The sufferer’s eyes closed and he sighed as though content. The corners of his mouth expanded slowly backwards towards his ears. The Giant stared amazed; but as he looked and wondered, a warm glow arose within his breast. His face reflected the sunshine of that smile whose like he had never seen light the features of beast or man. It was but a grinning mouth; and yet for the first time he gazed upon white teeth that neither snapped nor threatened but touched a responsive chord in his own breast.
“And what strange being are you?” he asked in a deep voice. “You whose snarl would make even a rabbit lose its fear of red jowl and gleaming fang?”
“I?” The eyes of the sick man opened wide. His brows wrinkled as vainly he strove to collect his thoughts. “Arrah; I do not know,” he answered faintly. “Where am I? Why am I here?”
The Giant’s face darkened. “Ugh; that I would like to know. Did you think to drive me from my cave? Who are you?”
“I do not know,” replied the sick man, startled by the other’s manner. “I remember nothing but what I have seen these few passing moments.”
The Giant’s wrath subsided as he observed the invalid’s perplexity. He even chided himself for his hasty display of temper. As the sufferer dozed off, he resumed his seat near the cave-mouth, turning from time to time to glance at the sleeper like a nurse awaiting the patient’s pleasure.
This was but the awakening,—light emerging from obscurity; the return of a mind long dead to the living body. But in that which lay upon the cave-floor, none would now recognize the once powerful Ape Boy of Moustier.
Long illness had wasted his muscular frame almost to a skeleton. His head was a grinning skull with hairy parchment stretched so tightly over its ridges and hollows, they threatened to break through. His body and limbs were little more than hide and bone. He was dead to look upon. The life-spark glowed feebly; but it burned. The fever had now left him, permitting his strength to return and repair the ravages of disease. His mind ceased to wander. It rejoined the body newly arisen from the grave and both followed the thread of life anew.
The Giant kept his patient supplied with food and water and covered him at night with the hyena robe. It was this latter that brought a first message from the forgotten past. One morning as Pic raised himself on one elbow to take his fare, his eyes fell upon the skin under which he lay. A strange look came over his face as he ran his fingers through the long thick fur.
“This skin?” he asked. “How came it here?”