tle to come and claim
his reward; but though we sat for a long time with our eyes glued to
the opening, we saw no sign of any beast.

At last I signed to Ajor to lie down, for I knew that she must have
sleep, and I sat on guard until nearly morning, when the girl awoke and
insisted that I take some rest; nor would she be denied, but dragged me
down as she laughingly menaced me with her knife.

Chapter 3

When I awoke, it was daylight, and I found Ajor squatting before a fine
bed of coals roasting a large piece of antelope-meat. Believe me, the
sight of the new day and the delicious odor of the cooking meat filled
me with renewed happiness and hope that had been all but expunged by
the experience of the previous night; and perhaps the slender figure of
the bright-faced girl proved also a potent restorative. She looked up
and smiled at me, showing those perfect teeth, and dimpling with
evident happiness--the most adorable picture that I had ever seen. I
recall that it was then I first regretted that she was only a little
untutored savage and so far beneath me in the scale of evolution.

Her first act was to beckon me to follow her outside, and there she
pointed to the explanation of our rescue from the bear--a huge
saber-tooth tiger, its fine coat and its flesh torn to ribbons, lying
dead a few paces from our cave, and beside it, equally mangled, and
disemboweled, was the carcass of a huge cave-bear. To have had one's
life saved by a saber-tooth tiger, and in the twentieth century into
the bargain, was an experience that was to say the least unique; but it
had happened--I had the proof of it before my eyes.

So enormous are the great carnivora of Caspak that they must feed
perpetually to support their giant thews, and the result is that they
will eat the meat of any other creature and will attack anything that
comes within their ken, no matter how formidable the quarry. From
later observation--I mention this as worthy the attention of
paleontologists and naturalists--I came to the conclusion that such
creatures as the cave-bear, the cave-lion and the saber-tooth tiger, as
well as the larger carnivorous reptiles make, ordinarily, two kills a
day--one in the morning and one after night. They immediately devour
the entire carcass, after which they lie up and sleep for a few hours.
Fortunately their numbers are comparatively few; otherwise there would
be no other life within Caspak. It is their very voracity t