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was Dian facing me and peering at me through the dense gloom.
"You are not Juag!" she exclaimed. "Who are you?"
I took a step toward her, my arms outstretched.
"It is I, Dian," I said. "It is David."
At the sound of my voice she gave a little cry in which tears were
mingled--a pathetic little cry that told me all without words how
far hope had gone from her--and then she ran forward and threw
herself in my arms. I covered her perfect lips and her beautiful
face with kisses, and stroked her thick black hair, and told
her again and again what she already knew--what she had known for
years--that I loved her better than all else which two worlds had
to offer. We couldn't devote much time, though, to the happiness
of love-making, for we were in the midst of enemies who might
discover us at any moment.
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I drew her into the adjoining cave. Thence we made our way to the
mouth of the cave that had given me entrance to the cliff. Here I
reconnoitered for a mo-ment, and seeing the coast clear, ran swiftly
forth with Dian at my side. We dodged around the cliff-end, then
paused for an instant, listening. No sound reached our ears to
indicate that any had seen us, and we moved cautiously onward along
the way by which I had come.
As we went Dian told me that her captors had in-formed her how
close
I had come in search of her--even to the Land of Awful Shadow--and
how one of Hooja's men who knew me had discovered me asleep and
robbed me of all my possessions. And then how Hooja had sent four
others to find me and take me prisoner. But these men, she said,
had not yet re-turned, or at least she had not heard of their
return.
"Nor will you ever," I responded, "for they have gone to that place
whence none ever returns." I then related my adventure with these
four.
We had come almost to the cliff-edge where Juag should be awaiting
us when we saw two men walking rapidly toward the same spot from
another direction. They did not see us, nor did they see Juag,
whom I now discovered hiding behind a low bush close to the verge
of the precipice which drops into the sea at this point. As quickly
as possible, without exposing our-selves too much to the enemy, we
hastened forward that we might reach Juag as quickly as they.
But they noticed him first and immediately charged him, for one
of them had been his guard, and they had both been sent to search
for him, his escape having been discovered between the time he
left the cave and the time when I reached it. Evidently they had
wasted precious moments looking for him in other portions of the
mesa.
When I saw that the two of them were rushing him, I called out to
attract their attention to the fact that they had more than a single
man to cope with. They paused at the sound of my voice and looked
about.
When they discovered Dian and me they exchanged a few words, and
one
of them continued toward Juag while the other turned upon us. As
he came nearer I saw that he carried in his hand one of my six-
shooters,
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but he was holding it by the barrel, evidently mistaking it for
some sort of warclub or tomahawk.
I could scarce refrain a grin when I thought of the wasted
possibilities of that deadly revolver in the hands of an untutored
warrior of the stone age. Had he but reversed it and pulled the
trigger he might still be alive; maybe he is for all I know, since
I did not kill him then. When he was about twenty feet from me
I flung my javelin with a quick movement that I had learned from
Ghak. He ducked to avoid it, and instead of receiving it in his
heart, for which it was intended, he got it on the side of the
head.
Down he went all in a heap. Then I glanced toward Juag. He was
having a most exciting time. The fellow pitted against Juag was a
veritable giant; he was hack-ing and hewing away at the poor slave
with a villainous-looking knife that might have been designed for
butch-ering mastodons. Step by step, he was forcing Juag back
toward the edge of the cliff with a fiendish cunning that permitted
his adversary no chance to side-step the terrible consequences of
retreat in this direction. I saw quickly that in another moment
Juag must de-liberately hurl himself to death over the precipice
or be pushed over by his foeman.
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