Without waiting for
Akut who was coming slowly along some distance in his rear, Korak
swung rapidly in the direction of the chattering mob. But a few
minutes sufficed to overtake the rearmost. At sight of him they
fell to screaming and pointing downward ahead of them, and a moment
later Korak came within sight of the cause of their rage.
The youth's heart stood still in terror as he saw the limp body of
the girl across the hairy shoulders of a great ape. That she was
dead he did not doubt, and in that instant there arose within him
a something which he did not try to interpret nor could have hade
he tried; but all at once the whole world seemed centered in that
tender, graceful body, that frail little body, hanging so pitifully
limp and helpless across the bulging shoulders of the brute.
He knew then that little Meriem was his world--his sun, his moon,
his stars--with her going had gone all light and warmth and happiness.
A groan escaped his lips, and after that a series of hideous roars,
more bestial than the beasts', as he dropped plummet-like in mad
descent toward the perpetrator of this hideous crime.
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