Chapter 10

Once a day I descend to the base of the cliff and hunt, and fill my stomach

with water from a clear cold spring. I have three gourds which I fill with

water and take back to my cave against the long nights. I have fashioned a

spear and a bow and arrow, that I may conserve my ammunition, which is running

low. My clothes are worn to shreds. Tomorrow I shall discard them for

leopard-skins which I have tanned and sewn into a garment strong and warm. It

is cold up here. I have a fire burning and I sit bent over it while I write;

but I am safe here. No other living creature ventures to the chill summit of

the barrier cliffs. I am safe, and I am alone with my sorrows and my remembered

joys—but without hope. It is said that hope springs eternal in the human

breast; but there is none in mine.

I am about done. Presently I shall fold these pages and push them into my

thermos bottle. I shall cork it and screw the cap tight, and then I shall hurl

it as far out into the sea as my strength will permit. The wind is off-shore;

the tide is running out; perhaps it will be carried into one of those numerous

ocean-currents which sweep perpetually from pole to pole and from continent to

continent, to be deposited at last upon some inhabited shore. If fate is kind

and this does happen, then, _for God’s sake, come and get me!_

It was a week ago that I wrote the preceding paragraph, which I thought would

end the written record of my life upon Caprona. I had paused to put a new point

on my quill and stir the crude ink (which I made by crushing a black variety of

berry and mixing it with water) before attaching my signature, when faintly

from the valley far below came an unmistakable sound which brought me to my

feet, trembling with excitement, to peer eagerly downward from my dizzy ledge.

How full of meaning that sound was to me you may guess when I tell you that it

was the report of a firearm! For a moment my gaze traversed the landscape

beneath until it was caught and held by four figures near the base of the

cliff—a human figure held at bay by three hyaenodons, those ferocious and

blood-thirsty wild dogs of the Eocene. A fourth beast lay dead or dying near

by.

I couldn’t be sure, looking down from above as I was; but yet I trembled like a

leaf in the intuitive belief that it was Lys, and my judgment served to confirm

my wild desire, for whoever it was carried only a pistol, and thus had Lys been

armed. The first wave of sudden joy which surged through me was short-lived in

the face of the swift-following conviction that the one who fought below was

already doomed. Luck and only luck it must have been which had permitted that

first shot to lay low one of the savage creatures, for even such a heavy weapon

as my pistol is entirely inadequate against even the lesser carnivora of

Caspak. In a moment the three would charge! A futile shot would but tend more

greatly to enrage the one it chanced to hit; and then the three would drag down

the little human figure and tear it to pieces.

And maybe it was Lys! My heart stood still at the thought, but mind and muscle

responded to the quick decision I was forced to make. There was but a single

hope—a single chance—and I took it. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and took

careful aim. It was a long shot, a dangerous shot, for unless one is accustomed

to it, shooting from a considerable altitude is most deceptive work. There is,

though, something about marksmanship which is quite beyond all scientific laws.

Upon no other theory can I explain my marksmanship of that moment. Three times

my rifle spoke—three quick, short syllables of death. I did not take conscious

aim; and yet at each report a beast crumpled in its tracks!

From my ledge to the base of the cliff is a matter of several thousand feet of

dangerous climbing; yet I venture to say that the first ape from whose loins my

line has descended never could have equaled the speed with which I literally

dropped down the face of that rugged escarpment. The last two hundred feet is

over a steep incline of loose rubble to the valley bottom, and I had just

reached the top of this when there arose to my ears an agonized cry—“Bowen!

Bowen! Quick, my love, quick!”

I had been too much occupied with the dangers of the descent to glance down

toward the valley; but that cry which told me that it was indeed Lys, and that

she was again in danger, brought my eyes quickly upon her in time to see a

hairy, burly brute seize her and start off at a run toward the near-by wood.

From rock to rock, chamoislike, I leaped downward toward the valley, in pursuit

of Lys and her hideous abductor.

He was heavier than I by many pounds, and so weighted by the burden he carried

that I easily overtook him; and at last he turned, snarling, to face me. It was

Kho of the tribe of Tsa, the hatchet-men. He recognized me, and with a low

growl he threw Lys aside and came for me. “The she is mine,” he cried. “I kill!

I kill!”

I had had to discard my rifle before I commenced the rapid descent of the

cliff, so that now I was armed only with a hunting knife, and this I whipped

from its scabbard as Kho leaped toward me. He was a mighty beast, mightily

muscled, and the urge that has made males fight since the dawn of life on earth

filled him with the blood-lust and the thirst to slay; but not one whit less

did it fill me with the same primal passions. Two abysmal beasts sprang at each

other’s throats that day beneath the shadow of earth’s oldest cliffs—the man of

now and the man-thing of the earliest, forgotten then, imbued by the same

deathless passion that has come down unchanged through all the epochs, periods

and eras of time from the beginning, and which shall continue to the

incalculable end—woman, the imperishable Alpha and Omega of life.

Kho closed and sought my jugular with his teeth. He seemed to forget the

hatchet dangling by its aurochs-hide thong at his hip, as I forgot, for the

moment, the dagger in my hand. And I doubt not but that Kho would easily have

bested me in an encounter of that sort had not Lys’ voice awakened within my

momentarily reverted brain the skill and cunning of reasoning man.

“Bowen!” she cried. “Your knife! Your knife!”

It was enough. It recalled me from the forgotten eon to which my brain had

flown and left me once again a modern man battling with a clumsy, unskilled

brute. No longer did my jaws snap at the hairy throat before me; but instead my

knife sought and found a space between two ribs over the savage heart. Kho

voiced a single horrid scream, stiffened spasmodically and sank to the earth.

And Lys threw herself into my arms. All the fears and sorrows of the past were

wiped away, and once again I was the happiest of men.

With some misgivings I shortly afterward cast my eyes upward toward the

precarious ledge which ran before my cave, for it seemed to me quite beyond all

reason to expect a dainty modern belle to essay the perils of that frightful

climb. I asked her if she thought she could brave the ascent, and she laughed

gayly in my face.

“Watch!” she cried, and ran eagerly toward the base of the cliff. Like a

squirrel she clambered swiftly aloft, so that I was forced to exert myself to

keep pace with her. At first she frightened me; but presently I was aware that

she was quite as safe here as was I. When we finally came to my ledge and I

again held her in my arms, she recalled to my mind that for several weeks she

had been living the life of a cave-girl with the tribe of hatchet-men. They had

been driven from their former caves by another tribe which had slain many and

carried off quite half the females, and the new cliffs to which they had flown

had proven far higher and more precipitous, so that she had become, through

necessity, a most practiced climber.

She told me of Kho’s desire for her, since all his females had been stolen and

of how her life had been a constant nightmare of terror as she sought by night

and by day to elude the great brute. For a time Nobs had been all the

protection she required; but one day he disappeared—nor has she seen him since.

She believes that he was deliberately made away with; and so do I, for we both

are sure that he never would have deserted her. With her means of protection

gone, Lys was now at the mercy of the hatchet-man; nor was it many hours before

he had caught her at the base of the cliff and seized her; but as he bore her

triumphantly aloft toward his cave, she had managed to break loose and escape

him.

“For three days he has pursued me,” she said, “through this horrible world. How

I have passed through in safety I cannot guess, nor how I have always managed

to outdistance him; yet I have done it, until just as you discovered me. Fate

was kind to us, Bowen.”

I nodded my head in assent and crushed her to me. And then we talked and

planned as I cooked antelope-steaks over my fire, and we came to the conclusion

that there was no hope of rescue, that she and I were doomed to live and die

upon Caprona. Well, it might be worse! I would rather live here always with Lys

than to live elsewhere without her; and she, dear girl, says the same of me;

but I am afraid of this life for her. It is a hard, fierce, dangerous life, and

I shall pray always that we shall be rescued from it—for her sake.

That night the clouds broke, and the moon shone down upon our little ledge; and

there, hand in hand, we turned our faces toward heaven and plighted our troth

beneath the eyes of God. No human agency could have married us more sacredly

than we are wed. We are man and wife, and we are content. If God wills it, we

shall live out our lives here. If He wills otherwise, then this manuscript

which I shall now consign to the inscrutable forces of the sea shall fall into

friendly hands. However, we are each without hope. And so we say good-bye in

this, our last message to the world beyond the barrier cliffs.

(_Signed_) BOWEN J. TYLER, JR.

LYS LA R. TYLER.