THE ETERNAL SAVAGE
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
Original Title: The Eternal Lover
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York 36, N.Y.
THE ETERNAL SAVAGE (THE ETERNAL LOVER)
This Ace edition follows the text of the first hard-cover book
edition, originally published in 1925.
Printed in U.S.A.
ADVENTURE AT MANKIND'S DAWN
Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, tears apart time to bring thefiercely primitive world of the Stone Age to vivid life as a startlingnatural catastrophe throws a caveman into contact with the modernAfrican jungle and brings a Twentieth Century American girl into thedawn world of the Niocene Age.
Here is Nu, son of Nu, seeking to test his mettle against the terriblefangs of the ferocious saber-tooth tiger.
Here is Victoria Custer, guest of Tarzan, seeking vacation andadventure and finding more than she could ever have dreamed of.
Here is THE ETERNAL SAVAGE, filled with terrific adventure, ofprimitive man against monster beast, and of comely cavewoman againstunending peril in a world where civilization was not even a cloud onthe volcanic horizon.
PART ONE
NU OF THE NIOCENE
Nu, the son of Nu, his mighty muscles rolling beneath his smoothbronzed skin, moved silently through the jungle primeval. His handsomehead with its shock of black hair, roughly cropped between sharpenedstones, was high held, the delicate nostrils questioning each vagrantbreeze for word of Oo, hunter of men.
Now his trained senses catch the familiar odor of Ta, the great woollyrhinoceros, directly in his path, but Nu, the son of Nu, does not huntTa this day. Does not the hide of Ta's brother already hang before theentrance of Nu's cave? No, today Nu hunts the gigantic cat, the fiercesaber-toothed tiger, Oo, for Nat-ul, wondrous daughter of old Tha, willmate with none but the mightiest of hunters.
Only so recently as the last darkness, as, beneath the great,equatorial moon, the two had walked hand in hand beside the restlesssea she had made it quite plain to Nu, the son of Nu, that not even he,son of the chief of chiefs, could claim her unless there hung at thethong of his loin cloth the fangs of Oo.
"Nat-ul," she had said to him, "wishes her man to be greater thanother men. She loves Nu now better than her very life, but if Love isto walk at her side during a long life Pride and Respect must walkwith it." Her slender hand reached up to stroke the young giant'sblack hair. "I am very proud of my Nu even now," she continued, "foramong all the young men of the tribe there is no greater hunter, or nomightier fighter than Nu, the son of Nu. Should you, single-handed,slay Oo before a grown man's beard has darkened your cheek there willbe none greater in all the world than Nat-ul's mate, Nu, the son of Nu."
The young man was still sensible to the sound of her soft voice and thecaress of her gentle touch upon his brow. As these things had sent himspeeding forth into the savage jungle in search of Oo while the day wasstill so young that the night-prowling beasts of prey were yet abroad,so they urged him forward deeper and deeper into the dark and tracklessmazes of the tangled forest.
As he forged on the scent of Ta became stronger, until at last thehuge, ungainly beast loomed large before Nu's eyes. He was standing ina little clearing, in deep, rank jungle grasses,