f
roasting meat to rouse him to a frenzy.

For seven Earth days he and Chet had kept account of the hours. How
long after that they had followed their stumbling course he could not
have told. Time ceased to be measured in hours and days; rather was it
reckoned in painful progress a foot at a time up rocky burrows,
helping, both of them, to ease the path for the girl who struggled so
bravely with them, until aching muscles refused to bear them further.
Then periods of drugged sleep with utter fatigue for an opiate--and on
again in hopeless, aimless wandering.

And now, the sun! And he was plunging his head into icy water to drink
until he strangled for breath! He knew that Chet and Diane were beside
him. A weak laugh came to his lips as he sat erect: the girl had drunk
as deeply as the rest--and now she was washing her hands and face.

The idea seemed tremendously amusing--or was it that the simple rite
indicated more than he could bear to know? It meant that they were
safe; they had escaped; and again a trifle like cleanliness was
important in a woman's eyes. He rocked with meaningless
laughter--until again a puff of wind brought distinctly the odor of
cooking food.

A hundred feet away, up higher in the valley, were the first of the
fires. Harkness came to his feet and ran--ran staggeringly, it is
true, but he ran--and he tore at some hanging shreds of smoking meat
regardless of the burn. But the fierce gnawing at his stomach did not
force him to wolf the food. He carried it back, a double handful of
half-cooked meat, to the others. And he doled it out sparingly to them
and to himself.

The cold water had restored his sanity. "Easy," he advised them; "too
much at first and we're done for."

* * * * *

He was chewing on the last shred when a thought struck him; he had
been too stunned before to reason. For the first time he jerked up his
head in startled alarm. He looked carefully about--at the meat on its
pointed stakes, at the distant fires, at the open glade below them and
the dense jungle beyond where nothing stirred.

"Cooked meat!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "Who did it? This means
people!"

The memory that had registered only in some corner of a mind deeper
than the conscious, came to the surface. "I remember," he said. "There
were things that ran--men--apes--what were they?"

"Oh, Lord!" Chet groaned. "And all I ask is to be left alone!" But he
wearily raised himself