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.

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