I had built a little shelter of rocks and brush where Imight crawl in and sleep out of the perpetual light andheat of the noonday sun. When I was tired or hungry Iretired to my humble cot.

My masters never interposed the slightest objection. As a matter of fact, they were very good to me, nor didI see aught while I was among them to indicate thatthey are ever else than a simple, kindly folk when left tothemselves. Their awe-inspiring size, terrific strength,mighty fighting-fangs, and hideous appearance are butthe attributes necessary to the successful waging of theirconstant battle for survival, and well do they employthem when the need arises. The only flesh they eat isthat of herbivorous animals and birds. When they huntthe mighty thag, the prehistoric bos of the outer crust, asingle male, with his fiber rope, will catch and kill thegreatest of the bulls.

Well, as I was about to say, I had this little shelter atthe edge of my melon-patch. Here I was resting frommy labors on a certain occasion when I heard a greathub-bub in the village, which lay about a quarter of amile away.

Presently a male came racing toward the field, shouting excitedly. As he approached I came from my shelterto learn what all the commotion might be about, for themonotony of my existence in the melon-patch must havefostered that trait of my curiosity from which it hadalways been my secret boast I am peculiarly free.

The other workers also ran forward to meet the messenger, who quickly unburdened himself of his information, and as quickly turned and scampered back towardthe village. When running these beast-men often goupon all fours. Thus they leap over obstacles thatwould slow up a human being, and upon the level attaina speed that would make a thoroughbred look to hislaurels. The result in this instance was that before Ihad more than assimilated the gist of the word whichhad been brought to the fields, I was alone, watchingmy co-workers speeding villageward.

I was alone! It was the first time since my capturethat no beast-man had been within sight of me. I wasalone! And all my captors were in the village at the opposite edge of the mesa repelling an attack of Hooja'shorde!

It seemed from the messenger's tale that two ofGr-gr-gr's great males had been set upon by a half-dozenof Hooja's cutthroats while the former were peaceablyreturning from the thag hunt. The two had returned tothe village unscratched, while but a single one ofHooja's half-dozen had escaped to report the outcomeof the battle to their leader. Now Hooja was coming topunish Gr-gr-gr's people. With his large force, armedwith the bows and arrows that Hooja had learned fromme to make, with long lances and sharp knives, Ifeared that even the mighty strength of the beastmencould avail them but little.

At last had come the opportunity for which I waited!I was free to make for the far end of the mesa, find myway to the valley below, and while the two forces wereengaged in their struggle, continue my search forHooja's village, which I had learned from the beast-menlay farther on down the river that I had been followingwhen taken prisoner.

As I turned to make for the mesa's rim the sounds ofbattle came plainly to my ears--the hoarse shouts ofmen mingled with the half-beastly roars and growls ofthe brute-folk.

Did I take advantage of my opportunity?

I did not. Instead, lured by the din of strife and by thedesire to deliver a stroke, however feeble, against hatedHooja, I wheeled and ran directly toward the village.

When I reached the edge of the plateau such a scenemet my astonished gaze as never before had startled it,for the unique battle-methods of the half-brutes wererather the most remarkable I had ever witnessed. Alongthe very edge of the cliff-top stood a thin line of mightymales--the best rope-throwers of the tribe. A few feetbehind these the rest of the males, with the exceptionof about twenty, formed a second line. Still farther inthe rear all the women and young children were clustered into a single group under the protection of the remaining twenty fighting males and all the old males.

But it was the work of the first two lines that interested me. The forces of Hooja--a great horde ofsavage Sagoths and primeval cave men--were working their way up the steep cliff-face, their agility butslightly less than that of my captors who had clamberedso nimbly aloft--even he who was burdened by myweight.

As the attackers came on they paused occasionallywherever a projection gave them sufficient foothold andlaunched arrows and spears at the defenders abovethem. During the entire battle both sides hurled tauntsand insults at one another--the human beings naturallyexcelling the brutes in the coarseness and vileness oftheir vilification and invective.

The "firing-line" of the brute-men wielded no weaponother than their long fiber nooses. When a foeman camewithin range of them a noose would settle unerringlyabout him and be would be dragged, fighting and yelling, to the cliff-top, unless, as occasionally occurred, hewas quick enough to draw his knife and cut the ropeabove him, in which event he usually plunged downward to a no less certain death than that which awaitedhim above.

Those who were hauled up within reach of the powerful clutches of the defenders had the nooses snatchedfrom them and were catapulted back through the firstline to the second, where they were seized and killedby the simple expedient of a single powerful closingof mighty fangs upon the backs of their necks.

But the arrows of the invaders were taking a muchheavier toll than the nooses of the defenders and I foresaw that it was but a matter of time before Hooja'sforces must conquer unless the brute-men changedtheir tactics, or the cave men tired of the battle.

Gr-gr-gr was standing in the center of the first line. All about him were boulders and large fragments ofbroken rock. I approached him and without a wordtoppled a large mass of rock over the edge of thecliff. It fell directly upon the head of an archer, crushing him to instant death and carrying his mangledcorpse with it to the bottom of the declivity, and on itsway brushing three more of the attackers into the hereafter.

Gr-gr-gr turned toward me in surprise. For an instant he appeared to doubt the sincerity of my motives. I felt that perhaps my time had come when he reachedfor me with one of his giant paws; but I dodged him,and running a few paces to the right hurled downanother missile. It, too, did its allotted work of destruction. Then I picked up smaller fragments and with allthe control and accuracy for which I had earned justlydeserved fame in my collegiate days I rained down a hailof death upon those beneath me.

Gr-gr-gr was coming toward me again. I pointed tothe litter of rubble upon the cliff-top.

"Hurl these down upon the enemy!" I cried to him. "Tell your warriors to throw rocks down upon them!"

At my words the others of the first line, who had beeninterested spectators of my tactics, seized upon greatboulders or bits of rock, whichever came first to theirhands, and, without, waiting for a command from Gr-gr-gr, deluged the terrified cave men with a perfectavalanche of stone. In less than no time the cliff-facewas stripped of enemies and the village of Gr-gr-gr wassaved.

Gr-gr-gr was standing beside me when the last of thecave men disappeared in rapid flight down the valley. He was looking at me intently.

"Those were your people," he said. "Why did you killthem?"

"They were not my people," I returned. "I have toldyou that before, but you would not believe me. Will youbelieve me now when I tell you that I hate Hooja and histribe as much as you do? Will you believe me when Itell you that I wish to be the friend of Gr-gr-gr?"

For some time he stood there beside me, scratchinghis head. Evidently it was no less difficult for him toreadjust his preconceived conclusions than it is for mosthuman beings; but finally the idea percolated--which itmight never have done had he been a man, or I mightqualify that statement by saying had he been somemen. Finally he spoke.

"Gilak," he said, "you have made Gr-gr-gr ashamed. He would have killed you. How can he reward you?"

"Set me free," I replied quickly.

"You are free," he said. "You may go down when youwish, or you may stay with us. If you go you may alwaysreturn. We are your friends."

Naturally, I elected to go. I explained all over againto Gr-gr-gr the nature of my mission. He listened attentively; after I had done he offered to send some of hispeople with me to guide me to Hooja's village. I was notslow in accepting his offer.

First, however, we must eat. The hunters upon whomHooja's men had fallen had brought back the meat of agreat thag. There would be a feast to commemorate thevictory--a feast and dancing.

I had never witnessed a tribal function of the brutefolk, though I had often heard strange sounds comingfrom the village, where I had not been allowed sincemy capture. Now I took part in one of their orgies.

It will live forever in my memory. The combinationof bestiality and humanity was oftentimes pathetic,and again grotesque or horrible. Beneath the glaringnoonday sun, in the sweltering heat of the mesa-top,the huge, hairy creatures leaped in a great circle. They coiled and threw their fiber-ropes; they hurledtaunts and insults at an imaginary foe; they fell uponthe carcass of the thag and literally tore it to pieces; andthey ceased only when, gorged, they could no longermove.

I had to wait until the processes of digestion had released my escort from its torpor. Some had eaten untiltheir abdomens were so distended that I thought theymust burst, for beside the thag there had been fully ahundred antelopes of various sizes and varied degreesof decomposition, which they had unearthed from burial beneath the floors of their lairs to grace the banquetboard.

But at last we were started--six great males andmyself. Gr-gr-gr had returned my weapons to me, andat last I was once more upon my oft-interrupted waytoward my goal. Whether I should find Dian at the endof my journey or no I could not even surmise; but Iwas none the less impatient to be off, for if only theworst lay in store for me I wished to know even theworst at once.

I could scarce believe that my proud mate would stillbe alive in the power of Hooja; but time upon Pellucidaris so strange a thing that I realized that to her or to himonly a few minutes might have elapsed since his subtletrickery had enabled him to steal her away from Phutra. Or she might have found the means either to repel hisadvances or escape him.

As we descended the cliff we disturbed a great packof large hyena-like beasts--hyaena spelaeus, Perry callsthem--who were busy among the corpses of the cavemen fallen in battle. The ugly creatures were far fromthe cowardly things that our own hyenas are reputedto be; they stood their ground with bared fangs as weapproached them. But, as I was later to learn, so formidable are the brute-folk that there are few even ofthe larger carnivora that will not make way for themwhen they go abroad. So the hyenas moved a littlefrom our line of march, closing in again upon their feastswhen we had passed.

We made our way steadily down the rim of the beautiful river which flows the length of the island, comingat last to a wood rather denser than any that I had before encountered in this country. Well within this forestmy escort halted.

"There!" they said, and pointed ahead. "We are to gono farther."

Thus having guided me to my destination they leftme. Ahead of me, through the trees, I could see whatappeared to be the foot of a steep hill. Toward this Imade my way. The forest ran to the very base of a cliff,in the face of which were the mouths of many caves. They appeared untenanted; but I decided to watch for awhile before venturing farther. A large tree, denselyfoliaged, offered a splendid vantage-point from which tospy upon the cliff, so I clambered among its brancheswhere, securely hidden, I could watch what transpiredabout the caves.

It seemed that I had scarcely settled myself in acomfortable position before a party of cave menemerged from one of the smaller apertures in the cliff-face, about fifty feet from the base. They descendedinto the forest and disappeared. Soon after came several others from the same cave, and after them, at ashort interval, a score of women and children, who cameinto the wood to gather fruit. There were several warriors with them--a guard, I presume.

After this came other parties, and two or threegroups who passed out of the forest and up the cliff-faceto enter the same cave. I could not understand it. Allwho came out had emerged from the same cave. Allwho returned reentered it. No other cave gave evidenceof habitation, and no cave but one of extraordinarysize could have accommodated all the people whom Ihad seen pass in and out of its mouth.

For a long time I sat and watched the coming andgoing of great numbers of the cave-folk. Not once didone leave the cliff by any other opening save that fromwhich I had seen the first party come, nor did anyre-enter the cliff through another aperture.

What a cave it must be, I thought, that houses an entire tribe! But dissatisfied of the truth of my surmise, Iclimbed higher among the branches of the tree that Imight get a better view of other portions of the cliff. High above the ground I reached a point whence Icould see the summit of the hill. Evidently it was a flat-topped butte similar to that on which dwelt the tribeof Gr-gr-gr.

As I sat gazing at it a figure appeared at the veryedge. It was that of a young girl in whose hair was agorgeous bloom plucked from some flowering tree ofthe forest. I had seen her pass beneath me but a shortwhile before and enter the small cave that hadswallowed all of the returning tribesmen.

The mystery was solved. The cave was but the mouthof a passage that led upward through the cliff to thesummit of the hill. It served merely as an avenue fromtheir lofty citadel to the valley below.

No sooner had the truth flashed upon me than therealization came that I must seek some other means ofreaching the village, for to pass unobserved through thiswell-traveled thoroughfare would be impossible. At themoment there was no one in sight below me, so I slidquickly from my arboreal watch-tower to the groundand moved rapidly away to the right with the intentionof circling the hill if necessary until I had found an unwatched spot where I might have some slight chance ofscaling the heights and reaching the top unseen.

I kept close to the edge of the forest, in the very midstof which the hill seemed to rise. Though I carefullyscanned the cliff as I traversed its base, I saw no sign ofany other entrance than that to which my guides hadled me.

After some little time the roar of the sea broke uponmy ears. Shortly after I came upon the broad oceanwhich breaks at this point at the very foot of the greathill where Hooja had found safe refuge for himself andhis villains.

I was just about to clamber along the jagged rockswhich lie at the base of the cliff next to the sea, insearch of some foothold to the top, when I chanced tosee a canoe rounding the end of the island. I threw myself down behind a large boulder where I could watchthe dugout and its occupants without myself being seen.

They paddled toward me for a while and then, abouta hundred yards from me, they turned straight intoward the foot of the frowning cliffs. From where I wasit seemed that they were bent upon self-destruction,since the roar of the breakers beating upon the perpendicular rock-face appeared to offer only death to any onewho might venture within their relentless clutch.

A mass of rock would soon hide them from my view;but so keen was the excitement of the instant that Icould not refrain from crawling forward to a pointwhence I could watch the dashing of the small craft topieces on the jagged rocks that loomed before her, although I risked discovery from above to accomplish mydesign.

When I had reached a point where I could againsee the dugout, I was just in time to see it glide unharmed between two needle-pointed sentinels of graniteand float quietly upon the unruffled bosom of a tinycove.

Again I crouched behind a boulder to observe whatwould next transpire; nor did I have long to wait. The dugout, which contained but two men, was drawnclose to the rocky wall. A fiber rope, one end of whichwas tied to the boat, was made fast about a projection ofthe cliff face.

Then the two men commenced the ascent of thealmost perpendicular wall toward the summit severalhundred feet above. I looked on in amazement, for,splendid climbers though the cave men of Pellucidarare, I never before had seen so remarkable a feat performed. Upwardly they moved without a pause, to disappear at last over the summit.

When I felt reasonably sure that they had gone fora while at least I crawled from my hiding-place andat the risk of a broken neck leaped and scrambled to thespot where their canoe was moored.

If they had scaled that cliff I could, and if I couldn'tI should die in the attempt.

But when I turned to the accomplishment of the taskI found it easier than I had imagined it would be, sinceI immediately discovered that shallow hand and footholds had been scooped in the cliff's rocky face, forminga crude ladder from the base to the summit.

At last I reached the top, and very glad I was, too. Cautiously I raised my head until my eyes were abovethe cliff-crest. Before me spread a rough mesa, liberallysprinkled with large boulders. There was no village insight nor any living creature.

I drew myself to level ground and stood erect. A fewtrees grew among the boulders. Very carefully I advanced from tree to tree and boulder to boulder towardthe inland end of the mesa. I stopped often to listenand look cautiously about me in every direction.

How I wished that I had my revolvers and rifle! Iwould not have to worm my way like a scared cattoward Hooja's village, nor did I relish doing so now; butDian's life might hinge upon the success of my venture,and so I could not afford to take chances. To have metsuddenly with discovery and had a score or more ofarmed warriors upon me might have been very grandand heroic; but it would have immediately put an endto all my earthly activities, nor have accomplishedaught in the service of Dian.

Well, I must have traveled nearly a mile across thatmesa without seeing a sign of anyone, when all of a sudden, as I crept around the edge of a boulder, I ranplump into a man, down on all fours like myself, crawling toward me.