tho! had she but known a moment before. When they passed she
might have joined them, for they were her father and two brothers. Now
it was too late. With bated breath and tense muscles she watched the
race. Would they reach the summit? Would the Kor-ul-lul overhaul them?
They climbed well, but, oh, so slowly. Now one lost his footing in the
loose shale and slipped back! The Kor-ul-lul were ascending--one hurled
his club at the nearest fugitive. The Great God was pleased with the
brother of Pan-at-lee, for he caused the club to fall short of its
target, and to fall, rolling and bounding, back upon its owner carrying
him from his feet and precipitating him to the bottom of the gorge.

Standing now, her hands pressed tight above her golden breastplates,
Pan-at-lee watched the race for life. Now one, her older brother,
reached the summit and clinging there to something that she could not
see he lowered his body and his long tail to the father beneath him.
The latter, seizing this support, extended his own tail to the son
below--the one who had slipped back--and thus, upon a living ladder of
their own making, the three reached the summit and disappeared from
view before the Kor-ul-lul overtook them. But the latter did not
abandon the chase. On they went until they too had disappeared from
sight and only a faint shouting came down to Pan-at-lee to tell her
that the pursuit continued.

The girl knew that she must move on. At any moment now might come a
hunting party, combing the gorge for the smaller animals that fed or
bedded there.

Behind her were Es-sat and the returning party of Kor-ul-lul that had
pursued her kin; before her, across the next ridge, was the
Kor-ul-gryf, the lair of the terrifying monsters that brought the chill
of fear to every inhabitant of Pal-ul-don; below her, in the valley,
was the country of the Ho-don, where she could look for only slavery,
or death; here were the Kor-ul-lul, the ancient enemies of her people
and everywhere were the wild beasts that eat the flesh of man.

For but a moment she debated and then turning her face toward the
southeast she set out across the gorge of water toward the
Kor-ul-gryf--at least there were no men there. As it is now, so it was
in the beginning, back to the primitive progenitor of man which is
typified by Pan-at-lee and her kind today, of all the hunters that
woman fears, man is the most relentless, the most terrible. To the
dangers of man she preferred the