Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of the girl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with the great beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from those which undertook to hunt him. He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wild honey, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest abounded at this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly woven branches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even the leopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him without giving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way due east, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampy meres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by the Bow-legs. Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled him to stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being a betrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the same hue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk as soundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through the branches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn, he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone and distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itself clearly as Mawg's--for there was no such thing as confounding that arched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish men. Feverishly the hunter cast about for another trail, smaller and slimmer. Forward he searched for it, and then back among the trampings of the pursuers. But in vain. Clearly Mawg had been the sole fugitive.