In this primeval setting the great pithecanthropus aroused no
jarring discord for he was as much a part of it as the trees that
grew upon the summit of the cliff or those that hid their feet
among the dank ferns in the bottom of the gorge.

Now he paused before an entrance-way and listened and then,
noiselessly as the moonlight upon the trickling waters, he merged
with the shadows of the outer porch. At the doorway leading into
the interior he paused again, listening, and then quietly pushing
aside the heavy skin that covered the aperture he passed within a
large chamber hewn from the living rock. From the far end, through
another doorway, shone a light, dimly. Toward this he crept with
utmost stealth, his naked feet giving forth no sound. The knotted
club that had been hanging at his back from a thong about his neck
he now removed and carried in his left hand.

Beyond the second doorway was a corridor running parallel with the
cliff face. In this corridor were three more doorways, one at each
end and a third almost opposite that in which Es-sat stood. The
light was coming from an apartment at the end of the corridor at his
left. A sputtering flame rose and fell in a small stone receptacle
that stood upon a table or bench of the same material, a monolithic
bench fashioned at the time the room was excavated, rising massively
from the floor, of which it was a part.

In one corner of the room beyond the table had been left a dais
of stone about four feet wide and eight feet long. Upon this were
piled a foot or so of softly tanned pelts from which the fur had
not been removed. Upon the edge of this dais sat a young female
Waz-don. In one hand she held a thin piece of metal, apparently