The slender youth was within a few feet of the bole of a mammoth tree that marked the trail's entrance, when a sudden rustling amid a clump of grasses to one side of the path brought him to a startled halt. Before Trakor could recover from his initial shock, those trembling grasses parted, and with majestic deliberation, Sadu, the lion, stepped into the trail less than twenty paces from the paralyzed youngster. Huge, impressive, his sleek, tawny coat and bristling mane shimmering in the fading sunlight, his tufted, sinuous tail moving in jerky undulations, stood the jungle king, his round yellow eyes fastened hypnotically on his intended prey. Trakor knew that only seconds remained for him in this life, that within fleeting moments he must go down to a horrible death beneath rending fangs. And with that knowledge came a fatalistic courage--a courage he had not dreamed he possessed. With icy calmness he closed the fingers of his right hand tightly about the shaft of his spear and brought it up level with his shoulder, point foremost, ready for a cast when the great beast should charge. Slowly Sadu crouched for the spring, his giant head flattened almost to the ground, massive hindquarters drawn beneath him like powerful springs, his long tail extended and quivering. Voicing a thunderous roar, Sadu sprang. * * * * * Racing across the plains and through the jungles of a savage world, moving with unflagging swiftness by night and by day, came Tharn, mighty warrior of an era already old twenty thousand years before the founding of Rome--an era which witnessed the arrival to recognizable prehistory of the first _true man_. Somewhere to the south of this Cro-Magnon fighting man, separated by endless vistas of primeval forest, grass-filled plains and towering mountain ranges, were the girl he loved and the men who had taken her. Still fresh in Tharn's memory were the events of the past few weeks: the battles in Sephar's arena; the bloody revolt engineered by Tharn and his friends; the arrival of his father and fifty warriors of his tribe; the ascension of his close friend, Katon, to the kingship of Sephar; the finding of his own mother, long given up for dead after disappearing from the tribal caves ten summers before; the stunning shock upon learning that Jotan had taken Dylara with him when he and his party of fellow Ammadians began their journey back to far-off Ammad, mother country of a civilization and culture far in advance of the Cro-Magnon cave dwellers.[1] [1] "Warrior of the Dawn", December, 1942-January, 1943, _Amazing Stories_.--Ed. The thrust of a knife from the cowardly and treacherous hand of Sephar's high priest had come near to costing Tharn his life on the eve of his departure in quest of Dylara. As it was, an entire moon passed before the caveman was able to leave his bed.