Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/299

 halfway across the clearing, spent.

It was Boloon—he who had been captured by the head-hunters the day before Thandar had been cast upon the shore. Revived with food and water the fellow told a most extraordinary tale. From the meager scraps that were afterward translated into pidgin English for Thandar the Bostonian learned that Boloon had been dragged far inland to a village of considerable size.

Here he had been placed in a room of one of the long houses to await the pleasure of the chief. It was hinted that he was to be tortured before his head was removed to grace the rafters of the chief’s palace.

The remarkable portion of his tale related to a strange temple to which he had been dragged and thrown at the feet of a white goddess. Tsao Ming and the other pirates were much mystified by this part of the story, for Boloon insisted that the goddess was white with a mass of black hair, and that her body was covered by the pelt of a magnificent black panther.

Though Tsao Ming pointed out that there were no panthers upon this island Boloon could not be shaken. He had seen with his own eyes, and he knew. Furthermore, he argued, there were no white goddesses upon the island, and yet the woman he had seen was white.