a, who seemed to me
to be the highest in the scale of evolution, and To-jo, who was just a
shade nearer the ape, while there were others who had flatter noses,
more prognathous faces and hairier bodies. The question puzzled me.
Possibly in the outer world the answer to it is locked in the bosom of
the Sphinx. Who knows? I do not.

Thinking the thoughts of a lunatic or a dope-fiend, I fell asleep; and
when I awoke, my hands and feet were securely tied and my weapons had
been taken from me. How they did it without awakening me I cannot tell
you. It was humiliating, but it was true. To-jo stood above me. The
early light of morning was dimly filtering into the cave.

"Tell me," he demanded, "how to throw a man over my head and break his
neck, for I am going to kill you, and I wish to know this thing before
you die."

Of all the ingenuous declarations I have ever heard, this one copped
the proverbial bun. It struck me as so funny that, even in the face of
death, I laughed. Death, I may remark here, had, however, lost much of
his terror for me. I had become a disciple of Lys' fleeting philosophy
of the valuelessness of human life. I realized that she was quite
right--that we were but comic figures hopping from the cradle to the
grave, of interest to practically no other created thing than ourselves
and our few intimates.

Behind To-jo stood So-ta. She raised one hand with the palm toward
me--the Caspakian equivalent of a negative shake of the head.

"Let me think about it," I parried, and To-jo said that he would wait
until night. He would give me a day to think it over; then he left,
and the women left--the men for the hunt, and the women, as I later
learned from So-ta, for the warm pool where they immersed their bodies
as did the shes of the Sto-lu. "Ata," explained So-ta, when I
questioned her as to the purpose of this matutinal rite; but that was
later.

I must have lain there bound and uncomfortable for two or three hours
when at last So-ta entered the cave. She carried a sharp knife--mine,
in fact, and with it she cut my bonds.

"Come!" she said. "So-ta will go with you back to the Galus. It is
time that So-ta left the Band-lu. Together we will go to the Kro-lu,
and after that the Galus. To-jo will kill you tonight. He will kill
So-ta if he knows that So-ta aided you. We will go together."

"I will go with you to the Kro-lu," I replied, "but then I must return
to my own people `toward the begi