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"
What other sort of soul, then, would you expect from `a comic little figure
hopping from the cradle to the grave'?" I inquired. "And what difference does it
make, anyway, what you like and what you don't like? You are here for but an
instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously."
She looked up at me with a smile. "I imagine that I am frightened and blue," she
said, "and I know that I am very, very homesick and lonely." There was almost a
sob in her voice as she concluded. It was the first time that she had spoken thus
to me. Involuntarily, I laid my hand upon hers where it rested on the rail.
"I know how difficult your position is," I said; "but don't feel that you are alone.
There is--is one here who--who would do anything in the world for you," I ended
lamely. She did not withdraw her hand, and she looked up into my face with
tears on her cheeks and I read in her eyes the thanks her lips could not voice.
Then she looked away across the weird moonlit landscape and sighed. Evidently
her new-found philosophy had tumbled about her ears, for she was seemingly
taking herself seriously. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how I loved
her, and had taken her hand from the rail and started to draw her toward me
when Olson came blundering up on deck with his bedding.
The following morning we started building operations in earnest, and things
progressed finely. The Neanderthal man was something of a care, for we had to
keep him in irons all the time, and he was mighty savage when approached; but
after a time he became more docile, and then we tried to discover if he had a
language. Lys spent a great deal of time talking to him and trying to draw him
out; but for a long while she was unsuccessful. It took us three weeks to build all
the houses, which we constructed close by a cold spring some two miles from the
harbor.
We changed our plans a trifle when it came to building the palisade, for we found
a rotted cliff near by where we could get all the flat building-stone we needed, and
so we constructed a stone wall entirely around the buildings. It was in the form
of a square, with bastions and towers at each corner which would permit an
enfilading fire along any side of the fort, and was about one hundred and thirty-
five feet square on the outside, with walls three feet thick at the bottom and
about a foot and a half wide at the top, and fifteen feet high. It took a long time
to build that wall, and we all turned in and helped except von Schoenvorts, who,
by the way, had not spoken to me except in the line of official business since our
encounter--a condition of armed neutrality which suited me to a T. We have just
finished it, the last touches being put on today. I quit about a week ago and
commenced working on this chronicle for our strange adventures, which will
account for any minor errors in chronology which may have crept in; there was so
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