burly brute seize her and start off at a run
toward the near-by wood. From rock to rock, chamoislike, I leaped
downward toward the valley, in pursuit of Lys and her hideous abductor.

He was heavier than I by many pounds, and so weighted by the burden he
carried that I easily overtook him; and at last he turned, snarling, to
face me. It was Kho of the tribe of Tsa, the hatchet-men. He
recognized me, and with a low growl he threw Lys aside and came for me.
"The she is mine," he cried. "I kill! I kill!"

I had had to discard my rifle before I commenced the rapid descent of
the cliff, so that now I was armed only with a hunting knife, and this
I whipped from its scabbard as Kho leaped toward me. He was a mighty
beast, mightily muscled, and the urge that has made males fight since
the dawn of life on earth filled him with the blood-lust and the thirst
to slay; but not one whit less did it fill me with the same primal
passions. Two abysmal beasts sprang at each other's throats that day
beneath the shadow of earth's oldest cliffs--the man of now and the
man-thing of the earliest, forgotten then, imbued by the same deathless
passion that has come down unchanged through all the epochs, periods
and eras of time from the beginning, and which shall continue to the
incalculable end--woman, the imperishable Alpha and Omega of life.

Kho closed and sought my jugular with his teeth. He seemed to forget
the hatchet dangling by its aurochs-hide thong at his hip, as I forgot,
for the moment, the dagger in my hand. And I doubt not but that Kho
would easily have bested me in an encounter of that sort had not Lys'
voice awakened within my momentarily reverted brain the skill and
cunning of reasoning man.

"Bowen!" she cried. "Your knife! Your knife!"

It was enough. It recalled me from the forgotten eon to which my brain
had flown and left me once again a modern man battling with a clumsy,
unskilled brute. No longer did my jaws snap at the hairy throat before
me; but instead my knife sought and found a space between two ribs over
the savage heart. Kho voiced a single horrid scream, stiffened
spasmodically and sank to the earth. And Lys threw herself into my
arms. All the fears and sorrows of the past were wiped away, and once
again I was the happiest of men.

With some misgivings I shortly afterward cast my eyes upward toward the
precarious ledge which ran before my cave, for it seemed to me quite
beyond all reason to exp