from the heart of a conqueror. I
saw epitomized in petal and stamen, all the poetry of the world's dead
dreams. I took as many as I could carry back to the portrait, and on the
following morning I returned for more.

They lured me strangely with their fox fire of sheer beauty, until I had
penetrated the jungle to the distance of a quarter of a mile and stood
in a small opening where I plucked an armful of their blossoms.

Suddenly, as I started back, I felt a biting pang in my left shoulder,
and knew that I had been speared, though the tangle of the jungle
revealed no human form, and its silence remained unbroken. The spear,
which had come from nowhere, as it seemed, fell to the ground, but not
before it had gashed my flesh and left upon the tattered remnants of my
jacket a tell-tale smear of blood.

I believed myself to have been mortally poisoned by the javelin, and my
one wish now was to escape, with the semblance of greatness still upon
me, and die unseen. I went with as much dignity as possible toward the
beach, backing through the tangle to keep my flow of blood concealed. I
had no doubt that many unseen eyes followed my exit and even if it were
for a brief time, I wished to go with the seeming of divine
invulnerability. I even forced a loud and derisive shout of laughter
which rang weirdly through the silences. Wicked pains shot in white-hot
currents through my blood and racked my muscles. I was weak with
nauseating pain and dizziness swam in my brain. At last the merciful
rocks gave me concealment. I dropped on my knees, my teeth gritted, and
dragged myself back to my cave where I turned my face to the rock wall
to die.

CHAPTER XI

I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD

Yet I did not die. While I lay waiting to do so the insistent ache of my
bones, the racking of my wound and the sodden numbness of my brain,
slowly blurred me into apathy. That passed and the delirium came on a
swelling tide of temperature. Centuries trampled roughshod over me and
demons of pain scourged me through the seven hells of fever. Scorching
wastes of time were broken at long intervals by little oases of lucidity
when I crawled to the opening and drank, but even these were clouded by
shreds of nightmare horror, and remembered hallucinations.

Once, waking to momentary sensibility, I found the narrow cave still
ringing with the echoes of my tortured and delirious shrieks.

When, at last, I came fully to myself, painfully weak and sca