scraping others of the pursuing horde with it. A chorus of rage came up from below him, but Waldo had not even turned his head to learn of his temporary good fortune. Up, ever up he sped, until at length he stood upon the topmost ledge, facing an overhanging wall of blank rock that towered another twenty-five feet above him to the summit of the bluff. Time and again he leaped futilely against the smooth surface, tearing at it with his nails in a mad endeavor to climb still higher. At his right was the low opening to a black cave, but he did not see it—his mind could cope with but the single idea: to clamber from the horrible creatures which pursued him. But finally it was borne in on his half-mad brain that this was the end—he could fly no farther—here, in a moment more, death would overtake him. [Pg 18] [Pg 18] He turned to meet it, and below saw a number of the cave men placing another ladder in lieu of that which had fallen. In a moment they were resuming the ascent after him. On the narrow ledge above them the young man stood, chattering and grinning like a madman. His pitiful cries were now punctuated with the hollow coughing which his violent exercise had induced. Tears rolled down his begrimed face, leaving crooked, muddy streaks in their wake. His knees smote together so violently that he could barely stand, and it was into the face of this apparition of cowardice that the first of the cave men looked as he scrambled above the ledge on which Waldo stood. And then, of a sudden, there rose within the breast of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones a spark that generations of overrefinement and emasculating culture had all but extinguished—the instinct of self-preservation by force. Heretofore it had been purely by flight. With the frenzy of the fear of death upon him, he raised his cudgel, and, swinging it high above his head, brought it down full upon the unprotected skull of his enemy. Another took the fallen man's place—he, too, went down with a broken head. Waldo was fighting now like a cornered rat, and through it all he[Pg 19] chattered and gibbered; but he no longer wept. [Pg 19] At first he was horrified at the bloody havoc he wrought with his crude weapon. His nature revolted at the
Prev.
Back
Top