That I could carry her, lift her high up with ease, toss her about, rejoiced her to the utmost....

I caught her up in my arms, pleasing this humour, tossing her like a ball ... till my muscles were as sore as if I had fought through the two halves of a foot-ball game....

Out of all this play between us there grew a series of Cave Poems.

One of them I set aside to read at the sing, beside the camp-fire.

* * * * *

They had chorused Up With the Bonnet for Bonny Dundee and You Take the Highway....

There ran a ripple of talk while they waited for me.

In the red glow of the camp-fire I towered over the stocky little husband as he introduced me.  Hildreth was sitting there ...  I must make a good impression before my mate.  All I saw was she—­too patently, I fear.

I went through poem after poem, entranced with the melody of my verse ... mostly delicate, evanescent stuff ... like this one ...

  “THE EMPEROR TO HIS LOVE

  “I’ve a green garden with a grey wall ’round
  Where even the wind’s foot-fall makes no sound;
  There let us go and from ambition flee,
  Accepting love’s brief immortality. 
  Let other rulers hugely labour still
  Beneath the burden of ambition’s ill
  Like caryatids heaving up the strain
  Of mammoth chambers, till they stoop again ... 
  Your face has changed my days to splendid dreams
  And baubled trumpets, traffics, and triremes;
  One swift touch of your passion-parted lips
  Is worth five armies and ten seas of ships.”

Hildreth’s applause was sweet.  My heart almost burst with happiness within me, as those tiny hands, that had run through my hair and been so wonderful with me ... hands that I had kissed and fondled in secret—­joined in unison with Penton’s and Darrie’s and Ruth’s hand-claps.

“And now I will finish with the Song of Kaa, the Cave-Man,” I announced ... it seemed that the poem was not, after all, in the bunch of MSS.  I had brought along with me....

At last I found it—­and read: 

  “THE SONG OF KAA

  “Beat with thy club on a hollow tree
  While I chant the song of Kaa for thee: 
  I lived in a cave, alone, at first,
  Till into a neighbouring valley I burst
  Wild and bearded and seeking prey,
  And I came on Naa, and bore her away ... 
  Away to my hole in the crest of the hill,
  Where I broke her body to my fierce will....

* * * * *

  “My fellow cave-men, fell in a rage: 
  ‘What hast thou done?’ cried Singh, the Sage,
  ’For I hear far off a battle-song,
  And the tree-men come, a hundred strong ...’ 
  Long the battle and dread the fight;
  We hurled rocks down from our mountain height”—­

I copy this from memory alone ...  Hildreth has all my cave-poems.  I gave them to her, holding no transcripts of them—­