For a brief, ecstatic moment the girl took them to be warriors from Sephar; but then she saw they were creatures identical to her late captor, and suddenly heightened hopes plunged to a new depth of misery.
Sadu stood as a statue of bronze, the lazy jungle breeze ruffling his tawny mane, narrowed eyes intent on the slow-moving figures. For several minutes he stood thus, then lowering his head he seized the corpse of Mog by one arm and dragged it from sight deep into the luxurious growth of vegetation beside the trail. Not once during this change of position did he glance toward the watching girl.
The moment Sadu disappeared from view, Alurna sprang to her feet and plunged blindly into the jungle at a point farthest removed from the beast. Her only thought was to put all the distance possible between Sadu and herself. She dared not take to the open for fear the Hairy Men would catch sight of her and hunt her down.
For nearly two hours she struggled on, tearing her way through a tangled confusion of creepers, trees, ferns, broken branches and bushes. Several times she tripped and fell headlong, only to rise and stumble onward. Her tunic was stained and torn, thorns and branches having ripped the material in many places.
At last, after unwittingly changing her course many times, she sank to the ground beside the hole of a great tree in the center of a small clearing deep within the heart of the primeval forest.
Completely exhausted she lay half-conscious on the soft carpet of grasses, her tortured lungs laboring to bring oxygen to an overtaxed heart. Gradually her eyes closed, her heart slowed its mad tempo, she breathed more calmly as fear left her. As from a great distance came the low monotonous hum of insects, the subdued twitter of birds and rustlings from many leaves. Alurna slept....
When she sat up, several hours later, the glade was filled with the half-light that presages nightfall. She stood up and looked about, aware of the danger she had courted by sleeping on the ground in a territory where savage animals were so plentiful.
Abruptly the fading dusk deepened into darkness. The girl's tiny supply of courage fled with the light, leaving a frightened child to grope her way to the base of the lofty tree, where she managed to climb among the branches.
Here she found two thick boughs close together and extending horizontally outward in about the same plane. Sitting with her back against the rough trunk, she stretched tired legs along the two branches and composed herself to wait for the dawn.