The long and perilous journey with Obergatz had trained her muscles and her nerves to such unaccustomed habits.She found a safe resting place such as Tarzan had taught her was best and there she curled herself, thirty feet above the ground, for a night's rest.She was cold and uncomfortable and yet she slept, for her heart was warm with renewed hope and her tired brain had found temporary surcease from worry.
She slept until the heat of the sun, high in the heavens, awakened her.She was rested and now her body was well as her heart was warm.A sensation of ease and comfort and happiness pervaded her being.She rose upon her gently swaying couch and stretched luxuriously, her naked limbs and lithe body mottled by the sunlight filtering through the foliage above combined with the lazy gesture to impart to her appearance something of the leopard.With careful eye she scrutinized the ground below and with attentive ear she listened for any warning sound that might suggest the near presence of enemies, either man or beast.
Satisfied at last that there was nothing close of which she need have fear she clambered to the ground.She wished to bathe but the lake was too exposed and just a bit too far from the safety of the trees for her to risk it until she became more familiar with her surroundings.She wandered aimlessly through the forest searching for food which she found in abundance.She ate and rested, for she had no objective as yet.Her freedom was too new to be spoiled by plannings for the future.The haunts of civilized man seemed to her now as vague and unattainable as the half-forgotten substance of a dream.If she could but live on here in peace, waiting, waiting for--him.It was the old hope revived.She knew that he would come some day, if he lived.She had always known that, though recently she had believed that he would come too late.If he lived! Yes, he would come if he lived, and if he did not live she were as well off here as elsewhere, for then nothing mattered, only to wait for the end as patiently as might be.
Her wanderings brought her to a crystal brook and there she drank and bathed beneath an overhanging tree that offered her quick asylum in the event of danger.It was a quiet and beautiful spot and she loved it from the first.The bottom of the brook was paved with pretty stones and bits of glassy obsidian.As she gathered a handful of the pebbles and held them up to look at them she noticed that one of her fingers was bleeding from a clean, straight cut.She fell to searching for the cause and presently discovered it in one of the fragments of volcanic glass which revealed an edge that was almost razor-like.Jane Clayton was elated.Here, God-given to her hands, was the first beginning with which she might eventually arrive at both weapons and tools--a cutting edge.Everything was possible to him who possessed it--nothing without.
She sought until she had collected many of the precious bits of stone--until the pouch that hung at her right side was almost filled.Then she climbed into the great tree to examine them at leisure.There were some that looked like knife blades, and some that could easily be fashioned into spear heads, and many smaller ones that nature seemed to have intended for the tips of savage arrows.
The spear she would essay first--that would be easiest.There was a hollow in the bole of the tree in a great crotch high above the ground.Here she cached all of her treasure except a single knifelike sliver.With this she descended to the ground and searching out a slender sapling that grew arrow-straight she hacked and sawed until she could break it off without splitting the wood.It was just the right diameter for the shaft of a spear--a hunting spear such as her beloved Waziri had liked best.
How often had she watched them fashioning them, and they had taught her how to use them, too--them and the heavy war spears--laughing and clapping their hands as her proficiency increased.
She knew the arborescent grasses that yielded the longest and toughest fibers and these she sought and carried to her tree with the spear shaft that was to be.Clambering to her crotch she bent to her work, humming softly a little tune.She caught herself and smiled--it was the first time in all these bitter months that song had passed her lips or such a smile.
"I feel," she sighed, "I almost feel that John is near--my John--my Tarzan!"
She cut the spear shaft to the proper length and removed the twigs and branches and the bark, whittling and scraping at the nubs until the surface was all smooth and straight.Then she split one end and inserted a spear point, shaping the wood until it fitted perfectly.This done she laid the shaft aside and fell to splitting the thick grass stems and pounding and twisting them until she had separated and partially cleaned the fibers.These she took down to the brook and washed and brought back again and wound tightly around the cleft end of the shaft, which she had notched to receive them, and the upper part of the spear head which she had also notched slightly with a bit of stone.It was a crude spear but the best that she could attain in so short a time.Later, she promised herself, she should have others--many of them--and they would be spears of which even the greatest of the Waziri spear-men might be proud.
