ations of pursuit and so he rose to his feet and
continued upon his way a sorry sight--covered with filth and blood, his
beard and hair tangled and matted and filled with burrs and dried mud
and unspeakable filth. He kept no track of time. He ate fruits and
berries and tubers that he dug from the earth with his fingers. He
followed the shore of the lake and the river that he might be near
water, and when ja roared or moaned he climbed a tree and hid there,
shivering.

And so after a time he came up the southern shore of Jad-ben-lul until
a wide river stopped his progress. Across the blue water a white city
glimmered in the sun. He looked at it for a long time, blinking his
eyes like an owl. Slowly a recollection forced itself through his
tangled brain. This was A-lur, the City of Light. The association of
ideas recalled Bu-lur and the Waz-ho-don. They had called him
Jad-ben-Otho. He commenced to laugh aloud and stood up very straight
and strode back and forth along the shore. "I am Jad-ben-Otho," he
cried, "I am the Great God. In A-lur is my temple and my high priests.
What is Jad-ben-Otho doing here alone in the jungle?"

He stepped out into the water and raising his voice shrieked loudly
across toward A-lur. "I am Jad-ben-Otho!" he screamed. "Come hither
slaves and take your god to his temple." But the distance was great and
they did not hear him and no one came, and the feeble mind was
distracted by other things--a bird flying in the air, a school of
minnows swimming around his feet. He lunged at them trying to catch
them, and falling upon his hands and knees he crawled through the water
grasping futilely at the elusive fish.

Presently it occurred to him that he was a sea lion and he forgot the
fish and lay down and tried to swim by wriggling his feet in the water
as though they were a tail. The hardships, the privations, the terrors,
and for the past few weeks the lack of proper nourishment had reduced
Erich Obergatz to little more than a gibbering idiot.

A water snake swam out upon the surface of the lake and the man pursued
it, crawling upon his hands and knees. The snake swam toward the shore
just within the mouth of the river where tall reeds grew thickly and
Obergatz followed, making grunting noises like a pig. He lost the snake
within the reeds but he came upon something else--a canoe hidden there
close to the bank. He examined it with cackling laughter. There were
two paddles within it which he took an