The cave girl

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

"Point," he said, "to the place where the cliff sank beneath the water."

Roof pointed almost due north.

"There," he said.

For days Thandar puzzled over the possible identity of the ship and the men with whom Nadara had gone so willingly. Doubtless some kindly mariner, hearing her story, had taken her home, away from the terrors and the loneliness of this unhappy island. And now the man chafed to be after her, that he might search the world for his lost love.

To wait for a ship appeared quite impossible to the impatient Thandar, for he knew that a ship might never come. There was but one alternative, and had Waldo Emerson been a less impractical man in the world to which he had been born he would have cast aside that single alternative as entirely beyond the pale of possibility. But Waldo was only practical and wise in the savage ways of the primitive life to which circumstance had forced him to revert. And so he decided upon as foolhardy and hair-brained a venture as the mind of man might conceive. It was no less a thing than to build a boat and set out upon the broad Pacific in search of a civilized port or a vessel that might bear him to such.

To Waldo it seemed quite practical. He realized of course that the venture would be fraught with peril, but would it not be better to die in an attempt to find his Nadara than to live on forever in the hopelessness of this forgotten land?

And so he set to work to build a boat. He had no tools but his crude knife and the razor the sailor of the Sally Corwith had given him, so it was quite impossible for him to construct a dug-out. The possibilities that lie in fire did not occur to him. Finally he hit upon what seemed the only feasible form of construction.

With his knife he cut long, pliant saplings, and lesser branches. These he fashioned into the framework of a boat. Roof helped him, keenly interested in this new work. The ribs were fastened to the keel and gunwale by thongs of panther skin, and when the framework was completed panther skins were stretched over it. The edges of the skin were sewn together with threads of gut, as tightly as Thandar and Roof could pull them.

A mast was rigged well forward, and another panther skin from which the fur had been scraped was fitted as a sail, square rigged. For rudder Thandar fashioned a long, slender sapling, looped at one end, and the loop covered with skin laced tightly on. This, he figured, would serve both as rudder and paddle, as necessity demanded.

At last all was done. Together Thandar and Roof carried the light, crude skiff to the ocean. They waded out beyond the surf, and upon the crest of a receding swell they launched the thing, Thandar leaping in as it floated upon the water.