As he returned to his people that afternoon filled with the enthusiasm of his hopes a burly, hairy figure crept warily after him. As Thandar emerged from the brush which reaches close to the cliffs where the temporary encampment had been made Nadara, watching for him, ran forward to meet him.
The creature upon Thandar’s trail halted at the edge of the bush. As his close-set eyes fell upon the girl his flabby lips vibrated to the quick intaking of his breath and his red lids half closed in cunning and desire.
For a few moments he watched the man and the maid as they turned and walked slowly toward the cliffs, the arm of the former about the brown shoulders of the latter. Then he too turned and melted into the tangled branches behind him.
That evening Thandar gathered the members of the tribe about him at the foot of the cliff. They sat around a great fire while Thandar, their king, explained to them in minutest detail the future that he had mapped out for them.
Some of the old men shook their heads, for here was an unheard of thing—a change from the accustomed ordering of their lives—and they were loath to change regardless of the benefits which might accrue.
But for the most part the people welcomed the idea of comfortable and permanent habitations, though their anticipatory joy, Thandar reasoned, was due largely to a childish eagerness for something new and different—whether their enthusiasm would survive the additional labors which the new life was sure to entail was another question.
So Thandar laid down the new laws that were to guide his people thereafter. The men were to make all implements and weapons, for he had already taught them to use arrows and spears. The women were to keep all edged tools sharp. The men were to hew the logs and build the houses—the women make garments, cook and keep the houses in order.
The men were to turn up the soil, the women were to sow the seeds, and cultivate the growing crops, which, later, all hands must turn to and harvest.
The hunting and the fighting devolved upon the men, but the fighting must be confined to enemies of the tribe. A man who killed another member of the tribe except in defense of his home or his own person was to suffer death.
Other laws he made—good laws—which even these primitive people could see were good. It was quite late when the last of them crawled into his comfortless cave to dream of large, airy rooms built of the trees of the forest; of good food in plenty just before the rains as well as after; of security from the periodic raids of the “bad men.”
Thandar and Nadara were the last to go. Together they sat upon a narrow ledge before Nadara’s cave, the moonlight falling upon their glistening, naked shoulders, while they talked and dreamed together of the future.
Thandar had been talking of the wonderful plans which seemed to fill his whole mind—of the future of the tribe—of the great strides toward civilization they could make in a few brief years if they could but be made to follow the simple plans he had in mind.
“Why,” he said, “in ten years they should have bridged a gulf that it must have required ages for our ancestors to span.”
“And you are planning ten years ahead, Thandar,” she asked, “when only yesterday you were saying that once beside the sea you hoped it would be but a short time before we might sight a passing vessel that would bear us away to your civilization? Must we wait ten years, Thandar?”
“I am planning for them,” he replied. “We may not be here to witness the changes; but I wish to start them upon the road, and when we go I shall see to it that a king is chosen in my place who has the courage and the desire to carry out my plans.
“Yet,” he added, musingly, “it would be splendid could we but return to complete our work. Never, Nadara, have I performed a single constructive act for the benefit of my fellow man, but now I see an opportunity to do something, however small it may seem, to—what was that?”
A low rumbling muttered threateningly out of the west. Deep and ominous it sounded, yet so low that it failed to awaken any member of the sleeping tribe.
Before either could again speak there came a slight trembling of the earth beneath them, scarcely sufficient to have been noticeable had it not been preceded by the distant grumbling of the earth’s bowels.
The two upon the moonlit ledge came to their feet, and Nadara drew close to Thandar, the man’s arm encircling her shoulders protectingly.
“The Great Nagoola,” she whispered. “Again he seeks to escape.”
“What do you mean?” asked Thandar. “It is an earthquake—distant and quite harmless to us.”
“No, it is The Great Nagoola,” insisted Nadara. “Long time ago, when our fathers’ fathers were yet unborn, The Great Nagoola roamed the land devouring all that chanced to come in his way—men, beasts, birds, everything.
“One day my people came upon him sleeping in a deep gorge between two mountains. They were mighty men in those days, and when they saw their great enemy asleep there in the gorge half of them went upon one side and half upon the other, and they pushed the two mountains over into the gorge upon the sleeping beast, imprisoning him there.
“It is all true, for my mother had it from her mother, who in turn was told it by her mother—thus has it been handed down truthfully since it happened long time ago.
“And even to this day is occasionally heard the growling of The Great Nagoola in his anger, and the earth shakes and trembles as he strives far, far beneath to shake the mountains from him and escape. Did you not hear his voice and feel the ground rock?”
Thandar laughed.
“Well, we are quite
