The Crystal Sceptre by Philip Verrill Mighels

BEFORE I got home I had ample time in which to think. What a strange concatenation of events! The outlet discovered, deliverance almost assured me, and then to find the camp of my bitterest enemy on the very bank of my gateway to freedom! But that human voice--what could it mean?

I began to speculate and to reason from deduction. Inasmuch as I had lost myself and been found by the red Missing Links, it was evident that another man could have met with some accident which would have thrown him in contact with the Blacks of the same family or species. The Reds had treated me with marked consideration from the first, therefore the Blacks might do the same for another of my kind. More than this, the Blacks had manifested not only an extraordinary interest in myself, that day when first I met them at the volcanic peak, but they had also attempted to abduct me without injury to my body or feelings. I had made them my foes by allying myself offensively and defensively with the Reds, but they might not be savage to one who had not so given them cause. Undoubtedly, I reasoned, they knew man and what he is and had recognised me at once. They had desired also to possess me, an inclination, I reasoned, which had resulted from association with this other, mysterious man. What manner of person was it they held as prisoner in their camp? How long had they held him captive? To this latter question I mentally answered that they had kept him several months at the least, since I had been a considerable time with the Reds, myself, and they had apparently become acquainted with my species before my arrival in the country. Then about his capacity as a man, my thought ran quickly to the conclusion that he must be weak or at least a man of no inventiveness and of no particular inward resources. I arrived at this from two sources of argument. First, he had obviously done nothing to arm his fellows, even with primitive spears, or bows and arrows, to say nothing of never having headed their hunting or fighting expeditions; and, second, he had done nothing to escape, although he must have known that he was living on the very edge of that great outflowing river, which should suggest to his mind the sea beyond, as it had done to me.