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had reached it, after having been stalked by a cave-lion and almost seized. I trembled at the risk she had
run.
It had been her intention to wait until after midnight, when most of the carnivora would have made their
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kills, and then attempt to reach the cave in which I was imprisoned and rescue me. She explained that
with my rifle and pistol--both of which she assured me she could use, having watched me so many
times--she planned upon frightening the Band-lu and forcing them to give me up. Brave little girl! She
would have risked her life willingly to save me. But some time after she reached our cave she heard
voices from the far recesses within, and immediately concluded that we had but found another entrance
to the caves which the Band-lu occupied upon the other face of the cliff. Then she had set out through
those winding passages and in total darkness had groped her way, guided solely by a marvelous sense of
direction, to where I lay. She had had to proceed with utmost caution lest she fall into some abyss in the
darkness and in truth she had thrice come upon sheer drops and had been forced to take the most
frightful risks to pass them. I shudder even now as I contemplate what this girl passed through for my
sake and how she enhanced her peril in loading herself down with the weight of my arms and ammunition
and the awkwardness of the long rifle which she was unaccustomed to bearing.
I could have knelt and kissed her hand in reverence and gratitude; nor am I ashamed to say that that is
precisely what I did after I had been freed from my bonds and heard the story of her trials. Brave little
Ajor! Wonder-girl out of the dim, unthinkable past! Never before had she been kissed; but she seemed
to sense something of the meaning of the new caress, for she leaned forward in the dark and pressed her
own lips to my forehead. A sudden urge surged through me to seize her and strain her to my bosom and
cover her hot young lips with the kisses of a real love, but I did not do so, for I knew that I did not love
her; and to have kissed her thus, with passion, would have been to inflict a great wrong upon her who
had offered her life for mine.
No, Ajor should be as safe with me as with her own mother, if she had one, which I was inclined to
doubt, even though she told me that she had once been a babe and hidden by her mother. I had come to
doubt if there was such a thing as a mother in Caspak, a mother such as we know. From the Bo-lu to the
Kro-lu there is no word which corresponds with our word mother. They speak of ata and cor sva jo,
meaning reproduction and from the beginning, and point toward the south; but no one has a mother.
After considerable difficulty we gained what we thought was our cave, only to find that it was not, and
then we realized that we were lost in the labyrinthine mazes of the great cavern. We retraced our steps
and sought the point from which we had started, but only succeeded in losing ourselves the more. Ajor
was aghast--not so much from fear of our predicament; but that she should have failed in the functioning
of that wonderful sense she possessed in common with most other creatures Caspakian, which makes it
possible for them to move unerringly from place to place without compass or guide.
Hand in hand we crept along, searching for an opening into the outer world, yet realizing that at each
step we might be burrowing more deeply into the heart of the great cliff, or circling futilely in the vague
wandering that could end only in death. And the darkness! It was almost palpable, and utterly
depressing. I had matches, and in some of the more difficult places I struck one; but we couldn't afford to
waste them, and so we groped our way slowly along, doing the best we could to keep to one general
direction in the hope that it would eventually lead us to an opening into the outer world. When I struck
matches, I noticed that the walls bore no paintings; nor was there other sign that man had penetrated this
far within the cliff, nor any spoor of animals of other kinds.
It would be difficult to guess at the time we spent wandering through those black corridors, climbing
steep ascents, feeling our way along the edges of bottomless pits, never knowing at what moment we
might be plunged into some abyss and always haunted by the ever-present terror of death by starvation
and thirst. As difficult as it was, I still realized that it might have been infinitely worse had I had another
companion than Ajor--courageous, uncomplaining, loyal little Ajor! She was tired and hungry and thirsty,
and she must have been discouraged; but she never faltered in her cheerfulness. I asked her if she was
afraid, and she replied that here the Wieroo could not get her, and that if she died of hunger, she would at
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least die with me and she was quite content that such should be her end. At the time I attributed her
attitude to something akin to a doglike devotion to a new master who had been kind to her. I can take
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