ubs, some tipped with rudely shaped stone heads, and
both men and women clothed only in short kittles of skin.

They searched ceaselessly for something, and I guessed that something
was food. Now and then one or the other of the little band tore up a
root and bit at it, and those that did so soon doubled into a twitching
knot of suffering and dropped behind.

At last they came to the edge of the sea. A few yards away the water was
lost in the dense steaming miasma that hemmed them in on all sides.
With glad expressions on their faces, the party ran down to the edge of
the water and gathered up great masses of clams and crabs. At first they
ate the food raw, tearing the flesh from the shells. Then they made what
I understood was a fire, although the girl was able to visualize it only
as a bright red spot that flickered.

The scene faded, and there was only the slowly swirling mist that I
understood indicated the passing of centuries. Then the scene cleared
again.

* * * * *

I saw that same shore line, but the people had vanished. There was only
the thick, steamy mist, the tropic jungle crowding down to the shore,
and the waves rolling in monotonously from the waste of gray ocean
beyond the curtain of fog.

Suddenly, from out of the sea, appeared a series of human heads, and
then a band of men and women that waded ashore and seated themselves
upon the beach, gazing restlessly out across the sea.

This was not the same band I had seen at first. These were a slimmer
race, and whereas the first band had been exceedingly swarthy, these
were very fair.

They did not stay long on shore, for they were restless and ill at ease.
It seemed to me they came there only from force of habit, as though they
obeyed some inner urge they did not understand. In a few seconds they
rose and ran into the water, plunged into it as though they welcomed its
embrace, and disappeared. Then again the vision was swallowed up by the
swirling mists of time.

* * * * *

When the scene cleared again, it showed the bottom of the sea. A group
of perhaps a hundred pale creatures moved along the dim floor of the
ocean. Ahead I could see the dim outlines of one of their strange
cities. The band approached, seemed to talk with those there, and moved
on.

I saw them capture and kill fish for food, saw them carve the thick,
spongy hearts from certain giant growths and eat them. I saw a p