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 suspicion 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 Emerson 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 toward 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 impossible feat of entirely covering his body.
As they neared their journey's end Waldo became 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 positive 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 discomfort 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.
Waldo had not the slightest conception as to whether he was upon some mainland or an unknown island. That the tidal wave had come upon them somewhere in the South Pacific was all that he knew; but long since he had given up hope that succor would reach him in time to prevent him perishing miserably far from his home and his poor mother.
He could not dwell long upon this dismal theme, because it always brought tears of self-pity to his eyes, and for some unaccountable reason Waldo shrunk from the thought of exhibiting this unmanly weakness before the girl.
All day long he racked his brain for some valid excuse whereby he might persuade his companion to lead him elsewhere than to her village. A thousand times better would be some secluded little garden such as that which had harbored them for the ten days following their escape from the cave men.
If they could but come upon such a place near the coast, where Waldo could keep a constant watch for passing vessels, he would have been as happy as he ever expected it would be possible for him in such a savage land.
He wanted the girl with him for companionship; he was more afraid when he was alone. Of course, he realized that she was no fit companion for a man of his mental attainments; but then she was ahuman 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 acquaintance 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 ease.
Late in the afternoon they wound down a narrow 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 precipitouscliffs, 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 moonpasses 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 joyously, 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 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.
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 demonstrate 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 Emerson never before had seen.
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 creatures 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.
AWAKENING
"Come," 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 revolting 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 meeting with Flatfoot and Korth, and the sudden disgust 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."
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 remembered, 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 immediately 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 primitive 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 person, such as she, had become infatuated with him.
It would have been embarrassing and unfortunate, but, of course, quite impossible—since Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones could never form an alliance beneath him. As for the girl herself, he might as readily have considered the possibility of marrying a cow, so far from any such thoughts of her had he been.
On and on he stumbled through the cold water. Sometimes it was above his head, but Waldo had learned to swim—the girl had made him, partly by pleas, but largely by the fear that she would ridicule him.
As night came on he commenced to become afraid, but his fear now was not such a horribly prostrating thing as it had been a few weeks before. Without being aware of the fact, Waldo had grown a trifle less timid, though he was still far from lion-like.
That night he slept in the crotch of a tree. He selected a small one, which, though less comfortable, was safer from the approach of Nagoola than a larger tree would have been. This also had he learned from Nadara.
Had he paused to consider, he would have discovered that all he knew that was worth while he had had from the savage little girl whom he, from the high pinnacle of his erudition, regarded withsuch pity. But Waldo had not as yet learned enough to realize how very little he knew.
In the morning he continued his flight, gathering 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 cascades; and ever it led Waldo farther into high and rugged country.
The climbing was difficult and oftentimes dangerous. Waldo was surprised at the steeps he negotiated—perilous ascents from which he would have shrunk 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 beyond 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 thegreat 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 pursuit. 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 observations 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 correct 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 himself 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 speculation; it was most annoying.
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 happenings of their daily life; her thoughtful kindliness to him, a stranger within her gates, and—again he flushed hotly—her sincere, though remarkable, 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. Simultaneously 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 description of Flatfoot and Korth brought him to a sudden 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 hissoul 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 kindness? 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 contemptible 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 hideously, 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 thehorrible, 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 initiating 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 boulders, so arranged that three of them could be removed 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 always in his mind that some day a ship would come, and Waldo longed to return to the haunts of civilization, 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 effectually 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 thatappalled 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 addition he had practised throwing rocks until he could almost have hit a nearby bird upon the wing. Besides 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. Bymeans 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 weakling; 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 purpose in view, but still he felt that the day was not yet come when he might safely venture to put his new-found 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 expect, he told himself, that a man should be entirely metamorphosed in a brief half year. He would wait a little longer.
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,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 missiles, 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.
As the pursued and the pursuers raced on through the forest one of the latter, fleeter than his companions, 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 disintegration 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.
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 remainder 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 lightninglike movement of Waldo's arm, and the aborigine 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 considerable time to make, and twice today it had saved his life. Forgetful that he had ever been a cowardhe 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 wielding 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 sudden, 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 infuriated 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 separated 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 hewas 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 before 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.
A CHOICE
Seamenupon 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, yellow 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," hesaid. "They're not exactly domesticated. Try firing 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 consternation.
"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 unintelligible. It seemed scarcely possible that a ship had really come.
He realized now that he had never actually entertained 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.
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, aspirations, 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 before the new Waldo Emerson—possibilities of which he never would have dreamed but for thestrange 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 resourcefulness that would have lain dormant within him always 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 him—he owed everything to Nadara.
"I was never ship-wrecked 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 shoreline 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 thathad 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 tobacco—the sole mementos of his recent brief contact 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. Itmentioned, among other things, that he had an obligation 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 shoreline of it had ever been explored, and scarce a score of vessels had reported it since Captain 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 gentleman 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 civilization.
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 thatwas 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 result was that he became aware of a deficiency in his equipment—a deficiency which his recent battle 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 andthen 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, crouching 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," murmured 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.
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 precarious 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 sinuous 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 transformation 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 rolledand 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 clawing 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 bottom of a dark ravine.
THANDAR, THE SEEKER
Fora 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 energetically, and after several efforts a yellow head streaked and matted with blood emerged from beneath. It required the better part of an hour for the stunned and lacerated Waldo to extricate himself 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.
From breast to knees ghastly wounds were furrowed 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 accuracy.
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, almost excruciatingly so when a movement of his body stretched or tore them; but notwithstanding his suffering he found himself smiling as he contemplated 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 fragment as large as one's hand depending behind.
"Nature is a wonderful leveler," thought Waldo. "It is evident that she hates artificiality as she doesa vacuum. I shall really need you now," he concluded, looking at the beautiful, black coat of Nagoola.
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 surface 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 itwas 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 village 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 supercilious contempt six months before.
Next Waldo turned his attention toward thefashioning of a sword, a new spear, and a shield. The first two were comparatively easy of accomplishment—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 new-born ingenuity.
With small twigs and grasses he succeeded, after nearly a week of painstaking endeavor, in weaving a rude, oval buckler some three feet long by two wide, which he covered with the skins of several 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 swiftly thrown missiles of the savages he knew he should encounter on his forthcoming expedition.
At last came the morning for departure. Rising 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 turning his back upon his rough home set off down thelittle 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 honeycombed 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.
Coming from the forest he crossed the clearing and approached the cliffs. His eye, now become alert in woodcraft, detected the young grass growing 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 corroboration of what was everywhere apparent—the village had been evacuated without haste in an orderly manner. Everything of value had been removed—only a few broken utensils remaining as indication that it had ever constituted human habitation.
Waldo was utterly confounded. He had not the remotest idea in which direction to search. During 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, primitive surroundings; among the beast-like 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 waspurely disappointment in being thwarted in his desire 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 valley, 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 information 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 hadgone down to the sea for the last time.
It came as readily and as glibly from these primitive 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 sickness.
"How did you slay Nagoola?" he asked suddenly.
Waldo indicated his spear, then he drew his garment 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."
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?" insisted 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 toward 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.
NADARA AGAIN
Waldowatched 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 valley, 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 sediment—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 atwhich 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 imprints 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 impresses 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 overlapped 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.
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. Evidently 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 toward 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 information than he had. Nor could Waldo eliminate the memory of those dainty feminine footprints.
It was foolish, of course, and he fully realized the fact; but his silly mind would insist upon attributing 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, protesting 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 recognized 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.
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 metamorphosis 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, swaying 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 shoulder of his antagonist, but it was the jugular his primal instinct sought.
The girl and the old man had drawn away wherethey 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 fighting 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 another opportunity to repeat that terrible affront.
As she allowed her mind to dwell on the humiliating 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 before to wrest her from the clutches of her hideous tormentor.
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 forehead 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, dragging with him the cave man, upon whose throat his fingers had just found their hold.