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so had overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no great distance

away, and saw with relief that Ajor was not with them.

The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming from the east

overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the defile formed by this overlapping the

party filed. I could see them climbing upward for a few minutes, and then they

disappeared from view. When the last of them had passed from sight, I rose and

bent my steps in the direction of the pass--the same pass toward which Nobs had

evidently been leading me. I went warily as I approached it, for fear the party

might have halted to rest. If they hadn't halted, I had no fear of being discovered,

for I had seen that the Galus marched without point, flankers or rear guard; and

when I reached the pass and saw a narrow, one-man trail leading upward at a

stiff angle, I wished that I were chief of the Galus for a few weeks. A dozen men

could hold off forever in that narrow pass all the hordes which might be brought

up from the south; yet there it lay entirely unguarded.

The Galus might be a great people in Caspak; but they were pitifully inefficient in

even the simpler forms of military tactics. I was surprised that even a man of the

Stone Age should be so lacking in military perspicacity. Du-seen dropped far

below par in my estimation as I saw the slovenly formation of his troop as it

passed through an enemy country and entered the domain of the chief against

whom he had risen in revolt; but Du-seen must have known Jor the chief and

known that Jor would not be waiting for him at the pass. Nevertheless he took

unwarranted chances. With one squad of a home-guard company I could have

conquered Caspak.

Nobs and I followed to the summit of the pass, and there we saw the party

defiling into the Galu country, the level of which was not, on an average, over fifty

feet below the summit of the cliffs and about a hundred and fifty feet above the

adjacent Kro-lu domain. Immediately the landscape changed. The trees, the

flowers and the shrubs were of a hardier type, and I realized that at night the

Galu blanket might be almost a necessity. Acacia and eucalyptus predominated

among the trees; yet there were ash and oak and even pine and fir and hemlock.

The tree-life was riotous. The forests were dense and peopled by enormous trees.

From the summit of the cliff I could see forests rising hundreds of feet above the

level upon which I stood, and even at the distance they were from me I realized

that the boles were of gigantic size.

At last I had come to the Galu country. Though not conceived in Caspak, I had

indeed come up cor-sva jo--from the beginning I had come up through the

hideous horrors of the lower Caspakian spheres of evolution, and I could not but

feel something of the elation and pride which had filled To-mar and So-al when

The People that Time Forgot