The Mena weekly star., 1910-05-05
CHAPTER |.
The Primitive Norm.


 thing she was sure, 1t had been dark when consciousness left her and 1t was now broad day, although the light seemed to come to her with greenish tiuge which was quite unfamiliar. The transition between her state of yester- day and that of to-day was as great as if she had been born into morning from the womb of midnight and like young animal she drank it in blindly with closed eyes. She could hear the tbunderous roaring of the breakers crashing upon the barrier reef. Alone her boat had been wrecked in the darkness of the night before = the sound softened and mellowed by distance came to her in a deep. low accompaniment to the sharper and nearer sounds of the birds singing and the breeze rustling gently through the long leaves of the trees overhead.
 soft and yielding and made comfort able bed for her tired body racked with weary days in the constraint and narrowness of small boat. It was warm, too. She had been drenched when she scrambled on the shore and fell prostrate on the beach, retaining iust strength enough and purpose enough to crawl painfully inward to where the tall palms grow before she lapsed in whatsoever way 1t might have been into oblivion.
 Incoherent thoughts raced through her bewildered brain; each one, how ever, bringing her little nearer the awakening point of realization Then there ran through her young body a primal pang which dispelled the trem- ulous and vague illusions which her fancy had woven about herself as she lay warm and snug and sunny at the foot of the tall trees. and she realized that she was frightfuliy thirsty, so thirsty that she did not know how hungry she was.
 The demand for the material awak- ened the animal In her. Her thoughts localized on one supreme desire. Coin cidently her eyes uncIosed and she sat up blinking in the strong light The rising sun still low on the horizon smote her full in the eyes and left her for the moment dazed again. She sat leaning upon her hands extended behind her back staring seaward, say ing nothing, thinking nothing. until strange sound to the right of her at tracted her attention It was a sound made by human voice and yet 1t was like nothing human that she had ever heard. It was a worthless, language less ejaculation. but 1t reused her in terest at once despite her material cravings.
 She weakly turned her head and there standing erect with folded arms looking down upon her was a man. He was unclothed entirely save for fan tastic girdle of palm leaves about his waist. She stared at him puzzled, amazed. affrighted. He returned her look with an intent curiosity in which there was no suggestion of evil pur- pose rather of great incomprehension, an amazing wonderment. There was nothing about him, save the fact that he was there. which should have caused any alarm in her heart, for with a woman's swift mastery of the possibilities of the other sex, she no- tced in her vague terror and wonder ment that he was remarkably good to look at Indeed, she thought that she had men of physical manhood as that be- fore her. In color he was white. Save that he was bronzed by the tropic sun, he was perhaps whiter than she was, His hair, which hung about his head in wild. matted tangle, not unpictures- que, was golden; his eyes bright blue. Beneath his beard. unkempt but short and curly, she could see his firm, clean-cut lips. His proportions were superb. He was limbed and ohested like the Apollo Belvedere. In him grace and strength strove for predom- inance He was totally unlike all that she had read of the aborigines of the South seas.
 It was the man who broke the si- ience, as it had been the man who had broken the spell of her slumber. He made that queer little chuckling noise in his throat which sounded ia miiiar enough and yet she had heard rom the lips of no man before. It meant nothing to her except that he who stood before her at least was not dumb, although the noise he made was certainly no articulate speech as she knew speech or could imagine 1t.
 At any rate 1t was a stimulus to her. She opened her own parched lips and strove to make reply, but hen thirst, with a rising terror and nervousness made her dumb and no sound came forth. The man might be preparing to XIII her. He could do so, If he will ca, she thought, but she must drink or uie. IT she could not speak, she could make signs. She leaned forward raised her arm, hollowed her hand and uipped as if from a we'll and made as to pour it into her lips. Then she stretched out both her hands to him m the attitude of petition. The man stared hard at her His brow wrinkled. ~ was such simple sign that any savage would have comprehended 1t, sne thought, and yet 1t appeared to "e,' watching in despair, that 1t took 'ong time for the idea to beat Into