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deer, saber-tooth tiger, cave-bear, hyaenadon and many other examples of the
fauna of Caspak done in colors, usually of four shades of brown, or scratched
upon the surface of the rock. Often they were super-imposed upon each other
until it required careful examination to trace out the various outlines. But they
all showed a rather remarkable aptitude for delineation which further fortified
Bowen's comparisons between these people and the extinct Cro-Magnons whose
ancient art is still preserved in the caverns of Niaux and Le Portel. The Band-lu,
however, did not have the bow and arrow, and in this respect they differ from
their extinct progenitors, or descendants, of Western Europe.
Should any of my friends chance to read the story of my adventures upon
Caprona, I hope they will not be bored by these diversions, and if they are, I can
only say that I am writing my memoirs for my own edification and therefore
setting down those things which interested me particularly at the time. I have no
desire that the general public should ever have access to these pages; but it is
possible that my friends may, and also certain savants who are interested; and to
them, while I do not apologize for my philosophizing, I humbly explain that they
are witnessing the groupings of a finite mind after the infinite, the search for
explanations of the inexplicable.
In a far recess of the cavern my captors bade me halt. Again my hands were
secured, and this time my feet as well. During the operation they questioned me,
and I was mighty glad that the marked similarity between the various tribal
tongues of Caspak enabled us to understand each other perfectly, even though
they were unable to believe or even to comprehend the truth of my origin and the
circumstances of my advent in Caspak; and finally they left me saying that they
would come for me before the dance of death upon the morrow. Before they
departed with their torches, I saw that I had not been conducted to the farthest
extremity of the cavern, for a dark and gloomy corridor led beyond my prison
room into the heart of the cliff.
I could not but marvel at the immensity of this great underground grotto.
Already I had traversed several hundred yards of it, from many points of which
other corridors diverged. The whole cliff must be honeycombed with apartments
and passages of which this community occupied but a comparatively small part,
so that the possibility of the more remote passages being the lair of savage beasts
that have other means of ingress and egress than that used by the Band-lu filled
me with dire forebodings.
I believe that I am not ordinarily hysterically apprehensive; yet I must confess
that under the conditions with which I was confronted, I felt my nerves to be
somewhat shaken. On the morrow I was to die some sort of nameless death for
the diversion of a savage horde, but the morrow held fewer terrors for me than
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