Emerging at last, she dried her body with handfuls of grasses, her lithe, sweetly rounded figure gleaming like an image molded of pure gold in the fading sunlight. Her spirits were soaring again, for when first leaving the water she had glimpsed the beginnings of a second trail into the forest--a trail pointing straight as a spear shaft toward the north. Already her plans were made. She would spend the night among the high-flung branches of that tree at the trail's entrance, when dawn came again she would start out once more--this time toward home. Donning her tunic she ran lightly toward the tree, its base buried among a heavy growth of bushes. While from the depths of tangled undergrowth near the bole of that tree, a pair of glowing yellow eyes were fixed in an unblinking stare upon the swiftly approaching girl! * * * * * A storm was blowing up. Tharn, belly flat against a broad branch while he gnawed the sweet pulpy interior of a hard-shelled fruit, caught the signs of it in the scent of the air, in the uneasy pattern of a shifting breeze, in the faintly yellowish cast of the sky overhead. He mentioned the possibility to Trakor, who, wedged into a fork nearby, was dozing in the heat of day. "A nice dry cave would come in handy if the rain comes," the youth observed. "I know how Gerdak's warriors hated being caught in a storm. They say the jungle is never more dangerous, with winds blowing branches through the air with the speed of flying spears, great trees being uprooted to crash down and crush the unlucky, while Rora, the lightning, flickers angrily about their heads." "It is a part of jungle living," Tharn said philosophically. "This one will not come for half a sun yet--if it comes at all. Or it may be only a little storm." "And if it is a bad one?" Trakor asked. "Then we find a very big tree that is not too old and stand under it until it passes." "But sometimes storms last for many suns!" "Not at this season. The rain may fall for suns on end but then the wind is not too strong and there is no danger in moving about."