I had seen a woman of any sort or kind.

She said something to me in her low, liquid tones; but I could not
understand her, and then she pointed toward the north and started
away. I followed her, for my way was north too; but had it been
south I still should have followed, so hungry was I for human
companionship in this world of beasts and reptiles and half-men.

We walked along, the girl talking a great deal and seeming mystified
that I could not understand her. Her silvery laugh rang merrily
when I in turn essayed to speak to her, as though my language was
the quaintest thing she ever had heard. Often after fruitless
attempts to make me understand she would hold her palm toward me,
saying, "Galu!" and then touch my breast or arm and cry, "Alu, alu!"
I knew what she meant, for I had learned from Bowen's narrative the
negative gesture and the two words which she repeated. She meant
that I was no Galu, as I claimed, but an Alu, or speechless one.
Yet every time she said this she laughed again, and so infectious
were her tones that I could only join her. It was only natural,
too, that she should be mystified by my inability to comprehend
her or to make her comprehend me, for from the club-men, the lowest
human type in Caspak to have speech, to the golden race of Galus,
the tongues of the various tribes are identical--except for
amplifications in the rising scale of evolution. She, who is a
Galu, can understand one of the Bo-lu and make herself understood
to him, or to a hatchet-man, a spear-man or an archer. The Ho-lus,
or apes, the Alus and myself were the only creatures of human
semblance with which she could hold no converse; yet it was evident
that her intelligence told her that I was neither Ho-lu nor Alu,
neither anthropoid ape nor speechless man.