"She-jato!" he
cried. "I will tame you! I will break you! Es-sat, the chief, takes
what he will and who dares question his right, or combat his least
purpose, will first serve that purpose and then be broken as I break
this," and he picked a stone platter from the table and broke it in his
powerful hands. "You might have been first and most favored in the cave
of the ancestors of Es-sat; but now shall you be last and least and
when I am done with you you shall belong to all of the men of Es-sat's
cave. Thus for those who spurn the love of their chief!"

He advanced quickly to seize her and as he laid a rough hand upon her
she struck him heavily upon the side of his head with her golden
breastplates. Without a sound Es-sat, the chief, sank to the floor of
the apartment. For a moment Pan-at-lee bent over him, her improvised
weapon raised to strike again should he show signs of returning
consciousness, her glossy breasts rising and falling with her quickened
breathing. Suddenly she stooped and removed Es-sat's knife with its
scabbard and shoulder belt. Slipping it over her own shoulder she
quickly adjusted her breastplates and keeping a watchful glance upon
the figure of the fallen chief, backed from the room.

In a niche in the outer room, just beside the doorway leading to the
balcony, were neatly piled a number of rounded pegs from eighteen to
twenty inches in length. Selecting five of these she made them into a
little bundle about which she twined the lower extremity of her sinuous
tail and thus carrying them made her way to the outer edge of the
balcony. Assuring herself that there was none about to see, or hinder
her, she took quickly to the pegs already set in the face of the cliff
and with the celerity of a monkey clambered swiftly aloft to the
highest row of pegs which she followed in the direction of the lower
end of the gorge for a matter of some hundred yards. Here, above her
head, were a series of small round holes placed one above another in
three parallel rows. Clinging only with her toes she removed two of the
pegs from the bundle carried in her tail and taking one in either hand
she inserted them in two opposite holes of the outer rows as far above
her as she could reach. Hanging by these new holds she now took one of
the three remaining pegs in each of her feet, leaving the fifth grasped
securely in her tail. Reaching above her with this member she inserted
the fifth peg in one of the holes of the cente