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Closely I examined the ghastly remains fearful each instant that I should find the
dainty skull that would shatter my happiness for life; but though I searched
diligently, picking up every one of the twenty-odd skulls, I found none that was
the skull of a creature but slightly removed from the ape. Hope, then, still lived.
For another three days I searched north and south, east and west for the
hatchetmen of Caspak; but never a trace of them did I find. It was raining most
of the time now, and the weather was as near cold as it ever seems to get on
Caprona.
At last I gave up the search and set off toward Fort Dinosaur. For a week--a week
filled with the terrors and dangers of a primeval world--I pushed on in the
direction I thought was south. The sun never shone; the rain scarcely ever ceased
falling. The beasts I met with were fewer in number but infinitely more terrible in
temper; yet I lived on until there came to me the realization that I was hopelessly
lost, that a year of sunshine would not again give me my bearings; and while I
was cast down by this terrifying knowledge, the knowledge that I never again
could find Lys, I stumbled upon another grave--the grave of William James, with
its little crude headstone and its scrawled characters recording that he had died
upon the 13th of September--killed by a saber-tooth tiger.
I think that I almost gave up |