When I awoke, it was daylight, and I found Ajor squattingbefore a fine bed of coals roasting a large piece ofantelope-meat. Believe me, the sight of the new day and thedelicious odor of the cooking meat filled me with renewedhappiness and hope that had been all but expunged by theexperience of the previous night; and perhaps the slenderfigure of the bright-faced girl proved also a potent restorative. She looked up and smiled at me, showing those perfect teeth,and dimpling with evident happiness--the most adorable picturethat I had ever seen. I recall that it was then I firstregretted that she was only a little untutored savage andso far beneath me in the scale of evolution.

Her first act was to beckon me to follow her outside, and thereshe pointed to the explanation of our rescue from the bear--ahuge saber-tooth tiger, its fine coat and its flesh torn toribbons, lying dead a few paces from our cave, and beside it,equally mangled, and disemboweled, was the carcass of a hugecave-bear. To have had one's life saved by a saber-toothtiger, and in the twentieth century into the bargain, was anexperience that was to say the least unique; but it hadhappened--I had the proof of it before my eyes.

So enormous are the great carnivora of Caspak that they mustfeed perpetually to support their giant thews, and the resultis that they will eat the meat of any other creature and willattack anything that comes within their ken, no matter howformidable the quarry. From later observation--I mention thisas worthy the attention of paleontologists and naturalists--Icame to the conclusion that such creatures as the cave-bear,the cave-lion and the saber-tooth tiger, as well as the largercarnivorous reptiles make, ordinarily, two kills a day--one inthe morning and one after night. They immediately devour theentire carcass, after which they lie up and sleep for a few hours. Fortunately their numbers are comparatively few; otherwise therewould be no other life within Caspak. It is their very voracitythat keeps their numbers down to a point which permits otherforms of life to persist, for even in the season of love thegreat males often turn upon their own mates and devour them,while both males and females occasionally devour their young. How the human and semihuman races have managed to surviveduring all the countless ages that these conditions must haveexisted here is quite beyond me.

After breakfast Ajor and I set out once more upon ournorthward journey. We had gone but a little distance when wewere attacked by a number of apelike creatures armed with clubs. They seemed a little higher in the scale than the Alus. Ajor toldme they were Bo-lu, or clubmen. A revolver-shot killed one andscattered the others; but several times later during the day wewere menaced by them, until we had left their country andentered that of the Sto-lu, or hatchet-men. These people wereless hairy and more man-like; nor did they appear so anxious todestroy us. Rather they were curious, and followed us for somedistance examining us most closely. They called out to us,and Ajor answered them; but her replies did not seem tosatisfy them, for they gradually became threatening, and Ithink they were preparing to attack us when a small deer thathad been hiding in some low brush suddenly broke cover anddashed across our front. We needed meat, for it was nearone o'clock and I was getting hungry; so I drew my pistoland with a single shot dropped the creature in its tracks. The effect upon the Bo-lu was electrical. Immediately theyabandoned all thoughts of war, and turning, scampered for theforest which fringed our path.

That night we spent beside a little stream in the Sto-lu country. We found a tiny cave in the rock bank, so hidden away thatonly chance could direct a beast of prey to it, and afterwe had eaten of the deer-meat and some fruit which Ajorgathered, we crawled into the little hole, and with sticks andstones which I had gathered for the purpose I erected a strongbarricade inside the entrance. Nothing could reach us withoutswimming and wading through the stream, and I felt quite securefrom attack. Our quarters were rather cramped. The ceilingwas so low that we could not stand up, and the floor so narrowthat it was with difficulty that we both wedged into ittogether; but we were very tired, and so we made the most ofit; and so great was the feeling of security that I am sure Ifell asleep as soon as I had stretched myself beside Ajor.

During the three days which followed, our progress wasexasperatingly slow. I doubt if we made ten miles in theentire three days. The country was hideously savage, so thatwe were forced to spend hours at a time in hiding from one oranother of the great beasts which menaced us continually. There were fewer reptiles; but the quantity of carnivora seemedto have increased, and the reptiles that we did see wereperfectly gigantic. I shall never forget one enormous specimenwhich we came upon browsing upon water-reeds at the edge of thegreat sea. It stood well over twelve feet high at the rump,its highest point, and with its enormously long tail and neck itwas somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred feet in length. Its head was ridiculously small; its body was unarmored, but itsgreat bulk gave it a most formidable appearance. My experienceof Caspakian life led me to believe that the gigantic creaturewould but have to see us to attack us, and so I raised my rifleand at the same time drew away toward some brush which offeredconcealment; but Ajor only laughed, and picking up a stick, rantoward the great thing, shouting. The little head was raisedhigh upon the long neck as the animal stupidly looked here andthere in search of the author of the disturbance. At last itseyes discovered tiny little Ajor, and then she hurled the stickat the diminutive head. With a cry that sounded not unlike thebleat of a sheep, the colossal creature shuffled into the waterand was soon submerged.

As I slowly recalled my collegiate studies and paleontologicalreadings in Bowen's textbooks, I realized that I had lookedupon nothing less than a diplodocus of the Upper Jurassic; buthow infinitely different was the true, live thing from thecrude restorations of Hatcher and Holland! I had had the ideathat the diplodocus was a land-animal, but evidently it ispartially amphibious. I have seen several since my firstencounter, and in each case the creature took to the sea forconcealment as soon as it was disturbed. With the exception ofits gigantic tail, it has no weapon of defense; but with thisappendage it can lash so terrific a blow as to lay low even agiant cave-bear, stunned and broken. It is a stupid, simple,gentle beast--one of the few within Caspak which such adescription might even remotely fit.

For three nights we slept in trees, finding no caves or otherplaces of concealment. Here we were free from the attacks ofthe large land carnivora; but the smaller flying reptiles, thesnakes, leopards, and panthers were a constant menace, thoughby no means as much to be feared as the huge beasts that roamedthe surface of the earth.

At the close of the third day Ajor and I were able to conversewith considerable fluency, and it was a great relief to both ofus, especially to Ajor. She now did nothing but ask questionswhenever I would let her, which could not be all the time, asour preservation depended largely upon the rapidity with whichI could gain knowledge of the geography and customs of Caspak,and accordingly I had to ask numerous questions myself.

I enjoyed immensely hearing and answering her, so naive weremany of her queries and so filled with wonder was she at thethings I told her of the world beyond the lofty barriers ofCaspak; not once did she seem to doubt me, however marvelous mystatements must have seemed; and doubtless they were the causeof marvel to Ajor, who before had never dreamed that any lifeexisted beyond Caspak and the life she knew.

Artless though many of her questions were, they evidenced akeen intellect and a shrewdness which seemed far beyond heryears of her experience. Altogether I was finding my littlesavage a mighty interesting and companionable person, and Ioften thanked the kind fate that directed the crossing ofour paths. From her I learned much of Caspak, but there stillremained the mystery that had proved so baffling to BowenTyler--the total absence of young among the ape, the semihumanand the human races with which both he and I had come incontact upon opposite shores of the inland sea. Ajor tried toexplain the matter to me, though it was apparent that she couldnot conceive how so natural a condition should demand explanation. She told me that among the Galus there were a few babies, thatshe had once been a baby but that most of her people "came up,"as he put it, "cor sva jo," or literally, "from the beginning";and as they all did when they used that phrase, she would wavea broad gesture toward the south.

"For long," she explained, leaning very close to me andwhispering the words into my ear while she cast apprehensiveglances about and mostly skyward, "for long my mother kept mehidden lest the Wieroo, passing through the air by night,should come and take me away to Oo-oh." And the child shudderedas she voiced the word. I tried to get her to tell me more;but her terror was so real when she spoke of the Wieroo and theland of Oo-oh where they dwell that I at last desisted, thoughI did learn that the Wieroo carried off only female babes andoccasionally women of the Galus who had "come up from thebeginning." It was all very mysterious and unfathomable, but Igot the idea that the Wieroo were creatures of imagination--thedemons or gods of her race, omniscient and omnipresent. This ledme to assume that the Galus had a religious sense, and furtherquestioning brought out the fact that such was the case. Ajor spoke in tones of reverence of Luata, the god of heatand life. The word is derived from two others: Lua,meaning sun, and ata, meaning variously eggs, life,young, and reproduction. She told me that theyworshiped Luata in several forms, as fire, the sun, eggs andother material objects which suggested heat and reproduction.

I had noticed that whenever I built a fire, Ajor outlined inthe air before her with a forefinger an isosceles triangle,and that she did the same in the morning when she first viewedthe sun. At first I had not connected her act with anything inparticular, but after we learned to converse and she hadexplained a little of her religious superstitions, I realizedthat she was making the sign of the triangle as a Roman Catholicmakes the sign of the cross. Always the short side of the trianglewas uppermost. As she explained all this to me, she pointed tothe decorations on her golden armlets, upon the knob of herdagger-hilt and upon the band which encircled her right legabove the knee--always was the design partly made up of isoscelestriangles, and when she explained the significance of thisparticular geometric figure, I at once grasped its appropriateness.

We were now in the country of the Band-lu, the spearmen of Caspak. Bowen had remarked in his narrative that these people wereanalogous to the so-called Cro-Magnon race of the UpperPaleolithic, and I was therefore very anxious to see them. Nor was I to be disappointed; I saw them, all right! We had leftthe Sto-lu country and literally fought our way through cordonsof wild beasts for two days when we decided to make camp alittle earlier than usual, owing to the fact that we hadreached a line of cliffs running east and west in which werenumerous likely cave-lodgings. We were both very tired, andthe sight of these caverns, several of which could be easilybarricaded, decided us to halt until the following morning. It took but a few minutes' exploration to discover one particularcavern high up the face of the cliff which seemed ideal forour purpose. It opened upon a narrow ledge where we could buildour cook-fire; the opening was so small that we had to lie flatand wriggle through it to gain ingress, while the interior washigh-ceiled and spacious. I lighted a faggot and looked about;but as far as I could see, the chamber ran back into the cliff.

Laying aside my rifle, pistol and heavy ammunition-belt, Ileft Ajor in the cave while I went down to gather firewood. We already had meat and fruits which we had gathered justbefore reaching the cliffs, and my canteen was filled withfresh water. Therefore, all we required was fuel, and as I alwayssaved Ajor's strength when I could, I would not permit her toaccompany me. The poor girl was very tired; but she would havegone with me until she dropped, I know, so loyal was she. She wasthe best comrade in the world, and sometimes I regretted andsometimes I was glad that she was not of my own caste, for hadshe been, I should unquestionably have fallen in love with her. As it was, we traveled together like two boys, with huge respectfor each other but no softer sentiment.

There was little timber close to the base of the cliffs, and soI was forced to enter the wood some two hundred yards distant. I realize now how foolhardy was my act in such a land asCaspak, teeming with danger and with death; but there is acertain amount of fool in every man; and whatever proportion ofit I own must have been in the ascendant that day, for thetruth of the matter is that I went down into those woodsabsolutely defenseless; and I paid the price, as people usuallydo for their indiscretions. As I searched around in the brushfor likely pieces of firewood, my head bowed and my eyes uponthe ground, I suddenly felt a great weight hurl itself upon me.I struggled to my knees and seized my assailant, a huge, nakedman--naked except for a breechcloth of snakeskin, the headhanging down to the knees. The fellow was armed with astone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet. In his blackhair were several gay-colored feathers. As we struggled to andfro, I was slowly gaining advantage of him, when a score of hisfellows came running up and overpowered me.

They bound my hands behind me with long rawhide thongs and thensurveyed me critically. I found them fine-looking specimens ofmanhood, for the most part. There were some among them who borea resemblance to the Sto-lu and were hairy; but the majority hadmassive heads and not unlovely features. There was little aboutthem to suggest the ape, as in the Sto-lu, Bo-lu and Alus. I expected them to kill me at once, but they did not. Instead theyquestioned me; but it was evident that they did not believe mystory, for they scoffed and laughed.

"The Galus have turned you out," they cried. "If you go backto them, you will die. If you remain here, you will die. We shall kill you; but first we shall have a dance and youshall dance with us--the dance of death."

It sounded quite reassuring! But I knew that I was not to bekilled immediately, and so I took heart. They led me towardthe cliffs, and as we approached them, I glanced up and wassure that I saw Ajor's bright eyes peering down upon us fromour lofty cave; but she gave no sign if she saw me; and wepassed on, rounded the end of the cliffs and proceeded alongthe opposite face of them until we came to a section literallyhoneycombed with caves. All about, upon the ground andswarming the ledges before the entrances, were hundreds ofmembers of the tribe. There were many women but no babes orchildren, though I noticed that the females had betterdeveloped breasts than any that I had seen among thehatchet-men, the club-men, the Alus or the apes. In fact,among the lower orders of Caspakian man the female breast isbut a rudimentary organ, barely suggested in the apes and Alus,and only a little more defined in the Bo-lu and Sto-lu, thoughalways increasingly so until it is found about half developedin the females of the spear-men; yet never was there anindication that the females had suckled young; nor were there anyyoung among them. Some of the Band-lu women were quite comely. The figures of all, both men and women, were symmetrical thoughheavy, and though there were some who verged strongly upon theSto-lu type, there were others who were positively handsome andwhose bodies were quite hairless. The Alus are all bearded,but among the Bo-lu the beard disappears in the women. The Sto-lumen show a sparse beard, the Band-lu none; and there is littlehair upon the bodies of their women.

The members of the tribe showed great interest in me,especially in my clothing, the like of which, of course, theynever had seen. They pulled and hauled upon me, and some ofthem struck me; but for the most part they were not inclinedto brutality. It was only the hairier ones, who most closelyresembled the Sto-lu, who maltreated me. At last my captors ledme into a great cave in the mouth of which a fire was burning. The floor was littered with filth, including the bones of manyanimals, and the atmosphere reeked with the stench of humanbodies and putrefying flesh. Here they fed me, releasing myarms, and I ate of half-cooked aurochs steak and a stew whichmay have been made of snakes, for many of the long, roundpieces of meat suggested them most nauseatingly.

The meal completed, they led me well within the cavern, whichthey lighted with torches stuck in various crevices in thelight of which I saw, to my astonishment, that the walls werecovered with paintings and etchings. There were aurochs, reddeer, saber-tooth tiger, cave-bear, hyaenadon and many otherexamples of the fauna of Caspak done in colors, usually of fourshades of brown, or scratched upon the surface of the rock. Often they were super-imposed upon each other until it requiredcareful examination to trace out the various outlines. But theyall showed a rather remarkable aptitude for delineation whichfurther fortified Bowen's comparisons between these people andthe extinct Cro-Magnons whose ancient art is still preservedin the caverns of Niaux and Le Portel. The Band-lu, however,did not have the bow and arrow, and in this respect they differfrom their extinct progenitors, or descendants, of Western Europe.

Should any of my friends chance to read the story of myadventures upon Caprona, I hope they will not be bored by thesediversions, and if they are, I can only say that I am writingmy memoirs for my own edification and therefore setting downthose things which interested me particularly at the time. I have no desire that the general public should ever have accessto these pages; but it is possible that my friends may, andalso certain savants who are interested; and to them, while Ido not apologize for my philosophizing, I humbly explain thatthey are witnessing the groupings of a finite mind after theinfinite, the search for explanations of the inexplicable.

In a far recess of the cavern my captors bade me halt. Again myhands were secured, and this time my feet as well. During theoperation they questioned me, and I was mighty glad that themarked similarity between the various tribal tongues of Caspakenabled us to understand each other perfectly, even though theywere unable to believe or even to comprehend the truth of myorigin and the circumstances of my advent in Caspak; and finallythey left me saying that they would come for me before the danceof death upon the morrow. Before they departed with theirtorches, I saw that I had not been conducted to the farthestextremity of the cavern, for a dark and gloomy corridor ledbeyond my prison room into the heart of the cliff.

I could not but marvel at the immensity of this greatunderground grotto. Already I had traversed several hundredyards of it, from many points of which other corridors diverged. The whole cliff must be honeycombed with apartments and passagesof which this community occupied but a comparatively small part,so that the possibility of the more remote passages being thelair of savage beasts that have other means of ingress and egressthan that used by the Band-lu filled me with dire forebodings.

I believe that I am not ordinarily hysterically apprehensive;yet I must confess that under the conditions with which I wasconfronted, I felt my nerves to be somewhat shaken. On themorrow I was to die some sort of nameless death for thediversion of a savage horde, but the morrow held fewer terrorsfor me than the present, and I submit to any fair-minded man ifit is not a terrifying thing to lie bound hand and foot in theStygian blackness of an immense cave peopled by unknown dangersin a land overrun by hideous beasts and reptiles of thegreatest ferocity. At any moment, perhaps at this very moment,some silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where itlaired in some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthilyupon me. I craned my neck about, and stared through the inkydarkness for the twin spots of blazing hate which I knew wouldherald the coming of my executioner. So real were theimaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a coldsweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close beforeme; yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the grave-likestillness of the cavern.

During that period of eternity many events of my life passedbefore my mental vision, a vast parade of friends andoccurrences which would be blotted out forever on the morrow. I cursed myself for the foolish act which had taken me from thesearch-party that so depended upon me, and I wondered whatprogress, if any, they had made. Were they still beyond thebarrier cliffs, awaiting my return? Or had they found a wayinto Caspak? I felt that the latter would be the truth, forthe party was not made up of men easily turned from a purpose. Quite probable it was that they were already searching for me;but that they would ever find a trace of me I doubted. Long since,had I come to the conclusion that it was beyond human prowessto circle the shores of the inland sea of Caspak in the faceof the myriad menaces which lurked in every shadow by day andby night. Long since, had I given up any hope of reachingthe point where I had made my entry into the country, and so Iwas now equally convinced that our entire expedition had beenworse than futile before ever it was conceived, since Bowen J.Tyler and his wife could not by any possibility have survivedduring all these long months; no more could Bradley and hisparty of seamen be yet in existence. If the superior force andequipment of my party enabled them to circle the north end ofthe sea, they might some day come upon the broken wreck of myplane hanging in the great tree to the south; but long beforethat, my bones would be added to the litter upon the floor ofthis mighty cavern.

And through all my thoughts, real and fanciful, moved the imageof a perfect girl, clear-eyed and strong and straight andbeautiful, with the carriage of a queen and the supple,undulating grace of a leopard. Though I loved my friends,their fate seemed of less importance to me than the fate ofthis little barbarian stranger for whom, I had convincedmyself many a time, I felt no greater sentiment than passingfriendship for a fellow-wayfarer in this land of horrors. Yet Iso worried and fretted about her and her future that at lastI quite forgot my own predicament, though I still struggledintermittently with bonds in vain endeavor to free myself; asmuch, however, that I might hasten to her protection as that Imight escape the fate which had been planned for me. And whileI was thus engaged and had for the moment forgotten myapprehensions concerning prowling beasts, I was startled intotense silence by a distinct and unmistakable sound coming fromthe dark corridor farther toward the heart of the cliff--thesound of padded feet moving stealthily in my direction.

I believe that never before in all my life, even amidst theterrors of childhood nights, have I suffered such a sensationof extreme horror as I did that moment in which I realized thatI must lie bound and helpless while some horrid beast of preycrept upon me to devour me in that utter darkness of the Bandlupits of Caspak. I reeked with cold sweat, and my fleshcrawled--I could feel it crawl. If ever I came nearer toabject cowardice, I do not recall the instance; and yet it wasnot that I was afraid to die, for I had long since given myselfup as lost--a few days of Caspak must impress anyone with theutter nothingness of life. The waters, the land, the airteem with it, and always it is being devoured by some otherform of life. Life is the cheapest thing in Caspak, as itis the cheapest thing on earth and, doubtless, the cheapestcosmic production. No, I was not afraid to die; in fact, Iprayed for death, that I might be relieved of the frightfulnessof the interval of life which remained to me--the waiting, theawful waiting, for that fearsome beast to reach me and to strike.

Presently it was so close that I could hear its breathing, andthen it touched me and leaped quickly back as though it hadcome upon me unexpectedly. For long moments no sound broke thesepulchral silence of the cave. Then I heard a movement on thepart of the creature near me, and again it touched me, and Ifelt something like a hairless hand pass over my face and downuntil it touched the collar of my flannel shirt. And then,subdued, but filled with pent emotion, a voice cried: "Tom!"

I think I nearly fainted, so great was the reaction. "Ajor!" I managed to say. "Ajor, my girl, can it be you?"

"Oh, Tom!" she cried again in a trembly little voice and flungherself upon me, sobbing softly. I had not known that Ajorcould cry.

As she cut away my bonds, she told me that from the entrance toour cave she had seen the Band-lu coming out of the forest withme, and she had followed until they took me into the cave,which she had seen was upon the opposite side of the cliff inwhich ours was located; and then, knowing that she could donothing for me until after the Band-lu slept, she had hastenedto return to our cave. With difficulty she had reached it,after having been stalked by a cave-lion and almost seized. I trembled at the risk she had run.

It had been her intention to wait until after midnight, whenmost of the carnivora would have made their kills, and thenattempt to reach the cave in which I was imprisoned and rescue me. She explained that with my rifle and pistol--both of whichshe assured me she could use, having watched me so manytimes--she planned upon frightening the Band-lu and forcingthem to give me up. Brave little girl! She would have riskedher life willingly to save me. But some time after she reachedour cave she heard voices from the far recesses within, andimmediately concluded that we had but found another entranceto the caves which the Band-lu occupied upon the other face ofthe cliff. Then she had set out through those winding passagesand in total darkness had groped her way, guided solely by amarvelous sense of direction, to where I lay. She had had toproceed with utmost caution lest she fall into some abyss inthe darkness and in truth she had thrice come upon sheer dropsand had been forced to take the most frightful risks to pass them. I shudder even now as I contemplate what this girl passed throughfor my sake and how she enhanced her peril in loading herselfdown with the weight of my arms and ammunition and theawkwardness of the long rifle which she was unaccustomed to bearing.

I could have knelt and kissed her hand in reverence andgratitude; nor am I ashamed to say that that is precisely whatI did after I had been freed from my bonds and heard the storyof her trials. Brave little Ajor! Wonder-girl out of the dim,unthinkable past! Never before had she been kissed; but sheseemed to sense something of the meaning of the new caress,for she leaned forward in the dark and pressed her own lipsto my forehead. A sudden urge surged through me to seize herand strain her to my bosom and cover her hot young lips withthe kisses of a real love, but I did not do so, for I knew thatI did not love her; and to have kissed her thus, with passion,would have been to inflict a great wrong upon her who hadoffered her life for mine.

No, Ajor should be as safe with me as with her own mother, ifshe had one, which I was inclined to doubt, even though shetold me that she had once been a babe and hidden by her mother. I had come to doubt if there was such a thing as a mother inCaspak, a mother such as we know. From the Bo-lu to the Kro-luthere is no word which corresponds with our word mother. They speak of ata and cor sva jo, meaning reproductionand from the beginning, and point toward the south; but noone has a mother.

After considerable difficulty we gained what we thought was ourcave, only to find that it was not, and then we realized thatwe were lost in the labyrinthine mazes of the great cavern. We retraced our steps and sought the point from which we hadstarted, but only succeeded in losing ourselves the more. Ajor was aghast--not so much from fear of our predicament; butthat she should have failed in the functioning of that wonderfulsense she possessed in common with most other creaturesCaspakian, which makes it possible for them to move unerringlyfrom place to place without compass or guide.

Hand in hand we crept along, searching for an opening intothe outer world, yet realizing that at each step we might beburrowing more deeply into the heart of the great cliff, orcircling futilely in the vague wandering that could end onlyin death. And the darkness! It was almost palpable, andutterly depressing. I had matches, and in some of the moredifficult places I struck one; but we couldn't afford to wastethem, and so we groped our way slowly along, doing the best wecould to keep to one general direction in the hope that it wouldeventually lead us to an opening into the outer world. When Istruck matches, I noticed that the walls bore no paintings; norwas there other sign that man had penetrated this far withinthe cliff, nor any spoor of animals of other kinds.

It would be difficult to guess at the time we spent wanderingthrough those black corridors, climbing steep ascents, feelingour way along the edges of bottomless pits, never knowing at whatmoment we might be plunged into some abyss and always hauntedby the ever-present terror of death by starvation and thirst. As difficult as it was, I still realized that it might havebeen infinitely worse had I had another companion thanAjor--courageous, uncomplaining, loyal little Ajor! She wastired and hungry and thirsty, and she must have beendiscouraged; but she never faltered in her cheerfulness. I asked her if she was afraid, and she replied that here theWieroo could not get her, and that if she died of hunger, shewould at least die with me and she was quite content that suchshould be her end. At the time I attributed her attitude tosomething akin to a doglike devotion to a new master who hadbeen kind to her. I can take oath to the fact that I did notthink it was anything more.

Whether we had been imprisoned in the cliff for a day or a weekI could not say; nor even now do I know. We became very tiredand hungry; the hours dragged; we slept at least twice, and thenwe rose and stumbled on, always weaker and weaker. There wereages during which the trend of the corridors was always upward. It was heartbreaking work for people in the state of exhaustionin which we then were, but we clung tenaciously to it. We stumbledand fell; we sank through pure physical inability to retain ourfeet; but always we managed to rise at last and go on. At first,wherever it had been possible, we had walked hand in hand lestwe become separated, and later, when I saw that Ajor wasweakening rapidly, we went side by side, I supporting her withan arm about her waist. I still retained the heavy burden ofmy armament; but with the rifle slung to my back, my handswere free. When I too showed indisputable evidences ofexhaustion, Ajor suggested that I lay aside my arms andammunition; but I told her that as it would mean certain deathfor me to traverse Caspak without them, I might as well takethe chance of dying here in the cave with them, for there wasthe other chance that we might find our wayto liberty.

There came a time when Ajor could no longer walk, and thenit was that I picked her up in my arms and carried her. She begged me to leave her, saying that after I found an exit,I could come back and get her; but she knew, and she knew that Iknew, that if ever I did leave her, I could never find her again. Yet she insisted. Barely had I sufficient strength to take ascore of steps at a time; then I would have to sink down andrest for five to ten minutes. I don't know what forceurged me on and kept me going in the face of an absoluteconviction that my efforts were utterly futile. I counted usalready as good as dead; but still I dragged myself along untilthe time came that I could no longer rise, but could only crawlalong a few inches at a time, dragging Ajor beside me. Her sweetvoice, now almost inaudible from weakness, implored me toabandon her and save myself--she seemed to think only of me. Of course I couldn't have left her there alone, no matter howmuch I might have desired to do so; but the fact of the matterwas that I didn't desire to leave her. What I said to her thencame very simply and naturally to my lips. It couldn't verywell have been otherwise, I imagine, for with death so close, Idoubt if people are much inclined to heroics. "I would rathernot get out at all, Ajor," I said to her, "than to get outwithout you." We were resting against a rocky wall, and Ajorwas leaning against me, her head on my breast. I could feelher press closer to me, and one hand stroked my arm in a weakcaress; but she didn't say anything, nor were words necessary.

After a few minutes' more rest, we started on again upon ourutterly hopeless way; but I soon realized that I was weakeningrapidly, and presently I was forced to admit that I was through. "It's no use, Ajor," I said, "I've come as far as I can. It maybe that if I sleep, I can go on again after," but I knew thatthat was not true, and that the end was near. "Yes, sleep,"said Ajor. "We will sleep together--forever."

She crept close to me as I lay on the hard floor and pillowedher head upon my arm. With the little strength which remainedto me, I drew her up until our lips touched, and, then Iwhispered: "Good-bye!" I must have lost consciousness almostimmediately, for I recall nothing more until I suddenly awokeout of a troubled sleep, during which I dreamed that I wasdrowning, to find the cave lighted by what appeared to bediffused daylight, and a tiny trickle of water running down thecorridor and forming a puddle in the little depression in whichit chanced that Ajor and I lay. I turned my eyes quickly uponAjor, fearful for what the light might disclose; but she stillbreathed, though very faintly. Then I searched about for anexplanation of the light, and soon discovered that it came fromabout a bend in the corridor just ahead of us and at the top ofa steep incline; and instantly I realized that Ajor and I hadstumbled by night almost to the portal of salvation. Had chancetaken us a few yards further, up either of the corridors whichdiverged from ours just ahead of us, we might have beenirrevocably lost; we might still be lost; but at least we coulddie in the light of day, out of the horrid blackness of thisterrible cave.

I tried to rise, and found that sleep had given me back aportion of my strength; and then I tasted the water and wasfurther refreshed. I shook Ajor gently by the shoulder; butshe did not open her eyes, and then I gathered a few drops ofwater in my cupped palm and let them trickle between her lips. This revived her so that she raised her lids, and when she sawme, she smiled.

"What happened?" she asked. "Where are we?"

"We are at the end of the corridor," I replied, and daylight iscoming in from the outside world just ahead. We are saved, Ajor!"

She sat up then and looked about, and then, quite womanlike,she burst into tears. It was the reaction, of course; and thentoo, she was very weak. I took her in my arms and quieted heras best I could, and finally, with my help, she got to herfeet; for she, as well as I, had found some slight recuperationin sleep. Together we staggered upward toward the light, andat the first turn we saw an opening a few yards ahead of us anda leaden sky beyond--a leaden sky from which was falling adrizzling rain, the author of our little, trickling streamwhich had given us drink when we were most in need of it.

The cave had been damp and cold; but as we crawled through theaperture, the muggy warmth of the Caspakian air caressed andconfronted us; even the rain was warmer than the atmosphere ofthose dark corridors. We had water now, and warmth, and I wassure that Caspak would soon offer us meat or fruit; but as wecame to where we could look about, we saw that we were upon thesummit of the cliffs, where there seemed little reason toexpect game. However, there were trees, and among them we soondescried edible fruits with which we broke our long fast.