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was already marching upon the Galu city. I sighed as I thought how close I had
been to saving not only Ajor but her father and his people from defeat and death.
Beyond the swamp was a dense wood. Could we have reached this, we would
have been safe; but it might as well have been a hundred miles away as a
hundred yards across that hidden lake of sticky mud. Upon the edge of the
swamp Du-seen and his horde halted to revile us. They could not reach us with
their hands; but at a command from Du-seen they fitted arrows to their bows,
and I saw that the end had come. Ajor huddled close to me, and I took her in my
arms. "I love you, Tom," she said, "only you." Tears came to my eyes then, not
tears of self-pity for my predicament, but tears from a heart filled with a great
love--a heart that sees the sun of its life and its love setting even as it rises.
The renegade Galus and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for the word from Du-
seen that would launch that barbed avalanche of death upon us, when there
broke from the wood beyond the swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon
the ears of man--the sharp staccato of at least two score rifles fired rapidly at will.
Down went the Galu and Kro-lu warriors like tenpins before that deadly fusillade.
What could it mean? To me it meant but one thing, and that was that Hollis and
Short and the others had scaled the cliffs and made their way north to the Galu
country upon the opposite side of the island in time to save Ajor and me from
almost certain death. I didn't have to have an introduction to them to know that
the men who held those rifles were the men of my own party; and when, a few
minutes later, they came forth from their concealment, my eyes verified my
hopes. There they were, every man-jack of them; and with them were a thousand
straight, sleek warriors of the Galu race; and ahead of the others came two men
in the garb of Galus. Each was tall and straight and wonderfully muscled; yet
they differed as Ace might differ from a perfect specimen of another species. As
they approached the mire, Ajor held forth her arms and cried, "Jor, my chief! My
father!" and the elder of the two rushed in knee-deep to rescue her, and then the
other came close and looked into my face, and his eyes went wide, and mine too,
and I cried: "Bowen! For heaven's sake, Bowen Tyler!"
It was he. My search was ended. Around me were all my company and the man
we had searched a new world to find. They cut saplings from the forest and laid a
road into the swamp before they could get us all out, and then we marched back
to the city of Jor the Galu chief, and there was great rejoicing when Ajor came
home again mounted upon the glossy back of the stallion Ace.
Tyler and Hollis and Short and all the rest of us Americans nearly worked our
jaws loose on the march back to the village, and for days afterward we kept it up.
They told me how they had crossed the barrier cliffs in five days, working twenty-
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