"Sadu must have gotten her after all," said one of the four. "I don't believe it!" Jotan snapped. "She knows the jungle beasts too well for that to happen." "Then why," asked another of the men, "does she not answer our calls?" Jotan ignored the question. "Return to the camp," he said through a strange lump in his throat. "When morning comes, we will take up the search for her." Alurna, still weak and shaken from her recent experience with Sadu, watched the five men enter the camp. She saw Jotan dismiss the others and come over to where she was seated between Tamar and Javan. When there was no sight of Dylara, and when she noticed Jotan's grim expression, her heart bounded with a wild and horrible hope. "Well, Jotan?" Tamar said quietly. * * * * * His friend spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "There is no trace of her," he admitted, and in his voice was a note of such intense suffering that Tamar's heart went out to him. Javan, blinked stolidly at the stricken man, put into words the unvoiced question of the others. "The lions...." Jotan shook his head. "I don't believe they got her. There were no signs of a struggle. No ... bones." His voice faltered on that last word, and he threw his hands wide in sick bewilderment. "I don't know what to think!" The princess Alurna spoke up suddenly in silken tones. "Have you forgotten so soon, O noble Jotan, the cave girl's own words?" Jotan stared deep into the faintly mocking gray-green eyes of Urim's daughter. "What do you mean?" he said stiffly. "Did she not say: 'I would escape and return to the caves of Majok, my father'? Did those words mean so little to you?" Harsh lines deepened at the corners of Jotan's lips. "Yes, she said that. But she would not try to get away at night. Especially tonight, when there are the God knows how many lions roaming about the camp. The hardiest warrior would not dare that, let alone a frail girl." "How long," Tamar broke in, "will you go on thinking of Dylara as a 'frail' girl? Can't you understand that she is not our kind of woman? She does not fear the jungle: all that she needed was a chance to get into it without our seeing her, and tonight she was given that chance. You have Sadu to thank for that."