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Chapter 10
Once a day I descend to the base of the cliff and hunt, and fill my stomach with
water from a clear cold spring. I have three gourds which I fill with water and
take back to my cave against the long nights. I have fashioned a spear and a bow
and arrow, that I may conserve my ammunition, which is running low. My
clothes are worn to shreds. Tomorrow I shall discard them for leopard-skins
which I have tanned and sewn into a garment strong and warm. It is cold up
here. I have a fire burning and I sit bent over it while I write; but I am safe here.
No other living creature ventures to the chill summit of the barrier cliffs. I am
safe, and I am alone with my sorrows and my remembered joys--but without
hope. It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast; but there is none
in mine.
I am about done. Presently I shall fold these pages and push them into my
thermos bottle. I shall cork it and screw the cap tight, and then I shall hurl it as
far out into the sea as my strength will permit. The wind is off-shore; the tide is
running out; perhaps it will be carried into one of those numerous ocean-currents
which sweep perpetually from pole to pole and from continent to continent, to be
deposited at last upon some inhabited shore. If fate is kind and this does
happen, then, for God's sake, come and get me!
It was a week ago that I wrote the preceding paragraph, which I thought would
end the written record of my life upon Caprona. I had paused to put a new point
on my quill and stir the crude ink (which I made by crushing a black variety of
berry and mixing it with water) before attaching my signature, when faintly from
the valley far below came an unmistakable sound which brought me to my feet,
trembling with excitement, to peer eagerly downward from my dizzy ledge. How
full of meaning that sound was to me you may guess when I tell you that it was
the report of a firearm! For a moment my gaze traversed the landscape beneath
until it was caught and held by four figures near the base of the cliff--a human
figure held at bay by three hyaenodons, those ferocious and blood-thirsty wild
dogs of the Eocene. A fourth beast lay dead or dying near by.
I couldn't be sure, looking down from above as I was; but yet I trembled like a leaf
in the intuitive belief that it was Lys, and my judgment served to confirm my wild
desire, for whoever it was carried only a pistol, and thus had Lys been armed.
The first wave of sudden joy which surged through me was short-lived in the face
of the swift-following conviction that the one who fought below was already
doomed. Luck and only luck it must have been which had permitted that first
shot to lay low one of the savage creatures, for even such a heavy weapon as my
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