One second I noted the great chief of the Reds mow down two of the Blacks at a single swing of his blood-painted, light-flashing club of crystal; the next I noted how like the writhing of a snake was the death contraction of one of my friendly Links. Then the flash of a club swinging quickly to its living cushion of ribs and flesh made a brilliant streak against the background of dusky forms. I saw that the head of this weapon was a massive nugget of gold. In that second I also detected a movement from the corner of my eye where a black creature, wounded and desperate, was rising up, club in hand, to strike me down. It flashed upon me instantly that the Blacks, if they could not possess me themselves, would rather I were dead than allied with their enemies.

I was standing with my back to the wall, willing to see fair play, but too wise to become entangled in that medley of physical giants. The treachery now revealed made me angry in a second. The smell of fight in my nostrils had been working on my animal nature; a pin-prick would have been sufficient to arouse all my human frenzy for slaying. I turned about, burning with wrath, and had no more than struck down the wounded monster than three others leaped to perform the office in which he had failed. A reeking club was swinging in toward my head like a shot from a cannon. I dived below its line of motion and drove home my knife with all the lust of vengeance. My falling antagonist tripped and overtoppled the second, destroyed the blow he was about to aim and made him an easy mark for the dripping rock-crystal that crushed his shoulder and part of his neck to a boneless mass. The third met another of my friends and beat him down, only to be killed himself a second later.

Shrieks of agony had rent the air and screams of rage and yells of triumph made discord as a number of the black Links now fled abruptly down the chasm to escape. And the fellow with the nugget club turned to hurl his defiance and to shake his reddened fist at me, as I stood on a rock in a circle of my friends. The cause of the Reds I had made my cause; I had slain a Black. The feud between these warring tribes included myself. I had created deadly enemies in the land of Missing Links.

CHAPTER VI
LANGUAGE AND WEAPONS

The darkness had begun to descend before we reached the camp, plainly causing anxiety to the Links, who were hindered on the march by the burden of several dead members of the tribe. Various sounds issued from the jungle, where brutes that eat flesh in the night were beginning to prowl. Doubtless no few of these smelled the blood that laded the wind which was sweeping down through the chasm.

I thought of all this and meditated much also on my peculiar situation. Why these two opposing bands of Missing Links should so desire myself as a prize as to fight with such fatal results, was a puzzle too deep for solution, considering that I had been treated by both parties in a manner far from being inimical to my safety. Were they cannibals, I asked myself, did they desire me for a dinner? Manifestly such was not the case, inasmuch as no man-eating creatures should be expected to be so moderate as to permit me to live in freedom as long as I had lived already in their settlement. No, their purpose involved something more permanent.

There was no end to the chatter as we hastened “home.” Though I failed to understand this, yet the gestures were easy to interpret. Reason also made it plain that Fatty, when he fled from my side and escaped the Blacks, had darted toward the camp to give the alarm, meeting on the way the Links who had come to the rescue, they having started beforehand on information furnished by the females, who had watched us start toward the peak.

I recapitulated the results of my exploration. I was hopelessly lost, as far as any human beings were concerned. I was in the hands of friendly creatures, more primitive than the lowest mortal. My only chance of escape lay in cultivating the friendly feelings and in endeavouring to understand my companions, with a view to inducing a force, later on, to accompany myself on a march across the country to the sea. Incidentally I had much to do to keep myself partially civilised. I must fashion tools, in the use of which the Links must be instructed. We were surrounded by dangerous animals, and we had a powerful enemy, the force of whose numbers might be greater than our own. This would mean that I must make our tribe superior, and arm them with a better class of weapons. Fortunately the country promised to be one of great resources. Yet the only tool I had with which to start was my knife.

I thought of the endless array of implements of war and peace to be had in the poorest modern community. Such meditation being idle, I reflected how glad I would be to hammer out my own requisites from the crude iron, but this was equally vain. In short my thoughts came tumbling down the age of iron and the age of bronze, as if I had fallen back through time and history, to land at the very age of stone itself. Here I must work with stone for hammers, axes, drills and even for an anvil, supposing I had my white-hot metal ready to forge into shape, for there was nothing else to be had.

All this made me excited, eager to be at work. I was forgetful of all that it meant, as my brain pictured stage after stage of this new development, but when a cool night wind blew across my half-clothed body, I was aroused from my reverie and confronted by a pitiless array of facts. I then foresaw personal suffering, mayhap a miserable death, and toil and disappointment, before I could wrest even something small from the fist of Nature, while I should have about me a tribe of semi-animal beings, fighting constantly for a bare existence. My hope and fate were rapidly being entangled with the lives and fates of these extraordinary creatures.