low log. I escaped by the will
of the Gods--I could as much have done harm to a mountain as injure that
horny tongue with my weapons--but I gave myself warning that this chance
must not happen again.

So I cut myself a ladder of footholes on the inside of the trunk till I
had reached a point ten man-heights from the ground, and there cut other
notches, and with tree branches made a floor on which I might rest.
Later, for luxury, I carved me arrow-slit windows in the walls of my
chamber, and even carried up sand for a hearth, so that I might cook my
victual up there instead of lighting a fire in all the dangers of the
open below.

By degrees, too, I began to find how the large-scaled fish of the rivers
and the lesser turtles might be more readily captured, and so my ribs
threatened less to start through their proper covering of skin as the
days went on. But the lack of salads and gruels I could never overcome.
All the green meat was tainted so powerfully with the taste of tars that
never could I force my palate to accept it. And of course, too, there
remained the peril of the greater lizards and the other dangers native
to the place.

But as the months began to mount into years, and the brute part of my
nature became more satisfied, there came other longings which it was
less easy to provide for. From the ivory of a river horse's tooth I had
endeavoured to carve me a representative of Nais as last I had seen her.
But, though my fingers might be loving, and my will good, my art was
of the dullest, and the result--though I tried time and time again--was
always clumsy and pitiful. Still, in my eyes it carried some suggestion
of the original--a curve here, an outline there, and it made my old love
glow anew within me as I sat and ate it with my eyes. Yet it did little
to satisfy my longings for the woman I had lost; rather it whetted my
cravings to be with her again, or at least to have some knowledge of her
fate.

Other men of the Priests' Clan have come out and made an abode in these
Dangerous Lands, and by mortifying the flesh, have gained an intimacy
with the Higher Mysteries which has carried them far past what mere
human learning and repetition could teach. Indeed, here and there one,
who from some cause and another has returned to the abodes of men, has
carried with him a knowledge that has brought him the reputation amongst
the vulgar for the workings of magic and miracles, which--since all arts
must be allowed