He could write verse in excellent Greek, but he was no longer proud of that fact. He would much rather that he had been able to tan a hide, or make fire without matches. Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones had a year ago been exceedingly proud of his intellect and his learning, but for a year his ego had been shrinking until now he felt himself the most pitiful ignoramus on earth. “Criminally ignorant,” he said to Nadara, “for I have thrown away the opportunities of a lifetime devoted to the accumulation of useless erudition when I might have been profiting by the practical knowledge which has dragged the world from the black bit of barbarism to the light of modern achievement—I might not only have done this but, myself, added something to the glory and welfare of mankind. I am no good, Nadara—worse than useless.”
The girl touched his strong brown hand caressingly, looking proudly into his eyes.
“To me you are very wonderful, Thandar,” she said. “With your own hands you slew Nagoola, the most terrible beast in the world, and Korth, and Flatfoot, and Big Fist lie dead beneath the vultures because of your might—single-handed you killed them all; three awesome men. No, my Thandar is greater than all other men.”
Nor could Waldo Emerson repress the swelling tide of pride that surged through him as the girl he loved recounted his exploits. No longer did he think of his achievements as “vulgar physical prowess.” The old Waldo Emerson, whose temperature had risen regularly at three o’clock each afternoon, whose pitifully skinny body had been racked by coughing continually, whose eyes had been terror filled by day and by night at the rustling of dry leaves, was dead.
In his place stood a great, full blooded man, brown skinned and steel thewed; fearless, self-reliant, almost brutal in his pride of power—Thandar, the cave man.
The months that passed as Thandar led his people from one honeycombed cliff to another as he sought a fitting place for a permanent village were filled with happiness for Nadara and the king.
The girl’s happiness was slightly alloyed by the fact that Thandar failed to claim her as his own. She could not yet quite understand the ethics which separated them. Thandar tried repeatedly to explain to her that some day they were to return to his own world, and that that world would not accept her unless she had been joined to him according to the rites and ceremonies which it had originated.
“Will this marriage ceremony of which you tell me make you love me more?” asked Nadara.
Thandar laughed and took her in his arms.
“I could not love you more,” he replied.
“Then of what good is it?”
Thandar shook his head.
“It is difficult to explain,” he said, “especially to such a lovable little pagan as my Nadara. You must be satisfied to know—accept my word for it—that it is because I love you that we must wait.”
Now it was the girl’s turn to shake her head.
“I cannot understand,” she said. “My people take their mates as they will and they are satisfied and everybody is satisfied and all is well; but their king, who may mate as he chooses, waits until a man whom he does not know and who lives across the great water where we may never go, gives him permission to mate with one who loves him—with one whom he says he loves.”
Thandar noticed the emphasis which Nadara put upon the word “says.”
“Some day,” he said, “when we have reached my world you will know that I was right, and you will thank me. Until then, Nadara, you must trust me, and,” he added half to himself, “God knows I have earned your trust even if you do not know it.”
And so Nadara made believe that she was satisfied but in her heart of hearts she still feared that Thandar did not really love her, nor did the half-veiled comments of the women add at all to her peace of mind.
During all the time that Thandar was with her he had been teaching her his language for he had set his heart upon taking her home, and he wished her to be as well prepared for her introduction to Boston and civilization as he could make her.
Thandar’s plan was to find a suitable location within sight of the sea that he might always be upon the lookout for a ship. At last he found such a place—a level meadow land upon a low plateau overlooking the ocean.
He had come upon it while he wandered alone several miles from the temporary cliff dwellings the tribe was occupying. The soil, when he dug into it, he found to be rich and black. There was timber upon one side and upon the other overhanging cliffs of soft limestone.
It was Thandar’s plan to build a village partly of logs against the face of the cliff, burrowing inward behind the dwellings for such additional apartments as each family might require.
The caves alone would have proved sufficient shelter, but the man hoped by compelling his people to construct a portion of each dwelling of logs to engender within each family a certain feeling of ownership and pride in personal possession as would make it less easy for them to give up their abodes than in the past, when it had been necessary but to move to another cliff to find caves equally as comfortable as those which they so easily abandoned.
In other words he hoped to give them a word which their vocabulary had never held—home.
Whether or not he would have succeeded we may never know, for fate stepped in at the last moment to alter with
