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The Cave Girl
Edgar Rice Burroughs
1917
Edgar Rice Burroughs began to write a south seas adventure tale in 1913. The first part was called The Cave Girl and was serialized in The All-Story magazine from July to September 1913. Its sequel, The Cave Man appeared 1917; both stories were collected in hard cover in 1925 by A. C. McClurg & Co. The text of this digital version is from the magazine serials.
CHAPTER I
FLOTSAM
THE dim shadow of the thing was but a blur against the dim shadows of the wood behind it. The young man could distinguish no outline that might mark the presence as either brute or human. He could see no eyes, yet he knew that somewhere from out of that noiseless mass stealthy eyes were fixed upon him. This was the fourth time that the thing had crept from out the wood as darkness was settling--the fourth time during those three horrible weeks since he had been cast upon that lonely shore that he had watched, terror-stricken, while night engulfed the shadowy form that lurked at the forest's edge.
It had never attacked him, but to his distorted imagination it seemed to slink closer and closer as night fell--waiting, always waiting for the moment that it might find him unprepared.
Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones was not overly courageous. He had been reared among surroundings of culture plus and ultra-intellectuality in the exclusive Back Bay home of his ancestors. He had been taught to look with contempt upon all that savored of muscular superiority--such things were gross, brutal, primitive. It had been a giant