ee the
pit. All that day Temple waited with his back to the water-hole,
facing the camouflaged pit, the trap he had set, but the woman failed
to appear. When she also did not come on the second day, he began to
think his plan would not work.

The third day, Temple arrived with the sun, sat as before in the tall
grass between the pit and the water-hole and waited. Several paces
beyond his hidden trap he could see the tall trees of the jungle with
vines and creepers hanging from their branches. At his back, a man's
length behind him was the water-hole, its deepest waters no more than
waist-high.

Temple waited until the sun stood high in the sky, then was fascinated
as a small antelope minced down to the water-hole for a drink. _You'll
make a fine breakfast tomorrow, he thought, smiling._

Something, that strange sixth sense again, made Temple turn around and
stand up. He had time for a brief look, a hoarse cry.

The woman had been the cleverer. She had set the final trap. She stood
high up on a branch of one of the trees beyond the hidden pit and for
an instant Temple saw her fine figure clearly, naked but for the
loincloth. Then the soft curves became spring-steel.

The woman arched her body there on the high branch, grasping a stout
vine and rocking back with it. Temple raised his bow, set an arrow to
let it fly. But by then, the woman was in motion.

Long and lithe and graceful, she swung down on her vine, gathering
momentum as she came. Her feet almost brushed the lip of Temple's pit
at the lowest arc of her flight, but she clung to the vine and it
began to swing up again like a pendulum--toward Temple.

At the last moment he hunched his shoulder and tried to raise his arms
for protection. The woman was quicker. She gathered her legs up under
her, still clutching the vine with her slim, strong hands. The vine's
arc carried her up at him; her knees were at a level with his head and
she brought them up savagely, close together striking Temple brutally
at the base of his jaw. Temple screamed as his head was jerked back
with terrible force.

The bow flew from his fingers and he fell into the water-hole, flat on
his back.

Sophia let the vine carry her out over the water, then dropped from
it. Waist deep, she waded to where the man lay, unconscious on his
back, half in, half out of the shallowest part of the water. She
reached him, prodded his chest with her foot. When he did not stir,
she rocked her weight do