question.
So Thandar laid down the new laws that were to
guide his people thereafter. The men were to make
all implements and weapons, for he had already


186 THE CAVE GIRL
civilization they could make in a few brief years if
they could but be made to follow the simple plans
he had in mind.
“Why,” he said, “in ten years they should have
bridged a gulf that it must have required ages for
our ancestors to span.”
“And you are planning ten years ahead, Than-
dar,” she asked, “when only yesterday you were
saying that once beside the sea you hoped it would
be but a short time before we might sight a pass-
ing vessel that would bear us away to your civiliza-
tion? Must we wait ten years, Thandar?”
“I am planning for them,” he replied. “We may
not be here to witness the changes; but I wish to
start them upon the road, and when we go I shall
see to it that a king is chosen in my place who has
the courage and the desire to carry out my plans.
“Yet,” he added, musingly, “it would be
splendid could we but return to complete our work.
Never, Nadara, have I performed a single construct-
ive act for the benefit of my fellow man, but now
I see an opportunity to do something, however small
it may seem, to-what was that?”
A low rumbling muttered threateningly out of the
west. Deep and ominous it sounded, yet so low that
it failed to awaken any member of the sleeping
tribe.
Before either could again speak there came a


188 THE CAVE GIRL
growling of The Great Nagoola in his anger, and
the earth shakes and trembles as he strives far, far
beneath to shake the mountains from him and
escape. Did you not hear his voice and feel the
ground rock?”
Thandar laughed.
“Well, we are quite safe then,” he cried, “for
with two mountains piled upon him he cannot
escape.”
“Who knows?” asked Nadara. “He is huge—
as huge, himself, as a small mountain. Some day,
they say, he will escape, and then naught will pacify
his rage until he has destroyed every living creature
upon the land.”
“Do not worry, little one,” said Thandar. “The
Great Nagoola will have to grumble louder and
struggle more fiercely before ever he may dislodge
the two mountains. Even now he is quiet again, so
run to your cave, sweetheart, nor bother your pretty
head with useless worries—it is time that all good
people were asleep,” and he stooped and kissed her
as she turned to go.
For a moment she clung to him.
“I am afraid, Thandar,” she whispered. “Why,
I do not know. I only know that I am afraid, with
a great fear that will not be quiet.”


CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE
ARLY the following morning while several of
the women and children were at the river
drawing water the balance of the tribe of Thandar
was startled into wakefulness by piercing shrieks
from the direction the water carriers had taken.
Before the great, hairy men, led by the smooth-
skinned Thandar, had reached the foot of the cliff
in their rush to the rescue of the women several of
the latter appeared at the edge of the forest, run-
ning swiftly toward the caves.
Mingled with their screams of terror were cries
of : “The bad men | The bad men!” But these
were not needed to acquaint the rescuers with the
cause of the commotion, for at the heels of the
women came Thurg and a score of his vicious
brutes. Little better than anthropoid apes were
they. Long armed, hairy, skulking monsters, whose
close-set eyes and retreating foreheads proclaimed
more intimate propinquity to the higher orders of
brutes than to civilized man.
Woe betide male or female who fell into their
remorseless clutches, since to the base passions, un-
restrained, that mark the primordial they were ad-
189


190 THE CAVE GIRL
dicted to the foulest forms of cannibalism.
In the past their raids upon their neighbors for
meat and women had met with but slight resist-
ance—the terrified cave dwellers scampering to the
safety of their dizzy ledges from whence they might
hurl stones and roll boulders down to the confusion
of any foe however ferocious.
Always the bad men caught a few unwary vic-
tims before the safety of the ledges could be at-
tained, but this time there was a difference. Thurg
was delighted. The men were rushing downward
to meet him—great indeed would be the feast
which should follow this day's fighting, for with
the men disposed of there would be but little diffi-
culty in storming the cliff and carrying off all the
women and children, and as he thought upon these
things there floated in his little brain the image of
the beautiful girl he had watched come down the
evening before from the caves to meet the smooth-
skinned warrior who twice now had bested Thurg
in battle.
That Thandar's men might turn the tables upon
him never for a moment occurred to Thurg. Nor
was there little wonder, since, mighty as were the
muscles of the cave men, they were weaklings by
comparison with the half-brutes of Thurg—only
the smooth-skinned stranger troubled the muddy
mind of the near-man.


THE BATTLE I91
It puzzled him a little, though, to see the long
slim sticks that the enemy carried, and the little
slivers in skin bags upon their backs, and the
strange curved branches whose ends were connected
by slender bits of gut. What were these things for!
Soon he was to know—this and other things.
Thandar's warriors did not rush upon Thurg
and his brutes in a close packed, yelling mob. In-
stead they trotted slowly forward in a long thin
line that stretched out parallel with the base of the
cliff. In the center, directly in front of the charg-
ing bad men, was Thandar, calling directions to his
people, first upon one hand and then upon the other.
And in accordance with his commands the ends
of the line began to quicken the pace, so that quick-
ly Thurg saw that there were men before him,
and men upon either hand, and now, at fifty feet,
while all were advancing cautiously, crouched for
the final hand-to-hand encounter, he saw the enemy
slip each a sliver into the gut of the bent branches
—there was a sudden chorus of twangs, and Thurg
felt a sharp pain in his neck. Involuntarily he
clapped his hand to the spot to find one of the
slivers sticking there, scarce an inch from his jugu-
lar.
With a howl of rage he snatched the thing from
him, and as he leaped to the charge to punish these
audacious mad-men he noted a dozen of his hench-


I92 THE CAVE GIRL
men plucking slivers from various portions of their
bodies, while two lay quite still upon the grass with
just the ends of slivers protruding from their
breasts.
The sight brought the beast-man to a momentary
halt. He saw his fellows charging in upon the foe
—he saw another volley of slivers speed from the
bent branches. Down went another of his fighters,
and then the enemy cast aside their strange weapons
at a shouted command from the smooth-skinned
one and grasping their long, slim sticks ran forward
to meet Thurg's people.
Thurg smiled. It would soon be over now. He
turned toward one who was bearing down upon him
—it was Thandar. Thurg crouched to meet the
charge. Rage, revenge, the lust for blood fired his
bestial brain. With his huge paws he would tear
the puny stick from this creature's grasp, and this
time he would gain his hold upon that smooth
throat. He licked his lips. And then out of the
corner of his eye he glanced to the right.
What strange sight was this! His people flying?
It was incredible! And yet it was true. Growling
and raging in pain and anger they were running a
gauntlet of fire-sharpened lances. Three lay dead.
The others were streaming blood as they fled before
the relentless prodding devils at their backs.
It was enough for Thurg. He did not wait to


THE BATTLE I93
close with Thandar. A single howl of dismay
broke from his flabby lips, and then he wheeled and
dashed for the wood. He was the last to pass
through the rapidly converging ends of Thandar's
primitive battle line. He was running so fast that,
afterward, Nadara who was watching the battle
from the cliff-side insisted that his feet flew higher
than his head at each frantic leap.
Thandar and his victorious army pursued the
enemy through the wood for a mile or more, then
they returned, laughing and shouting, to receive
the plaudits of the old men, the women and the
children.
It was a happy day. There was feasting. And
Thandar, having in mind things he had read of
savage races, improvised a dance in honor of the
victory.
He knew little more of savage dances than his
tribesmen did of the two-step and the waltz; but
he knew that dancing and song and play marked
in themselves a great step upward in the evolution
of man from the lower orders, and so he meant to
teach these things to his people.
A red flush spread to his temples as he thought
of his dignified father and his stately mother and
with what horrified emotions they would view him
now could they but see him—naked but for a
g-string and a panther skin, moving with leaps and


I94 THE CAVE GIRL
bounds, and now stately waltz steps in a great circle,
clapping his hands in time to his movements, while
behind him strung a score of lusty, naked warriors,
mimicking his every antic with the fidelity of apes.
About them squatted the balance of the tribe
more intensely interested in this, the first ceremonial
function of their lives, than with any other occur-
rence that had ever befallen them. They, too, now
clapped their hands in time with the dancers.
Nadara stood with parted lips and wide eyes
watching the strange scene. Within her it seemed
that something was struggling for expression—
something that she must have known long, long ago
—something that she had forgotten but that she
presently must recall. With it came an insistent
urge—her feet could scarce remain quietly upon
the ground, and great waves of melody and song
welled into her heart and throat, though what they
were and what they meant she did not know.
She only knew that she was intensely excited and
happy and that her whole being seemed as light and
airy as the soft wind that blew across the gently
swaying treetops of the forest.
Now the dance was done. Thandar had led the
warriors back to the feast. In the center of the
circle where the naked bodies of the men had
leaped and swirled to the clapping of many hands
was an open space, deserted. Into it Nadara ran,


THE BATTLE I95
drawn by some subtile excitement of the soul which
she could not have fathomed had she tried—which
she did not try to fathom.
Around her slim, graceful figure was draped the
glossy, black pelt of Nagoola–another trophy of
the prowess of her man. It half concealed but to
accentuate the beauties of her form.
With eyes half-closed she took a half dozen
graceful, tentative steps. Now the eyes of Than-
dar and several others were upon her, but she did
not see them. Suddenly, with outthrown arms, she
commenced to dance, bending her lithe body, sway-
ing from side to side as she fell, with graceful
abandon, into steps and poses that seemed as nat-
ural to her as repose.
About the little circle she wove her simple yet
intricate way, and now every eye was upon her as
every savage heart leaped in unison with her shapely
feet, rising and falling in harmony with her lithe,
brown limbs.
And of all the hearts that leaped, fastest leaped
the heart of Thandar, for he saw in the poetry of
motion of the untutored girl the proof of her birth-
right—the truth of all that he had guessed of her
origin since her foster father had related the story
of her birth upon his death bed. None but a child
of an age-old culture could possess this inherent
talent. Any moment he expected her lips to break


196 THE CAVE GIRL
forth in song, nor was he to be disappointed, for
presently, as the circling cave folk commenced to
clap their palms in time to her steps, Nadara lifted
her voice in clear and bird-like notes—a worldless
paean of love and life and happiness.
At last, exhausted, she paused, and as her eyes
fell upon Thandar they broke into a merry laugh.
“The king is not the only one who can leap and
play upon his feet,” she cried.
Thandar came to the center of the circle and
kneeling at her feet took one of her hands in his
and kissed it.
“The king is only mortal and a man,” he said.
“It is no reproach that he cannot equal the divine
grace of a goddess. You are very wonderful, my
Nadara,” he continued, “From loving you I am
coming to worship you.”
And within the deep and silent wood another was
stirred with mighty emotions by the sight of the
half-naked, graceful girl. It was Thurg, the bad
man, who had sneaked back alone to the edge of
the forest that he might seek an opportunity to be
revenged upon Thandar and his people.
Half formed in his evil brain had been a certain
plan, which the sight of Nadara, dancing in the
firelight, had turned to concrete resolution.
With the dancing and the feasting over, the tribe
of Thandar betook itself by ones and twos to the


THE BATTLE 197
rocky caves that they expected so soon to desert
for the more comfortable village which they were
to build under the direction of their king, to the
east, beside the great water.
At last all was still—the village slept. No sentry
guarded their slumbers, for Thandar, steeped in
book learning, must needs add to his stock of prac-
tical knowledge by bitter experience, and never yet
had the cause arisen for a night guard about his
village.
Having defeated Thurg and his people he thought
that they would not return again, and certainly not
by night, for the people of this wild island roamed
seldom by night, having too much respect for the
teeth and talons of Nagoola to venture forth after
darkness had settled upon the grim forests and the
lonely plains.
But a tempest of uncontrolled emotions surged
through the hairy breast of Thurg. He forgot
Nagoola. He thought only of revenge—revenge
and the black haired beauty who had so many
times eluded him.
And as he saw her dancing in the circle of hand-
clapping tribesmen, in the light of the brush wood
fire, his desire for her became a veritable frenzy.
He could scarce restrain himself from rushing
single-handed among his foes and snatching the girl
before their faces. However, caution came to his


198 THE CAVE GIRL
rescue, and so he waited, albeit impatiently, until
the last of the cave folk had retired to his cavern.
He had seen into which Nadara had withdrawn
—one that lay far up the face of the steep cliff and
directly above the cave occupied by Thandar. The
moon was overcast, the fire at the foot of the cliff
... had died to glowing embers, all was wrapped in
darkness and in shadow. Far in the depths of the
wood Nagoola coughed and cried. The weird
sound raised the coarse hair at the nape of Thurg's
bull neck. He cast an apprehensive backward
glance, then, crouching low, he moved quickly and
silently across the clearing toward the base of the
cliff.
Flattened against a protruding boulder there he
waited, listening, for a moment. No sound broke
the stillness of the sleeping village. None had seen
his approach—of that he was convinced.
Carefully he began the ascent of the cliff face,
made difficult by the removal of the rough ladders
that led from ledge to ledge by day, but which
were withdrawn with the retiring of the community
to their dark holes.
But Thurg had dragged with him from the forest
a slim sapling. This he leaned against the face of
the cliff. Its uptilted end just topped the lowest
ledge.
Thurg was almost as large and quite as clumsy


THE BATTLE I99
in appearance as a gorilla, yet he was not as far
removed from his true arboreal ancestors as is the
great simian, and so he accomplished in silence and
with evident ease what his great bulk might have
seemed to have relegated to the impossible.
Like a huge cat he scrambled up the frail pole
until his fingers clutched the ledge edge above him.
Ape-like he drew himself to a squatting position
there. Then he groped for the ladder that the cave
folk had drawn up from below.
This he erected to the next ledge above. There-
after the way was easy, for the balance of the ledges
were connected by steeply inclined trails cut into
the cliff face. This had been an innovation of
Thandar's who considered the rickety ladders not
only a nuisance, but extremely dangerous to life
and limb, for scarce a day passed that some child
or woman did not receive a bad fall because of
them.
So Thurg, with Thandar's unintentional aid,
came easily to the mouth of Nadara's cave.
Great had been the temptation as he passed the
cave below to enter and slay his enemy. Never had
Thurg so hated any creature as he hated this
smooth-skinned interloper—with all the venom of
his mean soul he hated him.
Now he stooped, listening, just beside the en-
trance to the cave. He could hear the regular
rese


2OO THE CAVE GIRL
breathing of the girl within. The hot blood surged
through his brute veins. His huge paws opened and
closed spasmodically. His breath sucked hot be-
tween his flabby lips.
Just beneath him Thandar lay dreaming. He saw
a wonderful vision of a beautiful nymph dancing in
the firelight. In a circle about her sat the Smith-
Joneses, the Percy Standishes, the Livingston-
Brownes, the Quincy Adams-Cootses, and a hun-
dred more equally aristocratic families of Boston.
It did not seem strange to Thandar that there
was not enough clothing among the entire assem-
blage to have recently draped the Laocoön. His
father wore a becoming loin cloth, while the stately
Mrs. John Alden Smith-Jones, his mother, was
tastefully arrayed in a scant robe of the skins of
small rodents sewn together with bits of gut.
As the nymph danced the audience kept time to
her steps with loudly clapping palms, and when she
was done they approached her one by one, crawl-
ing upon their hands and knees, and kissed her
hand.
Suddenly he saw that the nymph was Nadara,
and as he sprang forward to claim her a large man
with a coarse matted beard, a slanted forehead, and
close-set eyes, leaped out from among the others,
seized Nadara and fled with her toward a waiting
trolley car.


THE BATTLE 2OI
He recognized the man as Thurg, and even in
his dream it seemed rather incongruous that he
should be clothed in well-fitting evening clothes.
Nadara screamed once, and the scream roused
Thandar from his dream. Raising upon one elbow
he looked toward the entrance of his cave. The
recollection of the dream swept back into his mem-
ory. With a little sigh of relief that it had been
but a dream, he settled back once more upon his
bed of grasses, and soon was wrapped in dreamless
slumber.


THE ABDUCTION OF NADARA 203
about her waist held her as firmly as might iron
bands.
Thurg spoke no word, but as Nadara's hands
came in contact with his hairy breast and matted
beard as she fought for freedom she guessed the
identity of her abductor, and shuddered.
Waiting only to assure himself that his hold
upon his prisoner was secure and that no trailing
end of her robe might trip him in his flight down
the cliff face, Thurg commenced the descent.
Opposite the entrance to Thandar's cave Nadara
redoubled her efforts to free her mouth that she
might scream aloud but once. Thurg, guessing her
desire, pressed his palm the tighter, and in a mo-
ment the two had passed unnoticed to the ledge be-
low.
Down the winding trail of the upper ledges
Thurg's task was comparatively easy—thanks to
Thandar, but at the second ledge from the bottom
of the cliff he was compelled to take to the upper
of the two ladders which completed the way to the
ground below.
And here it was necessary to remove his hand
from Nadara's mouth. In a low growl he warned
her to silence with threats of instant death, then he
removed his hand from across her face, grasped the
top of the ladder and swung over the dangerous
height with his burden under his arm.


2O4 THE CAVE GIRL
For an instant Nadara was too paralyzed with
terror to take advantage of her opportunity, but
just as Thurg set foot upon the ledge at the bottom
of the ladder she screamed aloud once.
Instantly Thurg's hand fell roughly across her
lips. Brutally he shook her, squeezing her body in
his mighty grip until she gasped for breath, and
each minute expected to feel her ribs snap to the
terrific strain.
For a moment Thurg stood silently upon the
ledge, compressing the tortured body of his victim
and listening for signs of pursuit from above.
Presently the agony of her suffering overcame
Nadara—she swooned. Thurg felt her form re-
lax, and his flabby lips twisted to a hideous grin.
The cliff was quiet—the girl's scream had not
disturbed the slumbers of her tribesmen. Thurg
swung the ladder he had just descended over the
edge of the cliff below, and a moment later he stood
at the bottom with his burden.
Without noise he removed the ladder and the
sapling that he had used in his ascent, laying them
upon the ground at the foot of the cliff. This
would halt, temporarily, any pursuit until the cave
men could bring other ladders from the higher lev-
els, where they doubtless had them hidden.
But no pursuit developed, and Thurg disappeared
into the dark forest with his prize.


2O6 THE CAVE GIRL
he still clutched her shoulder. She saw him stand-
ing there before her—his greedy, blood-shot eyes
devouring her. His awful lips shook and trembled
as his hot breath sucked quickly in and out in ex-
cited gasps.
She knew that the end was coming. Frantically
she cast about her for some means of defense or
escape. Thurg was drawing her toward him.
Suddenly she drew back her clenched fist and
struck him full in the mouth, then, tearing herself
from his grasp, she turned and fled.
But in a moment he was upon her. Seizing her
roughly by the shoulders he shook her viciously,
hurling her to the ground.
The blood from his wounded lips dropped upon
her face and throat.
From the distance came a deep toned, thunderous
rumbling. Thurg raised his head and listened.
Again and again came that awesome sound.
“The Great Nagoola is coming to punish you,”
whispered Nadara.
Thurg still remained squatting beside her. She
had ceased to fight, for now she felt that a greater
power than hers was intervening to save her.
The ground beneath them trembled, shook and
then tossed frightfully. The rumbling and the
roaring became deafening. Thurg, his passion
frozen in the face of this new terror, rose to his


THE ABDUCTION OF NADARA 207
feet. For a moment there was a lull, then came
another and more terrific shock.
The earth rose and fell sickeningly. Fissures
opened, engulfing trees, and then closed like hungry
mouths gulping food long denied.
Thurg was thrown to the ground. Now he was
terror stricken. He screamed aloud in his fear.
Again there came a lull, and this time the beast-
man leaped to his feet and dashed away into the
forest. Nadara was alone.
Presently the earth commenced to tremble again,
and the voice of The Great Nagoola rumbled across
the world. Frightened animals scampered past Na-
dara, fleeing in all directions. Little deer, foxes,
squirrels and other rodents in countless numbers
scurried, terrified, about.
A great black panther and his mate trotted
shoulder to shoulder into the glade where Nadara
still stood too bewildered to know which way to fly.
They eyed her for a moment, as they paused in
the moonlight, then without a second glance they
loped away into the brush. Directly behind them
came three deer.
Nadara realized that she had felt no fear of the
panthers as she would have under ordinary circum-
stances. Even the little deer ran with their natural
enemies. Every lesser fear was submerged in the
overwhelming terror of the earthquake.


208 THE CAVE GIRL
Dawn was breaking in the east. The rumblings
were diminishing, the tremors at greater intervals
and of lessening violence.
Nadara started to retrace her steps toward the
village. Momentarily she looked to see Thandar
coming in search of her, but she came to the edge
of the forest and no sign of Thandar or another of
her tribesmen had come to cheer her.
At last she stepped into the open. Before her
was the cliff. A cry of anguish broke from her
lips at the sight that met her eyes. Torn, tortured
and crumpled were the lofty crags that had been
her home—the home of the tribe of Thandar.
The overhanging cliff top had broken away and
lay piled in a jagged heap at the foot of the cliff.
The caves had disappeared. The ledges had
crumbled before the titanic struggles of The Great
Nagoola. All was desolation and ruin.
She approached more closely. Here and there
in the awful jumble of shattered rock were wedged
the crushed and mangled forms of men, women and
children.
Tears coursed down Nadara's cheeks. Sobs
wracked her slender figure. And Thandar! Where
was he?
With utmost difficulty the girl picked her way
aloft over the tumbled debris. She could only guess
at the former location of Thandar's cave, but now


THE ABDUCTION OF NADARA 209
no sign of cave remained—r only the same blank
waste of silent stone.
Frantically she tugged and tore at massive heaps
of sharp edged rock. Her fingers were cut and
bruised and bleeding. She called aloud the name
of her man, but there was no response.
It was late in the afternoon before, weak and ex-
hausted, she gave up her futile search. That night
she slept in a crevice between two broken boulders,
and the next morning she set out in search of a
cave where she might live out the remainder of her
lonely life in what safety and meager comfort a
lone girl could wring from this savage world.
For a week she wandered hither and thither
only to find most of the caves she had known in
the past demolished as had been those of her people.
At last she stumbled upon the very cliff which
Thandar had chosen as the permanent home of his
people. Here the wrath of the earthquake seemed
to have been less severe, and Nadara found, high
in the cliff's face, a safe and comfortable cavern.
The last span to it required the use of a slender
sapling, which she could draw up after her, effectu-
ally barring the approach of Nagoola and his peo-
ple. To further protect herself against the chance.
of wandering men the girl carried a quantity of
small bits of rock to the ledge beside the entrance
to her cave.


2IO THE CAVE GIRL
Fruit and nuts and vegetables she took there too,
and a great gourd of water from the spring below.
As she completed her last trip, and sat resting upon
the ledge, her eyes wandering over the landscape
and out across the distant ocean, she thought she
saw something move in the shadow of the trees
across the open plain beneath her.
Could it have been a man? Nadara drew her
sapling ladder to the ledge beside her.
Thurg, fleeing from the wrath of The Great Na-
goola, had come at daybreak to the spot where
his people had been camped, but there he found no
sign of them, only the ragged edges of a great
fissure, half-closed, that might have swallowed his
entire tribe as he had seen the fissures in the forest
swallow many, many trees at a single bite.
For some time he sought for signs of his tribes-
men, but without success. Then, his fear of the
earthquake allayed, he started back into the forest
to find the girl. For days he sought her. He came
to the ruins of the cliff that had housed her people,
and there he discovered signs that the girl had been
there since the demolition.of the cliff.
He saw the print of her dainty feet in the soft
earth at the base of the rocks—he saw how she
had searched the debris for Thandar—he saw her
bed of grasses in the crevice between the two boul-
ders, and then, after diligent search, he found her


THE ABDUCTION OF NADARA 21 I
spoor leading away to the east.
For many days he followed her until, at last, close
by the sea, he come to a level plain at the edge of a
forest. Across the narrow plain rose lofty cliffs—
and what was that clambering aloft toward the dark
mouth of a cave?
Could it be a woman? Thurg's eyes narrowed
as he peered intently toward the cliff. Yes, it was
a woman—it was the woman—it was she he
sought, and, she was alone.
With a whoop of exultation Thurg broke from
the forest into the plain, running swiftly toward the
cliff where Nadara crouched beside her little pile
of jagged missiles, prepared to once more battle
with this hideous monster for more than life.


THE SEARCH 213
No sign of any of the poor unfortunates was
Seen.
Mrs. Smith-Jones is prostrated
Immediately John Alden Smith-Jones had fitted
out his yacht, Priscilla, despatching her under Cap-
tain Burlinghame, a retired naval officer, and an old
friend of Mr. Smith-Jones, to the far distant coast
in search of the body of his son, which the captain
of the steamer was of the opinion might very pos-
sibly have been washed upon the beach.
And now Burlinghame was back to report the
failure of his mission. The two men were sitting
in the John Alden Smith-Jones library. Mrs.
Smith-Jones was with them.
“We searched the beach diligently at the point
opposite which the tidal wave struck the steamer,”
Captain Burlinghame was saying. “For miles up
and down the coast we patrolled every inch of the
sand.
“We found, at one spot upon the edge of the
jungle and above the beach, the body of one of the
sailors. It was not and could not have been
Waldo's. The clothing was that of a seaman, the
frame was much shorter and stockier than your
son's. There was no sign of any other body along
that entire coast.
“Thinking it possible one of the men might have
been washed ashore alive we sent parties into the


2I4 THE CAVE GIRL
interior. Here we found a wild and savage
country, and on two occasions met with fierce,
white savages, who hurled rocks at us and fled at
the first report of our firearms.
“We continued our search all around the island,
which is of considerable extent. Upon the east
coast I found this,” and here the captain handed
Mr. Smith-Jones the bag of jewels which Nadara
had forgotten as she fled from Thandar.
Briefly he narrated what he knew of the history
of the poor woman to whom it had belonged.
“I recall the incident well,” said Mrs. Smith-
Jones, “I had the pleasure of entertaining the count
and countess when they stopped here upon their
honeymoon. They were lovely people, and to think
that they met so tragic an end l’”
The three lapsed into silence. Burlinghame did
not know whether he was glad or sorry that he had
not found the bones of Waldo Emerson—that
would have meant the end of hope for his parents.
Perhaps much the same thoughts were running
through the minds of the others.
Somewhere in the nether regions of the great
house an electric bell sounded. Still the three sat on
in silence. They heard the houseman open the front
door. They heard low voices, and presently there
came a deferential tap upon the door of the library.
Mr. Smith-Jones looked up and nodded. It was


THE SEARCH 215
the houseman. He held a letter in his hand.
“What is it Krutz?” asked the master in a tired
voice. It seemed that nothing ever again would
interest him.
“A special delivery letter, sir,” replied the serv-
ant. “The boy says you must sign for it yourself,
sir.”
“Ah, yes,” replied Mr. Smith-Jones, as he reached
for the letter and the receipt blank.
He glanced at the post mark—San Francisco.
Idly he cut the envelope.
“Pardon me?” He glanced first at his wife and
then at Captain Burlinghame.
The two nodded. º
Mr. John Alden Smith-Jones opened the letter.
There was a single written sheet and an enclosure
in another envelope. He had read but a couple of
lines when he came suddenly upright in his chair.
Captain Burlinghame and Mrs. Smith-Jones
looked at him in polite and surprised questioning.
“My God!” exclaimed Mr. Smith-Jones. “He
is alive—Waldo is alive!”
Mrs. Smith-Jones and Captain Burlinghame
sprang from their chairs and ran toward the
speaker.
With trembling hands that made it difficult to
read the words that his trembling voice could scarce
utter John Alden Smith-Jones read aloud:
23.


2I6 THE CAVE GIRL
On board the Sally Corwith,
San Francisco, California.
Mr. John Alden Smith-Jones,
Bostoh, Mass.
Dear Sir: Just reached port and hasten to for-
ward letter your son gave me for his mother. He
wouldn't come with us. We found him on
Island, Lat. Io9 —” South, Long.
150°–" West. He seemed in good health and able
to look out for himself. Didn't want anything, he
said, except a razor, so we gave him that and one
of the men gave him a plug of chewing tobacco.
Urged him to come, but he wouldn't. The enclosed
letter will doubtless tell you all about him.
Yours truly,
Henry Dobbs, Master.
“Ten south, a hundred and fifty west,” mused
Captain Burlinghame. “That's the same island we
searched. Where could he have been l’’
Mrs. Smith-Jones had opened the letter addressed
to her, and was reading it breathlessly.
My dear Mother: I feel rather selfish in remain-
ing and possibly causing you further anariety, but
I have certain duties to perform to several of the
inhabitants which I feel obligated to fulfill before
I depart.


THE SEARCH 217
My treatment here has been all that anyone
might desire—even more, I might say.
The climate is delightful. My cough has left me,
and I am entirely a well man—more robust than
I ever recall having been in the past.
At present I am sojourning in the mountains,
having but run down to the sea shore today, where,
happily, I chanced to find the Sally Corwith in the
harbor, and am taking advantage of Captain Dobbs’
kindness to forward this letter to you.
Do not worry, dearest mother; my obligations
will soon be fulfilled and then I shall hasten to take
the first steamer for Boston.
I have met a number of interesting people here
—the most interesting people I have ever met.
They quite overwhelm one with their attentions.
And now, as Captain Dobbs is anarious to be
away, I will close, with every assurance of my
deepest love for you and father.
Ever affectionately your son,
Waldo.
Mrs. Smith-Jones' eyes were dim with tears—
tears of thanksgiving and happiness.
“And to think,” she exclaimed, “that after all
he is alive and well—quite well. His cough has
left him—that is the best part of it, and he is sur-
rounded by interesting people—just what Waldo


THE SEARCH 219
purposes of commerce with the colonists.
“No, my friends,” he continued, “as much as I
should like to believe it my judgment will not
permit me to place any such translation upon
Waldo's letter.
“That he is safe and happy seems evident, and
that is enough for us to know. Now it should be
a simple matter for us to find him—if it is still
your desire to send for him.”
“He may already have left for Boston,” said
Mrs. Smith-Jones; “his letter was written several
months ago.”
Again Burlinghame shook his head.
“Do not bank on that, my dear madam,” he said
kindly. “It may be fifty years before another ves-
sel touches that forgotten shore—unless it be one
which you yourselves send.”
John Alden Smith-Jones sprang to his feet, and
commenced pacing up and down the library.
“How soon can the Priscilla be put in shape to
make the return voyage to the island?” he asked.
“It can be done in a week, if necessary,” replied
Burlinghame.
“And you will accompany her, in command?”
“Gladly.”
“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Smith-Jones. “And
now, my friend, let us lose no time in starting our
preparations. I intend accompanying you.”


THE SEARCH 22I
intelligent and experienced officer. That he was in-
clined to taciturnity but enhanced his value in the
eyes of Burlinghame. Stark was inclined to be
something of a martinet, so that the crew soon took
to hating him cordially, but as his display of this
unpleasant trait was confined wholly to trivial acts
the men contented themselves with grumbling
among themselves, which is the prerogative and
pleasure of every good sailorman. Their loyalty
to the splendid Burlinghame, however, was not to
be shaken by even a dozen Starks.
The monotonous and uneventful journey to the
vicinity of ten south and a hundred and fifty west
was finally terminated. At last land showed on the
starboard bow. Excitement reigned supreme
throughout the trim, white Priscilla. Mrs. Smith-
Jones peered anxiously and almost constantly
through her binoculars, momentarily expecting to
see the well-known thin and emaciated figure of her
Waldo Emerson standing upon the beach awaiting
them.
For two weeks they sailed along the coast, stop-
ping here and there for a day while parties tramped
inland in search of signs of civilized habitation.
They lay two days in the habor where the Sally
Corwith had lain. There they pressed farther in-
land than at any other point, but all without avail.
It was Burlinghame's plan to first make a cursory


222 THE CAVE GIRL
survey of the entire coast, with only short incur-
sions toward the center of the island. Should this
fail to discover the missing Waldo the party was
then to go over the ground once more, remaining
weeks or months as might be required to thor-
oughly explore every foot of the island.
It was during the pursuit of the initial portion of
the program that they dropped anchor in the self-
same harbor upon whose waters Waldo Emerson
and Nadara had seen the Priscilla lying, only to
fly from her.
Burlinghame recalled it as the spot at which
the bag of jewels had been picked up. Next to the
Sally Corwith harbor, as they had come to call the
other anchorage, this seemed most fraught with
possibilities of success. They christened it Eugenie
Bay, after that poor, unfortunate lady, Eugenie
Marie Celeste de la Valois, Countess of Crecy,
whose jewels had been recovered upon its shore.
Burlinghame and Waldo's father with half a
dozen officers and men of the Priscilla had spent
the day searching the woods, the plain and the hills
for some slight sign of human habitation. Shortly
after noon First Officer Stark stumbled upon the
whitened skeleton of a man. In answer to his
shouts the other members of the party hastened
to his side. They found the grim thing lying in a
little barren spot among the tall grasses. About it


THE SEARCH 223
the liquids of decomposition had killed vegetation
leaving the thing alone in all its grisly repulsiveness
as though shocked, nature had withdrawn in terror.
Stark stood pointing toward it without a word
as the others came up. Burlinghame was the first
to reach Stark's side. He bent low over the bones
examining the skull carefully. John Alden Smith-
Jones came panting up. Instantly he saw what Bur-
linghame was examining he turned deathly white.
Burlinghame looked up at him.
“It's not,” he said. “Look at that skull—either
a gorilla or some very low type of man.”
Mr. Smith-Jones breathed a sigh of relief.
“What an awful creature it must have been,”
he said, when he had fully taken in the immense
breadth of the squat skeleton. “It cannot be that
Waldo has survived in a wilderness peopled by such
creatures as this. Imagine him confronted by such
a beast. Timid by nature and never robust he
would have perished of fright at the very sight of
this thing charging down upon him.”
Captain Cecil Burlinghame acquiesced with a
nod. He knew Waldo Emerson well, and so he
could not even imagine a meeting between the frail
and cowardly youth and such a beast as this bleach-
ing frame must once have supported. And at their
feet the bones of Flatfoot lay mute witnesses to the
impossible.


THE SEARCH 225
a ladder. They breathed sighs of relief, for it
seemed that she was now quite safe—the man was
still one ledge below her.
But in another moment the watchers were filled
with horror. The brute pursuing her had reached
forth a giant hand and seized the base of the sap-
ling. He was dragging it over the edge of the
cliff. In another moment the girl would be pre-
cipitated either into his arms or to a horrible death
upon the jagged rocks beneath her.
Burlinghame and Stark halted simultaneously.
At once two rifles leaped to their shoulders. There
ºvere two reports, so close together that they seemed
aS Oile,


CHAPTER VII
FIRST MATE STARK
PON the day that Thurg discovered Nadara
he had come racing to the foot of the cliff,
roaring and bellowing like a mad bull. Upward he
clambered half the distance to the girl's lofty perch.
Then a bit of jagged rock, well aimed, had brought
him to a sudden halt, spitting blood and teeth from
his injured mouth. He looked up at Nadara and
shrieked out his rage and his threats of vengeance.
Nadara launched another missile at him that caught
him full upon one eye, dropping him like a stone to
the narrow ledge upon which he had been standing.
Quickly the girl started to descend to his side to
finish the work she had commenced, for she knew
that there could be no peace or safety for her, now
that Thurg had discovered her hiding place, while
the monster lived.
But she had scarce more than lowered her sapling
to the ledge beneath her when the giant form of
the man moved and Thurg sat up. Quickly Nadara
clambered back to her ledge, again drawing her
sapling after her. She was about to hurl another
missile at the man when he spoke to her.
“We are alone in the world,” he said. “All
226


FIRST MATE STARK 227
your people and all my people have been slain by
the Great Nagoola. Come down. Let us live to-
gether in peace. There is no other left in all the
world.”
Nadara laughed at him.
“Come down to you!” she cried, mockingly.
“Live with you! I would rather live with the pigs
that root in the forest. Go away, or I will finish
what I have commenced, and kill you. I would
not live with you though I knew that you were
the last human being on earth.”
Thurg pleaded and threatened, but all to no avail.
Again he tried to clamber to her side, but again he
was repulsed with well-aimed missiles. At last he
withdrew, growling and threatening.
For weeks he haunted the vicinity of the cliff.
Nadara's meager food supply was soon exhausted.
She was forced to descend to replenish her larder
and fill her gourd, or die of starvation and thirst.
She made her trips to the forest at night, though
black Nagoola prowled and the menace of Thurg
loomed through the darkness. At last the man
discovered her in one of these nocturnal expeditions
and almost caught her before she reached her ledge
of safety.
For three days he kept her a close prisoner.
Again her stock of provisions was exhausted. She
was desperate. Twice had Nagoola nearly trapped


228 THE CAVE GIRL
her in the forest. She dared not again tempt fate
in the gloomy wood by night. There was nothing
left but to risk all in one last effort to elude Thurg
by day and find another asylum in some far distant
corner of the island.
Carefully she watched her opportunity, and while
the beast-man was temporarily absent seeking food
for himself the girl slid swiftly to the base of the
cliff and started through the tall grasses for the
opposite side of the valley.
Upon this day Thurg had fallen upon the spoor
of deer as he had searched the forest for certain
berries that were in season and which he particu-
larly enjoyed. The trail led along the edge of the
wood to the opposite side of the valley, and over
the hills into the region beyond. All day Thurg
followed the fleet animals, until at last not having
come up with them he was forced to give up the
pursuit and return to the cliffs, lest his more valu-
able quarry should escape.
Halfway between the hills and the cliff he came
suddenly face to face with Nadara. Not twenty
paces separated them. With a howl of satisfaction
Thurg leaped to seize her, but she turned and fled
before he could lay his hand upon her. If Thurg
had found his other quarry of that day swift, so,
too, he now found Nadara, for terror gave wings
to her flying feet. Lumbering after her came


230 THE CAVE GIRL
The ladder ceased to slip. She opened her eyes
and glanced downward. Far below her lay the
body of Thurg. She could see that he was quite
dead. He lay upon his face and from his back
trickled two tiny streams of blood from little holes.
Nadara clambered upward to her ledge, drawing
her sapling after her, and then she looked about for
an explanation of the strange noise and the sudden
death of Thurg, for she could not but connect the
one with the other. Below, in the valley, she saw
a number of men strangely garbed. They were
coming toward her cliff. She gathered her missiles
closely about her, ready to her hand. Now they
were below and calling up to her. Her eyes dilated
in wonder—they spoke the strange tongue that
Thandar had tried to teach her. She called down
to them in her own tongue, but they shook their
heads, motioning her to descend. She was afraid.
All her life she had been afraid of men, and with
reason—of all except her old foster father and
Thandar. These, evidently, were men. She could
only expect from them the same treatment that
Thurg would have accorded her.
One of them had started up the face of the cliff.
It was Stark. Nadara seized a bit of rock and
hurled it down upon him. He barely dodged the
missile, but he desisted in his attempt to ascend to
her. Now Burlinghame advanced, raising his hand,


FIRST MATE STARK 231
palm toward her in sign that she should not assault
him. She recalled some of the language that Than-
dar had taught her—maybe they would understand
1t.
“Go-way!” she cried. “Go-way! Nadara kill
bad-men.”
A look of pleasure overspread Burlinghame's
face—the girl spoke English.
“We are not bad men,” he called up to her.
“We will not harm you.”
“What you want?” asked Nadara, still uncon-
vinced by mere words.
“We want to talk with you,” replied Burling-
hame. “We are looking for a friend who was ship-
wrecked upon this island. Come down. We will
not harm you. Have we not already proved our
friendship by killing this fellow who pursued you?”
This man spoke precisely the tongue of Thandar.
Nadara could understand every word, for Than-
dar had talked to her much in English. She could
understand it better than she could speak it. If
they talked the same tongue as Thandar they must
be from the same country. Maybe they were Than-
dar's friends. Anyway they were like him, and
Thandar never harmed women, She could trust
them. Slowly she lowered her sapling and began
the descent. Several times she hesitated as though
minded to return to her ledge, but Burlinghame's


234 THE CAVE GIRL
She did not know how to tell him—she shrank
from causing another the anguish and misery that
she had endured.
“Did you know of him?” asked Burlinghame.
Nadara nodded her head.
“Where is he?” cried Waldo’s father. “Where
are the people with whom he lived here?”
Nadara came close to John Alden Smith-Jones.
There was no fear in her innocent young heart for
this man who was Thandar's father—who loved
Thandar—only a great compassion for him in the
sorrow that she was about to inflict. Gently she
took his hand in hers, raising her sad eyes to his.
“Where is he? Where is my boy?” whispered
Mr. Smith-Jones.
“He is with his people, who were my people—
the people of whom I have just told you,” replied
Nadara softly— “He is dead.” And then she
dropped her face upon the man's hand and wept.
The shock staggered John Alden Smith-Jones.
It seemed incredible—impossible—that Waldo
could have lived through all that he must have lived
through to perish at last but a few short weeks be-
fore succor reached him. For a moment he forgot
the girl. It was her hot tears upon his hand that
aroused him to a consciousness of the present.
“Why do you weep?” he cried almost roughly.
“For you,” she replied, “who loved him, too.”


238 THE CAVE GIRL
that she wished to return to shore.
“She does not like me,” she said, nodding toward
Mrs. Smith-Jones's cabin, “and I will not stay.”
It took John Alden Smith-Jones a long time to
persuade the girl to change her mind. He pointed
out that his wife was greatly overwrought by the
shock of the news of Waldo's death. He assured
Nadara that at heart she was a kindly woman, and
that eventually she would regret her attitude toward
the girl. And at last Nadara consented to remain
aboard the Priscilla. But when Marie would have
clothed her in the garments of civilization she ab-
solutely refused—scorning the hideous and uncom-
fortable clothing.
It was two days before Mrs. Smith-Jones sent
for her. When she entered that lady's cabin the
latter exclaimed at once against her barbarous
attire.
“I gave instructions that Marie should dress you
properly,” she said. “You are not decently clothed
— that bear skin is shocking.”
Nadara tossed her head, and her eyes flashed fire.
“I shall never wear your silly clothes,” she cried.
“This, Thandar gave me—he slew Nagoola, the
black panther, with his own hands, and gave the
skin to me who was to be his mate—do you think
I would exchange it for such foolish garments as
those?” and she waved a contemptuous gesture


FIRST MATE STARK 239
toward Mrs. Smith-Jones's expensive morning
gown.
The elder woman forgot her outraged dignity
in the suggestion the girl had given her for an
excuse to be rid of her at the first opportunity.
She had mentioned a party named Thandar. She
had brazenly boasted that this Thandar had killed
the beast whose pelt she wore and given her the
thing for a garment. She had admitted that she
was to become this person’s “mate.” Mrs. Smith-
Jones shuddered at the primitive word. At this
moment Mr. Smith-Jones entered the cabin. He
smiled pleasantly at Nadara, and then, seeing in the
attitudes of the two women that he had stepped
within a theater of war, he looked questioningly
at his wife.
“Now what, Louisa?” he asked, somewhat
sharply. -
“Sufficient, John,” exclaimed that lady, “to
bear out my original contention that it was a very
unwise move to bring this woman with us—she
has just admitted that she was the promised ‘mate’
of a person she calls Thandar. She is brazen— I
refuse to permit her to enter my home; nor shall she
remain upon the Priscilla longer than is necessary to
land her at the first civilized port.”
Mr. Smith-Jones looked questioningly at Nadara.
The girl had guessed the erroneous reasoning that


FIRST MATE STARK 24I
He was very brave,” she cried. “He was not
‘timid,’ and he was only ‘gentle” with women and
children.”
Mrs. Smith-Jones had never been so shocked in
all her life. She sprang to her feet.
“Leave my cabinl” she cried. “I see through
your shallow deception. You thoughtlessly be-
trayed yourself and your vulgar immoralities, and
now you try to hide behind a base calumny that pic-
tures my dear, dead boy as one with your hideous,
brutal chief. You shall not deceive me longer.
Leave my cabin, please!”
Mr. Smith-Jones stood as one paralyzed. He
could not believe in the perfidy of the girl—it
seemed impossible that she could have so deceived
him—nor yet could he question the integrity of
his own ears. It was, of course, too far beyond
the pale of reason to attempt to believe that Waldo
Emerson and the terrible Thandar were one and the
same. The girl had gone too far, and yet he could
not believe that she was bad. There must be some
explanation.
In the meantime Nadara had left the room, her
little chin high in air. Never again, she determined,
would she subject herself to the insults of Than-
dar's mother. She went on deck. She had found
it difficult to remain below during the day. She
craved the fresh air, and the excitement to be found


FIRST MATE STARK 243
force. That was the only way she would have been
taken had she been left upon her own island.
That was the only kind of betrothal she knew. It
was what she expected. He had been a fool to ap-
proach her with the soft words of civilization.
They had made her despise him. She would have
understood force, and loved him for it. Well, he
would show her that he could be as primitive as
any of her savage lovers.
The storm broke. The wind became a hurricane.
The Priscilla was forced to turn and flee before the
anger of the elements, so that she retraced her
course of the past two days and then was blown
to the north.
Stark saw nothing of Nadara during this period.
At the end of thirty-six hours the wind had died
and the sea was settling to its normal quiet. It
was the first evening after the storm. The deck of
the Priscilla was almost deserted. The yacht was
moving slowly along not far off the shore of one
of the many islands that dot that part of the south
SeaS.
Nadara came on deck for a walk before retiring.
Stark and two sailors were on watch. At sight of
the girl the first officer approached her. He spoke
pleasantly as though nothing had occurred to mar
their friendly relations. He talked of the storm
and pointed out the black outlines of the nearby


CHAPTER VIII
THE WILD MEN
ADARA did not regain consciousness until
Stark had reached shore and was dragging
her out upon the beach above the surf. For sev-
eral minutes after she had opened her eyes she had
difficulty in recalling the events that had imme-
diately preceded Stark's attack upon her. She felt
the life belt still about her, and as Stark stooped
above her to remove it she knew that it was he
though she could not distinguish his features.
What had happened? Slowly a realization of
the man's bold act forced itself upon her—he had
leaped overboard from the Priscilla and swam
ashore with her rather than face the consequences
of his brutal conduct toward her.
To a girl reared within the protective influences
of civilization Nadara's position would have
seemed hopeless; but Nadara knew naught of other
protection than that afforded by her own quick wits
and the agility of her swift young muscles. To
her it would have seemed infinitely more appalling
to have been confined within the narrow limits of
the yacht with this man, for there all was strange
and new. She still had half feared and mistrusted
246


THE WILD MEN 247
all aboard the Priscilla except Thandar's father and
Captain Burlinghame; but would they have pro-
tected her from Stark? She did not know.
Among her own people only a father, brother, or
mate protected a woman from one who sought her
against her will, and of these she had none upon
the little vessel.
But now it was different. Intuitively she knew
that upon a savage shore, however strange and un-
familiar it might be, she would have every advan-
tage over the first officer of the Priscilla. His life
had been spent close to the haunts of civilization;
he knew nothing of the woodcraft that was second
nature to her; he might perish in a land of plenty
through ignorance of where to search for food,
and of what was edible and what was not. This
much her early experience with Waldo Emerson
had taught her. When their paths first had crossed
Waldo had been as ignorant as a new-born babe
in the craft of life primeval—Nadara had had to
teach him everything.
Behind them Nadara heard the gentle soughing
of trees—the myriad noises of the teeming jungle
night—and she smiled. It was inky black about
them. Stark had removed the life belt and placed
it beneath the girl's head. He thought her still un-
conscious—perhaps dead. Now he was wringing
the water from his clothes; his back toward her.


250 THE CAVE GIRL
and keep her. Together they would make a home
upon this tropical shore. He would get everything
out of life that there was to get.
He had taken but a few steps before he discov-
ered, plain in the damp sand before him, the prints
of Nadara's naked feet in a well defined trail lead-
ing toward the wood. With a smile of satisfaction
and victory the man followed it into the maze
of vegetation, dank and gloomy even beneath the
warm light of the morning sun.
By chance he stumbled directly upon Nadara.
She had descended from her tree to search for
water. They saw each other simultaneously. The
girl turned and fled farther into the forest. Close
behind her came the man. For several hundred
yards the chase led through the thick jungle which
terminated abruptly at the edge of a narrow, rock-
covered clearing beyond which loomed sheer, pre-
cipitous cliffs, raising their lofty heads three hun-
dred feet above the forest.
A half smile touched Stark's lips as he saw the
barrier that nature had placed in the path of his
quarry; but almost instantly it froze into an expres-
sion of horror as a slight noise to his right at-
tracted his attention from the girl fleeing before
him. For an instant he stood bewildered, then a
quick glance toward the girl revealed her scaling
the steep cliff with the agility of a monkey, and


THE WILD MEN 251
with a cry to attract her attention he leaped after
her once more, but this time himself the quarry—
the hunter become the hunted, for after him raced
a score of painted savages, brandishing long, slim
spears, or waving keen edged parangs.
Nadara had not needed Stark's warning cry to
apprise her of the proximity of the wild men. She
had seen them the instant that she cleared the
jungle, and with the sight of them she knew that
she need no longer harbor fear of the white man.
In them, though, she saw a graver danger for her-
self, since they, doubtless, would have little diffi-
culty in overhauling her in their own haunts, while
she had not had much cause for worry as to her
ability to elude the white man indefinitely.
Part way up the cliffs she paused to look back.
Stark had reached the foot of the lowering escarp-
ment a short distance ahead of his pursuers. He
had chosen this route because of the ease with
which the girl had clambered up the rocky bar-
rier, but he had reckoned without taking into con-
sideration the lifetime of practice which lay back
of Nadara's agility. From earliest infancy she had
lived upon the face and within the caves of steep
cliffs. Her first toddling, baby footsteps had been
along the edge of narrow shelving ledges.
When the man reached the cliff, however, he
found confronting him an apparently unscalable


252 THE CAVE GIRL
wall. He cast a frightened, appealing glance at the
girl far above him. Twice he essayed to scramble
out of reach of the advancing savages, whose tat-
tooed faces, pendulous slit ears, and sharp filed,
blackened teeth lent to them a more horrid aspect
than even that imparted by their murderous weap-
ons or warlike whoops and actions. Each time he
slipped back, clutching frantically at rocky projec-
tions and such hardy vegetation as had found foot-
hold in the crevices of the granite. His hands were
torn and bleeding, his face scratched and his cloth-
ing rent. And now the savages were upon him.
They had seen that he was unarmed. No need as
yet for spear or parang—they would take him
alive.
And the girl. They had watched her in amaze-
ment as she clambered swiftly up the steep ascent.
With all their primitive accomplishments this was
beyond even them. They were a forest people and
a river people. They dwelt in thatched houses
raised high upon long piles. They knew little or
nothing of the arts of the cliff dwellers. To them
the feat of this strange, white girl was little short
of miraculous.
Nadara saw them seize roughly upon the terror-
stricken Stark. She saw them bind his hands be-
hind his back, and then she saw them turn their at-
tention once more toward herself.


THE WILD MEN 253
Three of the warriors attempted to scale the
cliff after her. Slowly they ascended. She smiled
at their manifest fear and their awkwardness—
she need have no fear of these, they never could
reach her. She permitted them to approach within
a dozen feet of her and then, loosening a bit of the
crumbling granite, she hurled it full at the head of
the foremost. With a yell of pain and terror he
toppled backward upon those below him, the three
tumbling, screaming and pawing to the rocks at the
base of the cliff.
None of them was killed, though all were badly
bruised, and he who had received her missile bled
profusely from a wound upon his forehead. Their
fellows laughed at them—it was scant comfort
they received for being bested by a girl. Then
they withdrew a short distance, and squatting in a
circle commenced a lengthy palaver. Their re-
peated gestures in her direction convinced Nadara
that she was the subject of their debate.
Presently one of their number arose and ap-
proached the foot of the cliff. There he harangued
the girl for several minutes. When he was done he
awaited, evidently for a reply from her; but as
Nadara had not been able to understand a word
of the fellow's language she could but shake her
head.
The spokesman returned to his fellows and


254 THE CAVE GIRL
once again a lengthy council was held. During it
Nadara climbed farther aloft, that she might be out
of range of the slender spears. Upon a narrow
ledge she halted, gathering about her such loose
bits of rock as she could dislodge from the face
of the cliff—she would be prepared for a sudden
onslaught, nor for a moment did she doubt the
outcome of the battle. She felt that but for the
lack of food and water she could hold this cliff face
forever against innumerable savages—could they
climb no better than these.
But the wild men did not again attempt to storm
her citadel. Instead they leaped suddenly from
their council, and without a glance toward her dis-
appeared in the forest, taking their prisoner with
them. Out of sight of the girl, they stationed two
of their number just within the screening verdure
to capture the girl should she descend. The others
hastened parallel with the cliff until a sudden turn
inland took them to a point from which they could
again emerge into the clearing out of the sight of
Nadara.
Here they took immediately to a well-worn path
that led back and forth upward across the face of
the cliff. Stark was dragged and prodded forward
with them in their ascent. Sharp spears and the
points of keen parangs, urged him to haste. By the
time the party reached the summit the white man


256 THE CAVE GIRL
doubted, for she had seen that they were compara-
tively unaccustomed to this sort of going, and so
she guessed that if they followed her upward at all
it would be by means of some beaten trail of which
they had knowledge.
And so Nadara scaled the heights, passing over
and around obstacles that would have blanched the
cheek of the hardiest mountain climber, with the
ease and speed of the chamois. At the summit
she found an open, park-like forest, and into this
she plunged, running forward in quest of food
and drink. A few familiar fruits and nuts as-
suaged the keenest pangs of hunger, but nowhere
could she find water or signs of water.
She had traveled for almost a mile, directly in-
land from the coast, when she stumbled, purely
by chance, upon a little spring hidden in a leafy
bower. The cool, clear water refreshed her, im-
parting to her new life and energy. After drink-
ing her fill she sought some means of carrying a
little supply of the priceless liquid back to her cliff
side refuge, but though she searched diligently she
could discover no growing thing which might be
transformed into a vessel.
There was nothing for it then other than to return
without the water, trusting to her wits to find the
means of eluding the savages from time to time as
it became necessary for her to quench her thirst


THE WILD MEN 257
Later, she was sure, she should discover some form
of gourd, or the bladder of an animal in which she
could hoard a few precious drops.
Her woodcraft, combined with her almost un-
canny sense of direction, led her directly back to
the spot at which she had topped the cliff. There
was no sign of the savages. She breathed a sigh
of relief as she stepped to the edge of the forest,
and then, all about her, from behind trees and
bushes, rose the main body of the wild men. With
shouts of savage glee they leaped upon her. There
was no chance for flight—in every direction brutal
faces and murderous weapons barred her way.
With greater consideration than she had looked
forward to they signaled her to accompany them.
Stark was with them. To him slight humanity was
shown. If he lagged, a spear point, already red
with his blood, urged him to greater speed; but to
the girl no cruelty nor indignity was shown.
In single file, the prisoners in the center of the
column, the party made its way inland. All day.
they marched, until Stark, unused to this form of
exertion, staggered and fell a dozen times in each
mile.
Nadara could almost have found it in her heart
to be sorry for him, had it not been for the fact
that she realized all too keenly that but for his own
bestial brutality neither of them need have been


CHAPTER IX
BUILDING THE BOAT
WO days after the earthquake that had saved
Nadara from Thurg and wiped out the people
of the girl's tribe, a man moved feebly beneath
the tumbled debris from the roof top of his clogged
cavern. It was Thandar. The tons of rock that
had toppled from above and buried the entrance
to his cave had passed him by unscathed, while the
few pounds shaken from the ceiling had stunned
him into a long enduring insensibility.
Slowly he regained consciousness, but it was a
long time before he could marshal his faculties
to even a slight appreciation of the catastrophe that
had overwhelmed him. Then his first thought was
of Nadara. He crawled to what had once been the
entrance of his cave. He had not as yet linked
the darkness to its real cause—he thought it night.
It had been night when he closed his eyes. How
could he guess that that had been three nights be-
fore, or all the cruel blows that fate had struck
him since he slept! -
At the opening from the cave he met his first
surprise and setback—the way was blocked!
What was the meaning of it? He tugged and
260


BUILDING THE BOAT 26I
pushed weakly upon the mass that barred him from
escape. Who had imprisoned him? He recalled
the vivid dream in which he had seen Nadara stolen
away by Thurg. The recollection sent him franti-
cally at the pile of shattered rock and loose debris
which choked the doorway.
To his chagrin he found himself too weak to
direct any long sustained effort against the obstacle.
It occurred to him that he must have been injured.
Whoever imprisoned him must first have beaten him.
He felt of his head. Yes, there was a great gash,
but his touch told him that it was not a new one.
How long, then, had he been imprisoned? As he
sat pondering this thing he became aware of the
gnawing of hunger and the craving of thirst within
inis slowly awakening body. The sensations were
almost painful. So much so that they forced him
to a realization of the fact that he must have been
without food or water for a considerable time.
Again he assailed the mass that held him pris-
oner, and as he burrowed slowly into it the truth
dawned upon him. He recalled the rumblings of
the Great Nagoola that had frightened Nadara the
night of the council. A terrific quake had done this
thing. Thandar shuddered as he thought of Na-
dara. Was she, too, imprisoned in her cave, or had
the worst happened her? Frantically, now, he tore
at the close-packed rubble. But he soon discov-


262 THE CAVE GIRL
ered that not in ill-directed haste lay his means of
escape. Slowly and carefully, piece by piece he
must remove the broken rock until he had tun-
nelled through to the outer world.
Reason told him that he was not deeply buried,
for the fact that he lived and could breathe was
sufficient proof that fresh air was finding its way
through the debris, which it could not have done did
the stuff lie before the cave in any considerable
thickness.
Weak as he was he could work but slowly, so
that it was several hours later before he caught
the first glimpse of daylight beyond the obstacle.
After that he progressed more rapidly, and pres-
ently he crawled through a small opening to view
the wreckage of the shattered cliff.
A flock of vultures rose from their hideous feast
as the sight of Thandar disturbed them. The man
shuddered as he looked down upon the grisly things
from which they had risen. Forgetting his hunger
and his thirst he scrambled up over the tortured
cliff face to where Nadara's cave had been. Its
mouth was buried as his had been. Again he set
to work, but this time it was easier. When at last
he had opened a way within he hesitated for fear
of the blighting sorrow that awaited him.
At last, nerving himself to the ordeal, he crawled
within the cave that had been Nadara's. Groping


264 THE CAVE GIRL
The thought of living on through a long life
without her cast him into the blackest pit of despair.
He reproached heaven for not having taken him as
well, for without Nadara life was not worth the
living. With the passage of time his grief grew
more rather than less acute. As it increased so too
increased the horror of his loneliness. The island
became a hated thing—life a mockery. The
chances that a vessel would touch the shore again
during his lifetime seemed remote indeed, unless his
father sent out a relief party, but in his despair he
did not even hope for such a contingency.
He would not take his own life, though the
temptation was great, but he courted death in every
form that the savage island owned. He slept out
upon the ground at night. He sought Nagoola in
his lair, and armed only with his light lance he
leaped to close quarters with every one of the great
cats he could find.
The wild boars, often as formidable as Nagoola
himself, were hunted now as they never had been
hunted before. Thandar lived high those days, and
many were the panther pelts that lined his new-
found cave in the cliff beside the sea—the same
cliff in which Nadara had found shelter, and from
whence she had gone away with the search party
from the Priscilla.
One day as Thandar was returning from the


266 THE CAVE GIRL
“Let us not fight,” continued Thandar. “We
are alone upon the island. I have seen no other
than you since the Great Nagoola came forth and
destroyed the people. Let us be friends, hunting
together in peace. Otherwise one of us must kill
the other and thereafter live always alone until
death releases him from his terrible solitude.”
Roof peered over Thandar's shoulder toward the
wood behind him.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Yes—have I not told you that all were killed
but you and I?”
“All were not killed,” replied Roof. “But I
will be friends with Thandar. We will hunt to-
gether and cave together. Roof and Thandar are
brothers.”
He stooped, and gathering a handful of grass
advanced toward the American. Thandar did like-
wise, and when each had taken the peace offering
of the other and rubbed it upon his forehead the
ceremony of friendship was complete—simple but
none the less effectual, for each knew that the other
would rather die than disregard the primitive pact.
“You said that all were not killed, Roof,” said
Thandar, the ceremony over. “What do you
mean?”
“All were not killed by the Great Nagoola,” re-
plied the bad man. “Thurg was not killed, nor


BUILDING THE BOAT 267
was she who was Thandar's mate—she whom
Thurg would have stolen.”
“What?” Thandar almost screamed the ques-
tion. “Nadara not dead?”
“Look,” said Roof, and he led the way to the
foot of the cliff. “Seel”
“Yes,” replied Thandar, “I had noticed that
body, but what of it?”
“It was Thurg,” explained Roof. “He sought
to reach your mate, who had taken refuge in that
cave far above us. Then came some strange men
who made a great noise with sticks and Thurg fell
dead—the loud noise had killed him from a great
distance. Then came the strange men and she
whom you call Nadara went away with them.”
“In which direction?” cried Thandar. “Where
did they take her?”
“They took her to the strange cliff in which
they dwelt—the one in which they came. Never
saw man such a thing as this cliff. It floated upon
the face of the water. About its face were many
tiny caves, but the people did not come out of these
they came from the top of the cliff, and clamber-
ing down the sides floated ashore in hollow things
of wood. On top of the cliff were two trees with-
out leaves, and only very short, straight branches.
When the cliff went away black smoke came out
of it from a short black stump of a tree between the


268 THE CAVE GIRL
two trees. It was a very wonderful thing to see;
but the most wonderful of all were the noise-sticks
that killed Thurg and Nagoola a long way off.”
Not half of Roof’s narrative did Thandar hear.
Through his brain roared and thundered a single
mighty thought: Nadara lives! Nadara lives! Life
took on a new meaning to him now. He trembled
at the thought of the chances he had been taking.
Now, indeed, must he live. He leaped up and down,
laughing and shouting. He threw his arms about
the astonished Roof, whirling the troglodyte about
in a mad waltz. Nadara lives! Nadara lives!
Once again the sun shone, the birds sang, nature
was her old, happy, carefree self. Nadara was
alive and among civilized men. But then came a
doubt.
“Did Nadara go willingly with these strangers,”
he asked Roof, “ or did they take her by force?”
“They did not take her by force,” replied Roof.
“They talked with her for a time, and then she
took the hand of one of the men in hers, stroking
it, and he placed his arm about her. Afterward
they walked slowly to the edge of the great water
where they got into the strange things that had
brought them to the land, and returned to their
floating cliff. Presently the smoke came out, as I
have told you, and the cliff went away toward the
edge of the world. But they are all dead now.”


272 THE CAVE GIRL
from the side of the tree to the gourd. Roof helped
him. In an hour the gourd was filled. Then they
returned to the skiff.
Leaving the gourd there Thandar and Roof
walked to a clump of heavy jungle grasses not far
from the cliff where their cave lay. Here Thandar
gathered a great armful of the yellow, ripened
grass, telling Roof to do likewise. This they took
back to the skiff, where, by rolling it assiduously
between their hands and pounding it with stones
they reduced it to a mass of soft, tough fiber.
Now Thandar showed Roof how to twist this
fiber into a loose, fluffy rope, and when he had him
well started he daubed the rope with the rubbery
fluid he had filched from the tree, and with a sharp
stick tucked it in every seam and crevice of the skiff.
It took the better part of two days to accomplish
this, and when it was done and the gourd empty,
the two men returned to the tree and refilled it.
This time they built a fire upon their return to the
skiff, Roof spinning a hard wood splinter rapidly
between toes and fingers in a little mass of tinder
that lay in a hollowed piece of wood. Presently a
thin spiral of smoke arose from the tinder, grow-
ing denser for a moment until of a sudden it
broke into flame.
The men piled twigs and branches upon the blaze
until the fire was well started. Then Thandar tak-


BUILDING THE BOAT 273
ing a ball of the viscous matter from the gourd
heated it in the flames, immediately daubing the
melting mass upon the outside of the skiff. In this
way, slowly and with infinite patience, the two at
last succeeded in coating the entire outer surface
of the canoe with a waterproof substance that might
defy the action of water almost indefinitely.
, For three days Thandar let the coating dry, and
then the craft was given another trial. The man's
heart was in his throat as the canoe floated upon
the crest of a great wave and he leaped into it.
But a moment later he shouted in relief and de-
light—the thing floated like a cork, nor was there
the slightest leak discernible. For half an hour
Thandar paddled about the harbor, and then he re-
turned for the sail. This too, though rather heavy
and awkward, worked admirably, and the balance
of the day he spent in sailing, even venturing out
into the ocean.
Much of the time he paddled, for Waldo Emer-
son knew more of the galleys of ancient Greece than
he did of sails or sailing, so that for the most part
he sailed with the wind, paddling when he wished
to travel in another direction. But, withal, his at-
tempt filled him with delight, and he could scarce
wait to be off toward civilization and Nadara.
The next two days were spent in collecting food
and water, which Thandar packed in numerous


CHAPTER X
THE HEAD-HUNTERS
ATURE so far, had been kind to Waldo Emer-
son Smith-Jones. No high winds or heavy seas
had assailed him, and he had been upon the water
for three days now. The wind had held steadily out
of the south, varying but a few points during this
time but even so Waldo Emerson was commencing
to doubt and to worry. His supply of water was
running dangerously low, his food supply would
last but a few days longer; and as yet he had
sighted no sail, nor seen any land. Furthermore,
he had not the remotest conception of how he might
retrace his way to the island he had just quitted.
He could only sail before the wind. Should the
wind veer around into the north he might, by
chance, be blown back to the island. Otherwise he
never could reach it. And he was beginning to
wonder if he had not been a trifle to precipitate in
his abandonment of land.
In common with most other landsmen, Waldo
Emerson had little conception of the vastness of
the broad reaches of unbroken water wildernesses
that roll in desolate immensity over three quarters
of the globe. His recollection of maps pictured the
275


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 277
less sun beating down upon him increased his agony.
He stretched his panther skin across the stern and
hid beneath it from the torrid rays. And there he
lay until darkness brought relief.
During the night the wind sprang up again, but
this time from the west. It rose and with it rose
the sea. The man, clinging to his crude steering
blade, struggled to keep the light craft straight be-
fore the wind which was now howling fearfully
while great waves, hungry and wide jawed, raced
after him like a pack of ravenous wolves.
Thandar knew that the unequal struggle against
the mighty forces of the elements could not endure
for long. It seemed that each fierce gust of brutal
wind must tear his frail boat to shreds, and yet it
was the very lightness of the thing that saved it,
for it rode upon the crests of waves, blown forward
at terrific velocity like a feather before the hurri-
Cane.
In Thandar's heart was no terror—only regret
that he might never again see his mother, his father,
or his Nadara. Yet the night wore on and still
he fled before the storm. The sky was overcast—
the darkness was impenetrable. He imagined all
about him still the same wide, tenantless circle of
water, only now storm torn and perpendicular and
black, instead of peacefully horizontal, and sooth-
ingly blue-green. And then, even as he was think-


278 THE CAVE GIRL
ing this there rose before him a thunderous boom-
ing loud above the frenzied bedlam of the storm,
his boat was lifted high in air to dive headforemost
into what might be a bottomless abyss for all Than-
dar knew. But it was not bottomless. The canoe
struck something and stopped suddenly, pitching
Thandar out into a boiling maelstrom. A great
wave picked him up, carrying him with race-horse
velocity within its crest. He felt himself hurled
pitilessly upon smooth, hard sand. The water tried
to drag him back, but he fought with toes and
fingers, clutching at the surface of the stuff upon
which he had been dropped. Then the wave aban-
doned him and raced swiftly back into the sea.
Thandar was exhausted, but he knew that he
must crawl up out of the way of the surf, or be
dragged back by the next roller. What he had
searched for in vain through six long days he had
run down in the midst of a Stygian night. He had
found land Or, to be more explicit, land had got
in front of him and he had run into it. He had
commenced to wonder if some terrible convulsion
of nature had not swallowed up all the land in the
world, leaving only a waste of desolate water. He
forgot his hunger and his thirst in the happiness of
the knowledge that once more he was upon land.
He wondered a little what land it might be. He
hoped that dawn would reveal the chimneys and


282 THE CAVE GIRL
left shoulder blade, and behind it were the weight
and sinews of the cave man. With a shriek the
savage lunged forward, clutching at the cruel point
that now protruded from his breast. When he
touched the earth he was dead.
Thandar drew his sword from the body of the
head-hunter, and turned toward the man he had
rescued. The latter was approaching, talking ex-
citedly. It was evident that he was thanking
Thandar, but no word of his strange tongue could
the American understand. Thandar shook his head
to indicate that he was unfamiliar with the other's
language, and then the latter dropped into pidgin
English, which, while almost as unintelligible to the
cultured Bostonian, still contained the battered
remnants of some few words with which he was
familiar.
Thandar depreciated his act by means of gestures,
immediately following these with signs to indicate
that he was hungry and thirsty. The stranger evi-
dently understood him, for he motioned him to fol-
low, leading the way back along the beach in the
direction from which he had come.
Before starting, however, he had pointed toward
the wreck of Thandar's canoe and then toward
Thandar, nodding his head questioningly as to ask
if the boat belonged to the cave man.
Around the end of a promontory they came upon


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 283
a little cove beside the beach of which Thandar saw
a camp of nearly a score of men similar in appear-
ance to his guide. These were preparing breakfast
beside the partially completed hull of a rather large
boat they seemed to have been building.
At sight of Thandar they looked their astonish-
ment, but after hearing the story of their fellow
they greeted the cave man warmly, furnishing him
with food and water in abundance.
For three days Thandar worked with these men
upon their craft, picking up their story slowly with
a slow acquirement of a bowing acquaintance with
the bastard tongue they used when speaking with
him. He soon became aware of the fact that fate
had thrown him among a band of pirates. There
were Chinese, Japanese and Malays among them—
the off-scourings of the south seas; men who had
become discredited even among the villainous pirates
of their own lands, and had been forced to join their
lots in this remoter and less lucrative field, under
an unhung ruffian, Tsao Ming, the Chinaman whose
life Thandar had saved.
He also learned that the storm that had cast them
upon this shore nearly a month before had de-
molished their prahu, and what with the build-
ing of another and numerous skirmishes with the
savages they had had a busy time of it.
Only yesterday while a party of them had been


284 THE CAVE GIRL
hunting a mile or two inland they had been at-
tacked by savages who had killed two and captured
one of their number.
They told Thandar that these savages were the
most ferocious of head-hunters, but like the major-
ity of their kind preferred ambushing an unwary
victim to meeting him in fair fight in the open.
Thandar did not doubt but that the latter mode of
warfare would have been entirely to the liking of
his piratical friends, for never in his life had he
dreamed, even, of so ferocious and warlike a band
as was comprised in this villainous and bloodthirsty
aggregation. But the constant nervous tension
under which they had worked, never knowing at
what instant an arrow or a lance would leap from
the shades of the jungle to pierce them in the back,
had reduced them to a state of fear that only a
speedy departure from the island could conquer.
Their boat was almost completed, two more days
would see them safely launched upon the ocean, and
Tsao Ming had promised Thandar that he would
carry him to a civilized port from which he could
take a steaner on his return to America.
Late in the afternoon of the third day since his
arrival among the pirates the men were suddenly
startled by the appearance of an exhausted and
blood smeared apparition amongst them. From the
nearby jungle the man had staggered to fall when


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 285
halfway across the clearing, spent.
It was Boloon—he who had been captured by
the head-hunters the day before Thandar had been
cast upon the shore. Revived with food and water
the fellow told a most extraordinary tale. From
the meager scraps that were afterward translated
into pidgin English for Thandar the Bostonian
learned that Boloon had been dragged far inland
to a village of considerable size.
Here he had been placed in a room of one of the
long houses to await the pleasure of the chief. It
was hinted that he was to be tortured before his
head was removed to grace the rafters of the chief's
palace.
The remarkable portion of his tale related to a
strange temple to which he had been dragged and
thrown at the feet of a white goddess. Tsao Ming
and the other pirates were much mystified by this
part of the story, for Boloon insisted that the god-
dess was white with a mass of black hair, and that
her body was covered by the pelt of a magnificent
black panther.
Though Tsao Ming pointed out that there were
no panthers upon this island Boloon could not be
shaken. He had seen with his own eyes, and he
knew. Furthermore, he argued, there were no
white goddesses upon the island, and yet the woman
he had seen was white.


286 THE CAVE GIRL
When this strange tale was retold to Thandar he
could not but recall that Nadara had worn a black
panther skin, but of course it could not be Nadara
—that was impossible. But yet he asked for a
further description of the goddess—the color of
her eyes and hair—the proportions of her body—
her height.
To all these questions Boloon gave replies that
but caused Thandar's excitement to wax stronger.
And then came the final statement that set him in a
frenzy of hope and apprehension.
“Upon her left hand was a great diamond,” said
Boloon.
Thandar turned toward Tsao Ming.
“I go inland to the temple,” he said, “to see who
this white goddess may be. If you wait two days
for me and I return you shall have as much gold
as you ask in payment. If you do not wait repair
my canoe and hide it in the bushes where the man
hid who would have killed you but for Thandar.”
“I shall wait three days,” replied Tsao Ming.
“Nor will I take a single fun in pay. You saved
the life of Tsao Ming—that is not soon to be for-
gotten. I would send men with you, but they
would not go. They are afraid of the head-hunt-
ers. Too, will I repair your canoe against your
coming after the third day; but,” and he shrugged,
“you will not come upon the third day, nor upon


CHAPTER XI
THE RESCUE
T WAS dusk of the second day when Thandar,
following the directions given him by Boloon,
came to the edge of the little clearing within which
rose the dingy outlines of many long houses raised
upon piles. Before the village ran a river. Many
times had Thandar crossed and recrossed this
stream, for he had become lost twice upon the way
and had to return part way each time to pick up his
trail.
In the center of the village the man could see the
outlines of a loftier structure rearing its head above
those of the others. As darkness fell Thandar
crept closer toward his goal—the large building
which Boloon had described as the temple.
Beneath the high raised houses the cave man
crept, disturbing pigs and chickens as he went, but
their noise was no uncommon thing, and rather
than being a menace to his safety it safeguarded
him, for it hid the noise of his own advance.
At last he came beneath a house nearest the
temple. The moon was full and high. Her bril-
liant light flooded the open spaces between the build-
ings, casting into black darkness the shadows be-
288


THE RESCUE 289
neath. In one of these Thandar lurked. He saw
that the temple was guarded. Before its only en-
trance squatted two warriors. How was he to pass
them?
He moved to the end of the shadow of the house
beneath which he spied as far from the guards as
possible; but still discovery seemed certain were he
to attempt to rush across the intervening space. He
was at a loss as to what next to do. It seemed
foolish to risk all now upon a bold advance—the
time for such a risk would be when he had found
the goddess and learned if she were Nadara, or
another; but how might he cross that strip of moon-
light and enter the temple past the two guards, with-
out risk?
He moved silently to the far end of the building,
in the shadows of which he watched. For some
time he stood looking across at his goal, so near,
and yet seemingly infinitely farther from attain-
ment than the day he had left the coast in search of
it. He noted the long poles stuck into the ground
at irregular intervals about the structure. He
wondered at the significance of the rude carving
upon them, of the barbaric capitals sometimes
topped by the headdress of a savage warrior, again
by a dried and grinning skull, or perhaps the rudely
chiseled likeness of a hideous human face.
Upon many of the poles were hung shields,


290 THE CAVE GIRL
weapons, clothing and earthenware vessels. One
especially was so weighted down by its heterogene-
ous burden that it leaned drunkenly against the
eaves of the temple. Thandar's eye followed it
upward to where it touched the crudely shingled
roof. The suggestion was sufficient—where his
eye had climbed he would climb. There was only
the moonlight to make the attempt perilous. If the
clouds would but come! But there was no indica-
tion of clouds in the star shot sky.
He looked toward the guards. They lolled at the
opposite end of the temple, only one of them being
visible. The other was hidden by the angle of the
building. The back of the fellow whom Thandar
could see was turned toward the cave man. If they
remained thus for a moment he could reach the roof
unnoticed. But then there was the danger of dis-
covery from one of the other buildings. An occa-
sional whiff of tobacco smoke told him that some
of the men were still awake upon the verandahs
where most of the youths and bachelors slept.
Thandar crawled to where he could see the only
verandah which directly faced the portion of the
temple he had chosen for his attempted entrance.
For an hour he watched the rising and falling glow
of the cigarettes of two of the native men, and
listened to the low hum of their conversation. The
hour seemed to drag into an eternity, but at last


THE RESCUE 29I
the glowing butt of first one cigarette and then an-
other was flicked over into the grass and silence
reigned upon the verandah.
For half an hour longer Thandar waited. The
guards before the temple still squatted as before.
The one Thandar could see seemed to have fallen
asleep, for his head drooped forward upon his
breast.
The time had come. There was no need of
further delay or reconnaisance—if he was to be
discovered that would be the end of it, and it would
not profit him one iota to know a second or so in
advance of the alarm that he had been detected.
So he did not waste time in stealthy advance, or in
much looking this way and that. Instead he moved
swiftly, though silently, directly across the open,
moonlit space to the foot of the leaning pole. He
did not cast a glance behind nor to the right nor
left. His whole attention was riveted upon the
thing in hand.
Thandar had scaled the rickety, toppling sap-
lings of the cliff dwellers for so long that this pole
offered no greater difficulties to him than would an
ordinary staircase to you or me. First he tested it
with eyes and hands to know that it rested securely
at the top and that beneath his weight it would not
move noisily out of its present position.
Assured that it seemed secure, Thandar ran up it


294 THE CAVE GIRL
wealth of thick, black hair, fine as silk, upon the
third finger of the left hand blazed a large solitaire.
The woman's face was turned toward the wall—
but Thandar knew that he could not be mistaken—
it was Nadara.
From the rafter upon which he squatted to the
floor below was not over twelve or fifteen feet.
Thandar swung downward, clinging to the rafter
with his hands, and dropped, cat-like, upon his
naked feet to the floor below.
The almost noiseless descent was sufficient, how-
ever, to awaken the sleeper. With the quickness of
a panther she swung around and was upon her feet
facing the man almost at the instant he alighted.
The moonlight was now full upon her face. Than-
dar rushed forward to take her in his arms.
“Nadara!” he whispered. “Thank God!”
The girl shrank back. She recognized the voice
and the figure; but—her Thandar was dead! How
could it be that he had returned from death? She
was frightened.
The man saw the evident terror of her action,
and paused.
“What is the matter, Nadara?” he asked.
“Don’t you know me? Don't you know Than-
dar?”
“Thandar is dead,” she whispered.
The man laughed. In a few words he explained


300 THE CAVE GIRL
reached the jungle a screaming horde of warriors
was upon their heels.
Thandar was confused. He had lost his bearings
since entering the village and the temple. He turned
toward Nadara.
“I do not know the way to the coast,” he cried.
The girl took his hand.
“Follow me,” she said, and to the memories of
each leaped the recollection of the night she had
led him through the forest from the cliffs of the
bad men. Once again was Waldo Emerson Smith-
Jones, the learned, indebted to the greater wisdom
of the unlettered cave girl for his salvation.
Unerringly Nadara ran through the tangled
jungle in the direction of the coast. Though she
had been but once over the way she followed the
direct line as unerringly as though each tree was
blazed and sign posts marked each turn.
Behind them came the noise of the pursuit, but
always Nadara and Thandar fled ahead of it, not
once did it gain upon them during the long hours of
flight.
It was noon before they reached the coast. They
came out at the camp of the pirates, but to Than-
dar's dismay it was deserted. Tsao Ming had waited
the allotted time and gone. If Thandar had but
known it, the picturesque cut-throat had overstayed
the promised period, and had but scarce left when


THE RESCUE 3OI
the fugitives emerged from the jungle beside the
beach. In fact his rude craft was but out of sight
beyond the northern promontory. A pistol shot
would have recalled him; but Thandar did not know
it, and so he turned dejectedly to search for the hid-
den canoe.
It lay behind the little clump of bushes that had
hidden Thandar the morning that he had saved
Tsao Ming's life, several hundred yards to the
south.
All signs of pursuit had now ceased, and so the
two walked slowly in the direction of the craft.
They found it just where Tsao Ming had promised
that it would be. It was well and staunchly re-
paired, and in addition contained a goodly supply
of food and water. Thandar blessed Tsao Ming,
the unhung murderer.
Together they dragged the frail thing to the
water's edge, and were about to shove it out when,
with a chorus of savage yells, a score or more of the
head-hunters leaped from the jungle and bore down
upon them. Thandar turned to meet them with
drawn pistol. -
“Get the canoe into the water, Nadara,” he
called to the girl. “I will hold them off until it is
launched, then we may be able to reach deep water
before they can overtake us.”
Nadara struggled with the unwieldy boat which


THE RESCUE 303
caught them all, pursuers and pursued, sweeping
them out into deep water. Thandar and Nadara
clung to the canoe, but the head-hunters were
dragged down by the undertow.
Upon the beach, yelling, threatening and gesticu-
lating, danced thirty or forty baffled savages; but
now Thandar and Nadara had crawled into the
craft, which the outgoing tide was carrying rapidly
from shore, and with the aid of the paddle were
soon safely out upon the bosom of the Pacific.
Safely?


PIRATES 305
ever from their sight than dead ahead another shore
line showed. Thandar could scarce believe his
eyes. He rubbed them and looked again. Then he
asked Nadara to look.
“What is that ahead?” he asked.
The girl half rose with an exclamation of joy.
“Land!” she cried.
And land it was. The wind, driving them madly,
carried them toward the north end of what ap-
peared to be a large island. Angry breakers
pounded a rocky coast line. To strike there would
mean instant death to them both. But would they
strike? As they neared the point of the island it
became evident to Thandar that they would be
borne past it. Could he hope to stem the speed of
the little craft and turn it back into the sheltered
water in the lee of the land? The chances were
more than even that the canoe would capsize the
instant he cut away the sail and attempted to paddle
across the wind, as would be necessary to come
about the end of the island.
But there seemed no other way. He handed his
parang to Nadara, telling her to be ready to cut
the rawhide strips that supported the sail the
instant that he gave the word. With his paddle
clutched tightly in his hands he knelt in the stern,
watching the progress of the canoe past the rocky
point.


306 THE CAVE GIRL
At this extremity of the island a narrow tongue
of land ran far out into the sea. It was past the
outer point of this tongue that the canoe was rac-
ing. When they had passed Thandar realized the
rashness of attempting to turn the canoe into the
trough of the sea even for the little distance that
would have been necessary to make the shelter of
the point, where, almost within reach, he could see
the peaceful bosom of unruffled water lying safely
behind the island.
And yet as he looked ahead upon the limitless
waste of ocean before them he knew that one risk
was no greater than the other, and then an alter-
native plan occurred to him. He would run a short
distance past the point and then turn almost directly
back and attempt to paddle the canoe in the
calm water, running nearly into the face of the
wind, thus avoiding the dangers of the trough.
There was but a single drawback to this plan—
the question of his ability to drive the canoe against
the gale. At least it was worth trying. He gave
Nadara the word to cut down the sail, and at the
same instant, the canoe being upon the crest of
a wave, he bent to the paddle. As the panther skin
tumbled at the foot of the rough mast the nose of
the craft swung around in reply to Thandar's vig-
orous strokes.
So intent were both upon the life and death


3Io THE CAVE GIRL
ment. The black rose with clenched fists as though
prepared to strike him.
“Priscilla ahoy!” shrieked Waldo Emerson.
“Help! Help!”
The negro grinned. There was no response from
the white yacht. Then the men told Thandar that
they had captured the vessel several weeks before,
and were holding her crew prisoners upon land
awaiting the return of the chief who had been un-
accountably absent for a long time. When Waldo
Emerson told them that the yacht belonged to his
father the black was glad that he had not killed
him, for he should bring a fat ransom.
It was dark when they landed, and Thandar and
Nadara were forced into squalid huts that lay side
by side with several others just above the beach.
For a long time the man could not sleep. His mind
was occupied with doubts as to the fate of his
father and mother. Nadara had told him that both
had been aboard the Priscilla. She had said noth-
ing of the treatment accorded her by Mrs. Smith-
Jones, but Waldo had guessed near the truth, and
he had seen that the sight of the Priscilla had
awakened no enthusiasm or happiness in the girl.
After a while he dozed only to be awakened by
the sound of movement outside his hut. There was
something sinister in the stealthiness of the sound.
Silently Thandar rose and crept to the door. The


312 THE CAVE GIRL
though she could not see him.
At last, with a superhuman effort, the night
prowler broke away from Thandar. For a moment
silence reigned in the hut. None of the three could
see the other. From beneath his panther skin
Thandar drew the long pistol that Tsao Ming had
given him, but he dared not fire for fear of hitting
Nadara, nor dared he ask her to speak that he might
know her position, for then would he have divulged
his own to his antagonist.
For minutes that seemed hours the three stood
in utter silence, endeavoring to stifle their breathing.
Then Thandar heard a cautious movement upon
the opposite side of the room. Was it his foe, or
Nadara. He raised his pistol level with a man's
breast, and then very cautiously he too moved to
one side. At the slight sound of his movement
there came a sudden flash and deafening roar from
across the hut—the enemy had fired, and in the
flash of his gun all within the interior was lighted
for an instant, and Thandar saw the giant black
not two paces from him, and to the man's left stood
Nadara, safe from a shot from Thandar's pistol.
The black, not knowing that Thandar was armed,
had not guessed that his chance shot was to prove
his own death messenger. The instant that the
flash of the other's gun revealed his whereabouts
Thandar's pistol gave an answering roar, and simul


PIRATES 3I3
taneously Thandar leaped to one side, running
swiftly to grapple with the black from the side;
but when he came to him, instead of meeting with
ferocious resistance as he had expected, he stumbled
over his dead body.
But now the whole camp was awake. The pirates
were running hither and thither shouting questions
and orders in their many tongues. Confusion
reigned supreme, and in the midst of it Thandar
grasped Nadara's hand and ran from the hut. Back
of the other huts he ran until he had passed the end
of the camp. Then he turned down toward the
water. It was his intention to reach a boat and
make his way to the Priscilla.
Behind them the confusion of the camp grew as
the pirates searched the huts for an explanation of
the two shots—there could have been no better
opportunity for escape. Drawn up on the beach
was one of the Priscilla's own boats. Together
Thandar and Nadara pushed it off, and a moment
later were rowing rapidly toward the yacht.
It was with a feeling of unbounded security and
elation that Waldo Emerson clambered over the
side and drew Nadara after him; but his elation
was short lived for scarcely had he set foot upon the
deck than he was seized from behind by half a
dozen brawny villains who had been upon guard on
board the Priscilla and had seen the two put off


3I4 THE CAVE GIRL
from shore, watched their flight toward the yacht
and lain in wait for them as they clambered over
the side.
The balance of the night they were kept prison-
ers upon the Priscilla; but early the next morning
they were taken ashore. There they found all the
pirates congregated outside one of the huts. Within
were the passengers and crew of the Priscilla. As
Thandar and Nadara approached they were seized
and hustled toward the doorway—with an ac-
companiment of oriental oaths they were pushed
into the interior.
Standing about in disconsolate and unhappy
groups were the crew of the Priscilla, Captain
Burlinghame and Mr. and Mrs. Smith-Jones. As
his eyes fell upon the last, Waldo Emerson ran to-
ward her with outstretched arms.
With a horrified shriek Mrs. Smith-Jones dodged
behind her husband and the captain. Waldo came
to a sudden halt. The two men eyed him threaten-
ingly. He looked straight into his father's face.
“Don’t you know me, Father,” he asked.
John Alden Smith-Jones' jaw dropped.
“Waldo Emerson,” he cried. “It cannot be
possible!”
Mrs. Smith-Jones emerged from retreat.
“Waldo Emerson l’” she echoed. “It cannot
bel ”


316 THE CAVE GIRL
“I cannot tell you just what they are—only I
cannot blame my son for loving you. Only you
must discard that horrible garment for something
presentable.”
“Mother!” shouted Waldo Emerson, as he threw
his arms about her. “I knew that you would love
her, too, if you ever knew her.”
Just then the door opened and one of the pirates
entered.
“Come,” he said.
They filed out past him. From those outside they
learned that it had been decided to kill them all and
after looting the Priscilla, sink her, as a man-of-war
had been sighted cruising off the coast early in the
morning. In their terror they had decided to wait
no longer for the absent chief, and all thoughts of
ransom were forgotten in the mad desire to erase
every vestige of their piracy.
The victims looked at one another in horror.
They were entirely surrounded by the pirates, and
one by one were securely bound that there might
be no chance of any escaping. The plan was to lead
them inland to the densest part of the jungle and
there to cut their throats and leave their corpses
to the vultures. The pirates appeared to derive
much pleasure in recounting their plan to the pris-
OnerS.
At last all were bound and the death march com-


318 THE CAVE GIRL
the flats of murderous parangs. At last the pirates
halted in a tangled mass of vegetation.
“Here,” said one; but another thought they
should proceed a little further. For a few minutes
the two men argued, then the first drew his parang
and advanced upon Thandar.
“Here!” he insisted and swung the blade about
his head.
A sudden crashing of the underbrush and loud
and angry shouts caused him to turn his eyes in the
direction of the interruption. The prisoners, too,
looked. What they saw was not particularly reas-
suring—only another very ferocious appearing and
exceeding wrathful pirate followed by a half dozen
other villains.
He rushed into the midst of the group, knocking
men to right and left. The wicked looking fellows
who had bullied and cowed the frightened prisoners
but a few moments before now looked the picture
of abject terror.
The chief came to a halt before the man with
the bared parang. His face was livid, and work-
ing spasmodically with rage and excitement. He
tried to speak, and then he turned his eyes upon
Thandar, standing there bound ready for decapita-
tion. As his gaze fell upon this prisoner his eyes
went wide, and then he turned upon the would-be
executioner, and with a mighty blow felled him.


322 THE CAVE GIRL
chance, I picked them up close by the sea. The
poor lady to whom they once belonged you never
knew—it is quite possible that she never was upon
your savage coast—and how her jewels came there
must always remain a mystery. But two things you
hold in common with her, for she was a lady and
she was very beautiful.”
He held toward Nadara in his open palm a little
worn bag of the skins of small rodents, sewn to-
gether with bits of gut. At sight of it both the girl
and Waldo Emerson exclaimed in astonishment.
Nadara took the bag wonderingly in her hands
and dumped the contents into her palm. Waldo
pressed forward.
“Did you know to whom those belonged?” he
asked Burlinghame.
“To Eugenie Marie Celeste de la Valois,
Countess of Crecy,” replied the captain.
“They belonged to Nadara's mother,” returned
Waldo. “Her foster parents were present at her
birth and took these jewels from the poor woman's
body after she had passed away. She was washed
ashore in a boat in which there was only a dead man
beside herself—Nadara was born that night.”
And so, when the clergyman had performed the
marriage ceremony he entered upon the certificate
in the space provided there for the name of the
woman: Nadara de la Valois.


HOMEWARD BOUND 323
And they are living in Boston now in a wonder-
ful home that you have seen if you ever have been
to Boston and been driven about in one of those
great sight-seeing motor busses, for the place is
pointed out to all visitors because of the beauty of
its architecture and the fame that attaches to the
historic and aristocratic name of its owner, which,
as it happens, is not Smith-Jones at all.


T H E N OVELS OF
EDGAR RICE BURROUGH S
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list
TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE
TARZAN OF THE APES
TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR
TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN
TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION
TARZAN THE TERRIBLE
TARZAN THE UNTAMED
THE BEASTS OF TARZAN
THE RETURN OF TARZAN
THE SON OF TARZAN
JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN
THE MASTER MIND OF MARS
THE PRINCESS OF MARS
THE WARLORD OF MARS
THE GODS OF MARS
THUVIA, MAID OF MARS
THE CHESSMAN OF MARS
THE MONSTER MEN
THE WAR CHIEF
THE OUTLAW OF TORN
THE MAD KING
THE MOON MAID
THE ETERNAL LOVER
THE CAVE GIRL
THE BANDIT OF HELL’S BEND
THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT
AT THE EARTH'S CORE
PELLUCIDAR
THE MUCKER
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK