Suddenly a twig snapped, and the young man turned like a flash, only to receive Oomba’s mighty club full on the head. So silently had Oomba approached that the listening Nimba had not detected the slightest sound. Now he stood looking down at his victim and contemptuously turning the bleeding head from side to side with his foot, quite unconscious of any lurking danger.
Clinging only by her feet from the bough upon which she had been lying, Nimba reached down and swung her club with vicious force upon the side of Oomba’s head. Beside his own victim he fell, while Nimba dropped lightly to the ground, turning in the air like a cat and landing upon her feet.
Quickly she dragged Oomba to one side, where two rocks abutted, and wedged his head vicelike between them. Then she beat it with her club until it had no shape at all and the leaves and little green things nearby were spattered with blood. There was no doubt about it: Oomba was dead.
* * * * *
Great satisfaction showed on Nimba’s face when her bloody task was done.
She washed the blood from her body in the lake and returned to examine the young man who had first been struck down. Apparently satisfied with his condition, she picked him up and, trailing her bloody club, returned to her great rock at the head of the lake. Here she found the creeper where Oomba had left it and experienced little difficulty in climbing down to the privacy of her cave with the senseless man under one arm.
Two trips she made for water, which was carried in a gourd and stored in a hollow in the cave floor. This done, Nimba washed the young man’s face, wet his hair and propped him in a corner to recover his senses.
Her work of mercy finished, Nimba turned her attention to the animal which she had killed earlier in the day. Dragging it from its corner, she placed both feet upon the body while she tore off a leg with one furious wrench. As the sun was setting and the deep purple of the hills became bordered with gold, Nimba commenced the one meal of the day to which she was accustomed. It would soon be time to sleep.
Almost as the last shaft of sunlight shot over the distant hills consciousness returned to the young man as he sat propped in the corner of the cave. Slowly he looked about him. He rose to his feet and walked to the edge of the cave, where he gazed down at the lake and examined the dangling creeper down which he had been carried.
Finally the young man approached Nimba, who had stopped eating and was silently watching him, her mouth bloody from her raw repast. He dragged the animal from her side and shoved her into a corner, where a jagged stone cut her shoulder, causing the blood to flow. Having eaten his fill, the man lay down to sleep.
The great moon rose and silvered the sleeping lake. A night-bird screeched as it swept by the entrance to the cave and Nimba crept from her corner. Still bleeding, she stretched herself beside the sleeping man. Her body touched his and some blood from her shoulder mingled with his in a tiny pool.
Below them, in the water, a reptile splashed its way among the reeds. Nimba and her master slept.
Nimba had taken her mate.
_What Comes After Death?_
_An Anonymous Author Gives a Startling Answer in_
_The_ YOUNG MAN _who_ WANTED TO DIE
_By ? ? ?_
FIRST EPISODE.
In a mean, miserable, two-dollar-a-week bedroom in a Chicago lodging-house a young man was calmly and deliberately preparing to kill himself.
He possessed youth, health, affluence and comeliness--and yet he was preparing to kill himself. Calmly and deliberately. In the shabby room of a shabby hovel.
With a penknife, he was ripping the bedclothes to ribbons and wedging them into chinks and crannies. At last satisfied that the room was as near gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing and sat down at the battered bureau and began to write:
“_As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want to know why I did it. I’ll tell them. And they may scarehead it as much as they like. I don’t care. I’ve destroyed every clue to my identity, and though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and stared at, there is not one in this vast city whom I know, not one who cares whether I am alive tomorrow morning, or dead._
“_A love motive? Yes. But there is also something else--something equally potent to me, however weak and flimsy it may appear to others. I loved and do still love a girl whom I have known from childhood, but always there has been this thing that stood between us, and which is chiefly accountable for what I am about to do. It is not drink--nor gambling, nor hereditary disease._
“_It is a Curiosity. An awful, overwhelming, unconquerable Curiosity. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a terrible desire to know what follows death. As I grew up, this craving increased until it was a positive mania. I devoured every book on theosophy and kindred subjects I could lay hands on; I attended meetings of psychic societies; at college my avidity for psychology was remarked by everybody. At length I had reached the point where I yearned to tear aside the black veil of death and discover her secret. Why wait? I asked myself. Since you are bound to go some day, why not go now?_
“_One day I half-playfully voiced some such sentiment to her. It led to a dispute, which led to a violent quarrel; and that night she left the town where we both lived._
“_I traced her as far as Chicago, and here I have lost her. For three years now I have searched the city for her, but not a trace have I found. And so I have given it up. It is hopeless. I shall never see her again._
“_Like myself, she is alone in the world, but, unlike me, she is very poor. And somewhere in this great, monstrous city she is living even as I write these words--perhaps miles away--perhaps in the next block--perhaps ... God alone knows, and God protect her!_”
He stopped, put down his pencil, and placed his hand before his eyes. Thus he sat for several minutes. The yellow gas flames flickered weirdly at either side of the shoddy bureau; the clangor of a distant street car reached him faintly; a motor-truck rumbled heavily in the street below; a bickering couple jawed and wrangled ceaselessly in the next room.
After awhile he picked up the pencil and went on:
“_Well anyway, I’m going to gratify that Curiosity. In a few hours I shall be in an unknown country I have always longed to explore. I’ve an idea I’ll find a happiness there I have never known on this earth._
“_In any event, I shall leave some good front page stuff for the newspapers. It ought to make an interesting story: ‘Rich young man, seeking his lost sweetheart in the great city, gives way to despair and kills himself.’ If the girl is found next door, without money to buy food or pay her room rent--_”
He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written. Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full, and then lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room....
It was perhaps some twenty minutes before his body began to twitch convulsively.
“Lily May!” he murmured huskily. Then more hoarsely still, “Lily May--forgive--Lily May!”
... His body was writhing and twisting horribly now. His hands were clutching at the air, at his clothing, at the mattress; his legs were contracting and relaxing spasmodically. His face turned purple; he choked and gasped.
“Lily May!” he cried in a stifling whisper, and attempted to lift his arms.
But he could not, and his lips ceased moving and his head fell back, and he lay very still.
SECOND EPISODE.
When the deadly gas fumes reached the youth on the cot he turned over on his back, threw his arms out, and breathed long and deeply of the poisoned air.
His head throbbed and pounded; his heart pumped madly; his eyes started from their sockets. Yet still he lay with outstretched arms, inhaling evenly and steadily.
Then everything within him seemed to warp and become distorted and askew. His veins tied themselves in knots. His blood choked and clogged. An awful weight crushed and crunched his breast.
But he set his teeth and clenched his fists, and continued to gulp in the murderous air.
Then he felt himself dropping, gently, gently--down, down, down--as though invisible hands were lowering him into some bottomless, pitch black cavern.
But suddenly there burst upon his vision a dazzling golden light, and far above him he saw a blazing throne, sparkling and flashing with a strange brilliancy, and on the throne a girl, her hair undone, her body clothed in a virginal robe. And she gazed down upon him with eyes full of sadness and reproach. And he tried to call out to her, and tried to lift his arms to her....
And the fiendish darkness swept all away and closed in upon him and crushed him, and he knew no more.