not always avoid Nagoola. Nagoola was a part of Waldo's great plan, but Waldo was not ready for him yet. The young man still bore his cudgel, and in addition he had practised throwing rocks until he could almost have hit a nearby bird upon the wing. Besides these weapons Waldo was working upon a spear. It had occurred to him that a spear would be a mighty handy weapon against either man or beast, and so he had set to work to fashion one. He found a very straight young sapling, a little over an inch in diameter and ten feet long. By[Pg 63] means of a piece of edged flint he succeeded in tapering it to a sharp point. A rawhide thong, plaited from many pieces of small bits of hide taken from the little animals that had fallen before his missiles, served to sling the crude weapon across his shoulders when he walked. [Pg 63] With his spear he practised hour upon hour each day, until he could transfix a fruit the size of an apple three times out of five, at a distance of fifty feet, and at a hundred hit a target the size of a man almost without a miss. Six months had passed since he had fled from an encounter with Flatfoot and Korth. Then Waldo had been a skinny, cowardly weakling; now his great frame had filled out with healthy flesh, while beneath his skin hard muscles rolled as he bent to one of the many Herculean tasks he had set for himself. For six months he had worked with a single purpose in view, but still he felt that the day was not yet come when he might safely venture to put his new-found manhood to the test. Down, far down, in the depth of his soul he feared that he was yet a coward at heart—and he dared not take the risk. It was too much to expect, he told himself, that a man should be entirely metamorphosed in a brief half year. He would wait a little longer. [Pg 64] [Pg 64] It was about this time that Waldo first saw a human being after his last sight of Nadara. It was while he was on his way to the ocean, on one of the trips that had by this time become thrice weekly affairs, that he suddenly came face to face with a skulking, hairy brute.
Prev.
Back
Top