It was a girl, fashioned in human form like myself. She stood there cloaked in the long waving masses of her hair. I must have made some slight sound for after a moment she looked my way. I caught a glimpse of a beautiful oval face framed in the golden tresses, lips full and red, eyes blue, wide now with fear. Without warning, she left the ground. She went swiftly past me, lying in the air gracefully on one side, her arms moving rhythmically. She was swimming in the air with all the grace and skill of a mermaid! I stood spellbound. In a moment she had passed over the curve of the world and disappeared. CHAPTER II Can I say that the sight of this girl inspired in me any emotion stronger than my passions of hunger and thirst? Not so. I was in the full bloom of my manhood, yet the sight of this beautiful woman thrilled me because now I knew instinctively I might find food and water. I scrambled forward, holding myself to the ground with difficulty, and entered the mouth of her cave like some marauding animal seeking the sustenance I craved. The cave-mouth gave into a tunnel leading at an angle downward. The walls were smooth. I forced myself down, half sliding, half gently falling. For an instant the thought came to me that I would encounter other living creatures—things to keep me from the food and drink I wanted. Had I met them—humans or beasts—I know I should have fought desperately. It was dark in the tunnel; but soon I saw that the rocks were glowing with a phosphorescence. This grew brighter as I advanced. I went down perhaps two hundred feet; then the tunnel opened. I was in a subterranean chamber of indeterminate size, possibly five hundred feet square, with a black rocky ceiling some fifty feet above me. The whole place was dimly lighted by the red-silver glow which came from the rocks. The air was denser, with a pungent, aromatic odor. It seemed to strengthen me and clear my head. The sides of the cave were rough and broken with overhanging rocks like shelves. Here and there were other small tunnel-mouths. Most important of all, a small subterranean stream crossed the cave, opening up into a little lagoon near the center. It was a thin-looking, milk-white fluid. I flung myself down to it with a splash. It tasted, not like milk, but like pure, cold water, though very thin and light. I drank my fill. The joy of it! There was a pile of blue fabric—woven grass—on the bank beside the stream. The girl’s couch, it proved to be. The robes were very soft, gossamer in weight. I started to dry myself upon one of them. But the water—I shall call it that—evaporated like alcohol, and I was dry in a moment. There was food here. A patch of black soil had queer, fungus-like growths in it. I had no doubt it was the girl’s food. There were the remains of a fire, though I did not know what it was at the time. On a stone was some of the fungus which had been cooked. Of this I ate.