there arose on either side of her
from out of the bushes that border the path, as though materialized
from thin air, a score of tall, white warriors of the Ho-don. Like a
frightened deer Pan-at-lee cast a single startled look at these
menacers of her freedom and leaped quickly toward the bushes in an
effort to escape; but the warriors were too close at hand. They closed
upon her from every side and then, drawing her knife she turned at bay,
metamorphosed by the fires of fear and hate from a startled deer to a
raging tiger-cat. They did not try to kill her, but only to subdue and
capture her; and so it was that more than a single Ho-don warrior felt
the keen edge of her blade in his flesh before they had succeeded in
overpowering her by numbers. And still she fought and scratched and bit
after they had taken the knife from her until it was necessary to tie
her hands and fasten a piece of wood between her teeth by means of
thongs passed behind her head.

At first she refused to walk when they started off in the direction of
the valley but after two of them had seized her by the hair and dragged
her for a number of yards she thought better of her original decision
and came along with them, though still as defiant as her bound wrists
and gagged mouth would permit.

Near the entrance to Kor-ul-lul they came upon another body of their
warriors with which were several Waz-don prisoners from the tribe of
Kor-ul-lul. It was a raiding party come up from a Ho-don city of the
valley after slaves. This Pan-at-lee knew for the occurrence was by no
means unusual. During her lifetime the tribe to which she belonged had
been sufficiently fortunate, or powerful, to withstand successfully the
majority of such raids made upon them, but yet Pan-at-lee had known of
friends and relatives who had been carried into slavery by the Ho-don
and she knew, too, another thing which gave her hope, as doubtless it
did to each of the other captives--that occasionally the prisoners
escaped from the cities of the hairless whites.

After they had joined the other party the entire band set forth into
the valley and presently, from the conversation of her captors,
Pan-at-lee knew that she was headed for A-lur, the City of Light; while
in the cave of his ancestors, Om-at, chief of the Kor-ul-ja, bemoaned
the loss of both his friend and she that was to have been his mate.

8

A-lur

As the hissing reptile bore down upon the stranger swimming in the o